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South China Morning Post
Monday, September 17, 2001
Terror on our doorstep
VAUDINE ENGLAND
After losing a leg carrying a bomb he admits was intended for a church, Malaysian Taufik Abdul Halim, alias Dani, lies in a Jakarta police hospital and denies knowledge of regional militant Islamic groups. Whether or not he is proven to be connected to an alleged Mujahedeen group in Malaysia, Taufik, 26, represents a Southeast Asian threat many now see as real in the wake of the attacks in the United States.
He has a diploma in technical drawing from a state Islamic school in Johor, southern Malaysia, and studied for two years in an Islamic school in Pakistan.
Disclaiming knowledge of guns, bombs or an Islamic holy war (jihad), Taufik said he learned about the Muslim-Christian conflict in Indonesia's Maluku Islands from newspapers and the Internet. Following the lead of friends, he had entered Indonesia illegally through Nunukan, East Kalimantan, in a group of 10 and travelled to North Maluku. His goal, he said, was to help teach children and protect Muslims. He saw no fighting but was moved from place to place in North Maluku and Ambon before taking a ship to Jakarta.
Again just "following my friends", he had become entangled in a plan to bomb Christian targets in Jakarta but was caught and injured by the bomb he was carrying in the Senen shopping centre, north Jakarta.
Taufik clearly recognised the names of leaders of several of Indonesia's home-grown militant Muslim groups, including the Laskar Jihad, which has been active in stoking religious war in Maluku.
Asked in the presence of his state-appointed lawyers about the alleged Mujahedeen groups in Malaysia he said he did not know and, as for politics, he did not know about that either.
But an earlier interview he gave to news weekly Tempo describes him as a guerilla fighter for three years in Pakistan, and includes admissions that he was involved in a bomb attack on the Santa Anna church in Jakarta before he was caught about six weeks ago.
The terror attacks in the US by suspected militant Muslims has brought stories such as Taufik's into new focus. Police are convinced he is part of a group also responsible for bomb attacks on churches in Jakarta.
When police blamed last year's Jakarta Stock Exchange bombing on Acehnese rebels, most people scoffed. Now observers are not so sure. Some American residents said their ideas had changed overnight.
"I know that we don't know who did this back home, but what happened on Tuesday changes everything," said a long-term American resident of Indonesia, Asia's largest Muslim country.
He said that when the US embassy closed for two weeks last November because of alleged threats from Muslim terrorists, he and embassy friends thought the scare was "over the top".
"But this is very different; now it's serious," he said. Long-term expatriate residents had developed views on the nature of Islam in Indonesia as being distinct from the extremes found in the Middle East. "We're now having some changes of perspective," he said.
"There are clearly a lot of people out there with a wholly different view of human life to ours and there is no way Indonesia is immune to it."
Analysts in Indonesia are now focusing on long-standing claims of a regional terrorist network fed by Islamic militancy. It is not hard to find links.
Philippine security officials two years ago said they believed reports of hundreds of Indonesian Muslims receiving training at rebel camps in Mindanao, only a short sea journey away.
Arrests in Jakarta as recently as Friday include three Malaysians who, along with Indonesian partners, admit involvement in the blasts last Christmas Eve which killed 19 people at churches across the country, as well as other bomb attacks since.
"From their confession, we concluded that they were co-ordinating work in groups, hitting certain targets," said Chief Inspector Sofjan Jacoeb, the Jakarta police chief. Many of the suspects also had taken part in Muslim-Christian fighting in Maluku.
Police sources allege that such actions are co-ordinated by the Malaysia-based group which authorities there call the Malaysia Mujahedeen (KMM).
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and others have blamed KMM for involvement in the Maluku strife, the kidnapping activities of the Abu Sayyaf in Mindanao, southern Philippines, and in the separatist Free Aceh Movement in Indonesia's northern Sumatra.
The theory is that many of the young men involved were veterans of the Taleban's war in Afghanistan.
