Soldiers of fortune

Police investigators' claims that one of the suspects in the Christmas Eve bombing had been trained in assembling bombs in Afghanistan does not come entirely as a surprise. This is not the first time that we have stumbled onto a report that Indonesian mercenaries fought with the Mujahideens against the pro-communist Soviet regime in Afghanistan in the early 1990s.

The previous instance of when we came across these former mercenaries was when the Laskar Jihad, or the force of Muslim holy warriors, was established early in 2000. At that time, we heard that young volunteers bound for Maluku, where Christians and Muslims have been fighting each other, were given training in basic military skills and discipline by these former Indonesian mercenaries.

While we know of their existence, we have never really found out who they are and how they got involved in someone else's war in the first place. But even more disturbing is that we do not know what they have been up to since returning home, until we learn from time to time of their roles, first in training the Laskar Jihad last year, and now, at least according to the police, in planting some of the bombs on Christmas Eve.

It is interesting to note that the police in Manila have reported that the simultaneous bomb attacks in the Philippine capital were carried out by people who had fought in Afghanistan. Is it merely a coincidence or is there a link between the bomb attacks in the two countries? That is for the police in the two countries to investigate. We hope that this time the Indonesian police will pursue this lead to learn more about these "soldiers of fortune" and shed some light on their recent activities.

Unfortunately, little research has been carried out on the participation of young Asian Muslims, including those from Indonesia and the Philippines, in the Afghanistan war. The sketchy reports, mostly by journalists covering the Afghan war, indicated that they were recruited as "volunteers" and trained and deployed from rebel bases along the Pakistan border. Unconfirmed reports have even suggested that they were recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which certainly sounds plausible given the context of the Cold War conflict at the time.

Mercenaries by definition are foreign soldiers hired to fight a war on behalf of their sponsors. This was the nature of the participation of the Indonesian volunteers in the Afghan war. Ideology may have played a part in their decision to join the war, but at the end of the day, they were still mercenaries, fighting someone else's dirty war in return for money.

Their motive in the bombing campaign in Indonesia, if indeed these former mercenaries were involved as the police claimed, is less clear, at least until police investigators can give us some more information. If they are true mean-spirited mercenaries, although they are no longer in a foreign land, they could have been paid to carry out such jobs as the bomb attacks on Christmas Eve.

It may have been a smokescreen or a diversion, but the admission by one of the bombing suspects that he had fought in Afghanistan should still be pursued by police investigators to find out more about these former Indonesian soldiers of fortune, their identity and their whereabouts. Since they have the potential -- the skill, discipline and the experience -- to create unrest, their activities should be closely monitored, particularly now that there are indications of their involvement in a recent bombing campaign.

Police investigating the Christmas Eve bombing however must not stop their pursuit there. As important as it is to learn more about the activities of these former mercenaries, it is even more important for the police to find out about their sponsors, the people who paid the perpetrators of the bombings, and the real motive for such a repulsive terrorist act.