A new report published yesterday by the International Crisis Group (ICG) Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia: Damaged But Still Dangerous, * says that information emerging from the interrogation of JI suspects indicates that it is a bigger organisation than previously thought, with a depth of leadership that enables it to regenerate. JI is spread across the Indonesian archipelago with links across South East Asia.
Sidney Jones, ICG’s Indonesia Project Director, said: “More than 200 men linked or suspected of links to JI are in custody in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. However the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta provides clear evidence that the organisation remains capable of planning and executing a major operation in a large urban centre”.
ICG’s new report lists senior JI leaders still at large, and traces their links to training camps in Afghanistan. All senior members of JI’s central command trained in Afghanistan in the late 1980s and early 1990s and Afghan veterans also became the trainers at a JI camp in Mindanao in the Philippines from 1996 to 2000. Recruits to the Mindanao camp were not only JI members, but also came from like-minded jihadist organisations from other parts of Indonesia, especially South Sulawesi and West Java.
“This means that Indonesia has to worry about other organisations as well as JI”, said Ms Jones. “Their members have equally lethal skills, but do not operate under the JI command structure. In the short term at least, more attacks are likely”.
Schools and marriages provide further important connections on which JI depends. Only a tiny number of the 14,000 pesantrens – Muslim boarding schools – in Indonesia are committed to jihadist principles, but there is a kind of JI “Ivy League” to which JI members send their own children. Among them is the school known as Pondok Ngruki, whose founder, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, was arrested following the Bali bombing.
An intricate network of marriages also makes JI sometimes seem like a giant extended family. “Insufficient attention has been paid to the role women of JI play in cementing the network,” according to Ms Jones. “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”.
*Read the Report in full on:
http://www.crisisweb.org/projects/showreport.cfm?reportid=1104
The International Crisis Group (ICG) is an independent, non-profit, multinational organisation, with over 90 staff members on five continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. http://www.crisisweb.org/
Sidney Jones, ICG’s Indonesia Project Director, said: “More than 200 men linked or suspected of links to JI are in custody in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. However the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta provides clear evidence that the organisation remains capable of planning and executing a major operation in a large urban centre”.
ICG’s new report lists senior JI leaders still at large, and traces their links to training camps in Afghanistan. All senior members of JI’s central command trained in Afghanistan in the late 1980s and early 1990s and Afghan veterans also became the trainers at a JI camp in Mindanao in the Philippines from 1996 to 2000. Recruits to the Mindanao camp were not only JI members, but also came from like-minded jihadist organisations from other parts of Indonesia, especially South Sulawesi and West Java.
“This means that Indonesia has to worry about other organisations as well as JI”, said Ms Jones. “Their members have equally lethal skills, but do not operate under the JI command structure. In the short term at least, more attacks are likely”.
Schools and marriages provide further important connections on which JI depends. Only a tiny number of the 14,000 pesantrens – Muslim boarding schools – in Indonesia are committed to jihadist principles, but there is a kind of JI “Ivy League” to which JI members send their own children. Among them is the school known as Pondok Ngruki, whose founder, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, was arrested following the Bali bombing.
An intricate network of marriages also makes JI sometimes seem like a giant extended family. “Insufficient attention has been paid to the role women of JI play in cementing the network,” according to Ms Jones. “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”.
*Read the Report in full on:
http://www.crisisweb.org/projects/showreport.cfm?reportid=1104
The International Crisis Group (ICG) is an independent, non-profit, multinational organisation, with over 90 staff members on five continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. http://www.crisisweb.org/