Far Eastern Economic Review, Issue cover-dated June 17, 2004
INDONESIA
Terrorists' New Tactic: Assassination
Exclusive: Assassins Among Us - Al Qaeda's Plot to Kill Key Foreigners in Indonesia
By Donald Greenlees and John McBeth/JAKARTA
Bombs are indiscriminate killers of Muslims and Westerners alike, so Southeast
Asian terrorists are now targeting high-profile individuals. The REVIEW reveals a
disturbing shift in the terrorist threat
AFTER A 10-MONTH lull in terrorist attacks on Western targets in Indonesia, Jemaah
Islamiah, the extremist group linked to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, is readying a
new tactic: assassinations of public figures, diplomats and business people,
according to intelligence gathered recently by Western security agencies.
LIVE TARGETS
New intelligence indicates that Jemaah Islamiah is targeting:
* The U.S., British and Australian ambassadors, plus other senior embassy officials
* Foreign business executives, especially of mining and energy companies
* Indonesian public figures
In a disturbing shift in the nature of the terrorist threat in Indonesia, there are mounting
signs that JI is turning away from large-scale car bombs and towards simpler methods
that are potentially just as effective, say a number of Western police, security officials
and analysts.
They tell the REVIEW that British and Australian intelligence organizations have
collected specific and credible information--much of it from communications
intercepts--that a group of JI operatives, trained to carry out assassinations, has been
infiiltrated into Indonesia in recent weeks. The group arrived through the Indonesian
province of East Kalimantan from Mindanao, in the southern Philippines. No further
information about the group was disclosed.
Top of the target list, the Western security sources say, are the American, British and
Australian ambassadors, as well as other senior officials from these embassies.
There are also serious concerns about potential attacks on senior foreign business
executives, particularly in the mining and energy industries, and Indonesian public
figures.
"We have seen they have the ability to build bombs and we have evidence of their
capability in using weapons and we know they are well-trained and have Afghan
backgrounds, so it is clear they have the capacity of carrying out such an attack,"
says Ansyaad M'bai, head of the counter-terrorism desk at the Ministry of Political
and Security Affairs. "If the target is an important figure, then it would be just as
effective as a bomb."
The most likely form of attack would be the shooting of targeted individuals while they
are in their cars heading to or from work. In response, the United States, British and
Australian embassies are insisting that staff vary routes to and from work and their
times of departure. "I don't think it is a big leap to see [terrorists] going away from
large types of events for more selected targeting," says one U.S. official.
Publicly, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce has remained silent on the
latest threat, but a May 21 embassy message reminded Americans to observe
"vigilant personal security precautions." And pointing to the May 21 bombing in
Bangladesh that wounded the British high commissioner there, British Ambassador to
Jakarta Charles Humfrey says: "British ambassadors in countries where there have
been terrorist attacks are considered to be at risk."
Western security officials say there are no indications that JI has given up on the idea
of large-scale bombings, but they believe the terrorists are looking at other ways of
hitting foreign interests, particularly economic interests, without causing heavy
Muslim casualties.
According to leading terrorism expert Sidney Jones, leaders of JI met for a strategy
rethink after last August's bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. The meeting,
in Solo, central Java, used a conference of the Indonesian Mudjahidin Council, a
hardline Muslim group, as cover. The JI leaders were mostly unhappy about the
outcome of the Marriott blast, which killed 11 Indonesians and only one foreigner.
"The assessment was that it was a failure in implementation," says Jones, the
Indonesia director of the International Crisis Group, a not-for-profit organization that
works to resolve conflicts.
Fears over a switch in tactics by Jemaah Islamiah have prompted the three
embassies to toughen consular warnings on travel to Indonesia. Embassy officials
have also held a series of meetings with the expatriate community to remind them
that the danger of terrorist violence remains very real. The new threat comes amid
concerns that Indonesia's flurry of parliamentary and presidential elections, stretching
between April and September, is sapping the political will to deal with terrorism. Few
candidates for the presidency have mentioned the issue.
But in an incident that alarmed Western diplomats, four gunmen killed prosecutor
Ferry Silalahi on May 26 in central Sulawesi as he drove home from church. Silalahi
had prosecuted three men charged with a role in the October 2000 Bali bombings that
killed 202 people and were blamed on Jemaah Islamiah. Central Sulawesi, riven by
sectarian strife in recent years, is a known centre of JI operations and once was the
site of an Al Qaeda training camp.
For the small expatriate community, now used to living with searches at shopping
malls, office buildings and hotels, the assassination of individuals would have as
terrifying an impact as a hotel bombing. Says one Western police official: "You get
just as much news out of taking out an ambassador as a bombing, and it's easier to
do."
Targeting individuals would be a particular concern for foreign businesses. In the past
two years, security professionals have simply advised corporate clients to beef up
security in their offices and homes and avoid high-risk locations. But if the target is an
individual executive, providing protection is tougher.
Some big oil-and-gas companies have hired bodyguards for their senior executives.
These companies, used to working in precarious environments, say the security risks
of doing business in Indonesia are unlikely to affect investment or staff decisions. Still,
there is no disguising their concern. "If you look at the [embassy] warnings, the only
thing you can do that you are not doing now is pull out," says a security adviser to
one big Western energy company.
Unease over the terrorist threat has grown in the past two weeks following attacks by
Islamic militants on an oil company's office and an expatriate-housing complex in
Saudi Arabia, and the killing of two Westerners there. "We have to remind people that
terrorism can comes in different forms. We've seen that from Saudi Arabia," says
Ambassador Humfrey.
