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Jemaah Islamiya 'damaged but
dangerous'
By David Isenberg
Despite the four-year sentence handed on Tuesday
to radical Islamist cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir and the
August 11 capture of top Jemaah Islamiya leader Riduan
Isamuddin, aka Hambali, reports of JI's demise, to
paraphrase Mark Twain, are premature.
Ba'asyir,
65, was convicted of forgery, immigration violations and
treason-related charges. The judges found there was not
enough evidence to back prosecution claims that he
headed JI, the Southeast Asian terror group that has
murdered hundreds in Indonesia, Malaysia and the
Philippines in recent years, and is alleged to be linked
to with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.
A recent
report from the International Crisis Group (ICG) details
the threat posed by JI. Released on August 26, the
report "Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia: Damaged but
Still Dangerous" finds that it remains active, and
deadly.
Considering the August 5 bombing of a
hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people, and that on
Tuesday four suspected JI members were arraigned for
plotting terrorist attacks on five embassies in Thailand
and tourist spots in the country's premier tourist spots
of Pattaya and Phuket, this should come as no surprise.
But the ICG report is noteworthy for its
detailed analysis. It finds that it is "a bigger
organization than previously thought, with a depth of
leadership that gives it a regenerative capacity. It has
communication with and has received funding from
al-Qaeda, but it is very much independent and takes
most, if not all, operational decisions locally." The
report also notes that several members of the central
command have not yet been identified, let alone
apprehended. The cell structure is also considered more
extensive than originally believed.
While the
arrest of Hambali weakens JI and many of its members are
being hunted down - more than 200 are now in custody -
it remains a big organizations whose members probably
number in the thousands, and it is spread across a very
big and populous archipelago. And JI is organized well
enough that no single individual is indispensable.
According to the ICG report, the JI organization
is something of a family affair. "The JI network is held
together not just by ideology and training but also by
an intricate network of marriages that at times makes it
seems like a giant extended family. Insufficient
attention has been paid to the role the women of JI play
in cementing the network. In many cases, senior JI
leaders arranged the marriages of their subordinates to
their own sisters or sisters-in-law to keep the network
secure."
Furthermore, according to the report,
despite some past media reports, JI is hardly an
al-Qaeda franchise. While the two groups have some
elements in common, notably jihadist ideology and a long
history of shared experience in Afghanistan, JI's focus,
despite the claims about wanting to establish a
Southeast Asian caliphate, continues to be on
establishing an Islamic state in Indonesia.
In
theory JI has a formal structure. At the top sits an
emir. Beneath him are four councils - governing council,
religious council, fatwah council and disciplinary
council. The governing council is headed by a central
command that exerts control over four regions. One
covered Singapore and Malaysia and provided financing
for JI operations. Hambali was its head until early last
year. The second region covered most of Indonesia and
was considered the target of jihad efforts. The third
region covered Mindanao, Sabah and Sulawesi. The last
covered Papua and Australia and was responsible for
fundraising.
As with al-Qaeda, Afghanistan was a
crucial catalyst for JI. All of its top leaders and many
of its bombers trained there from 1985 to 1995. Their
experience there was also critical in terms of forging
bonds among themselves and building an international
network that included members of al-Qaeda. The process
of sending recruits to Afghanistan began at least seven
years before JI formally came into being in 1992.
In 1995 JI decided to set up training facilities
in Mindanao in the Philippines to replicate the Afghan
training as closely as possible, including using many of
the same instructors. Regular "cadets" went through a
six-month course including weapons training, demolition
and bombing, map reading, guerrilla and infantry
tactics, field engineering, leadership and self-defense.
It also included a religious curriculum, providing
instruction in basic law, traditions of the Prophet,
proselytization and jihad.
Yet, according to the
ICG report, members of JI's central command are not
constrained by a formal hierarchy. JI also maintains
alliances with a loose network of like-minded regional
organizations all committed in different ways to jihad.
They share a commitment to implementing salaafi
teachings - a return to the "pure" Islam practiced by
the Prophet Mohammed.
In fact, the bombs that
exploded in Makassar last December were carried out by
two South Sulawesi-based organizations, Wahdah Islamiya
and Laskar Jundullah, "which cooperate with JI and may
even have been modeled after it but were completely
independent in terms of leadership".
The one bit
of good news in the ICG report is that internal
dissensions within JI appear to be growing. "The
Marriott [hotel] bombing, in particular, generated a
debate about appropriate targets, but there were
apparently already divisions over the appropriateness of
Indonesia as a venue for jihad, once the Ambon and Poso
conflicts had calmed down. The Marriott attack appears
to have intensified that debate."
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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