MERC, MERC, MERC

By Zachary Abuza

Today, Australia’s Commonwealth Bank denied that it had funded the Southeast Asian affiliate of Al Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah, through its dealings with the Indonesian NGO, the Medical Emergency Relief Charity (MERC). Yesterday, The Australian Financial Review reported that MERC was soliciting donations through its account at the bank’s Jakarta branch. MERC is neither on the UN Security Council’s 1267 Committee list nor on the US Government’s SDN list as per Executive Order 13224, but it has a long history of working along side various organs of Jemaah Islamiyah.

The Medical Emergency Relief Charity (MERC) was established on 14 August 1999 as a result of sectarian fighting in Indonesia’s outer islands, much of which was being led and perpetrated by two paramilitaries, the Laskar Mujihidin and the Laskar Jundullah, run by JI leaders, Mohamad Iqbal Abdurrahman (Abu Jibril) and Agus Dwikarna, respectively. From late 1998 until 2001, some 6-9,000 people died in these conflicts.

While MERC members were not implicated in directly supporting Laskar Jundullah and Laskar Mujihidin paramilitary operations in the Malukus and Central Sulawesi, to the degree that another Indonesian charity KOMPAK was, its one-sided approach to the Malukus conflict, as well as the actions of some individual members raised suspicions. We don’t have firm evidence or a paper trail linking MERC to JI, but the circumstantial evidence is not insignificant.

In 2000-2001, MERC produced two well-publicized videos for fund-raising purposes: “Pasir Hitum Teluk Galela” (“The Black Sand of Galela Bay”) and “Dan Kesaksian Pun Menangis” (“And the Witnessing Despite the Crying”). Both are available from the MERC website: http://www.MERC.org/vcd_01.htm. Like other Jihadi videos produced by KOMPAK and Reda Seyam, an Egyptian-German film-maker for Al Qaeda, these are horrifically graphic and biased, portraying only Muslims as victims of the bloodletting. MERC’s videos do differ in one important way however, they do not explicitly support violence. The jihadi videos from Southeast Asia tend to be very formulaic: the first two thirds Muslims are being slaughtered, mosques are being desecrated, Kaffirs are running amok, and the state security forces are doing nothing to defend the Muslim community, thereby justifying Islamic vigilantism. The final third often shows poorly armed Muslims fighting back. The message is clear: join or support the cause so that these brave Mujihidin can defend themselves. The MERC videos don’t have that final third. Instead they show open air triage and surgery. Gory, to be sure, but not explicitly advocating violence.

I have some evidence that MERC received funding from the Indonesian branch of the Saudi charity the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), which was, along with the Philippine branch, designated by the US Treasury Department under Executive Order 13224 and by the UN 1267 Committee on 3 August 2006. The IIRO funded also funded KOMPAK, a charity explicitly tied to JI and sectarian militancy. KOMPAK and the Indonesian office of Al Haramain were headed by Aris Munandar, a senior JI leader, now on the lamb. Munandar was put on the 13224 and 1267 listings on 5 September 2003. Designated at the same time was Agus Dwikarna who ran the KOMPAK and al Haramain offices in Sulawesi, in addition to JI’s paramilitary force. Both Munandar and KOMPAK had some dealings with MERC.

MERC now has 12 offices in Indonesia, concentrated in the regions most directly affected by sectarian violence (Sulawesi, Malukus and Kelimantan). MERC was very active in relief efforts in Aceh following the 26 December 2004 tsunami that killed some 165,000 Indonesians. According to a separate English language website, MERC established for Acehnese relief efforts, they have used donations to buy medicine and basic foodstuffs as well as rent tractors and bulldozers to clear rubble and vehicles to distribute food. They have dispatched “mobile polyclinics” staffed by some 50 doctors. MERC’s goal was to quickly raise some Rp700,000,000 to establish an emergency field hospital in Meulaboh. In Aceh, it was working alongside with Jibril’s Laskar Mujihidin and Abu Bakar Ba’asyir’s Majelis Mujiheddin Indonesia.

MERC’s operations abroad, in particular in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, have also raised some concerns about it being a conduit for terrorist funding. Indeed the MERC website previously stated that they operate in the tribal areas of Pakistan with the support and permission of the Taliban.

MERC clearly has an Islamist and virulently anti-Western agenda. There is no crime in that. Its relationship with the IIRO, KOMPAK and JI-affiliated organizations is greater cause for concern. The Indonesian authorities have a responsibility to fully investigate MERC’s financial dealings with the IIRO and Al Haramain, both of whose Indonesian branches were proscribed by the US and UN as terrorist financiers. The Commonwealth Bank should probably do a better job in knowing its customer. If nothing else, it would be a prudent commercial decision, knowing the raw emotional feelings of the Australian public towards anything that remotely comes close to Jemaah Islamiyah.

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