Content area
Full text
SUMMARY The face of extremism in Indonesia has changed dramatically over the past decade. While the security threat from Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and other Salafi-Jihadist groups remains, it has diminished significantly from its heyday in the early 2000s. With many hardline leaders now in prison or dead and current mainstream leaders reluctant to support terror attacks, violence as a means to establish an Islamic state appears to be losing favor in militant circles. New followers continue to be radicalized through a number of channels, but there are also former radicals who are disengaging as they grow disillusioned with movement tactics and leadership, as they develop new relationships, and as their priorities shift. The organized, large-scale bombings have declined, largely in response to a changing security environment. Small-scale attacks and targeted assassinations are still prevalent, but these are often the actions of small splinter groups or unaffiliated individuals. Within JI itself, support for terror attacks on Indonesian soil is increasingly a minority-held view.
The "jihad project" in Indonesia has been losing ground over the past decade. The major jihadist groups, most notably Jemaah Islamiyah, have been decimated by arrests and deaths. The increasing effectiveness of the Indonesian police, the widespread public revulsion at terror attacks, and the imprisonment or death of the key masterminds of major terror attacks such as the Australian Embassy bombing, the first and second Bali bombings, and the 2009 Marriott and Ritz-Carlton bombings have highlighted the costs of continued bombing actions. While Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) had always been divided between those who favored the use of terror tactics and those who believed that violence was permissible only in conflict areas (for example: Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War, or Ambon or Poso during their respective communal conflicts), the consequences of bombings exacerbated these tensions.
Among those who still favor utilizing terror tactics, the current tendency is to eschew major attacks on Western targets in favor of local (such as police, mosques, and churches) and targeted assassinations. Interestingly, many of those individuals lack affiliations with any of the major jihadist groups. Perhaps most interesting, many JI members have become disillusioned by indiscriminate bombings, shortsighted and weak leaders, and reckless new members that lack the robust indoctrination of JI members from years past. As...