Indicative of an insular obsession with domestic political tensions over the past two years, most Indonesians and analysts blamed local bombing sprees on a variety of local elements, especially disgruntled military officers financed by men close to the regime of former president Suharto who are eager to disrupt the workings of democracy.
"This theory does not have to be discarded," said one intelligence source. "But now we know that, consciously or not, many of these Muslim youths have become willing foot soldiers in the conflict, for their own reasons.
"Call it an unholy alliance, between thugs and militant believers, some of whom may really think it is a holy war."
As recent threats and conflicts are re-examined for militant Islamic involvement, it is easy to get carried away. Political reality also suggests caution is due.
It is in the interests of the Indonesian armed forces and police, and their secular head, President Megawati Sukarnoputri, to highlight the alleged militant Islamic threat. The armed forces desperately want to re-establish close ties and funding with the US, which severed links after the army-backed violence in East Timor. What better way than to declare timely loyalty to the anti-terrorist cause?
Some local observers are concerned that this enthusiasm will provoke a backlash among the growing number of Muslim groups, the ideologies of which range across a wide spectrum from militant to moderate to downright adorable. It would not take much to set off a defensive Muslim reaction in Indonesia.
Signs are emerging already of an intensification of the us-and-them approach encouraged by US President George W. Bush's recent rhetoric. "They [the US] are reaping the fruit of their labours," said Ayip Syafruddin, a Laskar Jihad spokesman.
Local commentators are eager to explain the US attacks as a direct result of US foreign policy, forgetting to express condolences for the massive loss of life.
"It's like when a woman is raped and then people jump up and say she was asking for it. It turns my gut," said an American resident in Jakarta.
Such tensions will be encouraged by some leading politicians, perhaps including Vice-President Hamzah Haz, a Muslim who invited Laskar Jihad leaders to his office in the first week of his new job. Worrying to many is that he has been given the task of solving the conflict in Maluku, though he has been overtly playing the Islamic card.
As soon as the United States hits on an identifiably Muslim target, expect a massive increase in emotional anti-Americanism, anti-Western sentiment and the creation of more public space in which hard-line Islamic ideas can gain popularity.
Last year, the death of 100 Palestinians in the Middle East sparked riots in Indonesia and "sweepings" of hotels in Central Java by radical Islamic groups looking for Americans to "deport".
Such actions are deplored by the vast majority of moderate Muslims in Indonesia, but they show the sparks that might fly.
To what extent any of this ties in directly with America's prime suspect, Osama bin Laden, remains unclear. His Al Qaeda organisation is a many-headed hydra to which many groups may pledge allegiance without necessarily having made contact.
However, a report in the September 10 issue of Tempo makes a cautiously convincing case. It cites people such as Jafar Umar Thalib, commander of the Laskar Jihad Ahlussunah Wal Jamaah, who has lived in Indonesia, and Iqbal Uzzaman, a member of the Indonesian Islamic State group, who received 15 years' jail for his part in Indonesia's Christmas Eve bombings.
"According to Jafar Umar Thalib, the KMM group has joined Osama bin Laden's network . . . In Indonesia, said Jafar, the KMM has already put down roots.
The organisation they have formed is the Laskar Mujahedeen . . . based in the Airkuning region of Ambon," reported Tempo.
Meanwhile in Jogjakarta, central Java, perhaps the highest concentration of radical Islamic groups is flourishing. A convention in August last year proclaimed its own Mujahedeen group. Members seem to float between Malaysia and Indonesia and some are wanted by police.
"On the face of it, it is easy to connect bombings with radical Islamic movements . . . The question is, did they carry out these acts for the Islamic struggle. That is hard to prove," said Tempo.
With witnesses such as Taufik, police will be seeking proof. Clearly enjoying the attention of journalists, he smiled mysteriously each timequestions were asked about his links to groups or wider networks.
"I feel fine, I'm OK," he said from his hospital bed.
Vaudine England (vaudine@scmp.com) is the Post's Jakarta correspondent.
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