Indonesia attack telling sign of ISIS ambitions

The gun and suicide bomb attacks that tore through Jakarta’s bustling shopping district on Thursday, killing two people, including a Canadian, were a harsh reminder of the ever present danger of terrorism, but a minor operation compared with previous attacks in Indonesia that have taken many more lives.

They are also a dark foreshadowing of the Islamic State group’s ambitions in Southeast Asia, threatening the country that is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, as well as its neighbours in the region.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks, which like the recent assaults on Paris and Istanbul, struck at targets in heavily populated areas.

“Islamic State fighters carried out an armed attack this morning targeting foreign nationals and the security forces charged with protecting them in the Indonesian capital,” said a news agency associated with the group.

In the last six months, terrorist plans have escalated in Indonesia, Sidney Jones of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict told the New York Times. “It’s a desire to prove that jihadi groups are still alive and well” and are “committed to carrying out the ISIS agenda.”

The Jakarta attack included multiple gunshots and suicide bombings that struck at a police post as well as outside a popular Starbucks café, and ended in a 15-minute gun battle with police. By the end of the rampage, five assailants were dead.

Jakarta’s police chief, Tito Karnavian, told reporters that IS was “definitely” behind the attack, citing Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian believed to operate from the its headquarters of Raqqa in Syria, as its likely mastermind.

He is reportedly a leader of the Katibah Nusantara, a Malay-based combat unit that helped to capture Kurdish-held territory in Syria last spring.

As Islamic State jihadists are increasingly beleaguered in the Middle East, one of the most telling signs that they aim to plant their flag in Southeast Asia is the growing influence of Katibah Nusantara.

In a recent report, political violence analyst Jasminder Singh, of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, warned that the battle-hardened group could “gain importance in IS’s strategic goals of establishing a worldwide caliphate,” by mobilizing returning fighters for attacks in Southeast Asia.

It’s unlikely they could gain ground in Indonesia, says Prashanth Parameswaran, a writer on Southeast Asian security and associate editor of the Diplomat magazine for the Asia Pacific Region.

“If they’re trying to establish a branch of the caliphate in Indonesia they would need a foothold rather than just carrying out attacks,” he says.

“They would have to take territory to create a safe haven from which they could mount operations, situate training camps and potentially lure recruits from neighbouring countries.”

Indonesia has well-equipped and efficient security forces and has been vigorous in rooting out militant groups over the past decade, even as it evolved from authoritarianism to democracy. Most recently, it broke up networks planning attacks in December, with the help of intelligence from Australia, Singapore and the FBI.

More worrying than an IS base, Parameswaran says, is the prospect of its estimated 2,000 supporters inside Indonesia taking direction from countrymen in Syria who could plan deadly Paris-style attacks. Up to 700 Indonesians are believed to be fighting for IS in the Middle East.

A terrorist beachhead in the southern Philippines could also be a rallying point for Islamic State to plan attacks in the region, he adds. “There is a network of insurgent groups there, and the Philippine military doesn’t have strong control.” Indonesian sympathizers could be drawn there more easily than to Syria.

After Indonesia broke up a jihadi training camp in Sumatra in 2010, says the International Crisis Group, “police operations inspired a new wave of activity motivated by desire for revenge.” A new generation of sympathizers gravitated to other jihadist groups, the latest of which is Islamic State.

And it said, in spite of the successes of the crackdowns, “virtually no effective programs are in place to address the environment in which jihadi ideology continues to flourish.”

Indonesia, a religiously diverse society that has a tradition of tolerance and a largely moderate Muslim population, knows what is at stake if major terrorist attacks rebound.

In 2002, bombings on the resort island of Bali killed more than 200 people, most of them tourists. In 2009, militants attacked the highend Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta with suicide bombs, killing seven people and injuring more than 50.

In spite of that, says London-based Control Risks, “a country that witnessed multiple terror attacks and still reeling from economic shocks saw its per capita income increase four-fold and became a darling of private equity investors for its burgeoning middle class.”

This week that confidence was once again shaken.