Ba'asyir trial and the future of the Jemaah
Islamiah By Eric Koo
Last Thursday
Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir was brought to trial in
an Indonesian court. Ba'asyir, the alleged spiritual
leader of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) group, is being
charged with inciting terror attacks on the state,
including the Bali bombing on October 12, 2002, and the
Marriott Hotel bombing on August 5, 2003. Ba'asyir's
trial is not only of interest to the intelligence and
security community, but to the public as well. The JI
group, which Ba'asyir allegedly heads, was once and
still is, a menace to public security in the nations of
Southeast Asia.
The rise of the
JI Jemaah Islamiah, which means Islamic
community, is a group that arose in Indonesia from
humble beginnings. In 1971 two Islamic preachers, Abu
Bakar Ba'asyir and Abdullah Sungkar (who died in 1999 of
natural causes), co-founded the al-Mukmin Koranic
Studies boarding school in Ngruki village east of
Surakarta, Solo province. Both men aspired to the
ideology of Darul Islam, which advocates establishing an
Islamic state ruled by sharia, or Islamic law, in Java
as its ultimate goal, and started teaching and spreading
such ideas among the students who came to study at the
school.
Then-ruling Indonesian president Suharto
ordered a ban on the movement, arresting both men.
Ba'asyir and Abdullah were imprisoned from 1978 to 1982,
for trying to start an Islamic militia, Komando Jihad.
Soon after their release, they fled to Malaysia in 1985
to escape another prison term and returned to Indonesia
only after president Suharto stepped down in 1998. While
in Malaysia, the two men gathered like-minded Muslim
followers from neighboring states who shared their
vision for a regional Islamic state and formed the JI.
One of these men was Riduan Isamuddin, better known as
Hambali, who later became the JI operations chief.
Hambali, an Indonesian, went to Afghanistan in the 1980s
and supposedly fought the Soviets as a mujahideen, or
Islamic fighter. During that time he became associated
with Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda network.
The JI gained prominence in Indonesia in the
period 1999-2001, after the fall of president Suharto in
1998, when a number of violent incidents occurred
between religious and ethnic groups amid the social
chaos in the absence of a strong and stable government.
At that time, Ba'asyir was a well-known figure
and respected among the Indonesian Muslim community. His
friendship with then-Indonesian vice president Hamzah
Haz was also well known; hence the Indonesian government
did not move against him until after the Bali bombing
incident.
A White Paper released by the Ministry
of Home Affairs in Singapore on the Jemaah Islamiah
arrests in January 2003 described clearly that the JI
were organized at the local level into fiah or
cells, which consisted of members who lead normal lives
as covers for their secret identities until called upon
by the organization to act. The White Paper also
illustrated in detail the interlinked relationships
between the JI and other Islamic militant groups such as
the Kumpulan Militan Malaysia (Malaysian Militant Group,
or KMM), the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) based
in the southern Philippines, and al-Qaeda.
If
Ba'asyir was the spiritual leader and ideologue of the
JI, Hambali was the planner and organizer for bomb
operations that propelled the group to regional and
later, world attention. He was also known to have held
leadership positions in both the JI and al-Qaeda sharia
councils, the highest decision-making body in the
groups. Hambali was once regarded as being even more
dangerous than Ba'asyir. He was finally arrested in
Thailand in August 2003 and is now in US custody. His
arrest has since led to even more vital information on
links between the JI network and al-Qaeda.
Why the JI stays a threat Since 1998,
the JI had been active in Indonesia, covertly striking
religious, political or economic symbols of popular
discontent from Indonesia's Muslim majority, including
churches, shopping malls, or the Philippine ambassador's
residence.
Later, after the attacks on September
11, 2001, it was discovered that the JI had secretly
built up an alarmingly huge clandestine network and was
in collaboration with the global terrorist network,
al-Qaeda.
The JI was discovered to have
branches, or mantiqis, in Indonesia, Malaysia,
Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia and
Australia. These countries have openly outlawed this
group and JI members, suspects or known associates had
been arrested periodically through police investigations
or shared intelligence. Training camps that had been
discovered in Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia
were also neutralized.
Thus far, the JI has been
directly responsible for at least 257 deaths through
bomb attacks, a modest figure compared to other
insurgent or terrorist groups in Southeast Asia, or the
rest of the world for that matter. Certainly, other
regional groups such as the Abu Sayyaf in the
Philippines or Hamas have killed many more people than
that. However, many JI plans were disrupted by timely
crackdowns and arrests by various Southeast Asian state
governments, which accounts for its low attack frequency
and success rate.
The Bali bombing, which
claimed 202 victims, remains its most intense and
serious assault on the Indonesian state thus far. The
dormant threat JI poses to the region lies in the depth
of its infiltration into Southeast Asian societies, its
organization of secretive cells modeled on al-Qaeda and
its known links to this much larger and feared Islamic
group.
