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REUTERS, Tue 27 Feb 2007 12:11 AM ET

Indonesia's JI rebuilds with charity and violence

By Michael Perry

SYDNEY, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Southeast Asian militant network Jemaah Islamiah is not in retreat but rebuilding, gaining support through charity work and involvement in sectarian violence, a Sydney security conference was told on Tuesday.

"They are down but not out," said terrorism expert Zachary Abuza, an associate professor at Simmons College in Boston.

Abuza said that while some JI leaders had been jailed for bombings in Indonesia, the group was multi-structured and was seeking to rebuild by broadening its support base through "Hamas-style" social welfare work and sectarian violence.

But Paul O'Sullivan, chief of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), said the picture of JI was not that clear. "The status of JI is hard to sum up in one single phrase," he told Reuters at the conference.

"We see some evidence that JI has actually waxed and some evidence that it has waned," O'Sullivan said.

Abuza said "there has been a drum beat of violence" in places such as Indonesia's Central Sulawesi and there was evidence that JI was involved. He said Central Sulawesi had been hit by violence since 2004 with 28 bombings killing 48 people.

More than 2,000 people from Muslim and Christian communities were killed in the province in three years before a 2001 peace pact, but attacks mainly targetting Christians have continued.

"Everyone agrees the key to JI regrouping is going to be sectarian violence -- it gives people a taste of jihad, a taste of defending the religion. It's like a mafia right of passage," Abuza told the conference.

"I cannot emphasise enough this is what JI was doing before Bali. For three years plus JI was in the region fomenting sectarian violence." The first Bali bombing, in 2002, killed 202 people.

ASIO head O'Sullivan disagreed.

"Sectarian violence as a phenomena has existed in parts of the world for a long time, that's different from the phenomena of Islamic terrorism," he said.

Around 85 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people follow Islam, giving the country the world's largest Muslim population. Most Indonesian Muslims are moderates but there is a radical fringe that has been increasingly vocal and media-savvy.

JI CHARITY WORK

Founded around 1993, Jemaah Islamiah has a goal of creating an Islamic 'superstate' across the region. Its exact structure and membership remain murky, but many analysts believe it split into mainstream and pro-bombing factions after the Bali blast.

Abuza said JI was now trying to broaden its appeal through welfare work similar to that by the Palestinian Hamas group.

"This strategy allows them to come out, regroup, proselytise and renew supporters and forge common bonds with broader based Islamist organisations in the country."

Abuza also warned that southern Thailand's Muslim separatist conflict, while currently confined to Thailand, posed one of the greatest risks to regional security as it became more sophisticated, but added there was no evidence of JI involvement.

More than 2,000 people have been killed in the past three years in the region, which has closer cultural and religious ties to the neighbouring mainly Muslim nation Malaysia, than to the Buddhist kingdom of Thailand. Gun and bomb attacks are launched almost daily, schools have been torched and Buddhists beheaded.

"We cannot have a conflict in the region that has greater ramifications for regional security," Abuza said.

"There is much more organisation to this that the Thais give it credit for. They are starting to be much more systematic in their attacks on economic targets."

Thai security officials and some local analysts, however, remain unconvinced.

Still, Abuza said separatists had moved from one-kg pipe bombs to 15-kg home-made devices and were increasing attacks on car dealers and banks. "This is more significant than people realise. There will be a blow back throughout the region," he said.

Copyright © Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.
 


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