Asia Times, Jul 14, 2007
An alleged terrorist goes legit
By Simon Roughneen
DILI - After spending two years in prison on terror-related charges, Abu Bakar
Ba'asyir, widely regarded as Indonesia's most radical Islamic cleric, is plotting his
next career move: into mainstream politics.
A spokesman for Ba'asyir's Indonesian Mujahedeen Council (MMI) told Indonesian
media last week that the controversial cleric is weighing a run for the presidency at
the 2009 polls. Ba'asyir's spokesman said that before officially declaring his
candidacy, "He wants to see what people say first."
Ironically, perhaps, the radical cleric would likely aim to run on a morality ticket,
attempting to seize on growing public cynicism over official corruption, including
recent damaging allegations that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono received illicit
funds to finance his 2004 election campaign. (Yudhoyono has denied the allegations,
which were lodged by an opposition politician.)
Ba'asyir was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in March 2005 on conspiracy
charges related to the 2002 Bali bomb attacks, which killed 202 people, mostly
foreign tourists. That sentence was eventually reduced and he was released last
December, irking Canberra - many of those killed in Bali were Australians - and
enraging the victims' family members.
Western officials have contended that Ba'aysir is the spiritual leader of Jemaah
Islamiyah (JI), an Indonesia-based Islamic radical group accused of various terror
attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings, the 2003 J W Marriott Hotel bombing in
Jakarta, which killed 14 people, and the 2004 Australian Embassy bombing, also in
the Indonesian capital.
The United States and Australia contend that JI has links to al-Qaeda, and Ba'asyir is
on the United Nations' list of international terrorists. More recently, JI has allegedly
been involved in stirring communal violence in areas surrounding the town of Poso on
Sulawesi island.
For his part, Ba'asyir has repeatedly denied that JI exists and denies having links to
terrorism. Last month, however, Indonesian police arrested the group's alleged leader,
Zarkasih, and military head, Dujana, in coordinated raids on their hideouts. In
detention, Dujana has told Indonesian authorities that Ba'asyir was JI's leader from
2000-02.
Ba'asyir refuted Dujana's allegation, repeating his claim, "There are no terrorists in
Indonesia. What there are, are counter-terrorists," he said, adding: "The aims and
sacrifices of the bombers, in their efforts to defend Islam and Muslims in making war
against the real terrorist - that is, the United States of America and its allies - need to
be taken as a model."
Ba'asyir famously called on his followers to harass and chase American tourists from
hotels in Central Java in 2001. On June 25 this year, the radical cleric announced a
new political pressure campaign to have Indonesia's US-backed counter-terrorism
police unit, known as Detachment 88, officially disbanded.
Ba'asyir's legal defense team, known as the "Team for the Defense of Muslims", has
in recent years provided defense counsel to several militant suspects. Team lawyer
Munarman alleges that Detachment 88 is financed opaquely by the US, Australia and
Singapore, and is unlawfully waging war on Islam and using torture techniques while
interrogating suspected militants.
Both the US and Australia provide training and communications surveillance
equipment to the elite unit, which has been credited by Western officials with netting
several militant suspects. In Indonesia, however, the unit has been viewed with
suspicion by some Islamic groups, and rights organizations have raised questions
about the growing number of suspects detained without trial. Australian Federal Police
Commissioner Mick Keelty has said that his officers were "forward-deployed" during
the Dujana and Zarkasih arrests - raising politically sticky sovereignty issues.
Pro-sharia activism
Last week Australia issued a new travel warning to its nationals, suggesting that new
terrorist attacks could be imminent on Indonesia-based tourist resorts and in-country
Western interests. It's still unclear how much Dujana's, Zarkasih's and other key JI
members' arrests have hindered the group's operational capacity, but judging by
Ba'asyir's recent activities, it appears the radical group could be refocusing its efforts
on pro-sharia activism.
Since his release late last year, Ba'asyir has resumed his drive to have sharia
(Islamic) law instituted across Indonesia, where 86% of the 234 million population are
professed Muslims. Part of that campaign, it appears, is to foment anti-Western
sentiment and disseminate conspiracy theories against Yudhoyono's government,
which has worked closely with US and Australian counter-terrorism officials.
The old radical logic goes that fostering a sense of persecution and shared grievance
against the West will sharpen Indonesians' sense of being Islamic and cast the
incumbent, secular elites as corrupt, Western lackeys. To be sure, it will be difficult
for Ba'asyir, for all sakes and purposes a convicted terrorist, to mount a serious bid for
the presidency amid continued JI terror attacks, which the country's majority
moderate Muslims have frowned on.
Rather than promoting crude, religious-based political violence, Ba'asyir is now
bidding to launch a more sophisticated form of culture war, aimed at winning over
hearts and minds rather than destroying enemies. With both presidential and
parliamentary elections due in 2009, political tensions are ratcheting up.
Prior to the 1998 ouster of Suharto, Indonesia was a one-party state and arguably
never staged free and fair elections during his 32-year tenure. That changed with the
multi-party polls in 2004, and Indonesian democracy now gives scope for Islamic
expression in politics. Several Islamist groups are jostling for electoral position with
the new political opening, largest among them the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS), or
Prosperous Justice Party. The PKS won 7.3% of the vote on a morality ticket,
claiming it would end the corruption that has long plagued Indonesian politics. But the
party's popularity, judging by a 2005 public opinion poll, has declined dramatically
because of its renewed push to implement sharia law.
Ba'asyir nonetheless seems keen to test the political waters, which he apparently
hopes have shifted with the recent corruption allegations against Yudhoyono, who
successfully ran on a "clean hands" ticket at the 2004 polls. If Ba'asyir can effectively
and emotively conflate voter dissatisfaction with the perceived corruption of the
incumbent elite with a sense of injustice toward Muslims, then his presidential bid
could gather significant popular support.
More than 70 million Indonesians are members of two main Islamic organizations - the
"traditionalist" Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the "modernist" Muhamiddiyah. Both are
engaged in varying forms of social work, education and political activism and promote
inter-religious tolerance in a pluralistic society - much more moderate than the purist,
radical agenda Ba'asyir's MMI professes.
NU leader and former president Abdurrahman Wahid co-staged early last month a
religious-tolerance conference on the resort island of Bali, where he brought together
Nazi Holocaust survivors, Buddhist leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and Indonesian
Muslims in a display of cross-religious understanding.
The moderate Muslim leader also published a survey showing that 95% of
Indonesians support religious tolerance, but with an interesting caveat that an even
larger percentage of respondents did not think that pesantren, or Islamic schools,
fostered intolerance. The majority of terrorist convictions in Indonesia have come
against JI-affiliated pesantren, including allegedly Al Mukmin boarding school, which
Ba'asyir founded and still runs in Central Java.
Simon Roughneen is senior analyst for ISN Security Watch. He has reported from
Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia and Somalia and
has been working since early this year in Southeast Asia, where he has covered
Indonesian and Malaysian politics for the Irish Times, The Village, ISN (International
Relations and Security Network) and others.
Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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