Is Indonesia a terrorist base?
The gulf between rhetoric and evidence is
wide
Jul - Sept 2002
Greg Fealy
Indonesia has frequently been cast as a country with a serious
international terrorism problem. The US, Singapore and Malaysia
claim to have evidence of terrorists being based in Indonesia or
of Indonesians leading offshore terrorist groups. Singaporean
senior minister Lee Kwan Yew declared that Indonesia was a
‘hotbed of terrorism’. The claims have been used by the Bush
administration to pressure Indonesia to take strong action against
them.
A close look at the ‘evidence’ suggests, however, that the
terrorist threat has been overstated and that foreign officials
and the media have been alarmist in their claims. The emphatic
anti-terrorism policy pursued by the US and some of its allies
towards Indonesia is misguided.
Among many alleged instances, I shall restrict this present
discussion to the two most prominent and instructive cases. These
are that: (1) al-Qaeda fighters received terrorist training in the
Poso region of Central Sulawesi; and (2) Indonesian Muslims played
a leading role in the Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM) and Jemaah
Islamiyah (JI) ‘terrorist groups’ in Malaysia and Singapore
respectively, both of which have been linked to Osama bin
Laden’s network.
The claims of terrorist training bases in Sulawesi emerged
originally in testimony given to a Spanish judge by eight al-Qaeda
activists. They claimed 200-300 fighters had trained in Poso and
mentioned an Indonesian, Parlindungan Siregar, as a pivotal
figure. The claims were soon taken up by Hendropriyono, the head
of Indonesia’s State Intelligence Agency (BIN), who stated
publicly in mid-December 2001 that his officers had found evidence
of foreigners training near Poso. The US press also began carrying
stories, presumably based on briefings from Bush administration
officials, that high-resolution satellite imagery had confirmed
the existence of the camps and their foreign personnel.
Much of this ‘evidence’, however, was soon shown to be
equivocal. Key allies of the United States regarded the satellite
photographs as inconclusive, because they failed to show who might
have been using the base. A number of Western missions in Jakarta
sent their own teams to Poso but found nothing to support the
‘foreign base’ claim.
Hendropriyono’s statements were also contradicted by senior
Indonesian police and military officials, who admitted that, while
there were certainly Indonesian paramilitary training bases in
Poso, they had no evidence of outsiders training there. Finally,
there was the general question of how the training of several
hundred foreign Muslims could go unnoticed by the large Christian
community around Poso or by local security officials.
The KMM and JI allegations surfaced following a series of arrests
in Malaysia and Singapore between mid-2001 and early 2002.
Officials in both countries claimed there were links between the
two organisations. They said that testimony given by the detainees
pointed to three Indonesians as having a leading role in KMM and
JI. The three were Abubakar Ba’asyir, a fiery Islamic preacher
from Central Java and supposed spiritual leader of both
organisations, Riduan Isamuddin (commonly known as Hambali) who
was credited with the daily management of JI, and Mohammad Iqbal.
Iqbal was captured by Malaysian authorities in late 2001 and has
not been seen in public since; Ba’asyir has returned to
Indonesia where he maintains a high public profile; and Hambali
went to ground after Indonesian police issued a warrant for his
arrest. Malaysia and Singapore have pressed the Indonesian
government to arrest Ba’asyir but have been told there is no
case against him. This has led to highly critical reporting in the
international press of Indonesia’s ‘soft stance’ on
terrorism.
The JI-Indonesia connection received further coverage when
Philippines officials arrested an Indonesian, Fathur Rohim al-Ghozi
in January 2002, on charges of importing explosives. Al-Ghozi, a
former student at Ba’asyir’s boarding school, was soon
identified as JI’s bomb expert and accused of involvement in
various bombings across the region. This was followed in mid-March
by the detention of another three Indonesian Muslims — Tamsil
Linrung, Abdul Jamal Balfas and Agus Dwikarna — in Manila on
charges of smuggling C4 explosive in their luggage. Philippines
authorities claimed the men were linked to JI and other terrorist
organisations. Tamsil and Balfas were eventually released in
mid-April for lack of evidence but Dwikarna remains in detention,
reportedly at the request of BIN.
Sweeping claims
The KMM-JI connection has been frequently cited by foreign
officials and the media in sweeping claims about Indonesia’s
terrorism problem, but the available evidence only warrants a
narrower interpretation. In the case of JI, the Singaporean
government has released substantial documentary and video evidence
to back its claim that this was a genuine terrorist group, and
there appears little reason to doubt this information. The case
against al-Ghozi is also strong. Much of the original JI testimony
that led to his arrest has proven accurate and al-Ghozi has
admitted his involvement in terrorist training and bombings. He
was found guilty in the Philippines in mid-April and sentenced to
a minimum ten years’ jail. But the Singaporeans have failed to
present evidence proving that Ba’asyir, Hambali and Iqbal had a
role in JI’s terrorism.
