Counterterrorism Blog

The latest hotel bombings in Jakarta reflect the tragic reality that even when counter-terrorism policies are pursued systematically and pragmatically over an extended period by governments generally committed to doing the right thing by their people, small groups of people dedicated to destruction will, from time to time, succeed in killing innocents.

It is notable that the bombings took place less than a week after Indonesian voters re-elected the country’s president in a landslide. But also likely to be relevant is the political and ideological splintering that has taken place in the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group as a result of a series of enforcement activities. One of its leaders, Mas Selamat Kastari, was recently arrested in Malaysia. Two others were arrested in Palembang and Central Java. As highlighted in a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Center issued July 16 Policy_Analysis46[1].pdf that warned of potential JI attacks in the region, "the current leadership tensions and the release from prison of former JI members—at least raise the possibility that splinter factions might now seek to re-energise the movement through violent attacks." If a JI splinter group is confirmed as being behind the bombing, the Australian report demonstrates anew the value of sustained work on terrorism by academic analysts.

One element that governments, as well as terrorists, are likely to factor into their respective missions in days to come is the rapidly deepening role of personalized communications in getting information out immediately after an attack. Twitter and SMS broke the story. Within 30 minutes of the bombs being reported images of the damage appeared on Twitter. Many of the initial photos on media sites were taken by Twitter/social media users. Since the accurate reports on the hotel bombings, inaccurate reports of other incidents involving further bombings that did not actually take place, are propagating through social media.

Such immediate sources of information, accurate and otherwise, provide a new factor in the strategic communications aspects of terrorism. But the on-the-ground work of preventing it requires diligent analytic work as well as an understanding of what is going on in groups whose agendas are often extremely idiosyncratic, as well ugly and extreme. To control them requires, as much as anything, effective intelligence about whatever is welling up from people who in all other respects are at the periphery of a society, not its center.

While many governments have refocused attention to more constructive issues like educating the next generation, saving the planet from global warming, building a sustainable global economic system to sustain a livable world for the long-term, and so on, these types of attacks are not going to disappear on their own. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies have to be given the mission, authority, and resources to keep a close eye on extremist groups, most of whom are operating locally even when, as some but not all do, they reach out to others globally, looking for footprints from their communications trails, local criminal activities, and social networks. Whether or not it is a long war, it is a long slog.