ON GUARD AGAINST TERROR
As ISIS regroups in Iraq and Syria, authorities are concerned about fighters who have drifted back to their home countries in Southeast Asia. By Erich Parpart in Bangkok and Ismira Lutfia Tisnadibrata in Jakarta
When President Donald Trump ordered American troops to withdraw last October from northeastern Syria, critics said the decision would play into the hands of terrorists, with ramifications beyond the Middle East.
The withdrawal paved the way for Turkey to attack US-allied Kurdish forces, which had been guarding Islamic State (ISIS) prisoners in the area. As the Kurds redeployed their troops, ISIS was poised to exploit the chaos, with some prisoners possibly escaping to Southeast Asia and elsewhere.
The US Defense Intelligence Agency warned that “ISIS will probably be able to more freely build clandestine networks and will attempt to free ISIS members detained in … prisons and family members living in internally displaced persons camps”.
The death that same month of the terror group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, also put authorities in Indonesia and Malaysia on alert for possible retaliatory attacks, and an influx of ISIS loyalists into the Philippines was also feared.
So far this does not appear to have happened on a large scale. But there are many dimensions to the challenge, especially for Indonesia, which is still debating how to repatriate and deradicalise ISIS combatants and their families now stranded in northern Syria.
Indonesia is also seen as the Southeast Asian country most likely to be chosen as a regional ISIS base if the group decides to pursue a new strategy.
“We need to discuss how to repatriate them, and whether they could be a danger if we do that,” Chief Security Minister Mahfud MD said last month in Jakarta.
The United Nations, meanwhile, warned last week that ISIS has begun to reassert itself in Iraq and Syria under a new leader, said to be Amir Muhammad Said Abdal Rahman al-Mawla, Baghdadi’s deputy.
The militants have been “mounting increasingly bold insurgent attacks, calling and planning for the breakout of fighters in detention facilities and exploiting weaknesses in the security environment of both countries”, a report by the UN Monitoring Team read.
These developments have put security officials in Southeast Asia on high alert. Given the presence of militant Muslim separatist groups in the Philippines and Thailand, along with large Muslim populations in Indonesia and Malaysia, Southeast Asia is always pointed to as the next possible major destination for ISIS.
MARAWI AFTERMATH
In the Philippines, the painfully slow reconstruction of Marawi, devastated during a five-month siege by the ISIS-inspired Maute Group in 2017, has raised concern that the city could become a hotbed for ISIS ideology and recruitment.
The Philippine army declared an end to the siege of Marawi on Oct 23, 2017. The clashes killed 924 fighters from the Maute and Abu Sayyaf groups, 168 government troops and a conservative estimate of 114 civilians.
Two and a half years on, most of the civilians who left their devastated homes are still living in tent camps on the outskirts of the city.
“We have some elements of ISIS that are still roaming around Mindanao and these members also have close ties with ISIS in Indonesia,” Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar told Asia Focus.
He pointed to the fact that the Philippine army identified the suicide bombers who attacked a Catholic cathedral in Jolo, killing 23 people and wounding 100 others in January 2019, were Indonesians. Another suicide attack by two youths killed eight people in June, and a woman dies after prematurely detonating a bomb near an army detachment in September. The attackers included Indonesians, Filipinos and a Moroccan.
In November, soldiers in the southern Philippines foiled what the army called an attempted suicide bombing in an urban area linked to Abu Sayyaf. This time, two of the suspect terrorists were Egyptian nationals. It would have been the fifth attempted suicide bombing in the southern Philippines in less than two years.
“If they can slip into the Philippines then how can we be sure that these foreign terrorist fighters are not working together? This is a universal problem that our countries are facing and we should solve it together,” Mr Andanar said. “We have the common Sulawesi Sea and we (Philippines and Indonesia) should keep it safe from international terrorists together.”
The Philippine government is accelerating efforts to rebuild Marawi after two years of clearing explosives, land mines and ruins. Government houses are now being built to help people in the country’s poorest region get back on their feet.
However, Nasir Abas, a former Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) leader who established the Mindanao training camp called Camp Hudaibiyah, told the South China Morning Post in November that Mindanao is the only place ISIS could set up a wilayat, or province, as the island is awash with weapons, with porous borders and large swathes of poorly governed territory.
“Mindanao is the closest jihad zone for Malaysians and Indonesians and the most economically viable for them to travel to,” Mr Abas told the newspaper.
In Thailand, the separatist movement that has been waging a low-intensity war against central government authorities since 2004 is seen by some as another possible hotbed for ISIS ideology to take hold. They draw parallels with the Philippines and the sense of Muslim disenfranchisement that prevails.
However, the new head of the Thai dialogue team in the southern peace talks, Gen Wanlop Rugsanaoh, said in November that he has seen no such elements in the country’s three southernmost provinces.
“Southeast Asia is one of the locations that they could relocate to and Thailand has been monitoring this, but there is nothing here in the country so far,” he said. “There are some ISIS movements in neighbouring countries, as has been reported, and Asean is already working to address the common threat from international terrorists.”
The International Crisis Group, in a 2017 report, also notes some other unique characteristics of the local environment: “Thailand’s Malay-Muslim society is not a sympathetic milieu for transnational jihadism; the country’s Muslim religious leaders, both traditionalists and reformists, overwhelmingly reject the Salafi-jihadist ideology espoused by ISIS and al-Qaeda. To be sure, this diminishes but does not remove the risk of some Malay Muslims turning to jihadism.”
