---- by Karen Cho, Singapore ----

When Noordin Mohammad Top, the chief suspect in July’s suicide bomb attacks on  luxury hotels in Jakarta was killed during a police raid in Central Java in September, the feeling of relief in Indonesia and Southeast Asia was almost palpable.

But according to terrorism expert Sidney Jones, the threat that this Islamic militant posed when he was still alive, is far from over.

“In a sense, probably there will be a lull of any kinds of attacks, partly because it takes a while for people to build up the capacity and the teams again, but I don’t think we should assume that terrorism is over and done with in Indonesia – partly because just from the people who were arrested and killed as part of Noordin’s network alone, we know that there are new kinds of recruitment taking place,” says Jones, a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group based in Jakarta, who spoke recently to the Foreign Correspondents Association of Singapore.

Sidney Jones

Different groups are being targeted for recruitment, with university students a popular choice. Jones reasons this is happening as these organisations are now looking for more intelligent and strategic thinkers than if recruitment was aimed at the rural poor, which was the modus operandi in the past.

In fact, Jones cautions that student recruitment is on the rise. “In terms of campus-based activism, we have to be more aware than we’ve been thus far, that even the kinds of organisations that we’ve treated as completely acceptable within a democratic society can have links outside.”

And Indonesia it seems is predisposed to just this kind of recruitment, having already experienced a wave of campus-based activism in the 1980s that drew a lot of people into what eventually became the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). “It was those people, university-educated, that for the most part went to Afghanistan.”

She points out, however, that there’s “a lot of unhappiness in radical networks on university campuses at the direction that the leadership has taken.” She cites the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) as an example of a group that has links to the Muslim brotherhood but which had taken a “very prominent role” in the coalition of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, thereby causing some to question their integrity and look for other groups to join.

In addition to recruitment on campuses, the younger generation is also a prime target in “mosque-based recruiting” where they are being persuaded by an Imam of their local mosque to join up.

Something else to watch out for, according to Jones, is a new wave of publishing – what the jihadists call ‘jihad by the pen’, that has the effect of spreading like wildfire.

These are translations of radical writings from Arabic into Bahasa Indonesia, that make their way into online discussion groups, book launches and so on.

Aside from Noordin’s network which is a more violent, splinter group of the JI, Jones warns of other groups with similar hardline leanings. “We need to pay attention to an organisation set up by radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir in September 2008 because four of the people in Noordin’s network turned out to be affiliated to this network.”

“It was supposed to be an above-ground network to advocate for the immediate implementation of Islamic law, and it was borne as a result of a split between Bashir and the leadership of an organisation called the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council (MMI),” she adds.

Jones also cautions against groups calling themselves “al Qaeda for Southeast Asia”, of which Noordin was the recent phenomenon.

Despite the proliferation of such groups, the upshot is that regional organisations, apart from the JI group, don’t really work because of differences in goals, language and historical background.

Yet, the threat still exists as some “backyard training” is taking place in the region.

“In terms of overseas schooling, a couple of places that have come up over and over again as radical centres where contacts have taken place, and (where) South Asians and Southeast Asians have congregated. There’s (also) a whole slew of schools in the Karachi area (in Pakistan), the most famous being the Abu Bakar Institute … That brought Indonesians, Thais, Malaysians and Singaporeans together.”

Other schools that are a breeding ground for radicals include one in Yemen that was a hotbed of terrorist activity in the lead-up to 9/11. Interestingly enough, Jones says it is the Thais who outnumber the Malaysians and the Indonesians in these schools, particularly in Pakistan.

Although “the threat of terrorism is still very much alive in Southeast Asia”, Jones says we should take heart that terrorist activity does not ignite that easily. Many leaders are viewing attacks now as counter-productive because of the need to build up the strength of their organisations through religious outreach before launching a fresh attack.

“There’s always a local driver; you can’t assume that anger over Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya or Somalia by itself will lead people to join these groups. You’ve got to have something that’s much closer to home and only that will bring people in.”

First published: November 19, 2009

Last updated: January 4, 2011

KC 11/09