David Isenberg – Despite the four-year sentence handed on Tuesday to radical Islamist cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir and the August 11 capture of top Jemaah Islamiya leader Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali, reports of JI's demise, to paraphrase Mark Twain, are premature.
Ba'asyir, 65, was convicted of forgery, immigration violations and treason-related charges. The judges found there was not enough evidence to back prosecution claims that he headed JI, the Southeast Asian terror group that has murdered hundreds in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines in recent years, and is alleged to be linked to with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.
A recent report from the International Crisis Group (ICG) details the threat posed by JI. Released on August 26, the report "Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia: Damaged but Still Dangerous" finds that it remains active, and deadly.
Considering the August 5 bombing of a hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people, and that on Tuesday four suspected JI members were arraigned for plotting terrorist attacks on five embassies in Thailand and tourist spots in the country's premier tourist spots of Pattaya and Phuket, this should come as no surprise.
But the ICG report is noteworthy for its detailed analysis. It finds that it is "a bigger organization than previously thought, with a depth of leadership that gives it a regenerative capacity. It has communication with and has received funding from al-Qaeda, but it is very much independent and takes most, if not all, operational decisions locally." The report also notes that several members of the central command have not yet been identified, let alone apprehended. The cell structure is also considered more extensive than originally believed.
While the arrest of Hambali weakens JI and many of its members are being hunted down – more than 200 are now in custody – it remains a big organizations whose members probably number in the thousands, and it is spread across a very big and populous archipelago. And JI is organized well enough that no single individual is indispensable.
According to the ICG report, the JI organization is something of a family affair. "The JI network is held together not just by ideology and training but also by an intricate network of marriages that at times makes it seems like a giant extended family. Insufficient attention has been paid to the role the women of JI play in cementing the network. In many cases, senior JI leaders arranged the marriages of their subordinates to their own sisters or sisters-in-law to keep the network secure."
Furthermore, according to the report, despite some past media reports, JI is hardly an al-Qaeda franchise. While the two groups have some elements in common, notably jihadist ideology and a long history of shared experience in Afghanistan, JI's focus, despite the claims about wanting to establish a Southeast Asian caliphate, continues to be on establishing an Islamic state in Indonesia.
In theory JI has a formal structure. At the top sits an emir. Beneath him are four councils – governing council, religious council, fatwah council and disciplinary council. The governing council is headed by a central command that exerts control over four regions. One covered Singapore and Malaysia and provided financing for JI operations. Hambali was its head until early last year. The second region covered most of Indonesia and was considered the target of jihad efforts. The third region covered Mindanao, Sabah and Sulawesi. The last covered Papua and Australia and was responsible for fundraising.
As with al-Qaeda, Afghanistan was a crucial catalyst for JI. All of its top leaders and many of its bombers trained there from 1985 to 1995. Their experience there was also critical in terms of forging bonds among themselves and building an international network that included members of al-Qaeda. The process of sending recruits to Afghanistan began at least seven years before JI formally came into being in 1992.
In 1995 JI decided to set up training facilities in Mindanao in the Philippines to replicate the Afghan training as closely as possible, including using many of the same instructors. Regular "cadets" went through a six-month course including weapons training, demolition and bombing, map reading, guerrilla and infantry tactics, field engineering, leadership and self-defense.
It also included a religious curriculum, providing instruction in basic law, traditions of the Prophet, proselytization and jihad. Yet, according to the ICG report, members of JI's central command are not constrained by a formal hierarchy. JI also maintains alliances with a loose network of like-minded regional organizations all committed in different ways to jihad. They share a commitment to implementing salaafi teachings – a return to the "pure" Islam practiced by the Prophet Mohammed.
In fact, the bombs that exploded in Makassar last December were carried out by two South Sulawesi-based organizations, Wahdah Islamiya and Laskar Jundullah, "which cooperate with JI and may even have been modeled after it but were completely independent in terms of leadership".
The one bit of good news in the ICG report is that internal dissensions within JI appear to be growing. "The Marriott [hotel] bombing, in particular, generated a debate about appropriate targets, but there were apparently already divisions over the appropriateness of Indonesia as a venue for jihad, once the Ambon and Poso conflicts had calmed down. The Marriott attack appears to have intensified that debate."