AN ATOL INVESTIGATION Deep inside Indonesia's kill zone
By John McBeth
JAKARTA - Florida's Dade County police special weapons and tactics (SWAT) squad
conducts as many as five forced entries a day. In all of those, they rarely
fire a shot - and almost never have to deal with explosives. Indonesia's
Detachment 88 counter-terrorism crisis response teams have staged two sieges in
the past two months, laid down a heavy barrage of gunfire and killed five
leading militants.
But counter-terrorism experts say it is wrong to make comparisons: SWAT is
doing police work; Detachment 88, still
under-trained and ill-equipped, is dealing with suicidal jihadis often armed
with assault rifles and powerful shrapnel bombs.
"These are not criminals in the true sense of the word," said one US Special
Forces combat veteran, who has trained Detachment 88. "These are soldiers of
God. If they are cornered, they have the will and the means to kill as many as
they can before being killed themselves."
That hasn't stopped the unit from coming under mounting criticism for failing
to take alive some key individuals believed to possess information that may
have allowed investigators to roll up other terrorist networks. Malaysian
mastermind, Noordin Mohammad Top, and three other militants were killed in a
Detachment 88 operation on the outskirts of Solo, Central Java, on September
17, exactly two months after the twin bombings of Jakarta's JW Marriott and
Ritz Carlton hotels.
Three weeks later, the unit closed in on a house in the Jakarta suburb of
Ciputat and killed Syaifudin Zuhu Djaelani and his brother, Mohammad Syahrir,
who were accused of hiring the two suicide bombers used in the September 17
attacks. Ibohim, their brother-in-law and the inside man for the bombings, had
been originally misidentified as Noordin when he was shot dead in Temanggung,
Central Java, on August 8.
There is a suspicion that police have been simply killing the suspects to
dispense with the headaches of long and perhaps theatrical trials. But
Detachment 88's reluctance to engage the militants at close quarters probably
stems from the fact that it has insufficient teargas and stun grenades and,
more importantly, the advanced training to use them effectively.
The unit's spokesman declined to comment, noting that the Coordinating Ministry
for Political, Security and Legal Affairs was currently considering the
establishment of a new counter-terrorism agency which the military is keen to
head. Western officials, however, say involving the army would be a mistake.
Under the ministry's current standard operating procedures, the elite
Indonesian Special Forces (Kopassus) can only be called on in extreme cases,
such as the armed takeover of an embassy or a plane hijack.
Recent public criticism of Detachment 88's so-called "license to kill" has
literally given the military the ammunition to push harder for a more prominent
role in the operational aspects of the counter-terrorism campaign. Senior
defense officials say only that Kopassus wants to play a larger role in
anticipating terrorist actions; some of its troops have recently reinforced the
presidential security force in preparation for US President Barack Obama's
visit to Indonesia next May or June.
Obama was to have paid a fleeting visit to Jakarta on November 12, en route to
the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore. US officials say the
postponement was related not to security concerns but to the president's wish
to stay longer in Indonesia, where he spent part of his childhood. Apart from
bringing in highly trained Kopassus personnel, the battalion-sized presidential
bodyguard unit has also been exercising with US Secret Service agents, using
new weaponry and electronic devices.
It is not clear why the Detachment 88 crisis response teams have not been given
more advanced or even sustained refresher training and better equipment to
tackle a job that demands the sort of skills and teamwork mostly found in the
military. As it was, while the two most recent standoffs lasted for hours, a
single shot in one instance and a small bomb blast in the other triggered a
torrent of fire from Detachment 88 police officers surrounding the houses where
the suspects were holed up.
"To me, if a shot was fired or a small bomb was exploded, then that is grounds
to go in with the intention of shooting to kill and perhaps taking casualties
as well," said the American trainer. "The question is: are you committing your
force to arrest, which is a true police mindset that I don't buy into in many
of these cases, or are you there to kill them and, if a few live, well then
make an arrest."
Noordin probably would never have surrendered, given the almost certainty of a
death sentence if he were captured alive. But investigators were anxious to
capture Budi Bagus Pranoto, alias Urwah, one of the two other militants killed
along with him.
Paroled in 2007 after spending three years in jail for his role in the 2004
bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Urwah was a pivotal figure
because of his connections to several other terrorist networks. He had
introduced Noordin to the field operatives who carried out the 2004 embassy
attack and following his release started a video production company,
repackaging al-Qaeda material on CDs with Indonesian subtitles.
Syahrir and Zuhi would have been better alive than dead as well, given
suspicions that they raised the money from al-Qaeda for the hotel bombings.
