Southeast Asia

The militant Islamist separatist group Abu Sayyaf threatens to poison the water supply in Isabela, a mainly Christian town on Basilan Island in the country’s south. In October, residents in six nearby villages are suspected for contamination due to water that smelled like gasoline. Local officials respond by closing pipelines and bringing in drinking water by truck. In the months following the 9/11 attacks on New York, numerous false alarms of terrorist activity are reported around the world.

The US military, in ‘Operation Popeye,’ uses silver iodide for cloud seeding over Indochina (Vietnam), in an attempt to extend the monsoon season and stop the flow of materiel along Ho Chi Minh trail. “Continuous rainfall was intended to slow down the truck traffic and was relatively successful.”

A predominantely Muslim town in southern Philippines loses access to water after a group known as Abu Sayyaf is suspected in an explosion that damaged local water pipes. This group is said to be linked to al-Qaeda and/or at least inspired by al-Qaeda’s strategy to attack water infrastructure in Iraq. The affected town is without municipal water for at least several days. In a possibly related incident a person guarding the water facility is killed.

Suspected New People’s Army (NPA) militants hold up a water-treatment facility claiming that it had failed to pay “revolutionary taxes” to the NPA. No people are harmed, but armed guards are disarmed and additional items are taken from the personnel at the facility.

Irrigation water supply systems in North Vietnam are bombed during the Vietnam War. An estimated 661 sections of dikes damaged or destroyed.

Several explosive devices detonate at a hydroelectic power plant in Biltar, East Java, Indonesia.

Protests against the lack of water and other basic resources at a prison in Medan, Indonesia leave five dead. Hundreds of convicts escape after the inmates set fire to the prison.

United States bombs dikes in the Red River delta, rivers, and canals during massive bombing campaign.

Militia opposing East Timor independence kills pro-independence supporters and throws bodies in water well.

Violence over access to a water source in Maluku, Indonesia. Rival mobs from two villages attack one another “with sharp weapons, guns and explosives” causing several deaths and injuries.