Bali and the faceless foe

Bali and the faceless foe

Experts' early assessment of the Saturday evening bomb blasts in Bali points to the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) as the party responsible. Two of its principal operatives, Azahari Husin and Noordin Top, are believed to be behind the attacks. Both are reputed to be bomb-makers and have been on the run for several years. If Indonesian counter-terrorism experts and independent specialists such as the Singapore-based Dr Rohan Gunaratna are correct about JI involvement, this says that it remains a formidable force for destruction despite arrests of key figures and organizational disruptions in several of the Southeast Asian countries it operates in. The question is, what would it take to disable the organization and its collaborator outfits like the Abu Sayyaf? Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand have been more successful at holding the line, but it is acknowledged this is an interminable campaign.

But Indonesia and the Philippines continue to be vulnerable, despite some notable captures and prosecutions. JI's trail of signature hits in Indonesia would suggest it has regenerative capability that would trouble its most determined adversaries. Starting with the first Bali attack in 2002, it has managed to mount deadly strikes each year (the Jakarta Marriott Hotel in 2003, the Australian embassy last year). And now Bali 2005, with 26 dead so far. Since April 1999, it has been associated with some 50 successful and attempted terror incidents across the Indonesian archipelago.

Work on the difficult ideological front to defeat a virulent form of thinking will go on for decades. For the here and now, it bears repeating that sifting of raw intelligence remains the one credible way to thwart such attacks. Security agencies should not be discouraged that the attacks in Bali's Kuta and Jimbaran areas took place despite intelligence reported by a number of countries for months that Indonesia, specifically Jakarta, was being targeted around this period.

The problem was much of the information lacked details, so critical for meaningful intelligence work. The public will never know of successful infiltrations and the use of informers, and of terrorist operations that were aborted because the heat was too much. There is comfort to be drawn here. The hope is that the quality of intelligence evaluation improves faster than a fervid fatalism is growing. -- The Straits Times, Singapore