Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2002, pages 24-25

Islam and the Middle East in the Far East

 

Bali Bomb Blasts Undermine Extremists’ Support

 

By John Gee

Kuta seems far removed from the popular image of Bali. Over much of the Indonesian island quiet villages with their Hindu temples and elegant women in strikingly colored dresses prevail. Kuta, however, is normally a noisy resort, packed with young Western visitors who enjoy its cheap food and beer, its long beach that looks toward spectacular sunsets and its bars and nightclubs. Many of the tourists are Australians: of all the developed countries, theirs is the closest, and flights out to Bali are inexpensive.

The night of Saturday, Oct. 12, was a normal one, with Jalan Legian, the main street, still busy an hour before midnight. Then two bombs exploded—first, a smaller one that had been thrown into the doorway of a discothèque, followed quickly by a massive car bomb. Nearly 200 people were killed, with many more injured, primarily suffering burns. Most of the victims were Australians.

The repercussions were extensive. Before the troubles of the past few years, Bali had been the jewel in the crown of Indonesia’s tourism industry, the country’s second most important foreign currency earner. While it had survived the turbulence and inter-communal violence that had plagued much of the rest of Indonesia relatively unscathed, the days after the bombings saw a mass exodus of tourists and large-scale cancellations of hotel bookings. Almost overnight, Balinese saw their main source of income and number one employer vanish, with no idea of when the visitors might begin to return.

Speculation about who was responsible for the attack quickly focused upon the al-Qaeda network and, more specifically, the organization which has been accused of being its chief Southeast Asian affiliate, the Jemaah Islamiah (JI). The attack, it was pointed out, had the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation: It was carefully planned, apparently aimed at killing a large number of people solely because they were Westerners (locals, who included a handful of Balinese Muslims, were simply “collateral damage,” like the Africans murdered in the al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania five years earlier), and it was one of a number of near-simultaneous attacks: minutes later another bomb was exploded near the U.S. consulate in Denpasar, Bali’s capital, followed after a few hours by another at a Philippine consulate on the island of Sulawesi. No claim of responsibility was issued.

JI certainly has al-Qaeda links and shares its outlook. It was established in 1995, with the aim of uniting all predominantly Muslim Southeast Asia into one state. To that end, it has set up cells or found allies in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines and Thailand. Its chief center of operations, however, is Indonesia.

JI regarded Afghanistan under the Taliban as a model Islamic society and considered Osama bin Laden a great leader. The instruction its members received included detailed arguments claiming that democracy is incompatible with Islam. Around 50 activists were sent to Afghanistan to receive training in bomb-making, sabotage and other techniques that could be used in waging war on its enemies.

JI worked through other organizations, including some that predated it. It first attracted the attention of Southeast Asian governments when members of one of these groups, the Kampulan Militan Malaysia, attempted a bank robbery in order to raise money for its operations. An alert security guard shot and injured one of the robbers, whose subsequent arrest led to the discovery of the group’s network and its plans for taking power. As police rounded up members in May 2001, two of its leaders and a few activists escaped from Malaysia to Indonesia. The activists included men believed to have bomb-making skills.

Its leaders were Abu Bakar Bashir, regarded as JI’s “spiritual” head, and Nurjaman Riduan, better known as Hambali, who probably handled many of JI’s contacts with al-Qaeda. More JI groups were uncovered in Malaysia and Singapore following the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., and an Indonesian arrested in the Philippines following the bombing of a train in which 22 people were killed also turned out to be a JI member.

Saying that he had not broken its laws, Indonesia rejected calls that it detain Bashir and hand him over for questioning by either the Malaysian or Singaporean police. Jakarta denied knowledge of Hambali’s whereabouts, suggesting he had gone to Pakistan. Claims by Malaysia, Singapore and the U.S. that there were al-Qaeda-linked terrorist cells in Indonesia were met with denial. After the Oct. 12 bombing, however, this attitude looks untenable.

One of the ways that extremist groups such as JI had sought to defend themselves against a crackdown was by portraying themselves as authentic Muslim organizations that were standing up in defense of Islam: any move against them, they claimed, was an attack on Islam inspired by the U.S. (sometimes with Israel). In doing this, they played upon widespread public suspicion of the U.S. caused, above all, by Washington’s support for Israel and the double standard it is seen to apply depending upon whether it is judging the behavior of predominantly Muslim countries or that of Israel. This was an effective tactic, and made the Indonesian government more hesitant about tackling the extremists.

