http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GJ07Ae01.html Oct 7, 2005
Indonesia's terror dilemma By Bill Guerin JAKARTA - The al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) organization once again has its footprints all over a series of suicide bomb blasts on the Indonesian resort island of Bali. This time bombers claimed 22 lives, while injuring more than 100 in weekend blasts. Yet Jakarta has still not designated JI as a terrorist group or outlawed it. This means it is not illegal for the network to raise funds, spread propaganda and recruit new members. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said when he took office a year ago that he would need "proof" before JI could be outlawed. In fairness, Yudhoyono has been left to carry the can for the failure of the previous Megawati Soekarnoputri administration to properly address core issues that affected the well-being and security of Indonesians. Acutely aware of the danger to her presidency of being seen as a Western pawn by the Muslim majority, Megawati consistently backed off the necessary crackdown on radical groups. Meanwhile, the carnage has continued. "It is an underground movement. We can only ban an established organization," presidential spokesman Andi Malarangeng told CNN and other reporters after Saturday's blasts, adding that the government would continue to fight terrorism "under whatever name". Australian Prime Minister John Howard, whose country lost 88 citizens among the more than 200 killed in the 2002 Bali bombings, believes terrorist groups are actively working to undermine Yudhoyono's government because he represents a "threat to Islamic extremism". "There's nothing the terrorists want more than to destabilize Indonesia and what Indonesia represents as a moderate Islamic country and bulwark against the perverted, obscene version of Islam which is represented by these terrorist attacks," Howard said. Still, he downplayed Jakarta's stance on JI, saying outlawing the group would make little practical difference. "I do not believe that outlawing Jemaah Islamiyah is going to make an enormous practical difference," Howard told radio listeners. "It is not the be all and end all of tackling terrorism in Indonesia." The latest JI connection The media have reported that Indonesian police are searching for five men from the Javanese province of Banten with links to Imam Samudra, who has been sentenced to death for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings. Police say the five suspects, who have served time for possessing explosives, disappeared after Saturday's blasts. Samudra has been linked with a shadowy figure called Hambali - reputed to be the leader of the militant Islamic JI and a regional al-Qaeda leader. Hambali, whose given name is Riduan Isamuddin, is called by some the "the Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia". American officials in the past have said he is a close associate of September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Hambali was arrested in February 2004 by Thai authorities in the central town of Ayutthaya, and later handed over to the US Central Intelligence Agency. No one so far has claimed responsibility for the weekend attacks that blew apart two seafood cafes in Bali's Jimbaran beach resort and a three-story noodle and steakhouse in downtown Kuta, the island's bustling tourist center. Investigators are still putting together evidence and asking for anyone who recognizes grisly photographs of three suicide bombers to come forward. The JI dilemma In the early 1970s, Muslim youths hostile to the religious repression of Suharto's New Order regime started supporting local Muslim groups, and the diverse bands of believers became collectively known as the Jemaah Islamiyah, which literally means "Islamic community". These small groups agreed to live by Islamic law and were blamed for arson attacks on churches, nightclubs and cinemas. JI's ambition now is to create a single, fundamentalist Islamic state of more than 400 million, which would embrace Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines. Intelligence officials claim a deepening rift between the hardliners in JI who favor continued large-scale terrorist attacks and those who want more emphasis on education and recruitment. The suggestion is that mainstream ideological leaders are concerned that more Indonesians - most of them Muslims - are being slaughtered than Westerners, impacting badly on any support and sympathy for the group. Thirty-three JI operatives have been convicted over the 2002 Bali bombings, with three sentenced to death. JI has also been accused of responsibility for the August 2003 bombing at Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel that killed 12 people, and the September 2004 blast at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta that killed 11 people. Sidney Jones, Southeast Asia project director of the International Crisis Group (ICG), said that even if JI closed up shop tomorrow, the terrorism problem would not go away. All it takes is a few operatives and a little cash for a determined team to carry out an attack, particularly when suicide bombers are involved, Jones said. Only days before last weekend's blasts the ICG rashly concluded that following Indonesian police and intelligence operations, JI no longer "poses a serious threat in Indonesia or elsewhere". Former Australian foreign minister, Gareth Evans, who heads the ICG, said lamely that a "mad rush" to get his speech out to journalists meant he overstated the view that the terrorist group no longer posed a serious threat. Current Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who says he has nothing but praise for Indonesia's commitment to the counter-terrorist task, believes banning JI would make little difference to terrorist operations anyway, though he acknowledged it was an important symbolic gesture for Jakarta to "make perfectly clear its profound disapproval of the activities of that organization". Some 220 suspects have been jailed for terrorist activities since the 2002 Bali bombings, but only about half of these are JI members, with