Asia Times, Oct 7, 2005
Indonesia's terror dilemma
By Bill Guerin
JAKARTA - The al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) organization once again has
its footprints all over a series of suicide bomb blasts on the Indonesian resort island of
Bali.
This time bombers claimed 22 lives, while injuring more than 100 in weekend blasts.
Yet Jakarta has still not designated JI as a terrorist group or outlawed it. This means
it is not illegal for the network to raise funds, spread propaganda and recruit new
members.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said when he took office a year
ago that he would need "proof" before JI could be outlawed. In fairness, Yudhoyono
has been left to carry the can for the failure of the previous Megawati Soekarnoputri
administration to properly address core issues that affected the well-being and
security of Indonesians. Acutely aware of the danger to her presidency of being seen
as a Western pawn by the Muslim majority, Megawati consistently backed off the
necessary crackdown on radical groups.
Meanwhile, the carnage has continued.
"It is an underground movement. We can only ban an established organization,"
presidential spokesman Andi Malarangeng told CNN and other reporters after
Saturday's blasts, adding that the government would continue to fight terrorism "under
whatever name". Australian Prime Minister John Howard, whose country lost 88
citizens among the more than 200 killed in the 2002 Bali bombings, believes terrorist
groups are actively working to undermine Yudhoyono's government because he
represents a "threat to Islamic extremism".
"There's nothing the terrorists want more than to destabilize Indonesia and what
Indonesia represents as a moderate Islamic country and bulwark against the
perverted, obscene version of Islam which is represented by these terrorist attacks,"
Howard said.
Still, he downplayed Jakarta's stance on JI, saying outlawing the group would make
little practical difference. "I do not believe that outlawing Jemaah Islamiyah is going to
make an enormous practical difference," Howard told radio listeners. "It is not the be
all and end all of tackling terrorism in Indonesia."
The latest JI connection
The media have reported that Indonesian police are searching for five men from the
Javanese province of Banten with links to Imam Samudra, who has been sentenced to
death for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings. Police say the five suspects, who have
served time for possessing explosives, disappeared after Saturday's blasts.
Samudra has been linked with a shadowy figure called Hambali - reputed to be the
leader of the militant Islamic JI and a regional al-Qaeda leader. Hambali, whose given
name is Riduan Isamuddin, is called by some the "the Osama bin Laden of Southeast
Asia". American officials in the past have said he is a close associate of September
11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Hambali was arrested in February 2004 by
Thai authorities in the central town of Ayutthaya, and later handed over to the US
Central Intelligence Agency.
No one so far has claimed responsibility for the weekend attacks that blew apart two
seafood cafes in Bali's Jimbaran beach resort and a three-story noodle and
steakhouse in downtown Kuta, the island's bustling tourist center. Investigators are
still putting together evidence and asking for anyone who recognizes grisly
photographs of three suicide bombers to come forward.
The JI dilemma
In the early 1970s, Muslim youths hostile to the religious repression of Suharto's New
Order regime started supporting local Muslim groups, and the diverse bands of
believers became collectively known as the Jemaah Islamiyah, which literally means
"Islamic community". These small groups agreed to live by Islamic law and were
blamed for arson attacks on churches, nightclubs and cinemas.
JI's ambition now is to create a single, fundamentalist Islamic state of more than 400
million, which would embrace Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines.
Intelligence officials claim a deepening rift between the hardliners in JI who favor
continued large-scale terrorist attacks and those who want more emphasis on
education and recruitment. The suggestion is that mainstream ideological leaders are
concerned that more Indonesians - most of them Muslims - are being slaughtered
than Westerners, impacting badly on any support and sympathy for the group.
Thirty-three JI operatives have been convicted over the 2002 Bali bombings, with three
sentenced to death. JI has also been accused of responsibility for the August 2003
bombing at Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel that killed 12 people, and the September 2004
blast at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta that killed 11 people.
Sidney Jones, Southeast Asia project director of the International Crisis Group (ICG),
said that even if JI closed up shop tomorrow, the terrorism problem would not go
away. All it takes is a few operatives and a little cash for a determined team to carry
out an attack, particularly when suicide bombers are involved, Jones said.
Only days before last weekend's blasts the ICG rashly concluded that following
Indonesian police and intelligence operations, JI no longer "poses a serious threat in
Indonesia or elsewhere".
Former Australian foreign minister, Gareth Evans, who heads the ICG, said lamely
that a "mad rush" to get his speech out to journalists meant he overstated the view
that the terrorist group no longer posed a serious threat.
Current Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who says he has nothing but praise for
Indonesia's commitment to the counter-terrorist task, believes banning JI would make
little difference to terrorist operations anyway, though he acknowledged it was an
important symbolic gesture for Jakarta to "make perfectly clear its profound
disapproval of the activities of that organization".
Some 220 suspects have been jailed for terrorist activities since the 2002 Bali
bombings, but only about half of these are JI members, with others coming from
diverse jihadi groups.
