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."