Jihad Comes to Indonesia
MARSHALL, PAUL
Jihad Comes to Indonesia Bin Laden's allies attempt a hostile takeover. BY PAUL MARSHALL THE ROAD BETWEEN Poso and Tentena on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi runs past burned-out homes,...
...In the last two years it has slaughtered thousands...
...The checkpoints are the work of the Laskar Jihad militia...
...Using tales of Christian attacks on Muslims, some of them true, the group recruited youths in Java, its headquarters...
...There are many reports of Pakistanis and Arabs fighting with Laskar Jihad...
...Its Islamists have always been highly restrictive, out of step with the easygoing ways in the rest of the country, and have fought for independence in order to create a pure Islamic state along the lines of Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan...
...What does all this mean for America's war on terrorism...
...The Jihad then turned its attention to the neighboring island of Sulawesi, where there had been similar violence...
...Its goal is to kill, convert, or drive out all nonMuslims, mainly Christians, from Paul Marshall is senior fellow at Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom, in Washington, D.C., where he edits a global survey, Religious Freedom in the World...
...It obliges us to undercut and marginalize the ideology that breeds these enemies, and to support those people and movements that also resist them...
...The worst carnage came in the Maluku islands, some 1,400 kilometers northeast of Indonesia's capital, Jakarta...
...In the 1970s, the Indonesian government began a "transmigration" program to move people from the overcrowded central islands, mainly Java, to these less populated regions...
...There is an equally strong case for shoring up the friends of democracy and freedom in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, and so sending a signal of hope to democratic forces in the rest of the Islamic world...
...If the Laskar Jihads and Darul Islams flourish, then anti-American terrorism will flourish as well...
...Christians have been dragged out of cars and buses and summarily shot...
...The transmigration effort fueled ethnic and religious tension...
...In the last two years in Maluku there have been 9,000 killed and half a million refugees...
...Church burnings were one or two a year before 1995, but the figure has escalated to hundreds a year...
...If you want to go from Europe or the Middle East to East Asia, you must either go through Indonesian waters or take a 6,000-mile detour into the Pacific and back through the Philippines...
...It engages us against an ideological movement that recruits across international borders and whose political ambitions are worldwide...
...The Jihad swept through Maluku, burning homes and churches, and killing and driving out Christians, as well as the few Hindus and Buddhists...
...Terrifying anywhere, these trends are especially ominous in Indonesia...
...Over Christmas 2000, churches were bombed in 18 cities including Jakarta, killing 40 and wounding hundreds...
...It arrived in the country starting in the thirteenth century, brought by merchants, not conquerors...
...it takes a certain perverse genius to be impeached 591-0 and removed from office, as he was on July 23, 2001...
...Its moderate Sufi style took hold in a largely Hindu culture adept at absorbing and taking the edge off incoming religions...
...This past October, as part of its program to implement its version of Islamic law, the local government in Aceh Singkil district ordered the destruction of churches and forbade Christians to practice religion in their own homes...
...There is a strong case now for engaging, training, and reforming that military, and pressuring Indonesia's recalcitrant politicians to use it well...
...Religious tensions have steadily worsened throughout the country in recent years...
...This religious violence has continued...
...Laskar Jihad's head, Jaffar Umar Thalib, fought alongside bin Laden in Afghanistan...
...Locals feared becoming minorities in their own areas and believed that newcomers were getting government preferences, including the best jobs...
...Indonesia should be allowed to benefit from it...
...The Strait of Malacca, next to Aceh, is the world's busiest shipping lane...
...In the first week of December 2001, government security forces finally arrived, and there is now a measure of peace...
...During Indonesia's economic collapse in the 1997 Asian financial crisis, there was an eruption of violence, much of it directed against ethnic Chinese, the predominant merchant class and a frequent scapegoat in troubled times...
...Abdurraham Wahid once epitomized this tolerance...
...Before entering politics, he was head of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), a village-based educational and social network with up to 40 million members, making it the largest Muslim organization in the world...
...BY PAUL MARSHALL THE ROAD BETWEEN Poso and Tentena on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi runs past burned-out homes, stores, and churches, and is blocked by checkpoints adorned with pictures of Osama bin Laden...
...Indonesia also borders China (according to that country's government maps of the South China Sea...
...As head of NU, he said that his favorite novel was Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev, and could explain why...
...Most Indonesian Chinese are Christians, and there was a strong religious element to the attacks, with many non-Chinese as well as Chinese churches torched...
...Eventually there was violence...
