Sidney Jones speaks on Jemaah Islamiyah.

The well-known commentator on Indonesian extremist groups, Sidney Jones, the project director for the International Crisis Group in Jakarta, gave a speech some time back in Singapore at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies on “New Developments within Jemaah Islamiyah”, the terrrorist group behind various bombings in Bali and Jakarta. A video of her speech can be viewed here (there’s some chance you’ll die waiting for it to load).

Her speech is based on a paper submitted to the Australian Journal of International Affairs called “The changing nature of Jemaah Islamiyah”. A summary follows here:

Of all the Islamic terrorist organisations known to be operating in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) is probably the best known. But when attempting to combat it and its violence against civilians, security forces need to be aware of its current nature. This article seeks to show from the history of JI that it is a constantly changing, complex and highly flexible organisation; that while its roots lie deep in Indonesian history, it recruits from and adapts to the other countries in which it is operative. Consequently, JI seems to be a different organisation depending on the country from which it is viewed. The article shows that security forces need to be fully aware of both its Protean character and its history if effective measures are to be taken against it.

Intro:

Bomb blasts at the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar in Kuta which killed 200 people in 2002 provoked a major crackdown on the group by the Indonesian government. The consequent arrests, and hounding of the group, have forced changes in leadership, structure, and training.

Administrative structure

JI is thought to be divided into four regional groups, or mantiqi:

1. Mantiqi I - mainland Malaysia and Singapore (for fund-raising)
2. Mantiqi II - Java, Sumatra, other islands of Indonesia (jihad)
3. Mantiqi III - Philippines, Borneo, Sulawesi (for training)
4. Mantiqi IV - Australia (for fund-raising)

Mantiqi I provided most of the leadership until about 2003 and these men were internationalist oriented, close to al-Qaeda. Mantiqi I is now on its knees and key cadres of JI are being drawn from Mantiqi II who are more Indonesia focused, less interested in the middle east, want to establish sharia state in Indonesia. This may lead to fewer attacks on Western targets in Indonesia.

Ultimate objectives

The Indonesian branch of JI is an offshoot of the Darul Islam movement in the fifties. The Darul Islam rebellion in west Java eventually gained followers throughout Java and into Sumatra and Sulawesi. It sought to establish an Islamic state. It was militarily crushed in the fifties and its remnants were violent opponents of the Suharto regime which gained it new recruits especially in the seventies when Abdullah Sungkar, the co-founder with Abu Bakar Ba’asyir of the al-Mukmin pesantren (Muslim boarding school), in Ngruki, near Solo, Central Java, joined the movement.

Sungkar and Ba’asyir were charged with subversion in the eighties and fled to Malaysia. There they arranged for new recruits from Indonesia to be sent to training camps on the Pakistani-Afghan border. On their return many stayed in Malaysia. Many new recruits were gained in Singapore and Malaysia through the eighties. Many of these men later remembered, under police questioning, that the focus of the group was always the establishment of an Islamic state in Indonesia, not a regional Islamic state.

Wan Min bin Wan Mat, a Malaysian who joined JI in 1993, explained to Indonesian police:

I don’t know why Indonesia was chosen as the focus of jihad. But I think there was a possibility that an Islamic state was going to be set up in Indonesia first, because all the leaders of JI were from Indonesia. Setting up an Islamic state in Indonesia had also been part of the struggle of the JI leaders from way back. And then, the size of the population in Indonesia and the number of Islamic organisations there may have been other considerations, because if you could obtain the support, the impact would be much greater there. If Indonesia became an Islamic state, it would be an impetus for jihad elsewhere

Domino theory anyone?

By the late 1990’s much of the JI rank and file were Malaysian and many did not understand why Indonesia should be the focus. Then, talk of a wider Islamic state may have been designed for their ears.

Links to al-Qaeda

1997-2002 was the highpoint of cooperation between JI and al-Qaeda. This mainly came from the Mantiqi I command while the Mantiqi II people were often mainly focused on political struggles within Indonesia.

The bombings in Bali and Jakarta were classic al-Qaeda type, internationally focused operations, part of the Bin Laden view of the Christian-Zionist conspiracy, part of his call to attack American interests all over the world. These attacks caused much division and splitting within JI in Indonesia.

For the group in Indonesia opposed to such attacks they were a waste of resources if the goal was an Islamic state in Indonesia a la Darul Islam.

Further, attacks on western civilians in places where Muslims were not being attacked themselves, such as Bali and Jakarta, were sinful and against the spirit of jihad. Here we see the repudiation of the internationalist view of al-Qaeda and a clear focus on just Indonesia.

Moreover, the Mantiqi I command has been weakened by arrests and killings by security forces.

JI’s regional relationships

JI around 2000-01 was quite a broadly regional group with representatives from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Australia. It had staff in Karachi and Kandahar. But, initially, when setting up training camps in the southern Philippines JI members from Indonesia and elsewhere showed little interest in the Mindanao fight. They trained and went home.

Since 2001 there has been much more foreign involvement in fighting in the Philippines. There is as yet no evidence that JI are actively involved in Thailand but a network exists that could easily be activated.

Conclusions

JI constantly changes and adapts. It has deep roots in Indonesia going back to the Darul Islam rebellion. It finds new recruits easily. It is under much pressure, divided, and short of cash.

No doubt its activities will be the cause of many more reports on these pages in the future. It’s going to be a long fight.

Tags: Politics, Terrorism