STAY CALM AND CARRY ON BEING ALERT

 

Jihad wanes though threats remain

 

 Armed police camped outside churches across much of Indonesia during the Christmas break.  Their vigilance may have deterred some wannabe terrorists, but overall the alert level was low.  There were no reports of outrages as Christians – around ten per cent of the Republic’s 273 million citizens – celebrated their faith across the world’s most populous Islamic nation.

That peace didn’t surprise security studies advisor Sidney Jones of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict.  In an online lecture The Legacy of ISIS in Indonesia she told more than 560 academics, diplomats and students that support for ISIS is declining.

Then she added a rider:  ‘But it’s left a very dangerous legacy in Indonesia and other parts of the world… that will affect extremist movements for a long time to come. There will be a process of regeneration and rebuilding under new names and perhaps with new strategies and tactics.’ 

ISIS is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria aka Daesh fighting to impose Sharia (Islamic law). It gained international infamy in 2014 when proclaiming a worldwide caliphate after capturing territory from Western Iraq to Eastern Syria.

Fanatics were drawn by its ruthless interpretation of Islamic teachings and brutal treatment of opponents.  More than 500 Indonesians joined an estimated 30,000 fighters – including 150 Australians - while a further 5,000 lent financial and moral support from the archipelago.

A US-led coalition using the Iraqi army and Syrian democrats eventually crushed ISIS in mid-2019.  Since then pockets of diehard Indonesian returnees and their admirers have occasionally attacked churches and police posts.

Jones claimed that militants denied funds and easy access to guns and explosives following crackdowns by police are using knives and vehicles to hit targets. Women were also moving to the front.

In October 2019 a married couple stabbed and wounded Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Wiranto during a low-key visit to a West Java town.

Last Easter newly-wed suicide bombers attacked a cathedral in Makassar injuring 20.  Days later a woman wearing full Islamic garb was shot dead when she allegedly opened fire on staff at a Jakarta police station.

In the past, ISIS treated females as baby factories and carers of men, but women are shaming men to be braver.  Their motives included a desire to raise children in a pure Islamic state and being lured by propaganda predicting Islam’s Armageddon akhir zaman. At the end-of-time war the faithful would fly straight to heaven, so bought one-way tickets.

 ‘Women are now important components of extremist groups, and that’s not going to change,’ said Jones.  ‘So more women will be needed in senior management levels in the police and intelligence.’ That’ll require a rethink by the stout men at the top. Women in uniform are usually used for PR (a favourite is TV traffic reports by the best lookers) and investigations involving children.

Academic’s started disentangling the complex world of terrorism about 50 years ago.  US scholar US Professor Martha Crenshaw  has written that ‘although there’s  no consensus on any general theoretical laws of terrorism, researchers have defined key concepts and deepened explanations of cause, effect, and process.’

Jones previously worked for Human Rights Watch in the US and Amnesty International in the UK.  She praised Australian police sharing intelligence and techniques with Indonesia:  ‘The Australian government plays a huge role which is under-appreciated because they don’t crow.  I’m a big fan because they’ve done a good job.’

She also lauded the work of the Counterterrorism Special Detachment Densus 88 formed after the 2002 Bali bombings with aid and training from the US and Australia.

Jones offered little support for the theory that poverty and economic distress are factors in radicalising individuals.  Instead, she blamed corruption which ‘served terrorism more than any other external factor’ because it showed the state was immoral.

Jones’ slightly sunny forecast runs counter to a South China Morning Post story of the banned Jemaah Islamiah (Islamic congregation) responsible for the Bali bombings trying to infiltrate state institutions.  It claimed 31 civil servants had been arrested in the past decade for ‘involvement in terrorism’.

Last year the police and military snared 370 alleged subversives, though Jones said most were supporters preferring words to weapons. Pressure on courts and jails suggested more lenient punishments are needed for those not directly involved in violence.

Eradication was more cost-effective in combating extremism which was ‘deeply rooted’ in the archipelago. Jones said a low-key approach used by Indonesian authorities had been effective.  It involves persuading jailed zealots to alter their views by building a lasting personal rapport with religious officers able to demolish bloody interpretations of jihad (struggle).

When charismatic leaders were killed or imprisoned terror organisations tended to collapse or fragment.  Muhammad Rizieq Shihab aka Habib Rizieq, leader of the Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front) engineered mass protests against Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, widely known as Ahok.

The 2016 campaign, described by one Australian academic as ‘probably the largest single religious gathering in Indonesian history’ was a success.  Ahok, an ethnic Chinese Christian, was jailed for two years for blasphemy.  For a while, the FPI seemed to be mustering enough power to threaten the democratically elected government. 

Rizieq’s rhetoric terrified minorities in Indonesia as he raged against pluralism, secularism, liberalism, gays, apostasy and other perceived Western evils. That was the firebrand’s undoing.  Indonesia is a secular state. President Joko Widodo, who’d prayed at the protests, was persuaded to kill the chicken to scare the monkeys.

