Reports last week and over the weekend offer a little clarity about an ongoing manhunt in Aceh, Indonesia’s westernmost province. But they also raise many more questions about the identity of the group being sought.
Two weeks ago, when the reports first emerged in Jakarta’s English-language press of a terrorist group operating in Aceh, I urged caution regarding Police claims that group being pursued was connected to either Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) or the network of Noordin Mohammad Top. I was skeptical, first, that there was any such large group training in the jungles of Aceh, affiliated with whomever. Second, I suggested that if there was indeed a group, it was just as likely a splinter of the nationalist former Free Aceh Movement (GAM) as it was a splinter of either violent Islamist organization. In justifying my skepticism, I noted Police officials’ lack of credibility on similar matters, a pattern of similar violence between security officials and the former rebels last year, and the lack of support in Aceh for JI or Noordin’s cadres.
Over the last two weeks, my skepticism has been diminished. First, it is now clear that there is indeed a violent group evading police in the interior highlands of Aceh. Police have sent in hundreds of reinforcements from Mobile Brigade (Brimob) headquarters in Jakarta, and engaged in several firefights with the group. Three Brimob officers have been killed in the fights. Second, it no longer seems likely that the group is GAM-inspired, and much circumstantial evidence points to a violent Salafist purpose. The Police have claimed from the beginning that when they first raided the camp in late February, they found DVDs praising the Bali bombings. Several experts have noted that none of the detainees are former GAM members, and many are said to hail from outside Aceh. Al Chaidar of Malikussaleh University says that an Acehnese veteran of the Afghan mujahideen, who lived in a village close to the alleged training camp, has gone missing since the first shootout two weeks ago.
I had also suggested that we ought to be skeptical because, for the first week of the manhunt, the press did not appear to be getting its information from the leaders of the crack counterterrorism squad Detachment 88, but rather from regional police officials and a few National Police (Polri) officials speaking on background. It is odd that less reliable regional police officials, not Detachment 88, would be leading a 5-month long surveillance effort of such a large group of violent Salafists. But Detachment 88 is now on the scene and engaged, according to the head of the unit, Tito Karnavian. Other officials continue to imply that Densus 88′s presence has been a new development (in this Jakarta Globe piece), and further that Densus 88 was caught flat-footed by the group’s emergence. One possibility is that intra-institutional rivalries prevented Detachment 88 from taking a lead role earlier, leaving Aceh’s less capable cops in charge. If that is indeed the case, it is a sign of serious new problems in Indonesia’s counterterrorism effort.
The big question now, though, is this: who are the those guys, and what do they represent? So far, police and outside experts have not identified any of the named casualties or detainees as previously affiliated with an existing violent Salafist group. The most likely possibility, as President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) suggested Friday in his first public statement on the matter, is that this is a new network (SBY used the term “terrorist group,” but that seems premature based on the evidence currently publicly available). Violent Salafism in Indonesia has always been characterized by loose associations of geographically diffuse radicals, a structure which has frequently led to the creation of spin-off groups, such as Indonesia Islamic State, Komando Jihad, Jemaah Islamiyah, and Noordin’s network.
Perhaps those in the Aceh camp were merely inspired by Noordin’s efforts, or just loosely connected to those in his orbit. On Saturday, a blog post appeared with a statement from a group calling itself “Al-Qaida Indonesia Serambi Mekkah,” which translates to Indonesian al-Qaida on the Verandah of Mecca– “Verandah of Mecca” being a poetic name for Aceh. The name and method of announcement recalls the late Noordin’s announcement following his final attack in July last year that he was leading a new group, al-Qaida Indonesia. (Though Noordin probably received financing from the Arabian peninsula for last year’s attack, it is unclear whether he received money or an official franchise from al-Qaida Core, as have previous regional affiliates such as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, al-Qaida in Iraq, and al-Qaida in the Horn of Africa East Africa. His group was likely inspired, but neither endorsed nor supported, by al-Qaida Core).
The good news is that if this indeed a new group, they do not appear to have been particularly smart or successful. For all the reasons I outlined two weeks ago, Aceh is a poor candidate for a safe haven. The fact that this group was able to set up there does not disprove that assertion. In fact, news that their operations were quickly disrupted is a strong argument for it.