Picking Up The Pieces
by Nyier Abdou
The bombing of the J W Marriot in Jakarta last week was a painful reminder that Southeast Asia is living in a post-Bali world of security jitters, writes Nyier Abdou.
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[Thursday 7th August], Amrozi Bin Nurhasyim - the 41-year-old mechanic convicted of helping to plan and execute the terrorist attacks that killed 202 people on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on 12 October last year - was handed a sentence of death by firing squad, concluding the first in a string of high-profile trials connected with the Bali bombings. Known for his cheerful appearances in court, the so-called Smiling Bomber said that he was "happy to die a martyr", but his lawyers announced the next day that he would appeal the sentence.
Asmar Latinsani, who is believed to have perpetrated the bombing of the J W Marriot hotel in Jakarta last Tuesday that killed 10 people and injured 146, will not see the inside of an Indonesian courtroom. His head was found close to the car that exploded outside the gutted US-owned luxury hotel, casting strong suspicion that he was a suicide bomber. Suspects arrested last month in a police raid that uncovered a stash of explosives capable of surmounting the devastation of Bali in the Central Java town of Semarang identified Sani from pictures of the scorched head. The detained suspects also allegedly admitted to recruiting Sani into the militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which is blamed for the 2002 Bali bombing.
On Tuesday prosecutors in the trial of JI's alleged spiritual leader, Abu Bakir Bashir, demanded a sentence of 15 years on charges of treason - a far lighter sentence than the life imprisonment he faced. Bashir - also accused of supporting a string of church bombings across Indonesia in 2000, as well as involvement in a plot to assassinate current Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri when she was still vice-president - boldly maintains that JI does not exist, and has placed the blame for both the Bali and Marriot bombings on the CIA.
Despite Bashir's protestations, Jemaah Islamiyah is again in the spotlight as the prime suspect in the Marriot bombing, which bears significant similarities to the Bali attacks, from the type of explosives used down to the scratched out serial numbers on the car carrying the explosives. If, as is widely believed, JI is behind last week's attack, it could constitute the beginning of an odious trend within the nebulous movement known as JI. A shift towards large-scale attacks targeting symbols of Western decadence is consistent with the ideology of the group JI has been linked to with increasing regularity: Al-Qa'eda.
Andrew Tan, a security analyst at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS) in Singapore, confirms that JI and Al-Qa'eda are connected both by radical ideology and by the numerous JI operatives who trained or fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s. But Tan also warns that like all Muslim rebel groups in Southeast Asia, JI needs to be looked at as "home-grown and local". "The anti- Americanism [and] the anti-Western sentiment are very real and a hallmark of radical religiosity," Tan told Al- Ahram Weekly. But he adds that this is largely a result of the pervasive view that the West - and especially the United States - is at the root of the many "ills and oppression" in the Muslim world. As an example, Tan points to the repressive leadership of Indonesia's long-time dictator Suharto - once strongly supported by the US. Suharto, in turn, brutally suppressed all forms of political Islam.
The use of suicide bombers - first effectively used in Southeast Asia in Bali - also points to a change of method that shows JI to be emulating another conflict close to the heart of radical Islamic movements - the Palestinian resistance. The bombing of a McDonald's in the South Sulawesi capital of Makassar in December of last year also used a suicide bomber.
Sidney Jones, Indonesia project director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) in Jakarta says that though JI does seem to be taking the Palestinian experience as a model, "the glory of dying as a martyr has been an element of JI's jihadist ideology for some time". Noting that there is supposed to be an istimata, or suicide brigade, with JI's "special operations unit", Jones echoed the IDSS's Tan by affirming JI's Al- Qa'eda pedigree while underscoring the fact that the Bali bombings and the string of smaller bombings since then "seem to be local initiatives". "JI is not some local subordinate of Al-Qa'eda, even if it maintains contact," Jones told the Weekly. "It has the skills, personnel and ideological commitment within its own membership to undertake these bombings on its own."
Harold Crouch, an Indonesia expert at the Department of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, told the Weekly that there "does appear to be a shift that is clearly inspired by the examples of Palestine and Al-Qa'eda". So far limited to JI, the effects of this shift could be catastrophic for the region.
"The JI people seem to be motivated by what they see in Palestine and American support for Israel," says Crouch, who warns that JI militants are also angry about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he adds that there is "little public sympathy" in Indonesia for JI's activities, which, he says, is an indication that the root causes of terrorism in Indonesia and the region "lie elsewhere".
Indonesia is still wrestling with the demons unleashed by the fall, in May 1998, of Suharto, whose iron-fisted rule kept the country's numerous restive provinces and Islamic fundamentalism in tow. Since then, Indonesia has had three presidents, seen the bloody secession of East Timor, launched a crackdown on the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in the province of Aceh and suffered a devastating blow to its image among both tourists and investors alike in the wake of Bali.
Often identified as a "shadowy" organisation seeking to establish a hard- line Islamic state across Southeast Asia, some reports say that JI numbers around 300, while IDSS's Tan warns that between 500 and 1,000 operatives attended training in regional camps and in Afghanistan. Fears are growing that what was once a small and loose connection of militants with a tenuous agenda could be growing more tightly organised and formidable. But Indonesia expert Crouch remarks that the group was "quite formidable" beforehand, even if it was loosely organised. "Its agenda was vague only to us, not to them," he says.
Crouch is reluctant to label JI a "formal organisation with formal membership", noting that this is why "it's a bit pointless demanding that the Indonesian government ban it." "What exactly do you ban?" he asked. "You can't close down its office, because it doesn't have one. You can only identify its 'members' when they do something".
Tan also warns against perceptions that the group is gelling together into a traditional organisation. Saying that JI functions like a "mini-Al-Qa'eda", Tan suggests that the concept of "leaderless resistance" means that "modern-day terrorism" is not a slave to hierarchical structures or outdated notions of centralised leadership. Instead, the structure mirrors intelligence organisations, with operatives functioning independently and knowing only what is needed. "There are so many well-trained operatives within JI that even with top leaders arrested or on the run, second- and third-ranked members can step up and fill the ranks, as well as plan attacks autonomously".
In its efforts to crack down on terrorism, Indonesia enacted tough new security laws after Bali. The measures sparked alarm among local groups, who feared that increased powers for the military would curb hard-won civil liberties in the post-Suharto era. An even tighter strengthening of these measures after the Marriot will only follow in this vein. "There is a concern in Indonesia about a return to authoritarian methods in response to JI," Crouch said. "While many would be happy to give the security forces special powers to confront JI, they also fear that the same powers could be used for other purposes".
Jones also focusses concern on alternate uses of increased powers. "Once such measures are in place, a weak civilian government backed by a resurgent Indonesian military [could] use them not against genuine terrorists, but against domestic political opponents," she says. "Suharto has only been out of power for five years, and some of his old ways are beginning to creep back into Indonesian political life".
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– Nyier H Abdou
Nyier H Abdou
Al-Ahram Weekly
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E-mail: Nyier H Abdou
This article was first run on Al-Ahram Weekly
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