The world was taken aback by the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. A new threat has appeared but governments do not know exactly how to deal with it. Maybe, the past can help us in that matter. As a matter of fact, it can be noticed that terrorists operate within more or less organized networks. Earlier on, communists used to operate along this pattern of networks. As communism has fallen apart in most of the previous communist countries, can the method used by governments and police to track down communist agents and prevent them from taking part in operations be followed to deal with the terrorist threat? According to this paper, rather similar features can be observed between the two kinds of networks and beyond, and the way previous governments managed to control such networks of the past could help us devise a new approach to fight terrorist activities in Southeast Asia.

Although the whole world has been shocked by the September 11 terrorist attack which took place in New York and Washington, we must not forget that terrorism has more or less existed in the world since mankind appeared. So threats and attacks on persons and properties have taken place in our long history. True, some aspects are quite new such as the boldness of the terrorists, the magnitude of the actions, the technology mastered by the terrorists and the suicide approach of the group. So, if terrorism has been going on for a long time and has really become global nowadays, could we find similar patterns in the past to help us understand these barbarous acts, which as a matter of fact, started before September 11 terrorist attack but increased in power and boldness since then? It seems that communist networks of the past were run roughly the same way as terrorist networks of todays'. So, it may be useful to compare them to be in a better position to clamp down terrorist movements.

When we ponder over the past, we may discover that mankind has indeed set up a multitude of networks. We can mention, for instance, commercial networks, then later in the 20^th century, a new set of networks appeared in the world, that is the communist networks.

A Comparison between Communist Networks in the 20th Century and Islamic Terrorist Networks in the 21st Century in Southeast Asia, networks, communist, governments, approach, attacks, boldness, threat, Washington, communism, devise, increased, magnitude, movements, agents, barbarous, pattern, position, properties, shocked, technology