The KMM case is far less credible. The Malaysian government has
offered the public almost no evidence to back its assertion that
KMM is a terrorist group. Indeed, so flimsy is the government’s
case that a number of analysts have queried whether KMM even
exists. The Mahathir administration has clear political and
diplomatic motives in playing up the terrorism issue. It has
sought to discredit its main political foe, the Islamist PAS, by
alleging links between PAS and the KMM. It has also curried US
favour by appearing pro-actively anti-terrorist. As with the
Singaporeans, the Malaysian government has not revealed evidence
showing the complicity of Ba’asyir, Hambali and Iqbal in KMM’s
terrorism. Indonesian police who have examined the testimony of
the KMM detainees claim that, while it clearly shows that
Ba’asyir and Hambali were militant preachers, it does not
indicate any terrorist intent.
Also dubious is the case against Tamsil, Balfas and Dwikarna.
Almost from the outset, their arrest showed signs of being a
frame-up. Tamsil told the Indonesian press that he and his two
associates had been the only passengers searched from their flight
and that they had seen Filipino officials plant the explosives in
one of their suitcases. Filipino police had later told them that
their arrest had been ordered by Hendropriyono and that a senior
BIN official had travelled to Manila to oversee the operation.
Meanwhile the Filipino police refused to allow a visiting
Indonesian police team access to the ‘smuggled’ explosive. The
role played by Hendropriyono and BIN has attracted strong
criticism from Islamic groups, the press and parliamentarians.
Misinformation
A number of conclusions can now be drawn. The first is that there
is little basis for asserting that Indonesia is a proven base for
terrorist groups. While a small number of Indonesians can
reasonably be assumed to have engaged in terrorism, the data
regarding bases and cells is, at best, inconclusive. This is not
to say that Indonesia has no terrorists, but rather, that those
who assert it has a serious international terrorist problem lack
sufficient evidence or are not placing what they know on the
public record (I suspect the former).
A second conclusion is that US and Malaysian officials as well as
Hendropriyono appear to be engaging in deliberate misinformation
over the terrorism issue, apparently for domestic political and
diplomatic purposes.
The Indonesian government and Islamic community have grounds for
scepticism over foreign claims of terrorists within its borders.
It is in part true, as outsiders often point out, that Megawati is
wary of arousing Muslim sentiment. But the point remains that
those doing the accusing have failed to provide compelling reasons
for Indonesian law enforcement authorities to act. Rather than
excoriate Jakarta, the international community should commend it
for upholding the principle of presumption of innocence and not
arresting citizens without evidence of guilt.
The above conclusions call into question the wisdom of the current
US policy towards Indonesia, which entails pressuring it to step
up action against terrorists. Indonesia’s intelligence services,
for example, have a notorious reputation of fabricating evidence
and abusing human rights. The greater the US pressure, the greater
the risk that these services will act in an unprofessional if not
illegal way.
It seems that the Bush administration is planning to give a
leading role to Hendropriyono and BIN as part of its
‘anti-terrorism solution’ for Indonesia. In so doing, they
appear willing to overlook the lamentable record of Hendropriyono
and the organisation he leads. Apart from bungling the issue of
al-Qaeda bases in Poso and arousing controversy over his role in
the arrest of Tamsil, Balfas and Dwikarna, Hendropriyono has been
accused of involvement in the massacre of more than a hundred
Muslim villagers in Talangsari, Lampung, in 1989, when he was the
local military commander. More recently he has attracted adverse
press attention over his extensive business interests and for his
suspected complicity in the assassination of Papuan leader Theys
Eluay.
BIN’s record under his leadership is little better. It has been
publicly ridiculed for its inaccurate and often politically loaded
reporting. In early 2002, it was derided by ministers and senior
politicians when it emerged that BIN had written separate and
contradictory reports on the economy for cabinet ministers and a
parliamentary committee. BIN also prepared an error-filled
briefing for parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Security
Commission prior to John Howard’s visit to Indonesia in
February. Among other things, it alleged that Australia’s Lt-Gen
Peter Cosgrove had written an autobiography denigrating
Indonesia’s role in East Timor. It also asserted that the Howard
government had formed a secret twelve-person committee to engineer
Papua’s secession from Indonesia.
The cornerstone of any US anti-terrorism policy in Indonesia
should be to win the confidence of the Islamic community.
Cooperation from Muslims is critical if terrorists are to be
exposed. This is only possible if the US and Indonesia’s
security officials and ASEAN partners provide reliable information
to a community where anti-Western sentiment is already high.
Dr Greg Fealy ([email protected]) is a research fellow in
Indonesian politics at the Australian National University in
Canberra
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