Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta – Jakarta's secretive criminal gang structure, with links right up to national politics and next week's elections, has taken a serious blow with the sudden death of a key leader.
Fadloli El Muhir, leader of the violent Betawi Brotherhood Forum, a pseudo-Islamic organisation styling itself as the defender of the Indonesian capital's original inhabitants – so-called for the city's Dutch-era name, Batavia – succumbed to a heart attack at the weekend.
Fadloli, 48, leaves eight children and 55 students at the Islamic boarding school he ran out of the forum's headquarters in East Jakarta.
His more significant legacy is the forum's legion of followers – up to 1.2 million, according to the organisation's own estimates, spread across the capital.
His absence creates a real chance for an eruption of gang warfare, in a repeat of the violence that accompanied the group's founding in 2001, as it squeezed out other ethnic gangs. Largely comprised of unemployed and disaffected youth, members of the FBR, as its Indonesian-language acronym translates, have been involved in extortion, standover rackets, petty crime and murder.
"I don't want to be alarmist, but it (new warfare) is certainly possible," said Murdoch University researcher Ian Wilson, who has specialised in the FBR's development and methods. "We know that there has been some tension at the level of branch leaders in the FBR, and it will be interesting to see whether there will now be a process of redefining what the FBR is about."
In association with another major Jakarta-wide gang, the Muslim Defenders Front, or FPI, the FBR was at the forefront of violent attacks on clubs, bars and restaurants during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
While cast as acts of piety, in many cases the attacks were opportunities to enforce cash-for-protection regimes.
Fadloli's association also had developed links with the international Muslim group Hizbut Tahrir, which advocates the creation of a worldwide caliphate, or Islamic state. It is banned as a terrorist outfit in many Middle Eastern countries, but free to operate in Indonesia.
During a meeting last November with its Jakarta spokesman Ismail Yusanto, Fadloli declared it was imperative that all Muslim groups act together. "We cannot act alone – the struggle to enforce faith, to live the true Muslim law, requires real co-operation," Fadloli said.
The system of political patronage in Jakarta included a close relationship between Fadloli's followers and former governor Sutiyoso, including an infamous 2003 brawl that erupted when FBR members attacked a gathering called the Urban Poor Consortium and claimed to be acting in the governor's name.
After wresting control of the city's gangs, mainstream politics was next on the FBR's agenda. Having stood unsuccessfully as a candidate at regional elections in 2004, Fadloli was pitching himself in next week's national vote for the provincial parliament representing Jakarta.
Several FBR members will still stand for the regional house next week, signalling what the organisation has described as "stage two" of its program to become a powerful political force.
Their biggest weapon, in harnessing the poverty-class Jakarta vote, will be a bedrock FBR slogan: "We're not the real criminals – the real criminals are the ones wearing ties."