JEMAAH ISLAMIYAH

NEXT GENERATION RADICALS IN INDONESIA

Jacob Zenn

Asia Times, June 12, 2013

JAKARTA - Driven by strong exports and buoyant domestic markets, Indonesia is projected to be among the world's top 10 economies by 2025. While the future looks bright for Southeast Asia's largest economy, a growing tide of religious intolerance threatens to undermine those gains. Where officials have in the past attributed religious violence and terrorism to foreign influenced groups, now the threats to stability are more clearly homegrown.

In the late 1990s and 2000s Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) was the main threat in Indonesia. The radical group attacked foreign tourists in Bali in 2002 and 2005, the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004, the J W Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003 and 2009, and the Ritz Carlton hotel in the capital city in 2009.

JI was largely considered a Malaysian import to Indonesia, with most of the extremist group's key members having fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s or in the 1990s with the Taliban again its domestic rival the Northern Alliance. Most of JI's key members are now either in prison or have been killed by Indonesia's elite counter-terrorism force, Detachment 88 (or Densus 88).

In November 2012, one of JI's Indonesian-born and bred members, the Poso native Upik Lawanga (aka Taufiq Buraga), was captured trying to cross from East Kalimantan, Indonesia to Sabah, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. Lawanga was allegedly involved in the beheading of three Christian students in Poso, church bombings in nearby Palu in 2005, the two hotel bombings in Jakarta in 2009, and suicide bombings at a mosque in a police compound in Cirebon and a church in Solo in 2011.

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THE NAXALITE INSURGENCY IN INDIA

HOW MUCH OF INDIA IS MAOIST-AFFECTED?

Sushant Singh

Midday, November 8, 2011

How often have you heard that one-third of India is gripped with Naxals, or Maoists, or LWE-afflicted (LWE stands for Left Wing Extremism in government parlance)? One-third! Is it one-third area, or one-third population, or one-third districts, or one-third of India's states?

One-third of India actually creates an impression that one-third of India's geographical area -- and thus one-third of India's population -- is under the grip of Maoists. That sounds really horrible. Precisely why it is used by those who wish to portray India in poor light internationally.Where does this figure of one-third come from? India has a total of 640 districts and The Economist magazine (July 22nd, 2010) suggested that 200 of them are affected by Naxal insurgency. This brings us an approximate figure of one-third. International wire agency AFP (May 15, 2010) claimed that 20 of India's 28 states are affected by Naxalite conflict. By that yardstick, 70 percent of India is threatened by Maoists. Other media reports talk of a 'Red Corridor', which covers 40 percent of India's geographical area. 33, 40 or 70 percent -- take your pick.

What are the official figures for LWE-affected areas? There is no single official figure for LWE-affected districts released by the Government of India. In its annual report for the year 2010-11, Home Ministry doesn't mention the expanse threatened by the Maoists. However, there are some official data points which can help us assess the real extent of the Maoist challenge.

The first among these is the Integrated Action Plan (IAP), devised by the Planning Commission, which has provided Rs 65 crore directly in the hands of district officials for accelerated development works. Initially proposed for 35 Maoist-affected districts, political jockeying resulted in a plan for 60 districts, all of which are not Maoist affected. The plan has thus been christened as 'IAP for Selected Tribal and Backward Districts', and is not an accurate indicator of the expanse over which the Maoists hold sway.
Next is the list of SRE (Security Related Expenditure) districts. These are 83 districts in nine states where all the expenses incurred on security in these districts are reimbursed by the union Home Ministry. These districts, where incidents of Maoist violence are more than 20 per cent of all the incidents in that district, are identified after a survey.

Notwithstanding that precondition, full reimbursement by the centre has led to a clamour from all states for including more districts in the SRE list. While politics may eventually lead to an expansion of this list, it currently seems to be the best estimate of the number of districts affected by Maoist insurgency.

(...) [artículo aquí]

THE US AND CHINA AFTER 9/11

UNCLE SAM’S DECLINE AND RISE OF CHINA

Indrani Bagchi

The Times of India, September 11, 2011

The most enduring images of what is known as the "9/11 decade" are of suicide bombings, Predators, dead al-Qaeda leaders and new al-Qaeda leaders. But did we miss another, equally powerful image? Yes, that of China, growing unhindered and becoming a superpower in its own right, when the US was busy fighting its wars?