Zuhri had never been part of the Southeast Asian terrorist network, Jemaah
Islamiyah, but he did have strong links to the most radical Islamic school in
Yemen.
Rules of engagement
Detachment 88 teams are taught to run through a so-called "continuum" before
resorting to deadly force, but experts say time and budget constraints and
other circumstances make a step-by-step escalation difficult. It is always the
on-scene commander who dictates strategy, based on the unit's policy on the
Rules of Engagement (ROE) and Rules of the Use of Force (RUF) - issues which
were addressed from the beginning.
Western security sources say the Detachment 88 leadership has asked them on
several occasions to provide instruction in siege negotiations, but even then
there are other serious considerations. "As soon as you start negotiations,
you've got to be ready to go for hours and hours," said one former Australian
police officer. "You also can't use megaphones. They just don't cut it when
you're trying to establish a rapport."
Detachment 88 was created under the US State Department Anti-Terrorism
Assistance (ATA) program in 2003, the brainchild of then deputy assistant
secretary of state, Matthew Daley, a former Secret Service special agent and
skilled marksman.
Over the next five years, a dozen or so crisis response teams were formed and
each put through 28 days of intensive training at a small facility on the
outskirts of Bogor. But, according to most sources, that's about as far as it
went. "The initial training is so basic as to be dangerous if it is taken that
these are now operators who can kick down doors as part of a national element,"
the Special Forces veteran told Asia Times Online.
It might be good enough for Iraq or Afghanistan, but in countries such as
Indonesia it should be followed by months of further training and shooting -
perhaps as many as 2,000 rounds per man a week - as well as different scenarios
and different types of entry. When the US Special Forces last worked with
Kopassus' Detachment 81, the unit designated for high-risk anti-terrorist
operations, the initial training program lasted five months and covered a wide
range of scenarios.
More importantly, Kopassus had everything it needed, thanks to former president
Suharto's son-in-law, the then-commander, Major-General Prabowo Subianto, who
had ready access to funding. The selection process also ensured that the unit
got the best of the best. However, the choice of weaponry for Detachment 88 was
controversial from the outset.
Daley had recommended the semi-automatic Heckler & Koch MP5, with a
selector switch to fire either a single round or three-round bursts. "I did
that because it was easy to handle, reliable and accurate, and fired a round
that had been a standard pistol and sub-machine gun cartridge dating back to
before World War I and is still being used by the US military," Daley said.
Instead, for reasons known only to itself, the State Department's diplomatic
security office opted for the M-4, the shortened version of the M-16 which
fires a high-velocity 5.56mm NATO round. Although the M-4 uses frangible
ammunition - designed to break apart when it hits walls or other hard surfaces
- US military trainers considered it too powerful for the job. It is also more
expensive and not as freely available.
Diplomatic security also ignored Daley's suggested procurement of a sniper
version of the Remington 700 bolt action rifle, instead buying the AR-10, which
failed its field trials with the US Army and has never been adopted by any
major police or military force. As many as 14 of the 24 AR-10s that were
delivered to the Bogor training facility malfunctioned the first time that they
were fired.
"One of the reasons they liked the AR-10 seems to be because of its firepower,"
Daley notes. "But police are more in need of accuracy and reliability and
something that is relatively easy to maintain and service."
When the US State Department hedged on giving Detachment 88 more advanced
training in 2005, trainers asked the US Special Operations Command-Pacific to
bring in Okinawa, Japan-based Special Forces instructors to provide it at the
National Police Academy in Semarang.
But senior officials in Washington intervened, concerned that involving the US
military in the training of a civilian police unit would provoke a reaction in
the US Congress, where reviving US-Indonesia military relations after a
suspension for 13 years on Washington's concern about the armed forces' human
rights record was still a sensitive topic.
Still, experts say Semarang is where the training should have been conducted in
the first place because of the better facilities and the presence of an
Australian-run counter-terrorism intelligence school. Bogor's Megamendung site
is comparatively so small that snipers can not train effectively, demolitions
must be kept to a minimum and the "shoot house" was not built with internal
walls to vary the type of entries, or breaches.
If they are available, stun grenades, better known as "flash-bangs", are
considered an excellent tool for siege operations. But while they may be
effective in incapacitating an adversary, operators still have to be adept to
take full advantage of the five seconds of disorientation.
Teargas, experts say, can be equally effective, with supporting elements laying
down an initial barrage of grenades as the assault force, covered in the rear
by snipers, moves to the breach point of a targeted building. But gas
dissipates quickly, and while it played a key role in the brilliant May 1980
Special Air Service (SAS) operation at the Iranian Embassy in London, these are
different times, with better bombs and better-trained adversaries.