Some politicians adopted a more favorable stand. Vice President Hamzah Haz tried to increase his support among the more religious public ahead of a challenge for the presidency two years from now by taking a sympathetic attitude toward certain militant Muslim groups, such as Laskar Jihad. Having consistently denied that there was any international terrorist network operating in Indonesia, his first reaction to the Bali bombing was to blame it on weak intelligence and poor security measures, rather than first and foremost accusing the people who planted the bombs.

Predictably, JI’s Abu Bakar Bashir claimed that the bombings must have been “the work of foreigners, most probably the U.S.” Expressing the hope that the Indonesian government “will not fall into the U.S. trap,” he told a press conference that “America is doing things to justify their opinion that Indonesia is a haven for terrorists.”

The tide of Indonesian public opinion seems to be going against extremist groups, however. It had begun to turn, in fact, even before what some have called, in reference to the Bali bombing, “our Sept. 11.” In November 2001, Indonesia’s two largest Muslim organizations, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the Muhammadiyah, which have a combined membership of over 70 million, agreed to cooperate in order to restore the image of Islam, which they said had been tarnished by the activities of small extremist groups. Three months later, in February of this year, their leaders spoke out in favor of their government responding seriously to the accusation that terrorist groups were active in Indonesia. Said NU chairman Hasyim Muzadi, “Right now, the image of Indonesia and Islam is taking a beating because nothing is being done to counter any misperceptions.”

On Sept. 27, Muzadi spoke in favor of speeding up the introduction of an anti-terrorism law which the government had been due to submit to parliament in June. It had delayed bringing the planned bill forward because of opposition not only from supporters of the extremist groups, but also from human rights activists, who fear a return to the kind of measures used before 1997 by the Suharto regime.

There are other signs of Indonesians being fed up with the actions of extremist groups. A group of young Muslim intellectuals known as the Network of Liberal Islam has been formed to campaign for religious teaching that promotes pluralism in society, humanism and gender equality. It set up a Web site, started contributing articles to newspapers and sought to recruit students of Islamic studies.

Over the past couple of years, a group known as the Islamic Defenders Front has specialized in smashing up bars and nightclubs in Jakarta and other cities in Java. It threatened to expel foreigners during the buildup to the U.S. strikes on Afghanistan. Although its religious credentials were undermined by its known willingness to accept protection money, its operations were helped by the failure of the police to act against them; they used its threats to collect protection money of their own from the intended targets. In recent months opposition to the Front’s activities has become more vocal, and the public reaction to the Bali bombings finally encouraged thousands of entertainment sector workers to rally in Jakarta on Oct. 14 to demand real protection from the police for their legal activities.

Immediately after the Bali bombings, the leader of Laskar Jihad, one of the most violent extremist groups, announced its dissolution—although he said that the decision had been made earlier. While claiming to be acting in defense of Muslims in the communal conflict in the Maluku islands, the group had exacerbated the situation. Laskar Jihad members were accused of undermining efforts to achieve a peace agreement and of killing thousands of Christians. Their operations were facilitated by sympathetic elements in the army (others armed and supported Christian militants), but the reaction of the Indonesian public and the government to the Oct. 12 attacks appears to have made Ja’afar Umar Thalib, Laskar Jihad’s commander, decide that he should declare its disbandment. Whether that will really happen, or whether the group’s activists will resurface later under another name, remains to be seen. Ja’afar was detained in May after being accused of making a highly inflammatory speech.

The actions of the extremist groups now seem to be having the opposite result to that which they had wished: moderate Indonesian Muslims are reasserting themselves.

 

SE Asians Wary of Cost of Iraq War

While voicing varying degrees of criticism of Bush administration plans for a war on Iraq, Southeast Asian countries have been estimating what it could cost them. Singaporean economists expect that an attack on Iraq would produce higher prices and reduced growth in the republic. In the Philippines, there are concerns that the country will take a double blow from a rise in oil prices, coupled with a loss of revenues from Filipino migrant workers employed in the Middle East if any conflict overflows beyond Iraq. At the World Economic Forum in October, Malaysian International Trade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz warned that a war against Iraq would not help Asian economies. “This war is going to threaten, to negate all prospects and all plans for future growth anywhere in the world,” she said, “especially in Asia.”

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: Israel and the Palestinians, available from the AET Book Club.

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