Rizieq was suddenly accused of involvement in pornography, though no evidence was revealed; the charges were later dropped. He fled to Saudi Arabia and on his return was jailed for four years, not for exhorting hate, but for spreading lies about his Covid test.  The FPI was banned. Six of his followers were gunned down at night on a Jakarta street.  Only police versions of the event claiming self-defence have been published. 

Jones said disputes among dissidents over goals and ideology lead to indiscipline. Dogmatists have to stay active to draw recruits; lone-wolves are rarely smart enough to avoid detection. This month a military sweep in the jungles of Palu (Central Sulawesi) surprised and reportedly killed a xenophobe accused of beheading four Christian farmers last year.

Jones reminded that many Indonesians still wanted to go to Syria, apparently unaware of the defeat of ISIS.  If women and children in refugee camps get home some may seek to reignite extremism.

‘The threat has not gone away, but it’s lower,’ Jones said. ‘Autonomous cells can still be dangerous.’

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 14 January 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/eternal-vigilance-for-indonesia-even-after-a-season-of-peace/

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LIVING WITH TERROR

The jumbled world of Jihad 

                        

If the topic wasn’t so serious this would be a darkly funny book.

Sociopaths with warped religious views aren’t the stuff of humor, but many characters in The Roots of Terrorism in Indonesia are bumbling fools rather than sinister deviants.

They’re more likely to blow themselves to pieces (or heaven, according to their beliefs) than their targets, prone to fight each other than their perceived enemies and forever making clumsy errors that makes detection likely.

About 200 Indonesians went to Afghanistan to train between 1985 and 1991 but found the courses were taught in English and based on Indian military training.  When young men were employed as instructors, older recruits took offence.  The laid-back Javanese didn’t like the discipline and several dropped out.

None of this forgives evil intent. A bomb in the hands of an incompetent amateur or professional chemist is still a weapon that doesn’t discriminate, as the terrorists realized once body parts were scraped off the sidewalk. After the bangs, the debate.

Is it OK to kill innocent Muslim bystanders in a mission to murder unbelievers? Suppose the innocent are women and children. 

Should war be waged afar (in Western countries) or near, in the Republic run by pluralists who won’t impose sharia law, but are still brother Muslims?

What’s jihad – a violent struggle against oppressors, or an internal wrestling with deviance? What do the holy books say?

As always it’s the interpretation that determines.  Does the end justify the means? These are questions of deep philosophy but the intellectuals are too smart to strap on suicide vests.

That’s a job best left to the misfits who have lost their moral maps and rely on others to set the compass.

Solahudin’s book was first released in Indonesian as NII Sampai JI; Salafy Jihadisme di Indonesia and reportedly well received.

It has now been published as an English translation by Dr Dave McRae of Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy.

How did warped interpretations of Islam originate, and why did they take hold in Indonesia? 

Solahudin found getting answers hasn’t been easy.  People who plot to kill seldom leave lucid explanations for their actions, or chart their progress in assembling weapons. Then there’s the disinformation.

One of the few who articulated his conversion said:  ‘From the pesantren (Islamic boarding school) my fanatical feelings towards (mainstream Islamic organizations) Muhammadiyah, NU and so forth faded and disappeared – praise be to God – and changed into fanaticism for Islam’.

Apart from court testimonies the credible local literature wouldn’t make a doorstop, leaving the author to seek primary sources.

Even more difficult.  Those who haven’t killed themselves by confusing the green wire with the red one, or been gunned down, have died of old age, for the trail goes back to Darul Islam, the movement that predates Independence.

Those who have talked have given some dates, names and acronyms for the proliferation of forums and slogans. However apart from the more recent suspects, like the jailed cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, these lists mean little to those not in the security business.

What we do get is an insight into the fragmentation, disorganization and poor focus that makes up Indonesian terrorism.  The Western media talks about ‘membership’ of Jemaah Islamiyah and other groups as though members pay dues and carry laminated cards when the truth is otherwise.

The typical terrorist is young, disillusioned or dysfunctional, and often both, with a distorted view of the world.   Where others seek wisdom, they want revenge, hoping to change society by letting blood.  Paranoia is a prerequisite.

To the rational their actions seem doomed.  What difference have their bombs made?  Little, apart from a boom in security jobs and distrust of strangers.

The 2002 Bali bombing is usually marked as the start of modern terrorism in the archipelago.   It was the biggest but not the first.

Assassination attempts were made on president Soekarno, and others planned for his successor Soeharto.  These failed when a shopper sent to Malaysia with Rp 4 million to buy a rocket-propelled grenade returned empty handed.

Darul Islam considered the New Order government to be worse than the Dutch, arguing that though the colonialists interfered with the economy they left religion alone.