Again, it comes down to a question of training. Gas masks "are very restrictive
and it takes an extreme amount of training to be able to engage a target while
visually transitioning across your assigned sector looking for additional
targets," said the trainer.
"All this while you are continuing to stay on the move and keep the flow going,
searching for your next structural point of least resistance, then stacking,
breaching and entering a new phase line."
Smoke grenades are considered a bad choice because they mask the adversary as
well as the attacking force. "Fratricide and loss of control are huge factors,"
the instructor said. "I would never use this inside a building on a real
operation although I have done so in training to demonstrate the dangers."
Smoke grenades only start to burn in the gloved hand five seconds after the pin
is pulled, making it difficult to predict with any degree of certainty how the
smoke will disseminate. "That means your element of surprise is gone, the bad
guys move to another part of the building, lock it down with guns and you're
toast when you enter the room," he said. "They just shoot into the smoke."
Smoke can be used outside of a building to mask the movement of friendly
personnel on their approach to the breach point - providing they are trained to
move as a unit under restrictive visibility and have studied the layout of the
terrain. Forced entries can be an extremely dangerous commitment of forces. The
entire breach element of a US Special Forces team was killed when they entered
a building in Iraq that had been rigged with explosives.
Fallen militants
The initial test for Detachment 88 came in the wake of the Australian Embassy
bombing when the unit's newly-graduated post-blast investigation team did a
superb job in tracking the Bogor terrorist cell that had produced the truck
bomb.
"It was determined by the commander at the time [Brigadier-General Bekto
Suprapto] that minimal force would be used, with the shooters kept as back up,"
recalled the Special Forces veteran. "I disagreed with him because I thought
one slip-up could be disastrous, but it was his call.
"It turned out to be a brilliant and unorthodox operation, which I attribute to
his understanding of the Indonesian mind-set, resulting in the arrest of seven
cell members. But I still believe one mistake would have killed five police
officers, including him."
Suprapto, who had played a leading role in capturing many of those involved in
the 2002 Bali bombings, tricked the terrorists into opening the door by
pretending there had been an accident involving one of their friends. The
raiders had to move fast, however, because the suspects all turned out to be
wearing explosive vests. "It worked that time," said the trainer. "But they may
have felt it wouldn't work again."
Following the Bali bombings in 2005, the Indonesians wanted to stop raising the
platoon-sized crisis response teams and focus more on post-blast and explosive
incident counter-measure squads. The Americans argued that they had got lucky
in Bogor and that the crisis response teams were not only vital for taking down
a target, but were needed throughout the country because of a lack of available
aircraft.
Former deputy assistant secretary of state, Daley, said the initial plan called
for a highly trained operational element, based in Jakarta, and with priority
access to a pair of C-130 transport aircraft. That model was scrapped in favor
of raising about a dozen crisis response teams from among former and serving
members of the Police Mobile Brigade, giving them limited training and then
dispersing them at strategic points across the country.
According to the Special Forces trainer, it was only after President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono declared terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah and its affiliates
to be criminals rather than religious activists that the police looked at
killing rather than capturing them. "It was decided that if a threat or chance
of a getaway existed, then it was shoot to kill," he recalled.
"Azahari [bin Husain] became the first recipient of this policy with three
bullets in the chest." The Malaysian national was killed in the East Java hill
town of Batu in November 2005.
Since then, at least 26 suspected militants have died in police shootouts,
including 15 slain in a single pitched battle in Poso, Central Sulawesi, in
January 2007, which appears to have been the result of faulty intelligence. "It
was the national police who initially used the soft approach and, during my
time anyway, reversed that approach and leant more towards going in in-force
and pulling the trigger should it be necessary," the American trainer said.
"If you commit to entering a building with suspected jihadis in it, which may
also be rigged to explode, you need to be able to discriminately pull the
trigger. We are taught to look at the hands, only the hands, but one never
knows does one?"
What further complicates operations such as this are the difficulties police
often encounter in establishing a security perimeter, particularly in populous
parts of Java. In some cases, because of narrow lanes and the proximity of
other houses, the perimeter is only 10 meters off the front door of the target
- a situation fraught with danger if the militants have bombs.
"Everything is time critical," said the former Australian police officer. "If
you give people time, they will settle in and gain in confidence. Tactics
change all the time because they are always dictated by what you see on the
ground."
John McBeth is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic
Review. He is currently a Jakarta-based columnist for the Straits Times of
Singapore.
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