Cipher Brief Expert and former senior national security officer for the Australian Government, Alasdair Gordon, weighs on on the risks of the U.S. not placing more focus on the growing terrorist threat in Indonesia.
Recent terrorist incidents in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, with a population of 260 million, have again raised concerns about growing extremist Islamist influence in the archipelago.
May bombings in Surabaya, on the Eastern side of Indonesia’s largest Island, Java, were particularly horrific because of the use of young children as suicide bombers. The attacks on Police Stations, including the taking and execution of hostages, were also deeply worrying because they were clearly directed at a pillar of the State.
These attacks are the latest manifestation of the dangers of foreign fighters, and their families, returning from conflict in the Middle East, and their links to IS. But they may be more worrying than that. They may well say more about the the rise of fundamentalist Islam, with violent extremist elements, both in Indonesia and the region.
Public signs of this trend became evident during the May 2016 Gubernatorial elections in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, where incumbent Governor, Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian, was imprisoned for blasphemy. These charges followed a campaign conducted by fundamentalist organizations that included the Islamic Defenders Faith and a group called Hizbut Tahri Indonesia. While this latter group was subsequently banned by the Indonesian Government for calling for the establishment of an Islamic State in Indonesia, the ban may have done no more than push its support underground, with more dangerous consequences. A rally in Jakarta called by these groups attracted a crowd estimated at over half a million people.
The relative infrequency of terrorist attacks in Indonesia up until now has been mostly due to the successful efforts of Indonesian security forces. Since the first Bali Bombing in October 2002, the Indonesian Military, Intelligence and Police departments, including the impressive anti-terrorist Police Unit known as Detachment 88, have done much to halt the planning and execution of terrorist attacks.
A sustained crackdown weakened the most dangerous networks. At the same time, numerous recent IS-linked plots in Indonesia have been botched or foiled, with analysts now saying that many of the country’s militants lack the capacity to launch serious attacks.
This may well be changing as expertise honed on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq are brought back to the region, where IS has served as a potent rallying cry for radicals. This, with at least ideological succor from a growing fundamentalist Islamist political movement, has only magnified the threat.
Indonesia has traditionally been seen as a moderate Muslim society. While there have been a number of instances over the years of what we would now describe as terrorist attacks against either Christian or more moderate Islamic centres in Indonesia, its reputation for tolerance has been well deserved.
A 30 odd year repressive, authoritarian, military regime, under President Suharto greatly assisted in keeping in check any manifestation of extremist Islam. Nonetheless, since independence in 1945, a tension between conservative interpretation of the Koran and Indonesia’s secular laws has existed. And many mainstream Indonesian Muslims do not necessarily agree with the separation of mosque and State.
Suharto’s fall and the establishment of democracy in Indonesia, has provided opportunity for fundamentalist groups both to flourish, and, importantly, to develop political influence.
The growth of fundamentalism in South East Asia, and the extremist violence associated with it, is not confined to Indonesia, and incidents such as those in Surabaya resonate in the region. The Philippines has recently experienced its own major terrorist attack at Marawi in its South, and there is ongoing concern about links amongst groups in Indonesia, the Southern Philippines and Malaysia.
In Australia, authorities are taking increased measures to improve security at its borders, but the threat to Australians is at least as likely offshore. Australia’s Intelligence Chief, Nick Warner, re-iterated recently that the next mass casualty terrorist attack against Australian citizens was likely to occur in South East Asia.
And this is why the threats in Indonesia and elsewhere in South East Asia should be of real concern to the U.S. Bitter experience with the October 2002 Bali attack, and the 2003 bombings at the Marriot hotel in Jakarta, both of which led to the loss of American lives, show us that these terrorist groups which deliberately target foreign interests, pose a threat to U.S. citizens. And at any one time, there are around 10,000 U.S. citizens living in Indonesia, with close to 400,000 American visitors every year.
There has been a disappointing lack of focus here about this threat. While U.S. intelligence agencies have been resolute in providing impressive levels of assistance to relevant authorities in the region, this has not been reflected in the priority given to the threat by successive Administrations. This needs to change.
