The world seems a more dangerous place in the five years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, given the quagmire of Iraq, war in the Middle East and ongoing terrorist plots. Yet through the gloom come signs across East Asia that September 11 has acted as a catalyst for broader co-operation and engagement that was previously thought inconceivable - led by better intelligence and law-enforcement.
Intelligence officials, scholars and diplomats talk of converging security interests stripping away perennial suspicions between the region's nations and towards the US. Some also express hopes of co-operation expanding beyond terrorism into the wider security arena.
From the US relationships with Beijing and Hanoi to the traditionally awkward troika of Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia or the tense border between Thailand and Cambodia, working-level ties are expanding in the fight against terrorism, despite wider political concerns about the Bush administration's foreign policy and its Iraq adventure.
'It has been a long road, but it is really quite remarkable to think of the progress that has been made across the region,' said John Harrison, of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, in Singapore. 'The sort of co-operation we are now seeing represents something of a victory in itself, even if it is by its nature secretive and hard to quantify. Co-operation is the only way we are going to defeat a globalised network ... we are seeing a recognition now that it is not just a US issue, that most nations are potential targets, whether they are a westernised, industrialised or developing nation.'
For some, Indonesia serves as a metaphor for the wider progress. In the months after September 11, US intelligence officials grew alarmed at a lack of recognition within the world's largest Muslim nation of the threat posed by internal terrorist networks, specifically the so-called Jemaah Islamiah.
Then-president Megawati Sukarnoputri struggled to deal with domestic Muslim politics. Internal pressures grew after her long-planned visit to Washington within a week of the September 11 attacks.