Crackdown ahead, but how hard?
Former chief of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN), A M Hendropriyono, has urged
the president to come up with a new bill to give teeth to the intelligence bodies.
Hendropriyono still laments the failure of Megawati and the legislature to pass a law
that would have allowed BIN to detain suspects for limited periods.
He said intelligence operatives needed the ability to "discretely take aside" members
of radical organizations in an attempt to entice them into providing information from
inside terrorist cells. Receiving intelligence in this manner, BIN could better anticipate
terrorist acts before they took place, before a crime had been committed.
One can almost hear a chorus of Hallelujah's coming from the White House, but
Yudhoyono is unlikely to go as far as Malaysia and Singapore - or the United States -
by detaining alleged militants and terrorists indefinitely without charge.
While Yudhoyono is certain to launch a further crackdown on Islamic radicals, the
social dissent prompted by the recent drastic increase in fuel prices means an
increased risk of alienating the poor and providing potential new terrorist recruits. The
price of kerosene, which is used mainly by the poor for cooking, has increased by
more than 185%, while petrol has risen 87.5% and diesel has more than doubled in
price.
With a ready stock of young, disillusioned Muslims and a diversity of radical Islamic
groups waiting in the shadows, future suicide bombers may not need to act as part of
a regional, coordinated strategy of JI.
Meanwhile, some fear that a backlash from Muslim groups and political parties could
threaten the tenure of the government.
Still, critics point to a failure by Indonesia to explain the nature of the terrorism threat
to the public, yet perhaps even more compelling is the need to bring moderates into
the fold, and persuade them to reach out across the archipelago and preach
moderation and toleration.
Recent forcible closures of many Christian houses of worship in Bandung and
neighboring districts in West Java by Muslim hardliners from the Anti-Apostasy
Movement Alliance suggest that religion is as big a factor as ever in political
considerations.
Police have so far refused to take any action against the activists, who include the
Islam Defenders Front (FPI) that claimed responsibility for the closures. FPI is better
known for smashing nightclubs and discotheques and any other places it judges to be
dens of iniquity.
Clash of cultures
Most radical leaders cite immorality as the root of every single socio-economic
problem imaginable. Social injustice, poverty, unemployment, inflation, high taxes,
poor harvests and the generalized social chaos are all blamed on loose sexual mores
- the consumption of alcohol, hedonism, inaappropriate dress and the failure to work
hard and pray five times a day.
For example, Samudra said the Kuta nightspots Paddy's Bar and the nearby Sari
Club were targeted in 2002 because their loose-living patrons disgusted him. The
radicals' solution is the imposition of Islamic Sharia law with its harsh punishments.
Weak link?
While Jakarta has won praise for scores of arrests and convictions since the first Bali
bombings in 2002, Washington and Canberra say some key players got off lightly.
The fact that key individuals involved in planning and executing several bombings are
still at large prompts concerns by some that Indonesia is somehow a weak link in the
"war against terror".
Through the Jakarta Center for Law Enforcement Cooperation in Semarang, both the
Australian Federal Police and the Indonesian police have trained several thousand
police, intelligence personnel, and others in fighting terrorism. The 300-strong, Federal
Bureau of Investigation-trained police taskforce 88 is also boosted by a substantial
contingent from the Australian Federal Police.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty says Indonesia is as able as
any nation to track down the killers, while pointing out that it is not the only country in
the world that has not managed to stop terrorism altogether. "Even with all the might
and sophistication of the United Kingdom they still have had terrorist attacks in
London," he said.
The other effects of terrorism
Bali's tourism industry had been going from strength to strength after a large number
of local hotels were renovated or upgraded after the earlier tragedy. Luxury
accommodation was available to the masses with the rupiah at record lows to the
American dollar. The island accounts for more than 80% of the Indonesia's tourism
income, thousands of jobs will go after the latest blasts.
Anti-migrant sentiment has been simmering for years, yet after the 2002 carnage, the
predicted inter-religious, anti-migrant violence simply did not happen. This time around
the local economic situation is profoundly worse, given the two rounds of massive fuel
price hikes.
With the second terrorist attack on Indonesian soil directed at a predominantly Hindu
province, community leaders in Bali may be hard-pressed to prevent the pecalang,
Balinese civilian security groups, venting their anger on non-Balinese, particularly the
thousands of Javanese, most of them Muslim, who earn a living there.
Intolerance to people of other faiths in the world's largest Muslim-populated nation is
becoming much more pronounced, yet the vast majority of Indonesians have little
sympathy for the killers in their midst.
Meanwhile, authorities need to sort out the latest bombing before they can tackle the
root causes of terrorism in Indonesia. But maybe this time, the president will get the
proof he needs to come down hard on JI.
Bill Guerin, a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has worked in
Indonesia for 19 years in journalism and editorial positions. He has been published by
the BBC on East Timor and specializes in business/economic and political analysis
in Indonesia.
Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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