Who lost Indonesia? Too tragic to contemplate<\/p>\n
The Asian Wall Street Journal, Hong Kong<\/p>\n
Bali is a peaceful, welcoming paradise that since the turn of
\nthe last century has offered a spiritual escape to the Western
\ntraveler. It has now be come synonymous with carnage. The fact
\nthat Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation, but
\npractices a moderate form of the religion and is politically a
\ndemocracy, has put this resort island on the front line of the
\nwar on terror.<\/p>\n
For all these reasons, it is also too important to lose Bali
\nand the rest of the country. The terrorists who carried out the
\nweekend attacks on Bali, turning three crowded restaurants into
\nblood splattered ruins, taking at least 26 lives and wounding
\n122, rightly see religious and political tolerance as anathema.
\nThat alone should convince us of how high the stakes are.
\nIndonesia's government deserves support from throughout the
\nworld, not only well-deserved sympathy but also material help in
\ntracking down and destroying these killers and their network.<\/p>\n
If the choice of Bali as a target, for the second time in two
\nyears, demonstrates what the terrorists abhor, Indonesia's plight
\nin general illustrates the international nature of the struggle
\nwe're all facing. The attacks bear all the hallmarks of Jamaah
\nIslamiyah, al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian affiliate. Aside from the
\noperational guidance it receives from al Qaeda's Middle Eastern
\nheadquarters, JI and its Philippine sister organization Abu
\nSayyaf also rely on funding from Arab financiers.<\/p>\n
Al-Qaeda's goal is to turn parts or all of the moderate and
\nmostly democratic countries in the region into a unified
\nsultanate that adheres closely to the austere Wahhabi form of
\nIslam practiced in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
This is all far-fetched enough, but it holds appeal to some
\nMuslims around the region to whom the present political
\nboundaries are meaningless. They are a tiny minority, but a
\ndedicated one that can and does cause havoc. Indonesia's top
\nantiterror official said yesterday that the two JI operatives who
\nmasterminded Saturday's bombings and earlier ones were
\nMalaysians.<\/p>\n
Indonesia's Maj. Gen. Ansyaad Mbai said Malaysians Azahari bin
\nHusin and Noordin Mohamed Top were probably also responsible for
\nthe Bali bombing of 2002, which left 202 people dead at a popular
\ndiscotheque. The two fugitives were also behind the 2003 J.W.
\nMarriott blast that killed 12 people in Jakarta and last year's
\nAustralian Embassy bombing in the Indonesian capital, which
\nkilled 10, said Maj. Gen. Mbai.<\/p>\n
The desire to maximize the number of Australian victims while
\nlimiting the killing of their Islamic coreligionists may have led
\nthe terrorists to return to Bali, a Jakarta-based terrorism
\nexpert told our colleagues at Dow Jones Newswires.<\/p>\n
"They saw the 2002 Bali bombing as their only true success
\nbecause it inflicted foreign casualties and the collateral damage
\nweren't Muslims," Ken Conboy told DJ. This refers to the fact
\nthat though Islam is the majority faith of Indonesia, most
\nBalinese are Hindu, the religion of much of the archipelago until
\nMuslim' traders (from India also) converted the people of the
\nislands to Islam in the 15th century.<\/p>\n
To Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Saturday's
\n60-some odd Indonesian casualties were compatriots who have
\nfallen victim to an alien and evil ideology, and we doubt that he
\nwill make distinctions between Muslim and Hindu. The former
\ngeneral, who defeated Islamist candidates in last year's
\nelections, should also quickly realize that he either targets
\nthese terrorists now or they will target him soon enough.<\/p>\n
Indonesia's government has shown more backbone in this fight
\nsince. Yudhoyono's election than under the previous president,
\nMegawati Soekarnoputri. Last month's sentencing to death of a JI
\nleader involved in the 2004 Australian Embassy bombing, Iwan
\nDarmawan, better known as Rois, was a step in the right
\ndirection. But Jakarta should also reconsider the case of JI
\nchief Abu Bakar Bashir, a 67-year-old cleric who's been given a
\n30-month prison sentence that is about to expire. The government
\nis kidding itself if it believes that its softly-softly approach
\nin this case will win it any domestic peace.<\/p>\n
As for Indonesia's friends overseas, it bears repeating that
\nthis gigantic new democracy of 220 million souls dwarfs all other
\nIslamic nations, especially the mostly repressive tiny kingdoms
\nof the Arabian peninsula. Mr. Yudhoyono is the first president to
\nbe directly elected, an exercise that speaks for itself. Coming
\nto this nation's aid with funding, training and intelligence is
\nnow of the essence.<\/p>\n
The burden will be taken up mainly by the United States,
\nAustralia, Japan and the United Kingdom, nations that have
\nalready offered their help and who take their international
\nresponsibilities seriously. If this sounds like the coalition of
\nthe willing in Iraq it's because it is. The United Nations still
\ncannot even agree on a definition for "terrorism" while most of
\ncontinental Europe persists in treating this threat as a police
\nmatter. A scenario where we would have to ask the question, "Who
\nlost Indonesia?" is too tragic to contemplate.<\/p>",
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