John Aglionby – Indonesian police today announced the first arrest in connection with the October 1 Bali suicide bombings in which 23 people, including the attackers, were killed.
Identified only as Hasan S, the 45-year-old construction worker from the East Java town of Jember, allegedly shared a boarding house room in the Bali capital, Denpasar, in late September with one of the three young men who detonated 10kg backpack bombs in cafes on the island.
If Mr Hasan proves to be linked to the plot, his arrest would be the first major breakthrough in the investigation. It has so far made little progress, despite more than 250 people being interviewed and the faces of all three alleged bombers surviving largely intact.
A police spokesman, Senior Commander Bambang Kuncoko, yesterday admitted to Guardian Unlimited that the masterminds, thought to include the Islamist extremists allegedly responsible for major bombings across the country over the last three years, have improved their techniques. "We have learnt from our experience of investigating previous bombings... but it appears that the terrorists have altered their tactics too," he said.
After the 2002 Bali bombings, in which 202 people were killed in explosions in two nightclubs, the police were on the trail of the bombers within days after tracing one of the vehicles they used.
This time, no vehicles were used, and there are far fewer clues for investigators to work with. But analysts believe the authorities' problems are much more profound than a lack of leads.
After the fall of the dictator Suharto in 1998, responsibility for internal security and countering terrorism was taken out of the hands of the all-powerful military and given to the police.
The first problem was that the police did not have either the experience or the capacity to face the challenge. "Unlike the military, who had personnel in almost every village, the police didn't, and still don't have the people to extend [their intelligence networks] to the subdistricts," Ken Conboy, a Jakarta-based security and intelligence analyst, explained.
The military intelligence agency (Bais) and the State Intelligence Agency (Bin) therefore continued to remain extremely active in counter-terrorism work.
That did not mean the war on terrorism recorded rapid successes, however, because inter-agency squabbling and rivalry quickly materialised and has only recently started to abate.
"Things have come a long way, particularly in the last year or so," Mr Conboy said. "But they were starting from nothing – or, some would say, even lower than that – because the different agencies were so competitive that they were even obstructing each other." Last year, some police intelligence officers were deployed to Bin provincial offices for the first time, and this year the police's Security Intelligence Agency has started to expand.
Foreign donors have also poured tens of millions of pounds into counter-terrorism training, particularly for the police. This improved cooperation has yielded some positive results but, when faced with the latest high-profile challenge, the civilian security forces have failed to deliver.
Clearly angry and frustrated with the poor progress, the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, instructed the military in his recent armed forces day speech to take a more active role in domestic counter-terrorism.
Military chief General Endriartono Sutarto interpreted this as an order to reactivate the Suharto-era regional command network, mentioned above, which deployed troops to the village level. Human rights activists and opposition politicians immediately slammed the development as a regressive step on Indonesia's transition to a mature democracy.
Gen Sutarto's implementation of his orders has yet to be announced. It will undoubtedly be a significant symbolic step but, in many respects, there is likely to be little change from the current situation because the regional command network is still present in many villages.
Furthermore, it is arguable how much more effective the war on domestic terrorism will be because, while Bais and Bin have an excellent track record in gathering information, they are less competent at applying it.
"Analysis has always been their shortfall," Mr Conboy said. "They're vacuum cleaners. They can suck up a lot of stuff, but they're bottom heavy. Back at HQ in the analysis section, they've only got a couple of guys." This might change soon if Mr Yudhoyono gets his way and persuades parliament to pass a highly contentious intelligence bill, which is still being drafted.
But until there is an institutional shake-up or the authorities get a lucky break, terrorist leaders such as Azahari Husin and Noordin Top, who are thought to have masterminded the major blasts over the last few years, are likely to remain at large.
"After all, they've had agents chasing them for the last three years and they're still able to carry out annual deadly attacks," one western diplomat said.