http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4700&Itemid=202
Indonesia's Jihadis Rebuilding, Report Says
Written by Our Correspondent
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Bashir: The devil's disciple?
International Crisis Group says terrorists are looking for revenge for
2010 Aceh raid
Despite having been nearly wiped out by intense police pressure,
Indonesia’s violent extremists are finding ways to regroup, using old networks
to build new alliances, according to a new report by the International Crisis
Group.
The jihadists were smashed in the wake of bombings in Bali in 2002 which
killed 2002 people in the Kuta tourism district and injured 240 in what was
called the deadliest act of terrorism in Indonesia’s history. Three of the
bombers were executed and a fourth killed in a gunfight with police.
While the police have been relatively effective against the violent
Islamists, however, they have been almost criminally negligent in protecting
minority members of the society against threats from mainstream Muslim groups.
The tendency of the National Police is to look the other way in cases where
mobs beset the Ahmadiyah sect, as happened when a Muslim mob descended on sect
members in Bogor on July 15, beating them for being in company with western
journalists. The police then forced the Ahmadiyah members to apologize for the
incident and said no one would be arrested because there were no suspects.
In what seems a particularly toothless statement, the report recommends
suggests that the government “must…design and implement a policy of zero
tolerance toward any religiously-inspired violence, including maximum sentences
for vandalism, assault and threats of violence, with clear instructions to all
government employees, including police, to shun interaction with groups or
members of groups that have a known history of such activity.”
As to the violent extremists, however, the National Police’s Densus 88
unit has an impressive record of killing or capturing militants, most recently
in March when they killed five suspected terrorists after keeping them under
surveillance for a month. In 2009, Densus 88 rolled up a long string of
terrorists in shootouts in Central Java, killing, among others, Noordin Mohamad
Top, perhaps Southeast Asia’s top jihadi terrorist, among others. In the
shootout that netted Noordin, three other suspects were killed as well, and a
woman in the house was wounded. In early August 2009, police also killed two
other suspected militants and found 500 kilograms of explosives in a raid on a
house in the Bekasi area near Jakarta.
However, according to the report, the militants are finding ways to
regroup on the run, in prison and throughout Internet forums, using social
media to remain in communication. The ease with which wanted men can move
around, communicate with friends in prison, share information and skills,
disseminate ideology, purchase arms, conduct training and recruit new followers
shows how much basic preventive work still needs to be done, the report notes.
“In many cases, the same individuals keep reappearing, using old networks
to build new alliances,” the report says.” The fact that they have been
singularly inept in their operations in recent years does not mean that the
danger of attacks is over. There are signs that at least some are learning
lessons from past failures and becoming more sophisticated in recruitment and
fundraising.”
The police severely crippled militant operations in early 2010 when they
raided a training camp in Aceh on the northern end of Sumatra, capturing or
killing many senior leaders and discovering information that led to the arrest,
trial and imprisonment of 200 individuals.
“Instead of cowing the jihadis into submission, however, police
operations inspired a new wave of activity motivated by the desire for revenge,
with new partnerships and training centers established and new plans set in
motion,” the ISG said. Underground activity directly or indirectly assisted by
radical imams has cropped up in Medan, North Sumatra; Poso, Central Sulawesi;
Solo, Central Java; Bima, West Nusa Tenggara; and parts of East Kalimantan.
Almost a dozen plots since the 2010 raid have been connected directly or
indirectly to the fugitives from Aceh.
Many of the jihadi groups operating today have links to Jamaah Anshorut
Tauhid (JAT), a group set up by the radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir in 2008
that has replaced Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) as the country’s largest and most
active jihadi organization. Bashir has repeatedly been jailed for fomenting
terrorism only to be freed by the courts. He was most recently convicted in
June 2011 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. After a Jakarta High Court
reduced the sentence, the Supreme court reinstated it.
Jemaat Islamiyah, which was held responsible for the 2002 Bali attack,
continues to exert an influence through its schools, despite disapproval on the
part of other militant groups supposedly because of its abandonment of jihad.
Several smaller groups have emerged as well, often composed of
inexperienced young amateurs who lack the skills, discipline and strategic
vision of the so-called Afghan generation, the jihadis who trained on the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border between 1985 and 1994 and produced the Bali
bombers, the report notes.
The militants have learned from the Aceh experience, in which a web of
jihadi organizations were training together. Today they are more aware of how
their ranks have been infiltrated by Indonesian police intelligence, concluding
they must be more careful about vetting members and protecting their
communications, lessons the previous generation learned in Afghanistan and
Pakistan. Most of that generation have been wiped out or neutralized.
“There has been less introspection within the government about why
recruitment continues to take place or why there are so many more terrorist
plots – even if most have been poorly conceived,” the report notes, pointing
out that the police have become skilled at identifying and arresting those
responsible for violent crimes and interdicting plots, but there are virtually
no effective programs are in place to address the environment in which jihadi
ideology continues to flourish.
The report suggests that the Indonesian government adopt 20
recommendations designed to thwart further terrorism. They include designing a
study to determine what networks the extremists use to evade police when they
believe they are under surveillance, perhaps by further interrogation of the
200 militants they arrested at the Aceh camp.
Other recommendations include designing programs to reduce the influence
of radical clerics such as Abu Bakar Bashir, strengthening the analytical
capabilities of the National Anti-Terrorism Agency, developing better
information-sharing coordination between law enforcement groups and speed up
efforts to identify and monitor high-risk detainees, both while in detention as
well as after their release.
The government must also close loopholes in airport security that allow
passengers to present false identification without fear of detection and to
make more systematic use of the expertise of young Indonesian scholars when
developing policy on countering extremism.
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