Jakarta. Analysts have identified failures within the Indonesian government’s deradicalization program, deeming it responsible for the continued flow of Indonesians traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State, and sympathy that continues to grow for the extremist group in the archipelago.
Intelligence and terrorism observer Dynno Chresbon on Tuesday cited the arrest of 12 Indonesian nationals — including four women and five minors — by the Malaysian authorities last week as they allegedly attempted to travel to Syria via Malaysia.
He said Malaysia was able to stop the group while Indonesia was not — the 12 Indonesians had been able to pass through Indonesian immigration checkpoints — because the former was in possession of a database that maps militant networks and groups in the region, including suspected members.
“That database allows them to capture suspected militants planning to go to Syria, including those coming from Indonesia,” Dynno told the Jakarta Globe. “Malaysia and Singapore have such databases, while Indonesia misses out because it doesn’t have one.”
The unavailability of such database in Indonesia points to the government’s failure in its deradicalization program targeting homegrown terrorists and militants.
According to Dynno, Malaysia and Singapore have been able to develop their respective databases because under their successful deradicalization programs, former combatants are willing to share information and their knowledge on regional terror and militant networks.
“Indonesia’s deradicalization program, meanwhile, has met gridlock. Here, the outcome of the program is no more than certificates issued by the BNPT [the National Counterterrorism Agency] and the Home Ministry for former combatants,” Dynno said.
“It doesn’t make them willing to share crucial information about terror networks and groups in Indonesia, let alone in Southeast Asia, about which of them share the IS ideology and so on.”
Indonesia must fix its deradicalization program, Dynno said.
He added, citing data from the National Police and the military, that more than 500 Indonesians are estimated have already traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the IS.
Most of them traveled via Malaysia or Pakistan, before entering Iraq or Syria through Jordan.
Their movements, unfortunately, have largely been undetected by the Indonesian authorities, except when some of them are killed in battlefield and their remains are returned to the country, Dynno said.
He added that Indonesian militants went to Syria and Iraq to join the IS, in the hope that they would be able to return to the archipelago to spread the extremist Sunni group’s teachings here, including its anti-Shiite propaganda.
Another Indonesian terrorism expert, Al Chaidar, echoed Dynno’s opinion, saying that while the Indonesian police are considered to have been relatively successful in its anti-terror crackdown, it has focused too much on law enforcement, while failing in terms of preventive measures.
As a result, sympathy for IS in Indonesia has grown and without the presence of a terror network database, this will alarmingly mean continued outflow of Syria or Iraq-bound Indonesian jihadists and potential threats that they will pose to Indonesia once they return home.
“The number of IS sympathizers [in Indonesia] has kept growing, and will continue to grow. They are present in almost every province,” Al Chaidar said.
He could not estimate how many of them are exactly, but cited a group’s claim that IS has as many as two million sympathizers in Indonesia — although only a small portion of them translate the sympathy into real actions, by directly going to Syria or Iraq to support the IS and or helping them with financial assistance.
“Not all IS sympathizers, the radical groups here, have directly opposed the government, although they consider the Indonesian government as being taghut [supporting idolatry],” Al Chaidar said.
“The government’s focus on use of force and crackdown are thus unfit, ineffective to deal with such radical movements.”
Chaidar applauded the arrest of four foreigners and three Indonesians in Central Sulawesi by the National Police’s anti-terror squad in September, as the suspected IS sympathizers attempted to go to Poso, which is located in the province.
Poso has gained infamy as Indonesia’s terrorist hotbed with local militant groups running paramilitary training facilities for militants hidden in the area’s mountainous terrain and jungles.
The groups include the Indonesian Mujahideen, led by the country’s most wanted terrorist suspect Santoso, who reportedly sympathizes with IS.
Dynno said the arrest alerted authorities that Poso was also used as a paramilitary training hub for militants in Southeast Asia and even Australia now, to prepare them for fighting along with IS fighters in war-torn Syria and Iraq.
“But while law enforcement is necessary, Indonesia must not stick with a single method; it must devise various strategies [to tackle the IS issue], including through persuasion,” Al Chaidar said.
“While non-persuasive actions have been conducted [by the Indonesian security forces], persuasive measures have not been intensive enough.”
Al Chaidar elaborated that the government should be intervening with ongoing discourse among radical groups in Indonesia concerning central issues they share, such as shariah and a caliphate, as well as jihad and martyrdom.
Rather than attempting to eradicate those discourses completely, feared to only trigger unwanted backlash, the government could do better with steering them in a better direction, one that does not involve violence and terrorism, he said.
To be able to do that, Al Chaidar further suggested, the government could approach groups with a similar ideology to IS — seeking to uphold shariah and establish an Islamic state — but with less radical views.
Some of these groups are even against IS, he said, citing as example the Indonesian Islamic State (NII), Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia and Jamaah Ansharusy Syariah.
“[A caliphate, shariah, jihad] are not among types of discourse commonly discussed among members of the mainstream Muslim communities,” Al Chaidar said.
“The government must thus approach non-mainstream groups, openly if necessary, to ask them to fight against the IS together by spurring discourses that will counter IS’s extreme teachings,” he added.
The National Police on Tuesday said they would step up security ahead of Christmas and New Year celebrations.
While heightened security around December has been a regular occurrence in Indonesia, thanks to church bombings and terrorism attacks in previous years, police said this year they paid special
attention to possible materialization of sympathy for IS among Indonesian suspected militants.
Dynno said Monday’s hostage situation in Sydney, committed by an Iranian man who reportedly sympathized with the IS cause, shows an example of potential threats that IS poses to the region, and that IS sympathizers in Indonesia could be inspired to do something similar.
An Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict report released in September says IS has attracted the support of almost all the would-be terrorists still committed to waging jihad in Indonesia, even though it has generated outrage and rejection from the mainstream Muslim community.
“The overall capacity of Indonesian extremists remains low, but their commitment to IS could prove deadly,” IPAC director Sidney Jones said.
Note: This story was originally published at the Jakarta Globe on Dec. 18, 2014. http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/new-approach-needed-for-indonesia-to-end-extremism/
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