Print

Mail

wiki links

Analysis: Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah remains a threat, say analysts

Indonesia's capture of the leader and military boss of Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) has dealt the network a major blow but it still has the ability to bounce back, analysts say.

Indonesia's anti-terror police announced on Friday they were holding Zarkasi, an Indonesian-born veteran of the Afghanistan conflict, who coolly admitted on a video aired by police that he had headed JI since 2004.

Two days earlier, police revealed they had captured the extremist group's military chief Abu Dujana, another Afghan veteran, in raids earlier this month on the island of Java. Zarkasi, 45, was caught just hours later.

Bantarto Bandoro, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, said despite the netting of the pair, JI members would continue to pursue their goal of creating a regional pan-Islamic state.

The arrests "will disrupt JI's development for sure, but they won't stop their activities as long as their objective is not yet achieved," he said.

"In the long term, they will try to find new methods [of operation] so their network won't be easily detected," Bandoro said.

The shadowy organization has been blamed for a string of atrocities in the region, including the 2002 bombings on the resort island of Bali, which left 202 people dead.

Indonesia has been criticized for failing to outlaw JI, a move politically difficult in the world's most populous Muslim nation, while its court system is widely seen as being open to corruption.

"The military wing of JI, and JI as an organization, has suffered very significantly with the detention of these two individuals," al-Qaeda and terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna said.

But he said that the group should have been proscribed, blacklisted and criminalized in order to build a societal norm against support for JI.

"The ideology of JI is still intact and JI remains a legal organization in Indonesia," he said.

Gunaratna bestowed praise on Detachment 88, the unit named after the 88 Australians killed in the 2002 Bali attacks, for tracking down Zarkasi and Dujana.

However, he said: "Indonesia must improve both the legislative and judicial systems if the fight against terrorism is to be successful."

In a report last month, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said JI was probably comprised of more than 900 members across Indonesia and was likely not growing, though it retains deep roots and its vision of creating an Islamic state.

Detachment 88 chief Surya Dharma said on Friday that JI members, though not launching any serious attacks since October 2005, had been "building a network by recruitment, training and stockpiling weapons and ready-to-use bombs."
This story has been viewed 1145 times.