International Crisis Group

Indonesian anti-terror squad killings prompt revenge attacks | Radio Australia

Indonesia’s anti-terror squad Detachment 88 is being warned that it’s encouraging revenge attacks by shooting terrorist suspects.

The crack squad was trained and funded by Australia and other allies.

Since 2002, police from the squad and other officers have shot dead 90 terrorist suspects.

Now the International Crisis Group’s terrorism expert Dr Sidney Jones says the Squad’s methods are prompting counter attacks.

FULL TRANSCRIPT (Radio Australia)

Photo: Ben Hammersley/Flickr

Terrorism: myths and facts

Lecture delivered at Parahyangan Catholic University in Bandung, Indonesia

By Sidney Jones, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Senior Adviser

Terrorism is a very difficult and emotional subject, but it is one that deserves serious study. The word suggests an extraordinary crime with massive casualties of innocent people, with the iconic image now being the attack on the World Trade Center in New York. The word “terrorist” is also loaded — it conjures up images of ruthless killers, like Anders Breivik, the Norwegian gunman who killed 77 young political activists in 2011.

But it’s much more complicated than that. Not all terrorism involves large numbers of deaths: in 2011 in Indonesia, for example, we had eight separate terrorist incidents and a total death toll of five, including two bombers who killed only themselves. Not all crimes are instantly recognizable as terrorism. Suicide bombings have become the classic terrorist crime, but what about the robbery of an ATM or the shooting of a policeman? They might be terrorism, but they can also be acts of rebellion or ordinary crimes, depending on the circumstances and who was involved. Drawing those lines is not always easy. The problem gets even more complicated when we try and understand the causes of terrorism. Why in one village is one young man tempted to join an extremist network while his neighbor, of the exact same age, education, religious training and economic background, is not?

FULL TEXT (Crisis Group)

Photo: Dmitry Valberg/Flickr

French-Led Strikes on Mali Islamists Threaten Revenge Attacks | Bloomberg

By Franz Wild & Pauline Bax

French and West African military intervention in Mali runs the risk of provoking revenge attacks by Islamic militants, spreading instability in a region rich in gold, uranium and cocoa, said analysts from Dakar to London.

“When you send troops to the north of Mali there is the possibility of reprisals in terms of terrorist attacks,” Gilles Yabi, the West Africa program director of Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said today in an interview from the Senegalese capital, Dakar. “These countries don’t have the level of security and protection that western countries have. France itself is taking a risk, in terms of the hostages and in terms of terrorist attacks.”

FULL ARTICLE (Bloomberg)

Photo: Magharebia/Flickr 

Two killed in Bahrain ‘terrorist’ explosions, authorities say | Los Angeles Times

By Emily Alpert

Two foreigners were killed and a third injured when a series of explosions rocked Bahrain, government officials said Monday, a new eruption of violence that authorities labeled as terrorist acts bent on destabilizing the divided country.

The three men, all Asians, were victims of homemade bombs, one man dying after kicking a device and another killed near a movie theater, Bahraini police told state media.

The third man, a cleaner, was reported to be in serious condition. Like many Gulf countries, Bahrain brings in a large number of foreign laborers from Asia, including many workers from Pakistan and elsewhere in South Asia.

FULL ARTICLE (Los Angeles Times)

Photo: Zeep van der Kist/Flickr

INDONESIAN TERRORISTS ARRESTED PLANNING ASSAULT ON US EMBASSY | Breitbart

By William Bigelow 

The murderous attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi looks like the trigger mechanism for other Islamist assaults on American diplomatic posts –and al Qaeda may be involved.  Over the weekend, 11 suspected Islamist terrorists planning an assault not only on the US Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, but also other American sites in Indonesia, were arrested before they could mount the attack.

Besides the US Embassy, the head office of American mining company Freeport McMoRan, the US consulate-general in the city of Surabaya in eastern Java, and a police mobile brigade headquarters in Central Java were targeted.

FULL ARTICLE (Breitbart)

Photo: Michael J. Lowe/Wikimedia Commons 

Emerging peace deal in Philippines could turn rebel lairs into hostile ground for terrorists | AP via Fox News

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Hunted by U.S.-backed Filipino troops in 2005, Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani and other al-Qaida-linked militants sought refuge in the mountainous stronghold of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest Muslim rebel group in the southern Philippines.

But the rebels turned them away, afraid that harboring extremists would scuttle their peace talks with the government. The following year, Janjalani — among the most-wanted terrorist suspects in Southeast Asia — was killed by troops in another jungle area.

FULL ARTICLE (Fox News)

Photo: Keith Bacongco/Flickr

Bali bombings: 10 years later, progress and some bumps ahead | The Christian Science Monitor 

By Sara Schonhardt

A decade after bombs ripped apart two nightclubs in Bali, killing 202 people including 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians and seven Americans, the terrorist organization responsible for those blasts looks weak and fractured. Intelligence warnings that another attack might take place during anniversary commemorations led police to step up security, but by Friday morning they were calling the threat, “not significant.” 

To honor the victims of the 2002 bombings, hundreds of people, including Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, turned out for an early-morning ceremony. Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa gave a speech calling the attack, “nothing less than an assault on humanity,” and said Indonesia remained committed to strengthening “the voice of moderation … and fighting extremism and intolerance in all its forms.”

FULL ARTICLE (The Christian Science Monitor)

Photo: David Stanley/Flickr

A convenient recruiting pool | The Jakarta Post

Hilman Djaja Kusumah was a drug dealer. The detainee, 36, who was serving a seven-year term in Kerobokan prison, Bali for possession of marijuana in 2003, became a convert to a holy cause.

He was tasked to clean the prison mosque and open the cells for inmates ahead of Friday prayers. Eventually he looked up to the bombers who were detained there — Amrozi, his brother Mukhlas, and his friend Imam Samudra, who were all later executed.

FULL ARTICLE (The Jakarta Post)

Photo: Jeroen Mirck/Flickr