...The United States broke off military ties with Indonesia in 1998 because of its army's brutality in suppressing the independence of East Timor...
...This Christmas, the government has deployed 5,000 people in Jakarta alone to head off further violence...
...Other connections are now apparent...
...The war on terrorism is unique, yet it has certain parallels with the Cold War...
...Intelligence officials say that these cadres had gone to three training camps, one in Java, one in Maluku, and one in Aceh...
...The defense appropriations bill passed by Congress on December 20 allows funding for counterterrorism training for armies in Southeast Asia...
...He sent NU members to protect churches under attack by radicals...
...Some have signs proclaiming him "our leader...
...Despite the country's myriad divisions and problems, Indonesian Islam has historically been tolerant...
...There are other radical Islamic groups in Indonesia...
...With the arrival of the Jihad forces, what had previously been religious clashes, with dead on both sides, became one-sided religious cleansing and slaughter...
...A member of OPEC, Indonesia controls most of the sea routes to Asia...
...It has also forcibly converted other thousands to Islam, and then circumcised them, men and women, sometimes with scissors...
...They set up roadblocks, put up bin Laden posters, and, using armored bulldozers, automatic rifles, and the occasional rocket launcher, isolated and surrounded 60,000 Christians in the Poso area, threatening to finish them off before Christmas...
...The government stood passively by until early 2001, when the arrival of government special forces brought some order, though sporadic bombings, burnings, and massacres continue...
...In addition to its economic motives, the government hoped to make Islam the majority religion in all parts of the country, and so dampen separatist sentiment...
...In 1998, an argument between a Muslim and a Christian over bus fare led to pushing and shoving, then riots, then full-scale religious war...
...Well, shielding people from being slaughtered or mutilated for their religion is a worthy goal in itself...
...In July 2001, the Indonesian legislature gave the province more autonomy and allowed it to institute Muslim courts and sharia...
...Indonesia is about 85 percent Muslim, but many parts of the east have Christian majorities and are sparsely populated...
...Still, many in Maluku thought peace was still possible, and Muslim and Christian leaders jointly called for reconciliation...
...But even for hard-nosed realists, there are other good reasons to be involved in Indonesia...
...But there are fears that the Jihad will move into northern Sulawesi, and kill again until someday government forces catch up with them...
...The Indonesian government long denied any link between Laskar Jihad and al Qaeda, but on December 11, the head of Indonesian intelligence, Abdullah Hendropriyono, finally agreed with his American counterparts that the two were linked...
...An Islamist or fragmented Indonesia would have dramatic repercussions for the politics of Asia and the world and would present a national security nightmare for the United States...
...But he had been a great religious leader...
...In the next few months, more arrived, broadcasting their goal of driving out all Christians and instituting sharia law...
...In July 2001, 750 jihadists arrived, after notifying the local governor of their coming...
...The Indonesian army has repressed them in a decades-long brutal war...
...After Indonesia's first truly democratic elections in 1998, the new president, Abdurraham Wahid, sought to end the Acehnese rebellion by reining in the army and meeting some of the militants' demands...
...Some areas, such as Maluku and Irian Jaya, have had independence movements...
...At the very least, Indonesia's travails highlight the fact that we are in a global struggle...
...The province of Aceh, at the northernmost tip of Sumatra, has long been hospitable to militant Muslims...
...In full view of Indonesian security forces, it outfitted its recruits with white uniforms, gave them military training and automatic weapons, and shipped off thousands to the east...
...Similar ties are apparent with other growing radical groups, including Darul Islam, in Java, which has been targeting Americans, and boasts of sending 200-300 people a year to bin Laden for training and indoctrination...
...When Spanish police cracked an al Qaeda cell in Madrid last month, they reported that the cell had sent hundreds of militants to Indonesia for military training...
...Our military cannot fight everywhere, but there is room to encourage and aid countries fighting their own Islamic radicals...
...Muslim and Christian villagers often helped each other build mosques and churches...
...Islamic militias stop vehicles and check identity papers...
...These hopes were dashed by Laskar Jihad's intervention in mid-2000...
...Some clues as to how this openness has been undercut may be found half a world away, in Spain...
...His denunciations of Islamist violence were full and frank, with no ifs, ands, or buts...
...The order allowed five small church buildings to remain "as a sign of Islamic tolerance...
...Indonesia's eastern islands and to implement Islamic sharia law throughout this sprawling and populous country...
...It requires us to fight against those who fight against us...
...Wahid proved a lousy politician...
Vol. 7 • December 2001 • No. 16
