The Sydney Morning Herald, October 8, 2005
Indonesia's terrorist underground mutates
Jemaah Islamiah is adapting its strategy. Using smarter and smaller weapons, it is
also drawing from a wider pool of suicide bombers, reports Marian Wilkinson.
A few months before the latest Bali bombings, the Indonesian counterterrorism
taskforce, Detachment 88, had under surveillance a string of suspects it hoped might
lead it to the veteran bombmaker Dr Azahari Husin and his cohort, Noordin
Mohammed Top. The two are the most wanted men in Indonesia and involved in every
significant attack on Western interests since the first Bali bombings in 2002.
But an apparent breakdown in communication within the Indonesian police scuttled
the surveillance operation. Another police unit moved in to arrest one of the targets, a
militant called Abdullah Sunata, who was linked with a charity in the strife-torn region
of Ambon. With that arrest, the counter-terrorism squad was forced to move in on the
other suspects but, security sources say, several escaped and the hunt for the senior
Jemaah Islamiah fugitives was set back.
A terrorism analyst, Dr Zachary Abuza, who followed the arrests, said Sunata was
picked up after he had sent a letter to a senior JI figure in the Philippines, discussing
the dispatch of suicide bombers to Mindanao. That communication was also reported
by Associated Press last month.
In the raids that followed Sunata's arrest, Indonesian police made several disturbing
discoveries, including bomb-making equipment that appeared to point to small devices
that could be used as suicide bombs. But the main players, Azahari and Noordin,
were nowhere to be found.
There is no hard evidence to link the discoveries in the June and July raids to last
weekend's suicide bombings in Bali. But the Balinese police chief, I Made Mangku
Pastika, has confirmed that Azahari and Noordin are on the list of prime suspects
being sought in connection with the bombings. The material gathered in those earlier
raids is being raked over.
Soon after those raids, JI's reputed spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, was interviewed
in the visitors' room at the Cipinang prison in Jakarta, where he set out his religious
justification for suicide bombings. "The consideration is this: if I do this, will Islam
benefit or lose? If I must die, and without my dying Islam will not win, then my dying is
allowed … because to die in jihad is noble."
Bashir is serving a 30-month sentence after being convicted on conspiracy charges
over the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. He
has already received a cut in his sentence and another is pending, much to the
outrage of the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard.
The probing interview about Bashir's sympathies for suicide bombing was designed by
an American terrorism analyst, Dr Scott Atran, whose Indonesian colleague, Taufiq
Andrie, persuaded the cleric to answer questions about jihad, the first Bali bombings
and his frank sympathy for Osama bin Laden's "struggle".
Flanked by two bodyguards, who were convicted over other terrorist attacks in
Indonesia, Bashir claimed he had never met bin Laden but hoped to when he was
released from prison.
"I don't agree with all of his actions," said Bashir. "Osama believes in total war. This
concept I don't agree with. If this occurs in an Islamic country, the fitnah [discord] will
be felt by Muslims. But to attack them in their country is fine."
While Bashir repeatedly distanced himself from any specific attacks, and continues to
deny even the existence of JI, when the interview was over, Atran had little doubt he
supported the methods of the suicide bombers and the attacks on Western interests
across South-East Asia.
Bashir, Atran said, "believes martyrdom is an individual obligation and the suicide
mission cannot be trumped".
Just days before the Bashir interview, Atran's sources in JI had told him about a new
group set up outside the command structure of the organisation to conduct suicide
bombings across the region. The group, he was told, was the brainchild of Azahari,
who learned his advanced skills in Afghanistan, and Noordin. Both have been tied to
the three main attacks in Indonesia using suicide bombers: the first Bali bombings
and the Marriott hotel and Australian embassy bombings in Jakarta.
"After the Marriott bombing, Dr Azahari and Noordin Top had bigger and better plans,"
said Atran, a professor of psychology who works in Paris, lecturing on suicide
terrorism.
"They decided to set up a suicide squad called Thoifah Muqatilah - literally 'fighter
group' - for large actions against Western interests."
Like many other terrorist experts, Atran was not surprised by the latest bombings.
One week before the attacks, a terrorism analyst from the Australian National
University, Dr Greg Fealy, warned that Jemaah Islamiah, or more likely one of its
splinter groups, was still targeting Australians in Indonesia and around the region.
"Police investigations in Indonesia have shown that JI-linked operatives such as
Azahari, Noordin Top and Zulkarnaen are actively engaged in assembling teams and
bombs for new attacks. Police have found explosive materials and detonator
components in several of Azahari's former hide-outs, indicating his determination to
continue with bomb attacks," Fealy said.
The raids in Indonesia came just days before the London suicide bombings on July 7,
and their significance was overlooked. In Australia, the Government and the public
switched their attention to disturbing news that "cleanskin" locals had perpetrated the
bombings on the London transport system. The Howard Government stepped up
efforts for a security crackdown at home, including plans for sweeping security laws.
But the news from Jakarta was equally disturbing. The raids not only confirmed that
Azahari and others were planning new attacks. They also pointed to evidence that
JI-linked operatives were deepening their relationship with terrorist operatives in the
bloody religious warfare in Indonesian regions such as Ambon and Central Sulawesi,
and the Philippines.
Meanwhile, debate grows over whether JI has split, with operatives such as Azahari
wanting to pursue large-scale terrorist attacks while others in the movement are
encouraging proselytising and education. The hardliners have maintained links with
other terrorists through the region. But the concern is about whether these links have
deepened since the first Bali bombings, not diminished.
The bombing outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta in September last year
exposed this trend. Azahari and Noordin were both named by police as key suspects
in the organisation of that operation. But their cohort, Rois, had much wider links than
just JI.
An expert on Indonesian terrorism, Sidney Jones, from the International Crisis Group,
delved into Rois (aka Iwan Darmawan Mutho), who was sentenced to death last
month for his role in the embassy bombing.
Jones said a "network of terror" that is not limited to JI was being created. The
network was expanding - largely through personal contacts, through shared
experience in jihad - from Afghanistan to Ambon, or Poso or the southern Philippines.
Since the Australian embassy bombing, this broad network has been involved in
numerous terrorist attacks, resulting in scores of deaths and injuries. But because the
victims were not Western, they did not make headlines in Australia. On June 1 a
nervous US embassy warned of "plans by extremists to conduct bomb attacks
targeting the lobbies of hotels frequented by Westerners in Jakarta".
This was underscored by the Indonesian police chief, General Da'i Bachtiar, who
warned of terrorists "intensively planning to launch more attacks". He added: "We
think Azahari and his people are just outside Jakarta."
But in Australia, the fears about terrorism stayed focused on a domestic attack in the
aftermath of the London bombings. While travel warnings for Indonesia were updated
leading up to the anniversary of the first Bali bombings, there was no sense of
imminent danger from another attack. Indeed, the federal Minister for Health, Tony
Abbott, arranged to spend the school holidays in Bali.
Yet when the suicide bombers struck, it was not in Sydney or Melbourne, but once
again in Bali. The day after the attacks, an exhausted Australian Federal Police
commissioner, Mick Keelty, expressed his frustration that the terrorist networks in
Indonesia had not only survived to stage another attack, but had once again turned to
suicide bombers.
"The whole thing demonstrates the difficulty where suicide bombers are enlisted. It is
the same difficulty that was faced by the UK," he said.
"It is a very difficult thing to police, and it does require enormous intelligence
resources to try and keep on top of it."
As Australian police help their Indonesian counterparts in the search for the links of
these latest bombers, they are only too aware of the effort it will take to keep on top of
these deepening networks.
Copyright © 2005. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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