Sidney Jones and Solahudin – Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), perpetrators of the Bali bombings, decided on 30 June to disband. This is huge news, and many commentators are convinced it's a sham, a cold-blooded calculation after an unprecedented crackdown by police, to secure early release.
We are convinced it is for real. It was not some snap decision, easily reversed. It was the result of a nearly 15-year reconsideration of ends and means, aided by two years of intensive discussions with a police team from Detachment 88, Indonesia's counter-terrorism police.
The change began when Para Wijayanto, a university-trained engineer, took over as JI's amir in 2009. He and some of the others on JI's central committee believed there was no justification for jihadist violence on Indonesian soil because Indonesian Muslims were not under attack. In 2010, they prevented their members from joining a training camp in Aceh in which nearly every other violent extremist organisation in the country took part. The camp's participants included some men who had once been JI members but who had left to join more militant spinoffs, such as Abu Bakar Ba'asyir's Jamaah Ansharul Tauhid (JAT).
From 2009 to 2019, when Para Wijayanto was arrested, no JI member took part in jihadist operations or acts of violence in Indonesia. JI leaders maintained their commitment to an Islamic state, however, and after the Syria conflict erupted, they began sending cadres there for training with a variety of militias. The rise of ISIS with its takfiri violence also provided an opportunity for introspection among JI leaders who were opposed to both its tactics and teachings. JI analyses of ISIS tracts were disseminated without attribution in prisons among ISIS supporters since its critiques were far more trenchant than anything officials could come up with on their own. Over time, JI's anti-ISIS stance helped build a relationship with some of the Detachment 88 officers.
The goal of JI overseas training was not to prepare for terrorism attacks but to build up an armed force to defend a future state. Discovery of this training, however, based on information from a few deportees, was what sparked the massive crackdown by police between 2019 and 2023.
Even as the training was taking place, leaders were looking around them and seeing that if the goal was to deepen Islamic values and commitment to Islamic law, the groups that were above-ground and non-violent had achieved much more than they had as a tanzim sirri or covert organisation. Para allowed members to take part in the 2016 mass rallies against Ahok, then governor of Jakarta, and began thinking in terms of a political strategy, even toying with the idea of setting up a political party – a major departure for salafi jihadis who saw democracy and its institutions as antithetical to Islam. In 2019, senior JI leaders meeting in Bogor had already discussed the possibility of dissolving the organisation. At the time, not everyone was ready to accept such momentous change but the voices in support of disbanding were growing stronger.
All this meant that JI leaders both in and out of prison were willing to enter into discussions with a dedicated team of police about letting go of JI and joining existing organisations like Muhammadiyah and Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah (DDI) to focus on education and dakwah (religious outreach). Police facilitated meetings among some of the top leaders, encouraging them to talk about the individuals they most admired. It was not Ba'asyir's name that came up most frequently – it was Muhammad Natsir, the devout Islamist activist, politician and religious scholar who founded Dewan Dakwah Islam and the Masyumi party, and served as Indonesia's fifth prime minister in 1950-51. Natsir, through his ties to Saudi Arabia, also arranged the funding for the training on the Pakistan-Afghan border in the 1980s in which the men who were to become JI's leaders took part. Natsir was deeply opposed to Soeharto policies, but there was no question of his nationalism.
These discussions culminated in the announcement at a Bogor hotel on 30 June, with 16 leaders sitting on a podium and some 130 members in the audience. To further demonstrate its commitment, JI surrendered its caches of arms, ammunitions and explosives, as well as lists of names of all those trained in Syria. That was followed by a series of visits of leaders to West Java, East Java, Lampung and other strongholds to explain the decision and hold discussions. Thus far there has been little resistance, and what there has been less ideological than social – a sense of loss that an organisation that has served as a community since 1993 – further back, if one counts its Darul Islam parentage – has decided to disband.
The community will endure, however. JI's network of some 60 schools will also continue but will work with the Ministry of Religious Affairs to incorporate the national curriculum. Yes, it is possible that a splinter might emerge in the future, though there is little sign of it now. Yes, a new generation could arise with some members who look back to their fathers' and grandfathers' time as the glory days of jihad. But for the moment, this is a victory for rational discussion and persuasion.
Source: https://indonesiaatmelbourne.unimelb.edu.au/jis-decision-to-disband-is-for-real