ABC AUSTRALIA, 4/10/2005 10:00:00 AM
INDONESIA: Jemaah Islamiah rebuilding
An Australian counter-terrorism expert says that Jemaah Islamiah has the capacity to
continue its pattern of bomb attacks in Indonesia for years to come. And the group is
rebuilding so it'll be a greater threat to Indonesia in the future.The director of Terrorism
Studies at Canberra's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Clive Williams, told
Graeme Dobell that JI is following a pattern of mounting an attack every 12 months.
 Listen
WILLIAMS: They need to maintain a tempo to show that they're still around to get
recruits and to make themselves known, but there's no advantage in doing attacks
more often than that because it simply means that it's easier for the security forces to
round them up. So from a security point of vivew and tempo and so on once a year's
probably sufficient from their point of view.
DOBELL: After Bali in 2002 the targets moved to Jakarta, the Mariott, the Australian
embassy, why now back to Bali?
WILLIAMS: Probably because the tourist industry in Bali has recovered to a large
extent, people generally speaking who go there on holidays think that it's now a safer
environment and if you want to have a go at the Indonesian government the easiest
way to do that is to have a go at tourists. And 85 per cent of tourists who go to
Indonesia go to Bali and most of them don't go anywhere else in Indonesia, so clearly
if you want to have a go at western tourists Bali's the place to do it.
DOBELL: A sign also that JI was responding to the fact that in its attacks on the
Mariott and on the Australian embassy, most of the victims who were injured or died
were Indonesians?
WILLIAMS: That's right, mainly Muslims is what they were concerned about because
there was a backlash effect and some people have said that this led to Azahari
leading a breakaway group because there were elements within JI who wanted to work
within the political process in Indonesia. But one of the advantages obviously of doing
an attack in Bali is that the Balinese being mainly Hindu the likelihood of killing
Muslims is reduced.
DOBELL: What does this attack then tell us about Jemaah Islamiah's continuing
capacity and its ability to mount further attacks in the future?
WILLIAMS: It shows us that it can still conduct a variety of operations, it can still do
the vehicle bombs, the sort of thing it did against the Mariott and of course against the
Australian embassy, but it also has another weapon in its armoury, which is the
suicide bombers with the small IEDs with ball bearings. And that's going to be an
ongoing problem. At the same time JI has developed a training facility in Mindanao
and it's working quite closely nowadays with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the
Abu Sayyaf group, and there are apparently joint training teams that have been
established between the MILF and JI, and these training teams provide field training.
And so I think that what we're actually looking at is a period when JI is actually less
capable than it was, but also less capable than it will be in the future. And I think that
the Indonesian government has an ongoing problem with JI and will probably need to
consider that it's going to become an increasing threat in the years ahead.
DOBELL: A more capable JI in the future which has more capacity, what would that
mean for Indonesia?
WILLIAMS: It will probably make it more difficult to attract western investors in
Indonesia, it will certainly make it difficult to rebuild the tourism industry, particularly
in Bali, and I think it's going to create more social tensions within Indonesia as well.
So I think it'll be a difficult problem for Indonesia to deal with and remains to be seen
whether Indonesia has got the capacity to deal with an organisation like JI or whether
it will be able to build strength in particular regional areas.
DOBELL: Is this a conflict where the Indonesian government really doesn't have any
negotiating options, is it possible to negotiate with an extremist group that essentially
wants the overthrow of the Indonesian government and the establishment of an Islamic
caliphate across Southeast Asia?
WILLIAMS: It may be possible to have something of a half-way house where you have
a stricter religious regime but not going as far as having a fundamentalist state. That
may well then buy off many of the people that would otherwise support JI because
their support is being watered down in other words. So that's a possibility but it would
not probably be a good thing obviously from an Australian point of view to see a more
radical or more religious Indonesia, because there will perhaps be a tendency then to
focus on external interests in Indonesia. Up till now there haven't been any attacks on
expats in other parts of Indonesia and one of the dangers of course is that you could
develop an Iraq type situation where westerners are being kidnapped and that sort of
thing, and of course that's a situation that Australia certainly would want to avoid.
DOBELL: So is this a tempo of attacks that you see continuing for some time?
WILLIAMS: They can continue the tempo of attacks at the present level probably
indefinitely, next year if they continue this cycle and of course from an intelligence
point of view it's always a bit dangerous to say that people are going to continue to
maintain a cycle, because then they'll do something that you don't expect or mount a
sort of attack that you don't expect. But nonetheless I think they've got certainly the
capacity to maintain an annual rate of attack mounting a major attack every year,
certainly they can do that.
© ABC 2005 |
