Give ex-militants jobs to help curtail terrorism: Think tank
Give ex-militants jobs to help curtail terrorism: Think tank
Chris Brummitt, Associated Press/Jakarta
Indonesia should provide training and jobs for militants formerly involved in religious conflicts to prevent them joining up with extremists and launching terror strikes, a report by an international think tank said on Thursday.
Fighting between Muslims and Christians in Maluku and Central Sulawesi province in the late 1990s and early 2000s left some 10,000 people dead and attracted thousands of militants from across Indonesia.
Ex-combatants have been involved in the planning or carrying out of many of bombings that have rocked Indonesia since then, including the 2002 Bali blasts that killed 202 people, police and former militants have said.
The Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report that vocational training programs should be implemented in the regions so that the former fighters have a "viable alternative to violence."
"Encouraging local mujahedeen to find other pursuits will not be a silver bullet to end terrorism, but it could be a first step," said Dave McRae, the group's specialist on the Sulawesi conflict.
"If they can be reintegrated into civilian life, their willingness to support mujahedeen from elsewhere in Indonesia and engage in violence themselves might be lessened."
The report has taken on added urgency in the light of this month's triple suicide bombings on the resort island of Bali, which killed 23 people, including three attackers.
Police have made no arrests, but said the attacks were likely organized by the al-Qaeda-linked Jamaah Islamiyah group, a loose network of militants with cells across Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
Many of its members and sympathizers are veterans of the Maluku and Sulawesi conflicts, intelligence officials say.
The report examined in detail two attacks by suspected militants in May this year - a raid on a police post on Seram Island, Maluku, that left six people dead and twin bombings of a Christian market on Sulawesi that killed 21.
It cited police investigators as saying the perpetrators of the Seram raid were an ad-hoc group of militants drawn from different networks all over Indonesia, most of whom had fought in the region earlier.
"The hit squad does not appear to have been organized through any institutional hierarchy," the report said. "The common experience of training and fighting during the early stages of the Poso (a district in Sulawesi) and Maluku conflicts appears to be more important as the organizing principle."