Nathan Sales, the US State Department’s top counterterrorism official, said in November that militants were not heading to Southeast Asia “in droves” following the fall of the caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
However, he did warn that terrorist tactics from the Middle East, including suicide bombings, were being exported to Southeast Asia via local chapters, or inspiring copycat behaviour from regional groups.
“Suicide bombing is not something that we’ve seen in … Southeast Asia until very, very recently, and we are concerned about groups like ISIS and sympathisers emulating what they see in places like Syria and Afghanistan,” he said.
INDONESIA’S HEADACHE
In Jakarta, meanwhile, the debate continues about how best to deal with the Indonesians who have joined ISIS in Syria.
Mahfud said that 187 Indonesians, of whom 31 are men and the rest women and children, require repatriation since they are now stranded in camps and prisons in the northern part of Syria.
Of special concern, he said, are “those who went there but did not join ISIS. We need to talk about how to deradicalise them”.
All told, he said, there are roughly 600 Indonesians that the government has identified as foreign terrorist fighters in various countries abroad. He did not name the countries.
An Indonesian official who has been part of repatriating more than a dozen Indonesians from Syria told Asia Focus that there ware still about 200 Indonesians, without specifying if the number included just adult male combatants, or combatants with their wives and
Mindanao is the closest jihad zone for Malaysians and Indonesians and the most economically viable for them to travel to NASIR ABAS
Former Jemaah Islamiyah leader
children, who are now stranded in a “no man’s land” between Turkey and Syria.
In July last year, the government said it would set up a task force to assess the problem.
Mahfud’s predecessor, Wiranto, said at the time that the assessment was expected to set the tone for repatriation policy and what the government should do with them when they are back in Indonesia. He also said that Indonesian men who fought as ISIS combatants would face prosecution under the anti-terrorism law.
The Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (Ipac), in a report published in August 2019, said the need for Indonesia to repatriate its nationals from camps and prisons controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria was becoming more urgent.
If Indonesia wants to ensure that the most vulnerable among its citizens are removed from an atmosphere of increasing intimidation and ideological indoctrination, it needs to begin now to set up programmes in Indonesia, even before deciding on who or how many to take back.
Ipac said the goal should not be reduced to just having former fighters pledge loyalty to the country, but to “increase their willingness to interact with people from other religions and backgrounds”.
Returnees also need to be given a sense of economic and social security during the first year after returning so the experience would a positive one, it added.
But even if deradicalisation takes place, the risk of seeing militants with the potential to carry out attacks remains high, said Al Chaidar, a terrorism analyst from Universitas Malikussaleh in Aceh.
“Many of them, as well as suspects who have been arrested, have rejected taking part in the deradicalisation programme and remain unrepentant, while those who are still on the loose continue to dodge the police and are scheming plots to carry out attacks,” he told Asia
Focus.
Indonesia had a relatively quiet 2019, with only nine terror attacks linked to Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), a militant group affiliated with ISIS. That compared with 19 the year before, said the national police chief, Gen Idham Azis.
The number of police personnel targeted by terror attacks also decreased, with 11 injured and one killed, compared with 15 injured and seven killed in 2018. Arrests of terror suspects dropped to 297 from 395.
While the police are aware that they have been among the main targets, they saw an unprecedented attack in early October when a knife-wielding militant linked to JAD attacked thenchief security minister Wiranto at close range. He was stabbed in the abdomen as he was getting out of his car during a working visit in Banten province. It was believed to be the first militant attack against a high-ranking government official in Indonesia.
The last terror attack in 2019 was a suicide bombing targeting a police station in Medan, North Sumatra on Nov 13, which killed three. Idham said the police have arrested 74 suspects in the case.
Despite the calmer year, analysts said Indonesia could remain a preferred base for ISIS in Southeast Asia along with the Philippines’ restive southern region.
REGIONAL BASE
Al Chaidar said that since the death of Baghdadi, it is believed the new IS leadership prefers Indonesia to the Philippines.
“Some notable IS figures from Indonesia have more influence that their Filipino counterparts,” he said, adding that Abu Sayyaf had already failed to manage Baghdadi’s expectations to establish the southern Philippines as a new base in Asia.
“There could likely be more Indonesian militants in the southern Philippines than in Syria,” he said.
An Indonesian husband and wife were the suicide bombers who attacked the cathedral in Jolo, Sulu in the southern Philippines on Jan 29 last year.
“The involvement of two Indonesian suicide bombers in the Jolo bombings revealed that linkages between extremist movements in both countries have expanded since the 2017 Marawi siege,” the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore said in a report issued last month.
The report said that Southeast Asia needs to guard against regional fighters returning from abroad as well as online radicalisation, while lone wolf attacks remain likely as well.
Terror groups have become more reliant on family ties to plan and carry out attacks, it added.
This reflects a trend in which pro-ISIS parents are likely to indoctrinate their children, while police and top government officials continue to be a major target.
“In Indonesia, the rising number of women arrested for terrorist-related activities and the prospective return of a significant number of nationals from Syria in the near future, also highlights the need for deradicalisation initiatives targeting women and children,” the report said. “These should be differentiated from existing programmes that largely cater to male terrorist offenders and, to some extent, their wives.”