others coming from diverse jihadi groups. Crackdown ahead, but how hard? Former chief of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN), A M Hendropriyono, has urged the president to come up with a new bill to give teeth to the intelligence bodies. Hendropriyono still laments the failure of Megawati and the legislature to pass a law that would have allowed BIN to detain suspects for limited periods. He said intelligence operatives needed the ability to "discretely take aside" members of radical organizations in an attempt to entice them into providing information from inside terrorist cells. Receiving intelligence in this manner, BIN could better anticipate terrorist acts before they took place, before a crime had been committed. One can almost hear a chorus of Hallelujah's coming from the White House, but Yudhoyono is unlikely to go as far as Malaysia and Singapore - or the United States - by detaining alleged militants and terrorists indefinitely without charge. While Yudhoyono is certain to launch a further crackdown on Islamic radicals, the social dissent prompted by the recent drastic increase in fuel prices means an increased risk of alienating the poor and providing potential new terrorist recruits. The price of kerosene, which is used mainly by the poor for cooking, has increased by more than 185%, while petrol has risen 87.5% and diesel has more than doubled in price. With a ready stock of young, disillusioned Muslims and a diversity of radical Islamic groups waiting in the shadows, future suicide bombers may not need to act as part of a regional, coordinated strategy of JI. Meanwhile, some fear that a backlash from Muslim groups and political parties could threaten the tenure of the government. Still, critics point to a failure by Indonesia to explain the nature of the terrorism threat to the public, yet perhaps even more compelling is the need to bring moderates into the fold, and persuade them to reach out across the archipelago and preach moderation and toleration. Recent forcible closures of many Christian houses of worship in Bandung and neighboring districts in West Java by Muslim hardliners from the Anti-Apostasy Movement Alliance suggest that religion is as big a factor as ever in political considerations. Police have so far refused to take any action against the activists, who include the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) that claimed responsibility for the closures. FPI is better known for smashing nightclubs and discotheques and any other places it judges to be dens of iniquity. Clash of cultures Most radical leaders cite immorality as the root of every single socio-economic problem imaginable. Social injustice, poverty, unemployment, inflation, high taxes, poor harvests and the generalized social chaos are all blamed on loose sexual mores - the consumption of alcohol, hedonism, inappropriate dress and the failure to work hard and pray five times a day. For example, Samudra said the Kuta nightspots Paddy's Bar and the nearby Sari Club were targeted in 2002 because their loose-living patrons disgusted him. The radicals' solution is the imposition of Islamic Sharia law with its harsh punishments. Weak link? While Jakarta has won praise for scores of arrests and convictions since the first Bali bombings in 2002, Washington and Canberra say some key players got off lightly. The fact that key individuals involved in planning and executing several bombings are still at large prompts concerns by some that Indonesia is somehow a weak link in the "war against terror". Through the Jakarta Center for Law Enforcement Cooperation in Semarang, both the Australian Federal Police and the Indonesian police have trained several thousand police, intelligence personnel, and others in fighting terrorism. The 300-strong, Federal Bureau of Investigation-trained police taskforce 88 is also boosted by a substantial contingent from the Australian Federal Police. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty says Indonesia is as able as any nation to track down the killers, while pointing out that it is not the only country in the world that has not managed to stop terrorism altogether. "Even with all the might and sophistication of the United Kingdom they still have had terrorist attacks in London," he said. The other effects of terrorism Bali's tourism industry had been going from strength to strength after a large number of local hotels were renovated or upgraded after the earlier tragedy. Luxury accommodation was available to the masses with the rupiah at record lows to the American dollar. The island accounts for more than 80% of the Indonesia's tourism income, thousands of jobs will go after the latest blasts. Anti-migrant sentiment has been simmering for years, yet after the 2002 carnage, the predicted inter-religious, anti-migrant violence simply did not happen. This time around the local economic situation is profoundly worse, given the two rounds of massive fuel price hikes. With the second terrorist attack on Indonesian soil directed at a predominantly Hindu province, community leaders in Bali may be hard-pressed to prevent the pecalang, Balinese civilian security groups, venting their anger on non-Balinese, particularly the thousands of Javanese, most of them Muslim, who earn a living there. Intolerance to people of other faiths in the world's largest Muslim-populated nation is becoming much more pronounced, yet the vast majority of Indonesians have little sympathy for the killers in their midst. Meanwhile, authorities need to sort out the latest bombing before they can tackle the root causes of terrorism in Indonesia. But maybe this time, the president will get the proof he needs to come down hard on JI. Bill Guerin, a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has worked in Indonesia for 19 years in journalism and editorial positions. He has been published by the BBC on East Timor and specializes in business/economic and political analysis in Indonesia. (Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/uTGrlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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