The JI's last successful bomb attack was
on September 9 this year when a vehicle driven by a
suicide bomber blew up in front of the Australian
Embassy in Jakarta, killing 11 and wounding 180. The
suspected perpetrators, Malaysian JI member Azahari bin
Husin and other new key figures in the JI network such
as Noordin Mohammed Top and Zulkarnaen, are still on the
loose. Security officials speculate that it's possible
that Azahari and his followers are breaking off from the
JI network to go their own way as smaller, splinter
groups. If so, they would be even harder for the
security community to track.
Will Ba'asyir go
free? The Bali bombing radically changed
Indonesia's state strategy against Islamic militancy.
Time magazine reported that then-president Megawati
Sukarnoputri acted with uncharacteristic decisiveness
and passed an anti-terrorism presidential decree giving
special powers to the police to fight terrorism. Six
days later, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, was arrested. The
culprits involved in the Bali bombing operation were
also arrested over the subsequent months. Other
suspected militants involved in less well-known bombing
incidents - for example, an attack on a McDonald's
restaurant in Makassar, South Sulawesi, on December 5,
2002 - were also rounded up. Secret training camps
allegedly used by the JI for explosives and other types
of training were also destroyed when discovered.
Whether Ba'asyir will go free depends
principally on how the Indonesian court handles his case
- as a legal case involving violent crime, or as an
anti-government terrorist activity. Indonesia's unique
handling of terrorism cases is heavily influenced by
legal procedures and precedents. For example, the Bali
bombings' key suspects, Imam Samudra, Amrozi and
Mukhlas, were sentenced to death for direct
participation in the bomb plot. But Ba'asyir, who
inspired others to commit terrorist acts through his
militant and extremist teachings, initially received
only a four-year sentence on charges of plotting
treason.
These facts are well documented and
cannot be disputed. Ba'asyir's lawyers, no doubt, have
capitalized on the legal aspect of Indonesia's criminal
code by pointing out that Ba'asyir, though linked and
known to the JI militants and convicted terrorists,
nevertheless, was not directly involved in either the
planning or execution phases of the bomb attacks.
They also cite Ba'asyir's role in stepping forth
to give a public statement demanding that Iraqi
kidnappers release Indonesian women kidnapped in Iraq
last month, ostensibly for the purpose of demanding
Ba'asyir's release from prison. For whatever reasons,
the kidnappers released the two Indonesian women three
days later. Ba'asyir's role in diffusing the Iraqi
kidnapping incident will no doubt be considered in his
favor when the Indonesian court reviews his legal case
of appeal.
Still, terrorism experts and
politicians generally agree that radical teachings are
much more dangerous than the operational aspects of
terrorism. This could work against Ba'asyir. For
example, Singapore's minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew
likened Ba'asyir to that of a queen bee, but said Amrozi
and others were just worker bees. Singapore's Home
Minister Wong Kan Seng also pointed out that Ba'asyir's
Al-Mukmin religious school was still in operation.
The affect on US-Indonesia
relations The United States has previously
applied diplomatic pressure to coax the Indonesian
government toward more efficient and effective action
against terrorism and Islamic radicalism within
Indonesia. That the JI's key leaders are mostly
Indonesian by nationality, and that nearly all the
group's successful bomb attacks occurred within that
country, certainly cannot be denied.
The
Indonesian government naturally is the best entity to
deal with the JI problem. Nevertheless, legal
proceedings aside, Indonesia's security forces have
contributed the lion's share to breaking up the JI
network, arresting its members and associates,
destroying its infrastructure such as training camps,
and confiscating its weapon cache.
But greater
events are in motion that may overshadow Ba'asyir's
trial. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was sworn in
recently as Indonesia's sixth president and has stated
that his first 100 days in office will be committed to
addressing security issues. Based on the outcome of the
US presidential elections, new opportunities to build
cooperation and better interstate relations would be
presented for the taking, as long as both US and
Indonesian leaders remain open to diplomatic discourse
and committed to the campaign against terror and Islamic
radicalism.
Conclusion With the JI
incapacitated, many of its high- and mid-level leaders,
bomb operatives and cell members arrested, dead or on
the run, the JI's threat to regional security has been
reduced to containable levels. Still, security is a
concern that should never be taken lightly. The history
of JI has shown that it has a capacity of resilience,
metamorphosing into other organizational forms, adopting
other names, and forming links with other groups, to
suit the tides and times. Its radical goals, however,
remained consistent, and that is something to worry
about.
Eric Koo is a freelance writer
who holds a master of science degree in strategic
studies from the Institute of Defense and Strategic
Studies (IDSS).
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