January’s ISIS inspired attack in Jakarta raises serious concerns that the ISIS brand might be spreading to the world’s largest Muslim country. Indonesia is the home to more Muslims than the entire Arab Middle East combined and occupies a strategic location alongside the busiest trading routes in the world. Any serious inroads by ISIS in South East Asia would be a significant setback for Western efforts to battle the militant/terrorist group. However, a closer look at the attack in Jakarta shows that the emergence of ISIS in Indonesia, while troubling, is probably more related to Indonesia’s unique circumstances than to anything that ISIS itself has accomplished.
Indonesia is home to over 200 million Sunni Muslims, but it is not a Muslim state. There is no reference to Islam in Indonesia’s constitution, and the country has a long tradition of religious tolerance. It could have gone the other way, however.
Modern Indonesia is the inheritor state of the former Dutch East Indies. The country consists of over 17,000 islands stretching for more than 3,000 miles and is the home to over 300 different ethnic groups, hundreds of languages, and multiple religious traditions. The overwhelming majority of the citizens, however, are Muslim.
The independent Republic of Indonesia was established in 1949 following the Japanese occupation during WWII and the expulsion of the Dutch colonialists. Two groups held rival visions for Indonesia. One group, led by the charismatic populist Sukarno, was a largely Javanese nationalist movement. The other group was led by Sekarmadji Kartosuwirjo, whose Hizbullah militia was focused on creating an Islamic state under sharia law.
Sukarno took control of the government and oversaw efforts to write a new Constitution and developed a political ideology called Pancasila in an effort to unite the numerous ethnic groups and various squabbling factions across the vast archipelago. One of the most important principles of Sukarno’s Pancasila ideology was to guarantee the freedom of religion, thus helping to unite the numerous ethnic groups, and allowing the Sukarno government to build the institutions of a functioning government.
Kartosuwirjo declared his own Islamic State, initiating a Civil War which lasted until the early-1960s, and led to the death of tens of thousands. By the early 1960s, the Indonesian military and intelligence forces had killed Kartosuwirjo and destroyed his militias.
By the mid-1960s, however, Sukarno’s “guided democracy” began to flirt with communism, alienating both the West and his own military. He was deposed by the military and replaced by the strongman, authoritarian Suharto – an era captured in the Australian book and film, “The Year of Living Dangerously.”
Suharto’s 31 year-long “New Order” government was a centralized, authoritarian and military-dominated regime whose objective was to destroy communism and any threats to its rule. Suharto made it clear to Islamic groups that their desire for an Islamic, sharia state was not to be.
The remnants of Kartosuwirjo’s movement went underground and found a second life in the Islamic boarding schools, called Pesantrens. Clerics and graduates of the pesantrens refused to recognize Indonesia’s secular government and openly advocated for sharia law. A minority of the students engaged in terrorism to fight the state. These groups have fought under a variety of names – Komando Jihad, Jemaah Islamiyah, Laskar Jihad, al Qaeda, Jemaah Asharut Tauhid (JAT), Mujahidin Indonesia Timur and now, ISIS.
Kartosuwirjo’s most infamous disciple was the Muslim cleric and godfather of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group, Abu Bakar Bashir. Over the years, Bashir has been tied to dozens of terrorist attacks and been in and out of jail. He has sworn an oath of allegiance to both Osama Bin Ladin and ISIS, and controls his re-named JAT terrorist group from prison.
Bashir has been the key instigator and supporter for Indonesia’s most heinous terrorists. Among others, Bashir sent the terrorist Hambali to work directly with Osama Bin Ladin and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Hambali played a role in the 9/11 attacks and was eventually captured and sent to Guantanamo Bay. Umar Patek was a mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings and was arrested in Abbottabad, Pakistan, just blocks from Bin Ladin’s hide-out. Noordin Top was a key al Qaeda bomb maker who orchestrated the second attack on Bali, as well as other attacks in Jakarta throughout the 2000s.
While the good news is that the number Indonesians willing to engage in terrorism is small, and that they almost always come from the same pool, the bad news is that access to terrorist training grounds has increased. The numbers of Indonesians traveling to Syria is far smaller than in many European and Asian countries. However, problems of rampant corruption, a weak judicial and prison system, and poorly written laws make it hard for Indonesian authorities to effectively battle Kartusuwirjo’s descendants. Conspiracy in Indonesia is not a crime, nor is it against the law to be a member of ISIS or even travel for the purposes of military training. To be successful, the police have to catch would-be terrorists in the act. Even when they do, the porous prison system allows prisoners to maintain their contacts, and even orchestrate attacks from jail.
Indonesia’s lack of social unrest and tradition of tolerance have insured that those willing to engage in terrorism have a hard time building a following. However, several key challenges remain for the Indonesian authorities. Similar to the generation that trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Syria is a training ground where wannabe jihadis can develop lethal competence before returning to Indonesia. Also, Indonesia is one of the most cyber-connected places on earth, and the undereducated youth are potentially susceptible to ISIS sponsored social media campaigns. One way that this risk has manifested itself lately is the rise in the number of Indonesian women seeking online marriages with fighters in Syria, in the hopes of raising children in an “Islamic State.”
So, while the emergence of ISIS in Indonesia is a challenge for both the Indonesian and western authorities, it is not (yet) anything new. Almost all the violent terrorists over the years come from the same families, schools, and districts, and if ISIS didn’t exist, they would probably still be a threat to the state. The organizational names may change but the networks remain the same. The talented Indonesian counter-terror police are largely able to monitor the radical fringe in the country as long as their competence and outside support does not increase substantially. However, the longer that Syria remains a place for would-be terrorists to learn their trade, the greater chance that the system will buckle and ISIS will truly be able to make inroads in South East Asia.
