October is a month of special concern and tension in both Indonesia and Thailand due to the third anniversary of the Bali explosions of October 12, 2002, and the first anniversary of the terrible tragedy on October 25 last year, in which 78 Muslim youth, taken into custody by the security forces for participating in a big protest demonstration (1,300 protesters) outside the Tak Bai police station in the Narathiwat province of southern Thailand, allegedly died due to suffocation.
The tension and unease have been further aggravated this year due to the fact that the holy fasting period of Ramadan, during which some jihadi terrorist organisations step up their terrorist strikes, coincides with these anniversaries. Apart from the explosions in Bali, allegedly by three suicide bombers, on October 1,2005, in which 20 civilians, including some foreign tourists, were killed, there has been no other major incident so far in Indonesia.
. Despite this, the tension and disquiet in Bali have not subsided due to the apparent failure of the local police to make much headway in their investigation into the recent explosions. No one has so far come forward to identify the three suspected suicide bombers through the help of the photographs of their head and face widely disseminated by the Police.
Since the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) would seem to have been carried by the suicide bombers on backpacks and no car bomb was used, there is no possibility of getting the first clue through the identification of the ownership of the vehicle, as was reportedly done after the earlier Bali explosions of October 2002.
The apparent reluctance of anyone to come forward to identify the suspected suicide bombers could be partly attributed to fear of reprisal in the case of the non-Muslims, who might have met and/or known the suspected bombers and partly to feelings of Islamic solidarity in the case of the Muslims.
The Police too have not been able to identify the suspects through record checks or local enquiries amongst the members of the Muslim and non-Muslim communities. The absence of any clue from the record checks is attributable to the likely fact that the suspected bombers had not come to the adverse notice of the local Police in the past for their association with extremist or terrorist elements.
The absence of any clue from the local enquiries is attributable to the neglect of police-community relations, which is a pre-requisite for effective law and order and crime control and counter-terrorism. The absence of any well-nurtured tradition of police-community relations is coming in the way of citizens' co-operation in counter-terrorism. The problem has been compounded by the existence of a plethora of intelligence and other security agencies, which aggravate the problem of lack of co-ordination.
Indonesian analysts also attribute the lack of progress in the investigation so far to the absence of any significant foreign police assistance in the investigation--particularly from Australia In the Bali explosions of October 2002, there were 202 fatalities, with the foreign tourists constituting the majority of those killed and with the Australian tourists forming the largest single component among the fatalities. This led to considerable Western--particularly Australian--interest in helping the Indonesian investigators.
In the explosions of October 1, 2005, Indonesian civilians constituted the largest number of fatalities. Only four foreign tourists, three of them Australians, were reportedly killed. As a result, one does not see the same active foreign--particularly Australian--role in helping in the investigation.
The investigation so far has been on the assumption that the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which was responsible for the explosions of October 2002, must have been responsible for the latest explosions too, though the Police do not appear to have as yet any concrete evidence in support of this.
While continuing their efforts to have the suspected suicide bombers identified, the Indonesian Police have also been searching frantically for two Malaysian members of the JI--Azahari Husin and Nooruddin Mohamad Top--who have been absconding since 2001 and whose involvement was suspected in the Bali explosions of October,2002. The Police seem to believe that these two absconding terrorists, with known expertise in the fabrication of explosives and in the assembling of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), must have masterminded the explosions of October 1, 2005, too.
A difference between Indian and Indonesian investigators in investigating terrorism-related cases is that whereas Indian investigators keep all possibilities open and avoid starting any investigation with pre-conceived ideas which might direct the investigation in a single direction, Indonesian investigators start the investigation in a single direction with the pre-conceived idea that the JI must have been responsible and that no other organisation could have carried out such an explosion.
Such unidirectional investigation tends to draw attention away from the possibility of other organisations or free-lance jihadis, not necessarily belonging to the JI, having carried out the explosions.
Hindus constitute about 80 per cent of Bali's population. One would have, therefore, expected them to be more helpful to the police in intelligence collection, but this does not appear to be so. Possible fears of reprisals by the jihadi terrorists seem to be preventing them from being co-operative with the police.
In the absence of precise intelligence and any breakthrough in the investigation, the local Police have been detaining a number of persons, without adequate evidence against them, for questioning in connection with the explosions. Many of them had to be subsequently released for want of evidence. This has been adding to the sense of anger in the Muslim community against the Police.
The Indonesian authorities are faced with a dilemma following the refusal of Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, Imam Samudra and Ali Ghufron alias Mukhlas, who have already been sentenced to death for their involvement in the explosions of October 2002, to seek clemency. They seem to be hoping that members of their families would seek clemency on their behalf so that they do not have to have the death sentence implemented. Sections of the local Bali population, angered at the explosions of October 1, 2005, have been demanding that the death sentences should be quickly carried out in order to deter future terrorist strikes.
Made Mangku Pastika, the Inspector-General of the Bali Police, has reportedly warned the Government that speeding up their execution could provoke more terrorist strikes.
The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow, International Terrorism Watch Programme (ITWP), Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and Convenor of its Chennai Chapter. E-mail: [email protected]. Source: South Asia Analysis Group, New Delhi, Paper No. 1589, October 25, 2005. * Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.
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