Paras Indonesia, October, 14 2005 @ 09:27 pm
Indonesia Advised How To Weaken Militant Networks
In the wake of the latest terrorist attack on Bali, a new report by the respected
International Crisis Group (ICG) says Indonesia could reduce the risk of terror attacks
by weakening militant networks at the local level through programs aimed at
ex-combatants and imprisoned radicals.
"Weakening these networks will not guarantee an end to violence in conflict areas, nor
end terrorism elsewhere in Indonesia, but it could make an important contribution to
both objectives," the Brussels-based ICG says in the report, which analyzes conflict
in the Maluku islands and in Poso, Central Sulawesi province.
The two areas have been the scene of deadly fighting between Christians and
Muslims following the fall of former dictator Suharto in 1998. Islamic militants from
other parts of Indonesia have traveled to the regions to join the fighting.
Entitled Weakening Indonesia's Mujahidin Networks: Lessons from Maluku and Poso,
the October 13 report can be viewed at the ICG website in PDF format and MS-Word
format.
The report should draw attention away from an embarrassing statement by ICG head,
former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, who late last month said: "Crisis
Group's perception is that the Jemaah Islamiyah regional division that covered
Australia has been effectively smashed by Indonesian police and intelligence
operations (well supported by Australian agencies), and that JI no longer poses a
serious threat in Indonesia or elsewhere". A few days later, Bali was hit by triple
suicide bombings that have been blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah.
The new report examines two violent incidents in May 2005: a bombing of a market in
the Christian town of Tentena, Poso, and the execution of Mobile Brigade (Brimob)
paramilitary police in Seram, Maluku, as case studies of how militant networks are
formed and operate.
"Personal networks are at least as relevant as organizational affiliation in determining
how teams of operatives get put together for acts of violence," says Sidney Jones,
ICG's Southeast Asia project director. "It's increasingly important to know who knew
whom in Maluku or Poso."
Jones was recently allowed back into Indonesia after being expelled last year on
spurious accusations of subversion and selling information or slandering Indonesia to
get money from abroad.
The ICG report notes that Poso and Maluku continue to be home to "leftover
mujahidin" who went there to fight from other parts of the country and stayed on; who
returned home but maintained regular contact with people they had trained or fought
with there; or who were locally recruited and continued to be active in jihadist circles
long after the conflicts waned.
"Encouraging local mujahidin to find other pursuits will not be a silver bullet to end
terrorism, but it could be a first step," says ICG analyst and Poso specialist Dave
McRae. "If they can be reintegrated into civilian life, their willingness to support
mujahidin from elsewhere in Indonesia and engage in violence themselves might be
lessened."
The report says broader issues of justice and security would also help, including
better treatment of detainees, control over access to weapons and explosives, and
more serious punishments for serious crimes.
ICG says violent jihadist networks remain strong in Poso and Maluku for several
reasons:
- members of the major jihadist organizations in Indonesia -- Jemaah Islamiyah
(JI), some splinters and offshoots of Darul Islam (DI), KOMPAK and others --
see Maluku and Poso as areas where "enemies of Islam", including local
Christians, continue to pose a threat to the Muslim community;
- they believe that parts of Maluku and Poso, but particularly Poso, have the
potential to develop into a qoidah aminah, a secure area where residents can
live by Islamic principles and apply Islamic law: in their view, such a base
could then serve as the building block of an Islamic state, and Maluku and
Poso thus remain a focus for religious outreach and recruitment efforts;
- for some fighters, both local and non-local, the combination of military training
and active combat may have been the most meaningful experience of their
lives: it may be difficult for them to return to more mundane "civilian" life unless
better options emerge; and
- the concentration of ex-mujahidin has made both areas attractive to fugitives
who in the past have found a ready support network there.
The report says the attack on the Brimob post in Seram shows how a disparate group
of men linked through various networks can come together and form a team of
operatives. "The attack involved members of KOMPAK, Darul Islam, a Poso-based
organization, and perhaps JI, but the hit squad does not appear to have been
organized through any institutional hierarchy. The common experience of training and
fighting during the early stages of the Poso and Maluku conflicts appears to be more
important as the organizing principle. Those ties were also sufficiently strong to draw
the attackers together from Java, Sulawesi, Sumatra and Maluku."
ICG says the bomb in the Tentena market is more mysterious. "The investigation has
produced over a dozen arrests but no clear suspect. It has highlighted the complexity
of the networks involved in other recent violence in the area, going beyond mujahidin
circles to include local officials and gang leaders."
Following is the concluding section of the report's Executive Summary and
Recommendations:
One need in these conflict areas is for better law enforcement. Problems are of long
standing and not entirely of current incumbents' making, but police practices,
particularly wrongful arrests and ill-treatment of detainees, have alienated local
communities, making people unwilling to help investigations. The failure of government
security forces in the past to provide protection to threatened communities means
people who take the law into their own hands are treated as heroes. Prosecutors,
lawyers and judges have been subjected to intimidation and worse, and perpetrators
of violence have often received questionable acquittals or rejoined their networks after
serving short sentences.
Several measures would help: better treatment of detainees, control over access to
firearms, better coordination among intelligence agencies, and serious punishment for
serious crimes.
A second need is for direct engagement with local veterans of the Poso and Maluku
violence to reintegrate them back into "civilian" life. One possibility is to link a
reintegration program to the "assimilation" program of the Indonesian prison system,
whereby those about to be released are allowed to work outside prison during the day
under closely supervised conditions. This could be a vehicle for trying to introduce
members of these networks to new social contacts while at the same time giving
them viable alternatives to violence.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the Government of Indonesia:
1. Conduct a systematic analysis of why police and intelligence agencies failed to
detect preparations for the two May 2005 attacks, with a view to producing
recommendations that could feed into draft bills on intelligence and security as well
as into a much-needed strategic review of national security.
2. Develop a program to reduce the number of small arms and explosives in private
hands in Maluku and Poso by:
(a) increasing scrutiny and audits of weapons and ammunition manufactured in
Indonesia, as well as stocks issued to police and military;
(b) intensifying intelligence gathering to locate weapons caches still present in conflict
areas; and
(c) instituting a weapons recovery program, through an amnesty or buy-back scheme.
3. Improve police-community relations, among other things by ensuring that suspects
arrested in conflict areas are not ill-treated during arrest and interrogation, and that
police are more often prosecuted in court for offences under the criminal code rather
than simply subjected to internal disciplinary proceedings.
4. Improve law enforcement efforts in conflict areas, in part by ensuring that sufficient
security is provided to prosecutors, judges and defence lawyers to facilitate fair and
transparent trials and that crimes committed in conflict areas are treated at least as
seriously as crimes committed elsewhere in Indonesia.
To Donors:
5. Explore, in cooperation with the Department of Law and Human Rights and local
stakeholders, options for a reintegration program aimed at detained members of
mujahidin networks that would be tied into the assimilation programs of the
Indonesian prison system.
6. Explore the possibility of vocational training for former gang members that would
mesh with the local economy and job market while keeping them out of
security-related jobs.
7. Explore the possibility for community development programs that would specifically
include members of mujahidin networks but that would be available to ex-combatants
from both Muslim and Christian communities.
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