American government planners looking for new targets in their global war on terrorism have said they are looking at the links Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network has established with Islamist groups in south-east Asia, and in particular Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia.
Indonesia: The world's most populous Muslim country, and thus a crucial ally, Indonesia is probably the terrorists' most likely regional target even though the vast majority of its 175 million Muslims are anything but radical.
The evidence that al-Qaeda terrorists were planning an attack in Indonesia in August - well before the attacks on America - was so convincing that the US embassy was closed for a week while the threat was being assessed and combated.
Dozens of foreign Islamist fighters, mostly from the Middle East, are openly operating with local groups in various parts of the sprawling archipelago. The vast majority are in the eastern Maluku islands helping the militant Java-based Laska r Jihad (Holy War Force) organisation in its two-and-a-half-year sectarian war against local Christians.
Foreigners have also been helping to co-ordinate some of this week's protests outside the US embassy in Jakarta and there are fears that they are planning to launch terrorist attacks, although no evidence has been produced to substantiate these suspicions.
Demonstrations against the American and British strikes continued to grow yesterday but they were largely peaceful as the security forces showed an unprecedented willingness to crack down on the slightest hint of trouble.
Western diplomats are surprised that Laskar r Jihad - which, before September 11th, was considered by far the most dangerous of Indonesia's Islamist groups - has been conspicuously silent this week.
Philippines: Attracting more attention is the Abu Sayyaf group, based in the southern Philippines, particularly since it was named last month as one of the two dozen terrorist organisations that the United States is especially keen to eliminate.
It was formed in 1991 when its leader, Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, broke away from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Since then Abu Sayyaf has claimed to be campaigning for a separatist homeland for the Muslim people in the southern Philippines. But since Janjalani was killed by the army in 1998, it has fractured and concentrated more on kidnapping for ransom and intermittently detonating bombs in the overwhelmingly Catholic northern provinces.
Abu Sayyaf has known links with al-Qaeda and other radical groups based in Pakistan and Afghanistan but, like all the Indonesian Islamist organisations, it has shown no sign of exporting its terrorism overseas. One Abu Sayyaf cell currently holds at least two American missionaries among 18 hostages on its main base of Basilan island.
Philippine intelligence agencies believe several small Islamic fundamentalist groups in the southern Philippines received financial support from bin Laden through the International Islamic Relief Organisation. This was established by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, who is bin Laden's brother-in-law.
Washington is so concerned about the threat they pose that it is to send a general and a number of troops to the southern Philippines to help the local military crush the guerrillas, it was announced yesterday.
But the Philippines national security adviser, Roilo Golez, stressed that the American troops would only be there in an advisory capacity.
Another reason for the focus on the Philippines is that one of the bombers in the 1993 World Trade Centre attack, Ramzi Yousef, is a Filipino.
Yousef was also suspected of being behind a foiled plot to assassinate the Pope in 1995 and attempts to blow up 11 airliners heading for the US.
Malaysia: Malaysia poses the least serious threat of the three countries. Malaysians have been charged in Indonesia for alleged involvement in several bombings in the past year and others have been arrested in Thailand and the Philippines for importing bombs.