Indonesia: A Horrible Precedent

INDONESIA

‘A Truly Horrible Precedent’

Militants in the Islamic State are celebrating their first Ramadan since their terror organization lost control of most of the territory they seized in Iraq and Syria in recent years.

It’s not a coincidence that the group’s chapters in Indonesia have stepped up their efforts, wrote Greg Barton, a professor of global Islamic politics at Australia’s Deakin University, in the Conversation.

Attacks throughout the archipelago that is home to the world’s largest Muslim population killed at least 26 and injured dozens more in mid-May.

The attacks included bombings at three churches in Surabaya, which the police said were carried out by a “well-liked” couple who used their own four children as suicide bombers on motorcycles. The kids were ages nine to 18.

“Indonesia may have set a truly horrible precedent,” Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, told the South China Morning Post. “It’s a very significant development. It hasn’t happened before in Indonesia or elsewhere that I know of where whole families were involved as suicide bombers.”

Others were less analytical.

“As a parent, I wanted to understand what had compelled this family to erase itself from the earth,” wrote New York Times reporter Hannah Beech. “Every explanation seemed inadequate.”

It was only one of three attacks involving families in May, and almost every day last month saw an attack, an attempted attack or an operation to prevent an attack, wrote Jones in an opinion piece in the New York Times.

But, unlike Syria and Iraq, where civil war and weak governments failed to address the Islamic State’s rise before the group controlled vast tracts of territory and major cities, Indonesia is moving quickly to address the threat.

After the attacks, Indonesian lawmakers passed a controversial anti-terror law that expands the military’s role in internal security, allows authorities to detain suspects for 21 days without charge and for an additional 200 days before a trial, Al Jazeera reported. Anyone caught trafficking in weapons for terrorists faces the death penalty.

And on Sunday, Indonesia proposed cooperation through joint security exercises to fight terrorism in the Indo-Pacific region, the Jakarta Post wrote.

But the police and military have their work cut out for them.

Around 1,000 Indonesians traveled to the Middle East to fight for the Islamic State between 2014 and this year. Around 500 have returned. Islamic State leaders have urged those and others to join the jihad against the Indonesian government, non-Muslims and other targets, the BBC said, adding that around 30 terror cells have likely set up shop in the country.

It’s not clear if a crackdown will change the hearts and minds of those jihadists.

Terror detainees linked to the Islamic State rioted in an Indonesian prison in early May and kept security forces at bay for two days before authorities overpowered the inmates, for example.

Critics of the new anti-terror law abound. But even critics agree that something must be done to counter a dark – and spreading – new threat.