Making Sense of the Jakarta Bombings: The Shades of Grey

By Zachary Abuza

Last week’s bombings of two luxury hotels in Jakart, which killed 7 and wounded 53, raises two important questions about JI and the future of terrorism in Indonesia.

1. Was this a JI Attack?

This was clearly the handiwork of Noordin Mohammed Top, a 40-year old Malaysian national, who has been a fugitive in Indonesia since 2003. Top was a close associate of JI’s premier bomb-maker Dr. Azahari bin Hussin, also a Malaysian, who was killed when Indonesian CT police tracked him down to a safehouse in East Java in November 2005. By all accounts, Noordin was not the primary bomb-maker. He was a money man and recruiter of suicide bombers, including the 2003 JW Marriott bombings, the 2004 bombing of the Australian Embassy and the 2005, simultaneous triple bombings in Bali. The bombs used in the 17 July bombings in Jakarta are reported to be identical to those used in the 2005 Bali bombings.

The question, though, is whether Noordin runs his own organization separate from JI. It has been reported that he established his own group, Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad, in 2006. A synopsis of this analysis, which states that JI was not behind the attack, can be found here.

It is not so black and white. Yes, there are distinct differences of opinion in JI about the efficacy – though not always the morality – of a bombing campaign that targets western interests. Those who caution against it, simply believe that it has been counterproductive to the organizations – especially in the post-9/11 security environment. Since then, JI’s formal organization has been gutted, and the group has reeled from more than 500 arrests across the region. Many articulate efforts on dawah and social work until the security environment becomes more favorable and the ranks of JI have been bolstered. (For example, see the author’s Jemaah Islamiyah Adopts the Hezbollah Model). Others want to maintain a low-level sectarian campaign.

But to say this was completely separate from JI is a fallacy.

Noordin relies considerably on JI social networks and JI-linked madrassas for support and recruitment. While “mainstream” JI members may disagree with Noordin, no one has ever turned him in. He and his supporters rely on and recruit from some 50-60 JI madrassas. Indeed one of the alleged suicide bombers was once again, a graduate of Al Mukmin, founded by Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, JI’s founders and spiritual leaders, and which graduated more than one dozen people with direct ties to terrorist acts.

Moreover, the two positions are not mutually exclusive, and the factionalism is not zero-sum. To wit, several of the 2003 JW Marriott bombers were arrested where? In Poso, the epicenter of JI’s sectarian bloodletting. Killing Christians was what the bombers did in their down time.

While Noordin may not inform other JI leaders of his operations, that has to do with intense operational security mandated. Noordin knows better than anyone the degree to which JI’s ranks have been decimated. Moreover, documents found in a Javanese safehouse in 2007 show that JI has been dramatically restructured. It is a much more horizontal organization, with no real chain of command. To put this another way, JI has adopted the organizational and operational model espoused by Abu Musab al-Suri (the Syrian-born Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar) who stated that “Al Qaeda is not an organization, it is not a group, nor do we want it to be... It is a call, a reference, a methodology.” Al-Suri called for “leader-less resistance” across “open fronts.”

No JI leader or theologian is denouncing Noordin. No one would doubt that Muchlas was mainstream JI, and he was the leader of the 2002 bombing. Before his execution he wrote proliflicly justifying the bombings and calling for more.

Interviewed this week, by Paul Toohey of the The Australian, Abu Bakar Bashir gave the routine song and dance. Why terrorism? The apostate Indonesian state and the CIA:

• "The main cause of this disaster (the bombings) is the Indonesian government, which undermines the supremacy of Islamic law. This (terror) will not end until the government follows the right path."
• "There are no Muslim terrorists. The terrorists are the CIA, the Americans and the Australians. They're the ones who terrorise Muslims.

The media-savvy Bashir asserted that he felt some remorse. "What makes me sad about the bombings was that it involved innocent people being killed. People such as women and children who are not involved in the fight against Muslims should not be killed.”

Except the victims were not innocents: "But the problem is we don't know for sure that the victims weren't involved in the fight against Islam. Even the thought of fighting against Islam is involvement. Everyone that thinks like that is allowed to be killed." The westerners pay taxes to governments that are in his eyes, at war with Islam, and thus treated as combatants.

When asked about Noordin, Bashir gave a verbatim response as he gave me in 2002 when I asked him about Hambali: "If Noordin M.Top has bad intentions, then he should be apprehended," said Bashir. "If he is right, then Allah will protect him. What I know about Noordin M.Top is that he is a Malaysian who fights to defend Islam."



In a widely-replayed You-Tube sermon from a March 2008, in which Bashir called on his followers to take violent action against tourists, whom he described "Worms, snakes, maggots, he implored them to seek martyrdom: "The youth movement here must aspire to a martyrdom death. The young must be first at the frontline -- don't hide at the back. You must be at the front, die as martyrs and all your sins will be forgiven. Don't be scared if you are called a hardliner Muslim."

If mainstream JI was really appalled by Noordin and rejected his campaign then why do they endorse his activities and give him sanctuary, while fueling his pipeline of recruits, indoctrinating them to aspire towards martyrdom? To say, as one prominent Australian academic did, that this was not the work of JI is absurd and dangerous. There is no way that Noordin could operate without JI support and its social networks.

2. Does this Portent More Attacks?
Between 2002 and 2005, JI perpetrated terrorist attacks in Indonesia on roughly a yearly basis (October 2002, August 2003, September 2004, and October 2005). That was the best they could muster, indicating limits of finances, personnel, materiels, and an increasingly hostile security environment. Until last week, there had not been a bombing since 2005; nearly 4 years of peace and security. This was not just the result of excellent police work and intelligence gathering. As mentioned above, many JI leaders began to shift strategies. Upon release from prison, Abu Bakar Bashir and Abu Jibril got involved in social welfare – for no other reason than not wanting to get re-arrested. It also reflected the fact that when JI bombmaker Dr. Azahari was killed in November 2005, police captured his entire cache of explosives, more than 20 bag bombs.

This is not to say that JI did not come close. They came really close on several occasions, including two separate March 2007 raids and a mid-2008 raid that netted huge caches of explosives. More importantly was the foiled plot in July 2008 to bomb a tourist bar in Pekanbaru. Police recovered 22 explosive devices packed with bullets.

JI is down, it is not out. More attacks are likely, but at a lower rate.

This attack, in which the bombers figured out how to work around hotel security, was indicative of the preparation that they put into their attacks. This was a small but meticulous operation. Indeed, one suspect is thought to have worked as a florist in one of the hotels.

This week Indonesian authorities took into custody two individuals: a would be suicide bomber who, according to police officials, admitted to have been recruited by Noordin as a suicide bomber, and Arina Rochmah, a 25-year old woman, allegedly Noordin’s third wife. It was at her father’s madrassah that police raided two weeks ago in Cilacap. There, police discovered a bomb that was identical to the ones used in the July 17 bombings in Jakarta. Arina’s father, Bahrudin Latif, the 60 year old cleric is on the run. Police are also looking for two other suspects Nur Hasbi (Nur Said) and Ibrahim. The real prize, however, is the charismatic 40-year old Noordin.