In looking
at the car bomb explosion outside the Australian Embassy
in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta last Thursday, one
must avoid an over-interpretation and over-assessment of
the blast, which caused the death of nine persons and
injured more than 100 others, most of them civilians.
The post-September 11, 2001, breed of al-Qaeda
watchers tend to hype up every act of terrorism,
projecting it as the outcome of an al-Qaeda grand
strategy and evidence of the group's octopus-like
nature, thereby creating an unwarranted perception of
al-Qaeda's continuing anti-state potency and the seeming
helplessness of the state in countering this threat. By
doing so, these al-Qaeda watchers tend to play into the
group's hands and give it an image that helps it in its
self-perpetuation.
While the death of even a
single individual at the hands of terrorists is shocking
and ought to be a matter of concern to the state and the
international community, one has to note that on the
scale of terrorist incidents, the Jakarta blast would
fall into the category of low-to-medium or, at the most,
medium gravity. Such incidents have been taking place at
frequent intervals in India since 1956. As a result,
Indians treat terror attacks with a sense of balance and
consciously avoid overreaction and over-projection,
which would be counter-productive.
Presuming
that the perpetrators of the blast belonged to Jemaah
Islamiyah (JI), which seeks to establish a pan-Islamic
state in Southeast Asia and is the group blamed for
several previous bombings in Indonesia, what is really
significant is not that it was able to organize last
week's bombing despite stepped-up anti-terrorism
security in Indonesia in general and in Jakarta in
particular since the JW Marriott Hotel blast in August
last year, but that it took JI more than a year to find
a suitable volunteer for another suicide mission and to
procure the necessary material such a move required.
This speaks well of the counter-terrorism drive
instituted by the Indonesian government after the Bali
bombings in October 2002. One should avoid projecting
the blast as the outcome of any weaknesses in the
government's policies and actions. The lessons emerging
from the blast are as follows:
The motivation of the jihadi terrorist organizations
in Indonesia, whether it is the JI or any other
organization, and their urge to vent their anger through
acts of terrorism remain strong.
A reservoir of potential suicide bombers is still
available to these groups, but no evidence shows that
this is an expanding reservoir.
Despite the measures taken by the Indonesian
government to strengthen its intelligence collection
capability and the assistance it receives from
Australia, the US and other countries, Indonesia
continues to have gaps in its intelligence coverage.
Such gaps are inevitable and cannot be totally
eliminated.
Indonesian society still posses on-going pockets of
anger that are exploited by jihadi terrorists. In some
instances this anger is directed against the government,
either because of its perceived anti-Islamic policies or
because of its cooperation with Australia and the US. In
other instances, it is directed against external powers
such as the US and Australia, which are viewed as
anti-Islam. The anger against Australia is stronger
because of its alleged role in the separation of East
Timor from Indonesia, its perceived anti-Islamic
immigration policy and its support for US military
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Jihadi terrorists
wanting to remain active and grab media headlines
exploit this anger.
This latest terrorist strike does not appear to have
had any strategic objective. It was a pure and simple
tactical strike to let the world know that the jihadi
terrorists remain alive and kicking.
The gravity and impact of the strike would have been
greater and the reverberations arising from it would
have been felt far beyond Indonesia if the jihadi
terrorists had succeeded in their tactical objective of
harming Australian lives and interests. The fact that
the Australian mission was able to withstand such an
attack is not only a tribute to its physical security,
but is also proof of the validity of the
counter-terrorism adage that where physical security is
strong and effective, terrorists cannot prevail, even if
intelligence is weak, and where physical security is
weak, terrorists might succeed even if intelligence is
strong.
There is no evidence so far to connect
the blast with al-Qaeda, nor with the observance of the
third anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the US,
the forthcoming presidential elections in Indonesia or
the parliamentary elections in Australia. The impact of
the blast on the elections, either in Indonesia or in
Australia, will be minimal, if not nil, unless this
blast turns out to be the precursor of more to come.
Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri and
Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his party may
still lose the elections, but their defeat, if it comes
about, will not be because of this blast but because of
their sins of commission and omission in many other
matters.
Australia has not yet rid itself of its
image as a regional surrogate of the US. The
overreaction of its leaders to incidents such as the
blast, their unwise statements and actions, such as the
high-profile visit of Australian Foreign Minister
Alexander Downer to Jakarta immediately after the blast,
and their habit of throwing their weight around in the
name of counter-terrorism cooperation, with ostentatious
offers of financial and professional help in dealing
with terrorism, add to the darkness of its image.
That the JI is alive and kicking should not be a
matter of surprise. It has much deeper roots in
Indonesian society than al-Qaeda has in the society of
any Islamic country. To expect its early withering away
would be overly optimistic.
Australian police
officials have been quoted by the media as warning of
another possible terrorist strike directed at
Australians in Indonesia. An equally strong possibility
is a JI strike in Malaysia directed against the local
government or against the nationals and interests of the
US and Australia. The Pakistan-based jihadi components
of the International Islamic Front have maintained a
high level of virulence in their rhetoric against not
only their own government, but also against Indonesia
and Malaysia ever since the arrest and handing over to
the Malaysian and Indonesian authorities some months ago
of several Malaysians and Indonesians, including a
brother of Hambali, the projected operational chief of
JI, from a madrassa (seminary)in Karachi run by
the Lashkar-e-Toiba.
B Raman is a
former additional secretary, cabinet secretariat for the
government of India, New Delhi. Presently, he serves as
director of the Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai,
and is a distinguished fellow and convener for the
Chennai chapter of the Observer Research Foundation. He
can be reached by e-mail at corde@vsnl.com.
