The Age [Australia], October 14 2002
Military secret returns to haunt
The bombings in Bali will put Indonesia's deepening problem with radical Islamic
groups in the international spotlight, writes David Jenkins.
In 1980, five Indonesian members of a so-called Komando Jihad (Holy War Command)
hijacked a Garuda passenger jet and forced it to fly to Bangkok. The plane was
stormed by Indonesian commandos, who killed four of the hijackers in a shoot-out.
The fifth man died in mysterious circumstances while being taken back to Jakarta.
At the time, it was widely believed in Jakarta that the Komando Jihad had been set up
by General Ali Moertopo, a senior army colleague of then president Suharto, with the
aim of discrediting Islamic political groups, which were seen as a threat to the regime.
Abdurrahman Wahid, a conservative Muslim leader who later became president
himself, was one of those who had his doubts about the Komando Jihad. In a
conversation with General Benny Moerdani, the head of army intelligence, Wahid
brought up claims that the fifth hijacker had been murdered by commandos on the
plane going home, and joked that the man's last words were, "Don't Shoot! It's not in
the script!" Moerdani was not amused. "Don't ever say that again," he warned.
Two decades after the hijacking, Indonesia has a deepening problem with radicalised
Islam. And while it is too early to say who is behind the Bali bombing, two things
seem clear.
First, analysts are bound to be looking closely at some of Indonesia's more radical
Islamic groups, some of which have links with like-minded groups in Malaysia and the
southern Philippines. The fact that one of the weekend bombs went off not far from the
US Consulate in Bali and another not far from the Philippines Consulate in Mendao is
unlikely to have been coincidental.
Second, it seems clear that Suharto's intelligence operatives were too clever by half
when they tried to play the Islamic card in the 1970s. Some of the army's Komando
Jihad chickens seem to be coming home to roost.
Indonesia has had periodic problems with radical Islamic groups in the 52 years since
the proclamation of independence. Indeed, one such group, Hezbollah, predated the
republic by the best part of a year, having been set up late in the war by Beppan, a
special intelligence unit of Japan's occupying Sixteenth Army. The Japanese had
hoped to marshall the power of Islam to oppose an expected Allied invasion, and they
were eventually to train 500 Muslim fighters, although not with the same enthusiam
with which they had earlier trained the 37,000 men who formed the core of the future
Indonesian Army.
Some of those young Muslim men played a central role in the Darul Islam (House of
Islam) movement, which fought a bitter but ultimately unsuccessful 14-year (1948-62)
campaign to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia, a campaign that sharpened the
army's wariness of radicalised political Islam.
In the 1970s, Moertopo went to the jails and persuaded some Islamic radicals to work
with the army.
"He was trying to use them," said Aristides Katoppo, chief editor of Sinar Harapan, a
leading Indonesian daily. "But they were not just being passive. There was an
imbalance of power, but some of them worked within the constrains. They still had
their ideological orientation."
According to a recent study by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, the
men directing present Islamic unrest in Indonesia draw inspiration from those who
fought with the Darul Islam. What is more, they were able to make contact with
like-minded individuals when working for Moertopo or while serving time in jail. They
have gone on to forge even more dangerous links.
"One network of militant Muslims has produced all the Indonesian nationals so far
suspected of links to al Qaeda," the ICG report says. The network has at its hub a
religious boarding school in Central Java, known as Pondok Ngruki.
Most members of the network, according to the ICG, seek "to create an Islamic state
by first establishing an Islamic community or jemaah islamiyah, and shared
experiences of political detention in the 1980s".
One of the co-founders of Pondok Ngruki is an Indonesian preacher named Abu Bakar
Bashir, who has been described by former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew
as "the overall leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah organisation". His right-hand man is
said to be a shadowy Indonesian named Hambali, who, according to the ICG, "is
thought to be al Qaeda's main Indonesian contact".
Indonesia, as the ICG points out in a timely reminder, is not a terrorist hotbed. "But
even a tiny group of people can cause an immense amount of damage."
* David Jenkins is Asia editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.
Copyright © 2002 The Age Company Ltd
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