Churches were targeted, usually as revenge for perceived Western abuses of Muslims overseas.  Borobudur was bombed. 

The inspiration for these outrages came from overseas, particularly the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, with the Indonesians conveniently overlooking that their counterparts in Teheran were the hated Shiites.

The problem with fanatics of all faiths is that they’re closed to compromise, seeing the world as an old cowboy film, white hats versus black. 

Despite the record of Detachment 88 and the police, who have arrested over 700 suspects and killed more than 60, Solahudin offers little solace: ‘The resilience of the Indonesian jihadi movement is impressive … (reflecting) the idea of upholding Islamic law’.

While the success of democracy and a buoyant economy may dilute public support for extremists, ideological conflict in the Middle East continues to fuel the zealots’ ambitions – and provide the next generation of terrorists with the skills to maintain their hate.

The decades-old stories in this book of splits, plots, betrayals, pursuit and shootouts read like today’s news. Terrorism remains, an irritant rather than a movement, yet dangerous still.

The Roots of Terrorism in Indonesia

By Solahudin, translated by Dave McRae

Published by UNSW Press 2013

236 pages

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DOWN UNDER REACTION TO JAKARTA BOMBINGS

Kiwi response to Jakarta killings restrained Duncan Graham

When the first news of the Jakarta hotel bombings reached New Zealand the Prime Minister John Key said the outrage was a tragedy for Indonesia.

After the body of businessman Tim David Mackay, the Kiwi victim of the explosions, was returned home it was taken on Thursday to Wellington’s magnificent Old St Paul’s church. The casket was draped with NZ maritime insignia (Mr Mackay was a former captain in the merchant marine) and Indonesia’s Merah-Putih.

Hundreds, including ten Indonesians from the Embassy, attended the service.

Tom Clough, an executive of the Swiss company Holcim Cement where Mr Mackay, 62, was president-director told the mourners: “It’s easy to blame Indonesia … but that is not what Tim would have wanted. He loved Indonesia and its people.”

Tributes to Mr Mackay mentioned his good relationships with Indonesians and the charities he helped establish. His family thanked the Indonesian people for their support. The Indonesian Embassy condemned the ‘cruel and inhumane’ bombing, and offered sympathy to the victims. Diplomats visited the family privately.
The suicide bombing of the two hotels that claimed the lives of nine people and injured more than 50 is no longer page one in NZ. Media comment has been limited and muted.

That’s not the situation in Australia where updates following the police inquiry continue to dominate the news.

Three Australians died in the blasts. The activities and views of Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir have been widely reported, including hate statements directed at Australia and its people.

There have been regular media reminders of the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202. The Australian toll was 88; three Kiwis died. Then there was the 2004 bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta that killed nine and injured 150.

Other sad, bad histories continue to grate in Australia, including the killing by Indonesian troops of five journalists working for Australian TV at Balibo in East Timor. That was in 1975, but a new film has revived the story. In fact one of the men, camera operator Gary Cunningham, was a Kiwi, but that’s often overlooked.

Understandably the rest of the world tends to bundle Australia and NZ together. Both countries were ‘discovered’ by English navigator James Cook in the 18th century and soon settled by the British.

Today they share a common heritage. Their flags are confusingly almost identical. They have a similar outlook on many things – but not towards Indonesia.

Australia has set up a taskforce to help Indonesia deal with the Jakarta bombings. But NZ Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully said his country wasn’t going to be part of the response. He said the reason was because Australia has a closer relationship with Indonesia than NZ.

However two NZ police liaison officers in Jakarta are reportedly helping the Indonesian police and NZ has followed Australia and put out a travel warning against visiting Indonesia.

Australians are acutely conscious of Indonesia and sadly a large number, according to many surveys, still harbor suspicion towards their over-populated northern neighbor. The fearful know that any attack on Australia would have to pass through the Indonesian archipelago, even if it didn’t originate there.

There’s no such paranoia in NZ, where an armed threat to the South Pacific country would first have to seize and occupy 7.7 million square kilometers of Australia, much of it desert.

Having such a huge barrier between NZ and Asia helps most Kiwis take a benign view of Indonesia.

More than 50,000 Indonesian-born people live in Australia, but only 4,000 in NZ. Indonesians in NZ are frequently confused with Filipinos, and at street level there’s widespread ignorance of the nation with the largest number of Muslims in the world.

Bahasa Indonesia is widely taught in Australia, but not in NZ.

Although Kiwis are great overseas travellers they usually overfly South East Asia on their way to Europe. Australians have long seen Bali as their back-yard holiday home, while Kiwis favor the Pacific Islands.

Overall the response to the bombings in NZ has been sober and balanced. There’s been much condemnation of terrorism, but no hatred directed to Indonesia and its people, despite fanatics killing a Kiwi who only wanted to help Indonesians.

