An Australian counter-terrorism expert says that Jemaah Islamiah has the capacity to continue its pattern of bomb attacks in Indonesia for years to come. And the group is rebuilding so it'll be a greater threat to Indonesia in the future. The director of Terrorism Studies at Canberra's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Clive Williams, told Graeme Dobell that JI is following a pattern of mounting an attack every 12 months.

Williams: They need to maintain a tempo to show that they're still around to get recruits and to make themselves known, but there's no advantage in doing attacks more often than that because it simply means that it's easier for the security forces to round them up. So from a security point of vivew and tempo and so on once a year's probably sufficient from their point of view.

Dobell: After Bali in 2002 the targets moved to Jakarta, the Mariott, the Australian embassy, why now back to Bali?

Williams: Probably because the tourist industry in Bali has recovered to a large extent, people generally speaking who go there on holidays think that it's now a safer environment and if you want to have a go at the Indonesian government the easiest way to do that is to have a go at tourists. And 85 per cent of tourists who go to Indonesia go to Bali and most of them don't go anywhere else in Indonesia, so clearly if you want to have a go at western tourists Bali's the place to do it.

Dobell: A sign also that JI was responding to the fact that in its attacks on the Mariott and on the Australian embassy, most of the victims who were injured or died were Indonesians?

Williams: That's right, mainly Muslims is what they were concerned about because there was a backlash effect and some people have said that this led to Azahari leading a breakaway group because there were elements within JI who wanted to work within the political process in Indonesia. But one of the advantages obviously of doing an attack in Bali is that the Balinese being mainly Hindu the likelihood of killing Muslims is reduced.

Dobell: What does this attack then tell us about Jemaah Islamiah's continuing capacity and its ability to mount further attacks in the future?

Williams: It shows us that it can still conduct a variety of operations, it can still do the vehicle bombs, the sort of thing it did against the Mariott and of course against the Australian embassy, but it also has another weapon in its armoury, which is the suicide bombers with the small IEDs with ball bearings. And that's going to be an ongoing problem. At the same time JI has developed a training facility in Mindanao and it's working quite closely nowadays with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Abu Sayyaf group, and there are apparently joint training teams that have been established between the MILF and JI, and these training teams provide field training. And so I think that what we're actually looking at is a period when JI is actually less capable than it was, but also less capable than it will be in the future. And I think that the Indonesian government has an ongoing problem with JI and will probably need to consider that it's going to become an increasing threat in the years ahead.

Dobell: A more capable JI in the future which has more capacity, what would that mean for Indonesia?

Williams: It will probably make it more difficult to attract western investors in Indonesia, it will certainly make it difficult to rebuild the tourism industry, particularly in Bali, and I think it's going to create more social tensions within Indonesia as well. So I think it'll be a difficult problem for Indonesia to deal with and remains to be seen whether Indonesia has got the capacity to deal with an organisation like JI or whether it will be able to build strength in particular regional areas.

Dobell: Is this a conflict where the Indonesian government really doesn't have any negotiating options, is it possible to negotiate with an extremist group that essentially wants the overthrow of the Indonesian government and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate across Southeast Asia?

Williams: It may be possible to have something of a half-way house where you have a stricter religious regime but not going as far as having a fundamentalist state. That may well then buy off many of the people that would otherwise support JI because their support is being watered down in other words. So that's a possibility but it would not probably be a good thing obviously from an Australian point of view to see a more radical or more religious Indonesia, because there will perhaps be a tendency then to focus on external interests in Indonesia. Up till now there haven't been any attacks on expats in other parts of Indonesia and one of the dangers of course is that you could develop an Iraq type situation where westerners are being kidnapped and that sort of thing, and of course that's a situation that Australia certainly would want to avoid.

Dobell: So is this a tempo of attacks that you see continuing for some time?

Williams: They can continue the tempo of attacks at the present level probably indefinitely, next year if they continue this cycle and of course from an intelligence point of view it's always a bit dangerous to say that people are going to continue to maintain a cycle, because then they'll do something that you don't expect or mount a sort of attack that you don't expect. But nonetheless I think they've got certainly the capacity to maintain an annual rate of attack mounting a major attack every year, certainly they can do that.