In search for formless Jamaah Islamiyah

In search for formless Jamaah Islamiyah

Muhammad Nafik
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

"Do you believe Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) really exists here?" a
friend of mine once asked. Others have also raised the same
question on other occasions.

It is truly hard to verifiably say "yes" in reply to that
question, although police have repeatedly linked Indonesian
bombers to JI.

Several leading Muslim leaders also doubt the existence of the
regional terrorist network but have firmly stressed that
terrorists are at large in the world's largest Muslim country of
some 212 million people.

Hasyim Muzadi, who chairs Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) -- the nation's
largest Muslim organization with 40 million members, was one of
those casting doubt on JI's existence.

Last September, he accused the United States of playing the JI
card to put pressure on and control Indonesia and other Muslim
nations.

His statement came after the Central Jakarta District Court
failed to convict elderly cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir of leadership
of the regional terrorist group, although he was sentenced to
four years in prison for treason and immigration offenses. A
higher court in Jakarta later acquitted him of treason charges
and reduced his imprisonment to only three years.

"The verdict is proof that JI does not exist in Indonesia,
even if it exists in other countries," Hasyim said.

Also airing similar skepticism were another NU leader
Solahuddin Wahid, who is also a deputy chairman of the National
Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), and legal expert Rudy
Satrio from the University of Indonesia.

Solahuddin said it required hard evidence to convince people
that JI was operating in Indonesia. "Frankly speaking, I doubt
that JI exists in our country."

Satrio said there was no strong evidence to prove that JI
operated in Indonesia, adding that the trial of Ba'asyir was the
right occasion to prove it, but Indonesian authorities had failed
to do so.

JI is a shadowy terror group connected to Osama bin Laden's
al-Qaeda terrorist network, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in New York and
Washington.

Indonesian Police blamed JI for the Oct. 12, 2002, Bali
bombings that killed 202 people and the JW Marriott Hotel blast
on Aug. 5, 2003.

JI gained notoriety worldwide after it was officially listed
by the UN as a regional terrorist network, following the
humiliating Sept. 11 attacks.

But for many (if not most) Indonesians, JI remains a mystery.

Confessions that Ba'asyir, 64, was the emir of JI were made by
terror suspects detained overseas, such as Umar Al-Faruq and
others arrested in Singapore and Malaysia under the Internal
Security Act.

Their confessions could not, however, be directly verified by
Indonesian investigators as they were denied access to the
suspects.

Nor could worldwide reports that Hambali was the JI operative
leader be legally confirmed. He was captured in Thailand and is
being by held by American security forces at an undisclosed
location, but Indonesian police investigators were prevented from
grilling the terror suspect directly, for reasons as yet unknown.

The Jakarta office of the International Crisis Group (ICG)
released this year a report that JI was established by Ba'asyir
and another extremist, the late Abdullah Sungkar, and how it
operated in Indonesia. But once again, the report has not, as
yet, been verified in court.

Branding the convicted Indonesian bombers as part of JI only
may have precluded consideration of the possibility that other
groups or individuals might have been involved in the series of
terror attacks across Indonesia.

Even though the Bali bombing convicts confessed to have
assembled and detonated the powerful bombs, many remained
doubtful of the bombers' expertise to do so.

Doubt still shrouds the genuine masterminds of the devastating
attacks, as the key suspects, some of whom received death
sentences, have not been ordered to reenact how they mixed the
ingredients for the bombs to be assembled.

Police have said they found traces of high-powered explosives,
particularly RDX, at the scene of the bombings on Jl. Legian in
Kuta, Bali. But the sources of those explosives remain
unexplained.

JI was said to have plans for a regional Islamic state
covering Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines in the
future. The question was how they would make good on the plan,
for it appears not to be viable due to the diversity of the
Southeast Asian countries' social and religious cultures.

In Indonesia, JI is apparently not one of the extremist Muslim
organizations that have campaigned peacefully for Islamic sharia
law to be enforced in the country.

Harold Crouch, a prominent Indonesianist from the Australian
National University (ANU), has said there has been a tendency for
hard-line groups campaigning for the adoption of sharia in
Indonesia to have ceased to use violence to achieve their goals,
as the now-defunct Darul Islam radical movement did in the 1950s.

Darul Islam, led by Marijan Sukarmaji Kartosuwiryo, fought
violently for sharia in the country in the 1950s. Established in
West Java, the group declared an Indonesian Islamic state on Aug.
7, 1949, and waged a rebellion against government forces.

Crouch said radical movements had significantly declined in
Indonesia since then, even though Islamist parties continued to
struggle for the inclusion of sharia in the amended 1945
Constitution at the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR).

Moreover, the wave of recent terror incidents put major
Islamist political parties in a difficult position to reaffirm
publicly their ties with radical groups, so as to secure their
traditional support in the 2004 elections.

Like Crouch, other experts brushed aside claims that radical
movements could pose a serious challenge to the secular forces
that controlled the country's political stage due to their poor
unity and lack of support from most Indonesians.

Nevertheless, foreign media have often exaggerated reports of
radical movements in Indonesia but have failed to highlight the
root causes of the problem.

Radicalism and terrorism are inseparable from injustices that
prevail across the globe, particularly the perceived double
standard of United States policy in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict and in its invasion of Iraq.

The recent capture of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein
and how he will be treated before the law could further anger
radicals and terrorists who might launch new terror attacks
against the U.S. and its allies.