Jakarta – Southeast Asian extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah has more than 900 members and remains a major security threat despite extensive police efforts to close it down, a report said Thursday.
Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), responsible for the deadly 2002 and 2005 bombings in Indonesia's Bali, has formed a hit squad with specially trained militants to carry out operations, the International Crisis Group said in its latest report.
But rather than target Westerners in future bombing attacks, JI has switched tactics to focus on assassinating senior police, prosecutors and others in authority in its base of Indonesia.
The Brussels-based think-tank said such attacks were not only more cost effective but likely to strengthen JI's support network and number of recruits.
"JI is in a building and consolidation phase, which means that it is unlikely to be interested in large, expensive operations that could further weaken its support base," said Sidney Jones, ICG's Southeast Asia project director.
The report said many JI militants were opposed to bombings, such as its 2002 Bali attack and 2004 blast outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta, as they lacked religious justification and risked high Muslim casualties.
The Bali nightclub bombings killed 202 people, mainly foreign tourists, and were blamed on JI's then fugitive leader Noordin Mohammed Top, who has since left the extremist group and remains Southeast Asia's most wanted man.
For many JI members, jihadi attacks in restive areas like the religiously divided Poso on Indonesia's Central Sulawesi were more important, it said.
Violence has often flared in Poso where Muslims and Christians live in roughly equal numbers. Three Christian school girls were beheaded there in 2005 in a crime that drew international condemnation.
"Noordin's attempt to bomb the Australian embassy cost about 8,000 dollars. JI's assassination of the head of the Central Sulawesi Protestant Church cost 25 dollars," Jones said.
The group's strength has been weakened in the wake of a series of raids on hideouts, seizure of explosives and weapons and arrest of militants by Indonesia's anti-terror police, it said.
But JI, whose ultimate aim is to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-populated country, was still a serious security threat and its structure remained intact.
"The hundreds of arrests since the first Bali bombs may have disrupted the organisation less than originally assumed, although ideological differences over tactics and strategy are profound," the report said. The ICG warned that the government needed to focus on breeding grounds for Islamic radicalism particularly in prisons where convicted JI bombers are on death row and others are serving sentences.
"The Indonesian police get high marks for their work in identifying and detaining JI members responsible for violence," said Robert Templer, ICG's Asian programme director.
"Now the Indonesian government needs to pay much more attention to prisons, including what goes on inside, visitors and the material they bring, and pre- and post-release programmes."