(First published in The SundayPost 26 July 2009)

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MATURE RESPONSE TO JAKARTA BOMBS

Responses to Indonesian bombing mature Duncan Graham

‘Where, after all, is the Muslim outrage at these events, as their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies? Why are they not screaming?’

That outburst came from British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. It followed the 2001 World Trade Centre destruction and the 2002 Bali bombing which destroyed the lives of 202 people, including 88 Australians.
His words were appropriate then, but not in 2009 with the Jakarta hotel bombs which killed nine. That’s because the genuine fury and concern that followed the latest blasts came from within Indonesia and across the religious landscape.
The conservative Muslim organisation Muhammadiyah did not qualify its anger. The Indonesian media even reported that cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of the fundamentalist group Jemaah Islamiyah, disapproved of the bombings.
Past reaction tended to follow the ‘wayward lad’ excuse: ‘Well of course this is wrong and shouldn’t happen, but we can understand their anger and after all they are Brother Muslims …’
In 2002 the president was Megawati Soekarnoputri. She took a floppy position fearing firmness might alienate Muslim support. She also rejected US requests to interdict Bashir.
Her vice president Hamzah Haz refused to accept that radical Islam was linked to terrorism until the evidence became overwhelming. At the time Indonesia wanted no part in George Bush’s ‘war on terror’; many believed the JI was a phantom invoked by the CIA, which was why the organization was never proscribed.
But this time president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) pulled no punches, vowing to pursue and prosecute.
Sure, it’s good hairy-chested stuff, but the Indonesian security forces haven’t found the JI hardliner and master bomb-maker Noordin Mohammed Top who was probably behind the Bali and Jakarta bombings. This despite his photo being widely posted in public buildings around the country for the past five years.
He and other fundamentalists yearning for an Islamic republic may not be getting support from the public outside the extremist pesantren (Islamic boarding schools), but plenty have been prepared to turn a blind eye to their activities.
Indonesia is a country with few secrets. There’s an extensive community watch system introduced during the Japanese occupation, and which reaches right into the smallest street. Coupled with people’s natural nosiness means that no one escapes the neighbours’ scrutiny.
Unfortunately there’s little trust in the police, so unusual comings and goings may arouse comment, but are unlikely to get formally reported. Although reform continues since the police force was split from the military after Soeharto lost power, the public still believes the men in khaki are corrupt and untrustworthy, more interested in pocketing traffic fines than investigating crime.
Western culture has long included a respectable print and screen tradition of clever cops solving complex crimes. It is totally absent in Indonesia.
SBY’s instant and unequivocal response does indicate a welcome rejection of past equivocation. That included tolerating outlandish theories to brush away the idea of homegrown Islamic terrorism.
The looniest explanation had a micro nuclear weapon being fired by a US warship into the Bali nightclubs in 2002 to provoke hatred against Muslims.
The world has moved on. A new man with links to Islam and Indonesia is in the White House. The US is pulling out of Iraq. There are still plenty of reasons for disliking Western imperialism, but the easiest excuses have gone.
The JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta has been marketing itself as a safe venue following the 2003 bombing and a major upgrade in security. It has just been tested and failed dreadfully.
Security in Indonesia has always been porous and reports that this year’s bombers got into the hotel despite triggering screening alarms sounds right.
Like most Westerners I can rattle off a list of examples at many venues where security guards (known as satpam) have gone off duty leaving doors open, guards being posted on one entrance but not another, and bored officials waving through people in a hurry without making baggage checks.
Security gets tightened after every bombing so expect to see heavily armed soldiers in the streets. These will vanish as time passes, creating the opportunities for anyone with evil intent. They just need to bide their time.
Satpam are badly paid – few get more than AUD 100 a month – and many are understandably open to bribes. Some embassies reportedly replace their guards after six months in the belief that by then they’re likely to have been corrupted.
Satpam are also employed in the suburbs, closing streets between 11pm and 5 am, but if your house gets burgled, they’re the first people under suspicion.
Travel warnings may help the Australian government avoid litigation should wounded travelers who don’t read, watch or listen to the news claim they should have been told of the risks. However the alerts tend to do more harm than good. They certainly damage neighbourly relations.
Academics, students, businesspeople and others genuinely interested in Indonesia will be denied the opportunity to visit by nervous bosses and restrictive insurance polices.
Bad things and evil people exist everywhere; wise travelers will not go to the obvious targets like the up-market hotels (where you’ll never experience the real Indonesia) and maintain a low profile.
Most Indonesians are tolerant pluralists, genuinely friendly, proud of their country, and keen to meet and help visitors. Proportionally there are probably no more fanatics in Indonesia than Australia and the chance of meeting one ready to do serious harm is rare – there and here.

(First published in On Line Opinion 20 July; a similar version was also published on Scoop (NZ) the same day.)

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