They are being dubbed ‘solo jihadis’.
Recent terror-related incidents in Indonesia signal that although the security forces have succeeded in tamping down the main underground militant networks, angry young men — acting as ‘free radicals’ — now pose a mounting threat to security.
The arrest of 19 suspects on Thursday and the subsequent discovery of a Good Friday bomb plot revealed this new danger, with anti-terrorism sources saying they had yet to find any real link between the men and known terrorist or Islamist groups.
“The face of terror is changing now,” one police source was quoted as saying in The Jakarta Globe.
The source pointed to similarities between the group and other “lone wolves” who planned and carried out attacks without the support or backing of major networks.
In the past six months, small cells with no known links to Jemaah Islamiyah or other large jihadi organizations have raided police stations and assassinated officers. Mail bombs have been sent to liberal Muslim activists and an anti-terror chief, and on April 15 a suicide bomber targeted a mosque, a first in the country.
All this poses new challenges to the authorities, said Ansyaad Mbai, who heads the country’s Anti-Terrorism Agency.
“The book bombs, Molotov cocktails left at police stations and religious sites, attacks on officers — they might not be as deadly,” he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press, “but that doesn’t make them less serious.”
He also said that all the 19 suspects nabbed on Thursday were ‘somehow related to mainstream figures or groups’ such as the Indonesian Islamic State (NII) movement.
The NII was founded several decades ago by Sekar Maji Kartosuwiryo, a former nationalist who turned to radical Islam after falling out with then president Sukarno. He founded NII in his quest to transform Indonesia into an Islamic state.
One person was recently arrested for trying to recruit NII sympathisers on campus in the student city of Yogyakarta.
“NII has been targeting to recruit more people on four different campuses. However, I can’t reveal the names of those universities as it might disrupt the ongoing investigation,” Yogyakarta Police Chief Brigadier-General Ondang Sutarsa told the Kompas daily.
Noor Huda Ismail, a terrorism analyst, said many of the new breed of terrorists were inspired by the arrests or deaths of senior leaders of large terror groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah.
“Because their leaders were being arrested by police, these individual terrorists conclude that their new enemy is the police or security forces, that’s why many of their attacks were addressed to the National Police.”
Noor said these individual terrorists might be harder to uncover and eradicate.
A Brussels-based think-tank, the International Crisis Group, in a report released last week entitled Indonesian Jihadism: Small Groups, Big Plans, also underlined this new trend of small violent groups adopting ‘individual jihad’ aimed at local ‘enemies’, including police and Christians.
According to the ICG, there were two main strains of jihadism — organised and individual. Currently in Indonesia, individual jihad — or jihad fardiyah — has become popular, it added.
The shift is also in part ideological. Low-level, targeted terrorist attacks result in fewer unintended Muslim victims — something militants in the Middle East have long advocated.
That’s not to say that JI and other groups have lost their influence in the country.
Although the authorities believe they had dismantled JI’s militant structure, remaining members operate legally, hosting religious study sessions, translating Arabic texts and handing out vitriolic leaflets. Their main goal is to create an Islamic state.
They are most critical of the security forces and moderate Muslim leaders for joining the anti-terrorism fight, and often fall just short of advocating violence.
zo 24 apr 2011 - 17:16