http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/national/weapons-for-aceh-militants-allegedly-from-source-on-java/362611
March 08, 2010 Farouk Arnaz & Nurfika Osman Weapons for Aceh Militants Allegedly From Source on Java The new terrorist threat police are dealing with is apparently not limited to Aceh, as officers apprehended two suspects in Java over the weekend for allegedly supplying weapons to members of the armed militant group being hunted down in Aceh Besar, the National Police chief said on Monday. "We have detained two men in West Java and Jakarta," Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri told reporters. He said officers, including members of the National Police's Mobile Brigade (Brimob), were continuing to track down the group's networks outside Aceh, even as the manhunt inside the resource-rich province continued for dozens of members of the group in the heavily forested district of Aceh Besar. The manhunt at the end of February when police raided a suspected paramilitary training camp and found ammunition, rifles, books and jihad paraphernalia, and military uniforms. Bambang said police had yet to find evidence linking the armed group to the former separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM). The staunchly Muslim province suffered nearly three decades of separatist conflict before a peace deal was struck in 2005. "We have already lost three of our best officers in a gun battle with the group [on Thursday]. We deployed 100 officers from Brimob following the exchange of gunfire," Bambang said, referring to last week's incident in Aceh Besar when officers searching for militants found five bodies, three of them police officers. Al Chaidar, a terrorism analyst in North Aceh, reiterated on Monday that he believed the armed group was linked to terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah, most likely from the "Banten faction." Al Chaidar added that members of the group were linked to the Darul Islam hard-line movement that sought to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state between 1942 and 1962. "This group most likely contains a mixture of DI followers and those who remain true to the ideology of Jemaah Islamiyah. Their purpose is to establish a pan-Islamic state," Al Chaidar told the Jakarta Globe on Monday. Established in 1949 by Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosoewirjo in West Java, Darul Islam is a hard-line political movement. Sekarmadji's execution by the military in the 1960s officially ended the movement, but splinters of Darul Islam continue to exist. The ideology of the group is found within the teachings of JI. JI, however, wants to establish a pan-Islamic state in the Asean region, whereas DI wants to establish Negara Islam Indonesia, or an Indonesian Islamic state. Ansyaad Mbai, head of anti-terror efforts at the Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, reiterated on Monday that the militants found in Aceh were terrorists. "They are terrorist [suspects]. They have the same agenda as other terrorist groups, which is to create an Islamic state based on their beliefs. I believe they are connected with international terrorist networks," Ansyaad told Metro TV in a live interview. "Areas that were once conflict-ridden like Aceh are considered areas that would give such [militants] the most advantage in terms of paramilitary training. They [terrorists] find it easy to recruit new members and indoctrinate local citizens with their ideologies," Ansyaad said. "These [terrorists] are spreading terrorism via paramilitary training activities in Aceh in order to provoke the people in the country," he said. "Everyone knows that GAM was a separatist group and now they [terrorists] are using Aceh as their base camp so that people will think the terrorists are GAM. They [terrorists] want to trigger internal conflict and mislead us, trap us into leading people in the country to hate each other. Even though leaders of terrorist groups have been eliminated, the ideology remains alive. New leaders will be born."
