Old network masterminds terrorist attacks on Bali?

Hermawan Sulistyo, Jakarta

Entering the months of September and October, the Bali Police had in fact tightened security measures to prevent terrorism.

Bali Police chief Made Mangku Pastika took the measures in anticipation of possible terrorist acts, particularly bombing. The policy itself was based on the existing pattern of previous bombings, including targets and timing.

The bombs, however, exploded anyway. The police could be accused of a security failure but it is not easy to prevent such an attack. It is near impossible to monitor the thousands of people with backpacks in public spaces to find which one is carrying a bomb. Though, it cannot be denied that extreme caution is never kept up for more than a month after an attack has occurred.

Speculation has been rife in the aftermath of the Oct. 1 attack concerning the perpetrators and their motives.

One version says the bomb was an instrument of terror against the Helsinki peace agreement on Aceh. This is unlikely as, so far, retaliation related to the Aceh cause has been confined to Jakarta and Bandung.

The Free Aceh Movement (GAM) has accepted the terms of the peace deal. Similarly, there is no strong argument for some former hard-line officers who are against the Helsinki agreement to launch such an attack.

The second theory is that the bombings were orchestrated to shift the focus away from the recent oil price increases. But any effort to shift attention away from one issue by creating a potentially disastrous situation for the country is illogical. The government would not jeopardize its image as a nation capable of fighting terrorism.

On the contrary, there is another theory that the bombs were set off to protest the fuel price increases. This scenario is also far from reality. People were informed of the increases well in advance.

The fact is these were suicide bombers and three executors of the bombings are dead. There is only one group linked to Jamaah Islamiyah that has the capacity for such an attack. This is the same network that bombed the JW Marriot hotel and the front of the Australian Embassy. Some analysts and former terrorists speculate that the perpetrators are new recruits led by old players.

At least 250 people in the region have the skills to make a bomb; they gained their skills from training in the Abu Sayyaff camp in the Southern Philippines and/or the battlefield in Afghanistan. If everybody in this group functions as a leader then he needs no less than three to four trained assistants, meaning the group totals more than 1,000 recruits. It is definitely not an easy task to control more than one thousand trained potential terrorists.

The network usually consists of three categories of activists:

The first group consists of religious hard-liners. Although they are devout and activists for their cause they do not practice violence.

The second group consists of political hard-liners. Although stemming from religious devotion, they are more active in politics, both formal politics through political parties and informal politics through various pressure groups.

The third consists of military hard-liners. They are, of course, religious hard-liners but they believe that violent actions -- including terrorism -- is the best and most effective way to raise their cause. This third group is clandestine.

The problem with the three groups is that they know each other but are unaware of individual group activities. The majority, if not all, activists from religious and political wings do not know that some of their members are militarily active. That explains why many activists try to protect colleagues who are involved in a bombing because they do not believe that their friends were really involved in the bombing.

Any analysis of an attack like the Oct. 1 bombings, is only speculative without forensic proof. If the old network is the perpetrator, then why were the bombings not on the same scale as those of 2002? That is another question to be addressed in another area of the investigation.

The writer is a history student specializing in political killings, terrorism and violence. Editor of the Police's White Book on the 2002 Bali Bombings and CEO of Bukafe (bookstore & cafi), he may be reached at kikiek@centrin.net.id.