THE NEW YORK TIMES, Wednesday, January 23, 2002
Qaeda Moving Into Indonesia, Officials Fear
By RAYMOND BONNER and JANE PERLEZ
JAKARTA, Jan. 22 — For the last two years, Osama bin Laden has been working to
establish a beachhead here in the world's most-populous Muslim nation, say
American and Asian officials. Members of his organization Al Qaeda have slipped in
and out of the archipelago, bringing millions of dollars in cash for radical Islamic
organizations, recruiting members, and providing military training, those officials say.
As the Bush administration pushes its war on terror beyond Afghanistan, Southeast
Asia has become a new focus, a place where a senior Pentagon official said the
United States was looking for "bad guys to chase." Of all the countries in the region,
Indonesia is the most worrisome for Washington, yet it is the place where the United
States has the least clout.
One of the operatives in Indonesia, a Pakistani, was deported 10 days ago by
Indonesian authorities to Egypt, where he is wanted for immigration violations and is
also being questioned by American law enforcement officials, a senior Bush
administration official said. The man, Hafiz Mohammed Sasa Iqbal, has been linked
by American intelligence to the attempt by the so-called shoe bomber to blow up the
American Airlines jet from Paris to Miami.
In addition, a Qaeda group carried out surveillance of the American Embassy here, in
late 2000, and last summer a group came from Yemen to blow up the embassy in
downtown Jakarta, a senior American official said.
The men fled before they could be arrested, either because of inept work by the
authorities, or possibly because they were tipped off by powerful sympathizers within
the Indonesian military, he said.
In the region, Singapore announced this month that it had arrested 13 men who had
plotted to blow up the American Embassy there. Authorities said the men were
members of a clandestine organization, Jemaah Islamiah, or Islamic Group, which
they said was associated with Al Qaeda and had cells in Malaysia and Indonesia. It is
a new group in the panoply of international terrorist organizations, and the Singapore
police say that it is headed by an Indonesian cleric.
If a terrorist cell could operate in rigidly controlled Singapore, American officials say
they shudder at what Al Qaeda may have achieved in the disarray of Indonesia,
considered one of the most fertile havens in the world for international terrorists. It has
a weak central government, rampant corruption, porous borders and 220 million
people, most of them Muslims, stretched over a vast archipelago of tropical islands.
Yet, though neither an American enemy nor an ally, Indonesia has been less
cooperative with the Bush administration's terror campaign than other countries in
Asia, its leadership wary of arousing anti-American sentiment. Its military contains
officers who support the hard-line Islamic cause, which is gaining ground among the
country's traditionally moderate Muslims.
Indonesia has also declined to look for bank accounts of many of the organizations on
the Bush administration's terrorist list, and it has not granted blanket overflight
authority to American warplanes.
What it has done is issue varying public statements about the presence of Al Qaeda.
After long denying any links between local groups and Al Qaeda, last month the
director of the country's intelligence agency, Gen. Hendropriono, said Al Qaeda had
set up training camps here. He made the public statement — after consultation with
President Megawati Sukarnoputri — in an effort to persuade his government to
become more active in the war on terrorism.
Several Islamic groups immediately attacked General Hendropriono for raising the
temperature, and he swiftly backed down. "There is a lot of nervousness here that the
opposition to a crackdown on Islamic groups could be 100 times more than in the
Philippines" where President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo faces a parliamentary revolt for
inviting American military trainers, a Western diplomat said.
On Monday, the Indonesian foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda, said the government
did not have any evidence that Muslim organizations here were part of an international
terrorist network.
The Bush administration is pushing the Indonesians to do far more. In essence, the
administration wants the Indonesians to do what the Philippines have done: recognize
the seriousness of the terrorist presence in their country and ask for help. But it is
unlikely that the government here will agree to an American military presence on
Indonesian soil.
While Indonesia does not want an American presence, it favors resuming training of
Indonesian military officials in the United States. Congress has barred that because of
human rights abuses by the Indonesian military. The Bush administration has,
however, invited the Indonesian government to submit a list of equipment it needs for
an antiterror campaign, like helicopters and communications gear. The Indonesians
have not responded. "We sure would like to help them, but the key is what are they
willing to do?" a Pentagon official said.
American officials acknowledge they lack extensive information about a Qaeda
network here, and how it might operate. One senior American official in Washington
said the United States knew that two years ago Al Qaeda had established at least five
cells, as well as a travel agency, several charitable foundations and training camps.
So far most of the focus has been on a group called Laskar Jihad, the most visible
and violent of the radical Muslim organizations. Founded in early 2000 in Central Java,
the group has an avowed agenda of wiping out Christians in the Moluccas and central
Sulawesi, and establishing an Islamic state. It has a well- designed Web site, which
an American official noted is similar to those of the Chechnyan rebels and several
radical Islamic groups in the Middle East, one suggestion that Laskar Jihad receives
help from outsiders.
The organization is headed by Jaffar Umar Thalib, a religious leader of Yemenese
ancestry, who fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980's, when he
met Mr. bin Laden. Mr. Thalib has said that Al Qaeda offered his organization money,
but that he rejected it, and he has been critical of Mr. bin Laden.
But an American specialist on Indonesian Islam, Robert W. Hefner of Boston
University, told the House International Relations Committee that in recent years
members of Laskar Jihad have had contacts with Mr. bin Laden, and a few dozen
Arab fighters are reported to have traveled to Indonesia to aid in the battle against
Christians. Mr. Thalib's recent statements that he disagreed with Mr. bin Laden were
probably revisionism, Mr. Hefner suggested.
Still, in recent interviews, several American and foreign officials said there was no hard
evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Laskar Jihad, and it was not placed on the
Bush administration's list of terrorist organizations.
With the arrests in Singapore, attention has now turned to Jemaah Islamiah.
According to Singaporean authorities, it is run by Abu Bakar Baasyir, an Indonesian
cleric. Like Mr. Thalib, Mr. Baasyir has denied any links to Al Qaeda or Mr. bin
Laden, but has said he supports their goals "because they are enemies of the United
States."
Singapore and Malaysia have asked Indonesia to arrest Mr. Baasyir, but the
Indonesian government has said it has no evidence that he has committed any
crimes. Under pressure from its neighbors, however, the government called Mr.
Baasyir in for a two-hour interrogation last weekend, and his lawyer said today that he
had been summoned for another round on Thursday.
Despite its irritation with the Megawati government's reluctance to embrace the
antiterror effort fully, the Bush administration has gone along with the Indonesian
government's domestic need to distance itself from Washington. In the case of Mr.
Iqbal, whom the Americans wanted to interrogate in the shoe bomber case, he was
deported to Egypt rather than arrested to avoid having him interrogated by American
officials here. The Indonesian government has said he was deported for visa violations,
and it has declined to say publicly where he was sent.
But the Indonesians did allow agents from the F.B.I. to visit this month to pursue the
shoe bomber case. The agents were on the trail of the Indonesian sneakers in which
Richard C. Reid is accused of stashing explosives for use against an airliner. But just
as the United States has been frustrated with President Megawati, so were the F.B.I.
agents thwarted. It turned out that the sneakers were a pirated version of the real
thing, and that the Indonesian manufacturer was of little help in the quest for evidence.
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