The attacks in Saudi Arabia heighten fears of copycat attacks in Indonesia. In March
a memo appeared on an Al Qaeda Web site attributed to Abdulaziz al-Mokrin,
allegedly Al Qaeda's leader in Saudi Arabia, urging attacks on "unprotected soft
targets and . . . individuals" in Indonesia, citing businessmen, diplomats, scientists,
soldiers and tourists. Police raids on Jemaah Islamiah safe houses in the past two
years have uncovered at least two significant caches of automatic weapons.
All the major U.S. oil companies--including ExxonMobil, Unocal and
ConocoPhillips--were on a target list found in a JI safe house in Semarang, central
Java, llast year. In the past month, counter-terrorism chief M'bai says, there have
been "indications" of a terrorist attack planned against the Canadian-owned
International Nickel Co. (Inco) in southeast Sulawesi. Warned by Western security
agencies, Inco's foreign mine executives were evacuated to Jakarta.
Last August, Indonesian troops seized a 30-year-old Yemeni national, believed to be a
recruiter for Al Qaeda, after he illegally boarded a bus taking workers to the giant
Freeport copper-and-gold mine in Papua. He was taken to Jakarta, then disappeared
from police custody. Videotape of Freeport was used in an Al Qaeda propaganda film
made in 2002, accusing U.S. multinationals of exploiting Muslim workers.
Western security officials say a range of other factors increases anxiety about a
resumption of terrorist attacks on Westerners in Indonesia. They include anger among
Muslims over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. guards, and the re-arrest and
impending second trial of alleged former JI spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir.
Indonesian investigators say a lack of political will and Indonesia's weak legal system
mean they face an uphill struggle in their efforts to track JI and five or six other
home-grown militant groups that feed off their own ideology. And in newly democratic
Indonesia, "you can't just round up people because they espouse a particular
philosophy," notes Jones, the terrorism expert.
Much of the investigators' criticism has been heaped on President Megawati
Sukarnoputri, whose ineffective leadership is the main reason for her declining
popularity ahead of the July 5 first round of the country's first direct presidential
elections. "What we need is a national leader to make a clear decision on terrorism,"
one senior Indonesian police officer told the REVIEW. "If Megawati is re-elected, she
will change nothing. When it comes to any issue regarding Islam, she won't make a
decision. This is a crucial issue."
Among the presidential candidates, only Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the former
coordinating minister for political and security affairs, appears to have a coherent
policy for dealing with the terrorist threat. "He is the only one who fully understands
how it is viewed by the international community and what the constraints are in
dealing with counter-terrorism in Indonesia," says the senior police officer. "The other
candidates use only rhetoric."
Yudhoyono's approach centres not on more legislation, but on strengthening the legal
system and improving co-ordination among law-enforcement agencies--measures that
go beyond Islamic militancy and address the other serious problems of social
injustice and flagging foreign innvestment.
Counter-terrorism officials also speak of an urgent need to change the thinking of
Indonesian judges, to get them to understand that terrorism is "an extraordinary crime
that demands an extraordinary solution." Efforts to win a long jail term for radical
cleric Bashir at his first trial foundered largely on the judges' refusal to accept
teleconference testimony from detained terrorist suspects in Malaysia and Singapore,
due to a legal technicality.
One counter-terrorism official also criticizes the judges for not being more proactive in
questioning witnesses during the trial. "We don't want to intervene in the judicial
process," he explains, "but we do believe these are issues that should be discussed
outside the courtroom."
Outlawing various militant groups doesn't appear to be an option. In the world's largest
Muslim country, that would only drive Islamic radicals underground. The government
has yet to prosecute any of the militants on the often-provable charge of preaching
hatred, an offence under Article 160 of the Criminal Code. It is, however, studying the
legal systems in France, Germany and Spain to look for new ways to tackle
terrorism.
MORE MILITANT GROUPS
Terrorism experts believe it is a mistake simply to focus on JI. "What has to be
changed is the militancy and the ideology [that attract recruits to the organization],"
warns the senior police officer. "The militants will only gather strength if the next
leaders can't improve the situation. This is very disappointing to the people in the
field."
Jones also thinks it is a mistake to see Indonesian militancy as monolithic. Although
the militants may be interwoven in one way or another, she identifies several different
home-grown groups outside JI with a capacity for independent action. They include:
-- Radical members of the Ngruki network, named after the central Java boarding
school run by Bashir. Most of the militants bbroke away after a split in the Ngruki
alumni in 1995 when Bashir was living in exile in Malaysia.
-- Followers of Darul Islam, the Muslim organization which fought for the creation of an
Islamic state in the 1950s. JI foundder Abdullah Sungkar, who died in late 1999,
helped to revive remnants of Darul Islam in the early 1980s. Many of the current
militants are either relatives or descendants of former Darul Islam leaders.
-- Groups of veterans from Afghanistan and Mindanao training camps who operate
independently from JI.
Although police have the names of more than 350 Indonesians who have received
instruction in everything from infantry weapons to map-reading, booby traps and
explosives, many others have still not been identified "What do we do with them?"
says M'bai. "We can't find all of them. We know these are dangerous people [but] we
can't touch them unless there is clear evidence they are directly involved in terrorist
acts."
Police say an accidental blast at a house in the Jakarta suburb of Cimanggis in
March shows how radical groups have proliferated. Twelve people were arrested in
connection with the explosion, but investigators have yet to determine where they fit in
the terrorism picture.
The blast also showed that training and recruitment continues unabated, with
evidence pointing to the emergence of a second-generation Laskar Kos, the JI
operations arm formerly headed by Riduan Isamuddin, or Hambali, who was captured
in Thailand last year and handed over to the U.S. Indonesian police believe he has
been moved recently from Diego Garcia to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Warns Jones:
"JI is very much an alive and ongoing organization, even if a lot of the leadership is
incapacitated."
Copyright ©2004 Review Publishing Company Limited, Hong Kong. All rights
reserved.
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