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NEW DELHI: As a terror attack in Jakarta, Indonesia, claimed seven lives, including the five gunmen leading the attack, officials were quick to point to similarities with the Paris attacks last year, which were claimed by the Islamic State (also known as Daesh and ISIS).
The Islamic State, in turn, was quick to claim that attack in Jakarta, issuing a statement that read: “A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta,” adding, incorrectly, that 15 people had been killed.
The mainstream media across the world has run articles on what this attack on Indonesian soil means for the Islamic State. “Attacks in Indonesia Mark Expansion for Islamic State,” claimed a headline in the Wall Street Journal. “Indonesia terror rampage is a sign of Islamic State’s global strategy,” noted the Washington Post. “Jakarta Attacks Spark Concerns Over Rise Of ISIS In Indonesia,” said the International Business Times.
In reality, however, the Islamic State’s link to the attack in Jakarta is tenuous. For one, the group claims several attacks -- even ones it has nothing to do with. Secondly, the group of attackers that carried out the shootings and bombings in Jakarta were badly trained and badly equipped, definitely not the hallmark of coordinated Daesh action as the militant group is known to carry out fairly sophisticated attacks. On Twitter, one Indonesia-based security analyst and lecturer, Yohanes Sulaiman, posted a comment on the skill of the attackers: “I have to say that this is a dumb terrorist group.”
The link with the Islamic State is more likely in the form of “lone wolf” attacks, where Daesh fanboys carry out suicide missions off their own accord, inspired by the Syria and Iraq-based group but with little to no coordination or instruction from there.
These lone wolf attacks are problematic on their own, but need to be seen in the context of Indonesia’s relationship with terror in general, and the Islamic State in particular. Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country, and has proved to be an exceptionally poor recruiting pool for Daesh.
There are more than 200 million Muslims in Indonesia, of which, officials say, only 800 have travelled abroad to fight in Syria. That’s less than half the number of Islamic State fighters originating from France -- a country with a tiny Muslim population.
Like a vast majority of the Muslim world, the Islamic State is viewed unfavourably in Indonesia. According to research by the Pew Research Centre, 79 percent of the country views the group unfavourably, with only 4 percent expressing a positive stand on the group.
The total number of Indonesian fighting-age males that have joined the Islamic State is probably only 160, according to Sidney Jones, the director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta and an expert on Indonesian terror groups, as told to The Global Post. “And many of them,” she said, “complain they’ve been given menial jobs and haven’t been sent to the front.”
“The jihadi groups still active in Indonesia are focused more on getting to Syria than on undertaking any action,” Jones wrote in a recent analysis. “And anyway, they are poorly trained, poorly led and largely incompetent.”
Further, the Islamic State doesn’t have any known formalised wing operating inside Indonesia. “There is as yet no ISIS structure for Indonesia, and pressure from some pro-ISIS quarters to form a unified organisation has not yet succeeded. Fortunately for us, the groups are divided along multiple lines, ideological as well as personal, and fears that a united Jamaah Anshorud Daulah or Anshorud Daulah Islamiyah could emerge, or a Wilayat Nusantara be declared, are still unrealised,” Jones writes in an article published on The Interpreter.
Indonesia has a well equipped and comprehensive anti-extremist operation, with the country’s aggressive counter-terror squads closely monitoring extremists -- particularly the 100 or so Indonesians who’ve managed to visit Islamic State territory and return home. In December, Indonesian officials and police, acting on intelligence acquired in November, staged raids and arrests to break up a terror network that was “inspired” by the Islamic State.
That said, this week’s attack is a reminder that it is no time for complacency. The attacks correspond with a declaration by Al Qaeda that South East Asia is “ripe for a jihadist revival.”
And the Al Qaeda has seen success in carrying out terror attacks in Indonesia. In 2002, the group helped finance nightclub bombings in Bali, killing 202 people in an attack that remains the nation’s worst incident of terror. Jemaah Islamiah was added to the UN Security Council Resolution 1267 as a terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda or the Taliban immediately after the 2002 attacks. Although the 2002 attacks brought the group into the spotlight, it had led deadly attacks on Indonesian soil in previous years -- some of which include the September 2000 car bomb attack in South Jakarta that killed 15, and the December 2000 Pekanbaru blast that killed five people.
Other groups such as Laskar Jundullah Islamic Militia and Commando Jihad have claimed isolated attacks in Indonesia’s recent political history, as homegrown jihadists seek to transform Indonesia into a Saudi-styled orthodox state.
All theoretic analysis aside, the reason why this motive has met with limited appeal in Indonesia is evinced by the following fact: This writer was recently in Indonesia, and nowhere in the world does the prospect of an orthodox state seem more absurd, as the liberal country’s streets bustle with young men and women mingling, alcohol freely flowing, and music blaring. Islam remains a fundamental part of the daily life of Indonesians, and exists within this liberal landscape, not in opposition to it.