Ten years since 9/11, the jury is still out on whether the US is winning the war against al-Qaida. But there is no doubt that in the past decade the world has found a new fulcrum. As Lionel Barber wrote in the 'FT' , the three most important words in the last decade was not "war on terror" but "made in China" . Derek Scissors, economist at conservative think tank, Heritage Foundation says, "The US met the narrow security challenge of 9/11 but meeting any security challenge has an economic component. The US lacked the political courage to pay the economic price, weakening America's global position and making China a more serious challenger than it otherwise would be in 2011." The year 2001 was the zenith of America's unipolar status. Ten years later, the world is talking about Pax Sinica. After the 9/11 attacks, the US decided to go after the guys who planned and executed the terror plot. But instead of hot pursuit , US decided to go after Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which was a war of "choice" . But despite pouring billions into its war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, al-Qaida and Taliban remain a potent threat to the US and a drain on an imploding US economy.

All this while, China stayed in the background. They did not have to spend murderous amounts of money, or send thousands of soldiers to die in a war where their main ally was also their main enemy. China retained its "all weather " friendship with Pakistan - on the cheap. China never spent the kind of money America did in Pakistan, yet its influence with Islamabad was disproportionately high

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INDIA’S FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC THREATS

MUMBAI TERROR ATTACK UNDERSCORES INDIA'S VULNERABILITY

Indo-Asian News Service

Hindustan Times, July 16, 2011

Even before the country could ascertain the implications of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's much-awaited cabinet reshuffle, especially since it is supposedly the last major one before the next general election, the Mumbai blasts reminded it yet again of its dangerous neighbourhood and volatile domestic scene.

For the present, the terrorist outrage appears to be the handiwork of an indigenous group, probably the Indian Mujahideen. But the curious coincidence of these attacks taking place on the 13th and 26th of a month points to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba's hand.

Before the multiple explosions in Mumbai on Sep 13, the German bakery in Pune was a terrorist target on Feb 13, 2010, before which occurred the horrendous Mumbai massacres of the Pakistani suicide bombers on Nov 26, 2008. The year 2008 was one of the worst for India since, besides the Mumbai carnage, there were six blasts in New Delhi on Sep 13 of that year, in which 26 people were killed.

Two months earlier, on July 26, 2008, there were as many as 20 explosions in Ahmedabad, killing 57, while 68 were killed in Jaipur on May 13. There were other outrages, too, in addition to these ones on various days of the month, but the choice of the 13th this time is indicative of a particular group.

The fact, however, that India has experienced no more than two major terrorist attacks in the nearly three years after 26/11 is a sign that the security situation has improved since the days of the "spectacularly inept" Shivraj Patil, to use the Wikileaks quote about the former home minister. There were minor ones, of course, as in Varanasi on Dec 7, 2010, in which two people were killed.

(...) [artículo aquí]

INDIA’S COUNTER-TERROR POLICY

POOR INTELLIGENCE KEEPS INDIA VULNERABLE: ANALYSTS

The Economic Times, July 14, 2011

NEW DELHI: India will remain a soft target for militant attacks until it enforces a radical shift in counter-terror policy that prioritises effective intelligence-gathering, analysts said Thursday.

Despite Home Minister P. Chidambaram's insistence that Wednesday's serial bomb blasts in Mumbai could not be blamed on any intelligence failure, experts said India's internal security apparatus remained woefully inadequate.

The three explosions in the country's commercial capital left 17 dead and 131 injured, dozens of them seriously.

Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute of Conflict Management in New Delhi, said new security measures introduced after the 2008 Mumbai attacks had only addressed &quota fraction" of the core weaknesses in policing and grassroots information gathering.

“Obviously, you cannot have a 100 percent guarantee against a terror attack, but that said, we have tremendous infirmities in terms of security,” Sahni told AFP.

“Our system does not respond on a war footing to terrorism, it acts like a confused bureaucracy,” he said, adding that India's police force was largely &quotincompetent" with little or no forensic capability or intelligence training.

(...) [artículo aquí]

PUNE BLAST: ONE OF MANY TO COME?

Indrajit Basu

Asia Times, February 17, 2010

KOLKATA - Ever since the devastating terror attack on Mumbai by a group of militants in November 2008, India has been living in fear of more. Few thought it would take until February 2010 for the next strike - on Saturday a bomb ripped through a German bakery in the western Indian city of Pune, killing 10 people and injuring more than 60.

Experts fear the attack signals the beginning of a new wave. "I am more astonished by the fact that we did not have an attack in 2009. Given that India remains as vulnerable today as it was on 26/11, we were expecting a serious attack in 2009 as well," said Ajai Sahni, the founder-director of the Delhi-based Institute of Conflict Management, a noted internal security think-tank.

"It was an attack on a soft target and there will be many more to come and the amazing thing is not that a local eatery was attacked; the amazing thing is that there are a dozen other soft targets that have not been attacked yet."

Sahni added that the state of Indian internal security is "deplorable". He said that while the blast in Pune had some of the tell-tale signs of a terror attack - targeting foreigners as well as Indians - that it was different. For one, he said, it was directed solely at a soft target, and it did not have a suicide element - a bomb was left in a backpack.

(...) [artículo aquí]