Dewi Kurniawati – If terrorists had gotten their way, it seems 2010 would have been marked by a major attack targeted at no less than President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono himself during Independence Day celebrations.
Instead, the past 12 months have seen the systematic breakdown of a new threat that emerged in western Indonesia and the arrest or killing of a number of key terror suspects.
Outlining the National Police's achievements, recently appointed police chief Gen. Timur Pradopo said on Wednesday that 55 terror suspects have been killed over the past decade and 583 arrested. Of those arrested, 388 have been sentenced to prison, 56 are currently on trial and 37 released due to lack of evidence.
Key targets
A highlight of the police's antiterror campaign was the raid in Pamulang in March, which led to the death of the country's most wanted terrorist: Dulmatin.
Allegedly the mastermind behind one of the country's worst terrorism attacks, the 2002 Bali bombings, Dulmatin was believed to have fled to the southern Philippines where the master bomb-maker helped train Muslim rebels. But police discovered his presence in Indonesia during a February raid on a militant training camp in the mountains of Aceh.
Police trailed him on trips between Aceh and Jakarta, and on March 9 shot him dead in a raid on the outskirts of the capital.
Four months later in June, police arrested Abdullah Sunata, whom they believed was the other leader of the Aceh group alongside Dulmatin, during a series of police raids in Central Java.
A total of 51 members of the Aceh group have since been charged, and are either facing trial or have already been sentenced. They were charged in three separate cases related to the group's activities, including clandestine paramilitary training and public acts of terrorism.
Another highlight was the arrest of Abu Bakar Bashir, who was arrested during an ambush by the Densus 88 antiterror unit in West Java on Aug. 9.
In his third arrest over the past decade, the firebrand cleric is this time accused of being the figurehead behind the Aceh group, which police say was a budding Al Qaeda-style terrorist network that was plotting to kill Westerners, including US aid workers, businesspeople and tourists.
Densus 88 also arrested Mustofa, alias Abu Tholut, inside his house in Kudus, Central Java, on Dec. 10.
Tholut, also believed to have been involved in the organization of the Aceh camp, is alleged to be the leader of the armed robbery of a CIMB Bank branch in Medan in August that left one officer dead and two security guards injured. He is also suspected of leading other violent robberies in the same city and surrounding areas between April and August. Weakening, evolving enemy
Sidney Jones, the renowned terrorism expert from the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, says the terror networks operating in Indonesia – especially the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah – have steadily weakened.
To illustrate, between December 2006 and December 2010, 29 people were killed as a result of terrorist attacks, including nine in the July 2009 hotel bombings in Jakarta and 10 policemen over the past year.
"That's a very small number compared to the Philippines or southern Thailand, let alone a place like Pakistan," Sidney told the Jakarta Globe.
Police, by contrast, have killed 26 suspected terrorists since February 2010 alone. "The police have generally done a good job, although the number of suspects killed rather than captured alive is too high," Sidney said.
She added that police should embrace non-lethal options for capturing suspects, a different incentive structure that gives greater rewards to taking suspects alive and reviews after operations that involve deaths to see what could have been done differently.
"The high death toll among police this year, though, suggests that the attitude of 'kill or be killed' is widespread," she said.
Based on Sidney's analysis, although members of the JI worked with slain terrorist mastermind Noordin M. Top and a few took part in the Aceh training camp, the organization has moved away from violence and is instead focusing on dakwah [campaign through teaching] and education.
"Recruitment is probably still taking place but probably not on as wide a scale as before – because the arguments for recruitment have weakened. No Ambon, no Poso and no Bush," Sidney said, referring to two sites of interreligious clashes and former US President George W. Bush.
However, she pointed out that several students of Azhari Hudin, a former operations chief for Noordin, are still fugitives, including Upik Lawangga and Reno, alias Tedi, who escaped when Azhari was shot in 2005.
"So we still have a handful of expert bomb-makers at large, and even if they are caught, it's not too difficult to learn how to make a bomb from materials available on the Internet," she said.
Targeting the root cause
Despite the successes, Brig. Gen. Tito Karnavian, former Densus 88 chief who is now working with the newly established National Anti-Terrorism Agency (BNPT), said counterterrorism efforts in Indonesia still faced a huge challenge as the root causes failed to be addressed.
"You see this in the whole process; there are members of terror organizations who keep coming back," he said. "The front is just changing, from Jemaah Islamiyah to Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid. Recruitment is ongoing. Something is missing in our counterterrorism effort."
The missing link, according to Tito, is the forgotten process of tackling radical ideology, which he says is the center of gravity for terrorism in Indonesia.
"Radical ideology is the root cause of the problem of terrorism in Indonesia, and the police alone can't handle that."
Deradicalization, an effort to convince terrorists to renounce violence, is now the core program of the BNPT. The agency, which was established in July and answers only to the president, is charged with preventing terrorism, protecting civilians, deradicalizing terrorists and building national preparedness. The agency is headed by retired Maj. Gen. Ansyaad Mbai, the former head of the antiterror desk at the Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal and Security Affairs.
Although BNPT is seen by many as a comprehensive breakthrough in the fight against terrorism, skepticism remains. "I think BNPT is a decade too late," intelligence analyst Dynno Cresbon said.
According to Dynno, the comprehensive programs pushed by BNPT should have been established years ago, considering the speedy radicalization programs of terrorist networks. "Deradicalization has to race with radicalization now, and it's not easy," he said.
Involving the military
With the enemy changing, efforts to thwart them are evolving as well.
This year saw Muslim militants wearing black masks storm a tiny police precinct on the outskirts of Medan, North Sumatra, and open fire, killing three officers. It seems that terrorists, better known for targeting Western nightclubs and hotels, are now striking at state institutions. And for the first time in more than a decade, the army may be wading into the fight.
BNPT chief Ansyaad said his agency would not shy away from requesting support from the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI).
"There has been a strong push to give the TNI a role in counterterror efforts," Sidney said. "This was particularly evident after the apparent car bomb plot against President Yudhoyono that was uncovered at the time of the July 2009 hotel bombings."
She explained that in the government's view, terrorism had changed from being an extraordinary crime primarily directed against foreigners to being a state security issue, with senior Indonesian officials' lives at stake.
According to Sidney, this sense was strengthened after the deaths of so many police officers this year at the hands of terrorists, and some TNI officers have strongly argued that they have a powerful but unused capacity for fighting terrorism and supplying intelligence.
But even with the combined forces of numerous state apparatuses, there is still the matter of recidivism, seen in the case of Abu Tholut in particular.
In 2004 he was convicted for possession of explosives but only served three years of his seven-year prison sentence. He was released for good behavior in 2007.
Dynno said the solution was to deny convicted terrorists remissions and to keep them isolated from "regular" prisoners.
Both Dynno and Sidney acknowledged the herculean task that lay ahead. The focus, Sidney said, couldn't just be on deradicalization or involving the military, but rather a combined effort melding both intelligence gathering with a preventative strategy that included deradicalization.