| |
Jakarta bombing exposes 'war on
terror' flaws
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG KONG - In Indonesia's latest bombing
incident, at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, accusatory
fingers are once again pointed at Jemaah Islamiyah (JI),
the terror network allegedly linked to al-Qaeda.
The trail pointed to JI even before the smoke
from the rubble had settled. This is because in past
weeks Indonesian police have arrested suspected JI
members. They have also seized a huge quantity of
explosives in Samarang. Moreover, the blast came just
two days before a court was due to hand down the first
verdict in the trials of Islamic militants accused of
carrying out the October 12, 2002, bombing of two
nightclubs on the resort island of Bali.
Although JI's involvement cannot be ruled out at
this stage, there is also something very troubling with
how Indonesia is prosecuting the "war on terror". To
begin with, insufficient attention is given to the due
process of the law, a problem that Indonesia suffers in
no small degree in any case.
While retroactive
legal verdicts are not allowed anywhere in the developed
world, it might happen in Indonesia if death sentences
are handed down to the defendants in the Bali case -
justified by an anti-terrorism law passed after the
bombings themselves. So far, no Western government seems
to have filed any protest over this matter, leading the
government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri to believe
that all things pursued in the name of the "war on
terror" are legitimate. The brutal military campaign in
Aceh is the logical outcome of this belief.
However, such a punitive approach not only
weakens Indonesia's legal and political system further,
but it assures the accused JI members a place in the
annals of Indonesian history as future martyrs. Nor has
sufficient effort been made toward understanding the
trajectory that leads JI to favor violence. Rather,
members of JI are deemed to be beyond redemption.
Such an approach stems from the belief that JI
is beyond compromise, a line similarly adopted by the
administration of US President George W Bush. Yet taking
a hard line purely for the sake of maintaining a stance
can be counter-productive, as the "war on terror" is
equally based on transforming the hearts and minds of
those bent on destroying the state and society.
Moreover, there has been no systematic attempt
to understand whether JI-like groups can spawn splinter
elements that are even more militant. Some speculate
that the Marriott attack was carried out by a suicide
bomber or bombers. If the evidence does eventually lead
to JI, this would imply that the group has been
radicalized further, as suicide bombings have not among
its trademarks previously.
Inevitably, because
of the lack of understanding of JI's organic character,
speculation has run rampant: from JI's possible attempts
to assassinate Megawati, a claim made by Zach Abuza, a
professor in Southeast Asian studies at Simmons College
in Boston, to efforts to kill the key decision makers in
parliament.
Anything seedy and bad, it seems,
belongs to JI notwithstanding the lack of any overt
theory about the group's motivation. It seems that the
fact that recent bombings indeed occurred in the
hallways of the Indonesian parliament only served to
reinforce the aggression of JI. Yet for anyone familiar
with the political landscape of post-Suharto Indonesia,
such an account should be taken with a grain of salt
before all the facts are weighed and revealed.
Over the past five years, JI has not been alone
in perpetrating violence in Indonesia. Nor is it likely
to be the only group in future. Even the Indonesian army
itself is known to have fostered violence to protect its
organizational interest. Its actions in sponsoring
Laskar Jihad, a group that was disbanded in 2001, served
to show the kinds of intrigues and machinations that are
part of the political culture of Indonesia. Indeed,
armed forces chief General Endriartono Sutarto has
admitted that the military has a "bad image" and has
promised to try to avoid rights abuses in the current
military campaign in Aceh.
Regardless of how JI
may or may not be involved in the latest bombing, a more
thorough investigation of the social conditions that
create JI and violent groups is warranted. Famed
anthropologist Clifford Geertz, currently at Princeton
University, is known to have favored the use of "thick
description" to understand the idiosyncrasies of Islamic
societies. From Morocco to Mindanao, Islam undergoes
various nuances and inflections before acquiring its
localized form. Just as al-Qaeda did not spring from a
vacuum, neither did JI or like-minded groups in
Indonesia emerge from nowhere to wreak havoc.
Inevitably, in describing JI as the offshoot of
an al-Qaeda network, an approach favored by Rohan
Gunaratna, currently a senior research fellow at the
Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore,
much has been glossed over, specifically the local
dimension of JI's growth and sustainability. Indeed,
just as all politics are local, JI has its own
grievances, with or without the proper constituency in
Indonesia; for groups like JI purport to represent God
anyway.
To be sure, what makes JI different from
extreme Islamic groups in the Middle East is its
tenacity to use violence even though other means of
political participation remained available to them in
Indonesia after the end of the Suharto regime. This is
the puzzle of JI, not the fact that it is sponsored by
al-Qaeda to take out "soft targets" or the extent of its
networks in Southeast Asia.
All roads to hell
are paved with good intentions. History has been replete
with seemingly thoughtful individuals, each trying to do
good, only to render just the opposite.
In
opting for violence, JI feels it is on the right side of
God's laws. In choosing a hardline approach, including a
retroactive legal verdict, the Indonesian government may
feel that it also has justice on its side. Both are of
course apocryphal virtues. The best way to deal with
terrorism, cliched as it may sound, is to tackle the
problems roots, branches and all. An adversarial and
militant approach alone, as is the practice of the
Indonesian government to date, is bound to fail. When it
does, another round of bombings will once again
occur.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
