Sectarian Violence and Terrorism in Southeast Asia

By Zachary Abuza

Arrests in Ambon, Indonesia, an ominous warning in Mindanao, Philippines, and continued violence in Southern Thailand portend the future of militant Islam in Southeast Asia, and the revival of Jemaah Islamiyah.

Although Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) has been the most active and lethal of Al Qaeda's regional affiliates, perpetrating three major terrorist attacks in Indonesia since 2002: Bali (October 2002), the JW Marriott in Jakarta (August 2003) and the Australian Embassy (September 2004), JI is a weakened organization. JI has been significantly degraded in terms of its capability and manpower since October 2001. There have been more than 300 arrests, including most of its senior leaders and founding members. JI's leadership structure, its shura and regional (mantiqi) structure no longer seem to be in place. What is left is a looser organization, autonomous cells, with little if any centralized command and control. There is considerable bomb-making expertise and a cadre of Afghan trained leaders still at large.

JI has not thrown in the towel, and the path to its regrouping and expansion lies less in bombing western targets and more through provoking sectarian conflict. This is what JI and its leaders were consumed with in 1998-2000. Then they established two separate paramilitaries, the Laskar Mujiheddin and the Laskar Jundullah in the Malukus and Sulawesi, respectively. This was an important tool for JI in indoctrinating their members, giving them a sense of defending their religion and reinforcing their Manichean view of the world. In 2004, there were a number of bombings, attacks, and assassinations that must be seen as an attempt to break the uneasy truce that has held since the negotiation of the Malino Accords in 2002.

In the past few weeks, further evidence of this strategy have emerged in three seperate countries: Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Yesterday, Indonesian police raided safe houses used by Islamic militants in Ambon, seizing a cache of some 95 IEDs and ammunition. Clearly militant seek to spoil the peace, and provoke a heavy handed government response.

Likewise, in the southern Philippines, the revived ASG, together with JI members/trainers have been calling for a jihad against the Christians. While the MILF has shied away from engaging in sectarian conflict, in the course of their revolution, radical elements of the group have lost patience with the peace process and seem to be willing to ratchet up the violence. Detained JI members who trained in Mindanao confirm that sectarian violence is part of the MO of the groups. Interestingly, the MILF posted a warning about the spectre of sectarian violence on their website earlier this week.

Finally, the violence in southern Thailand continues unabated, with several attacks each day in the three Muslim-dominated provinces. Some 600 people were killed in 2004, and the lvel/rate of violence has escalated since the October Tak Bai incident in which over 80 suspected militants were killed by the Thai army. Ominously, a Thai Buddhist monk was targeted this week. There is some alarm that the conflict in Southern Thailand is spiraling out of control and that JI will try to take advantage of it, as they did in the Malukus and Sulawesi in 1998. While there is no evidence to support that JI is behind the violence in southern Thailand, there are some links between JI and one of the groups that has been one of the main perpetrators of the violence.

While there is a debate amongst JI-watchers as to whether the group is divided factionally between advocates of terrorism and proponents of sectarian violence, one must understand that they are not mutually exclusive, indeed they are mutually reinforcing.

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