Terrorism in Indonesia: Noordin’s Networks
Jakarta/Brussels |
5 May 2005
Police are closing in on Noordin Mohamed Top, South East Asia’s most wanted terrorist, but the problem of his support structure must still be tackled.
Terrorism in Indonesia: Noordin’s Networks,* the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines how Noordin has used personal networks, based around an inner circle of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) members but gradually expanding beyond them, to build a following committed to al-Qaeda style attacks – even though many in JI disapproved.
“Noordin may think of himself as JI, but since the 2003 Marriott bombing, he has been running his own show that is seen as a deviant splinter by many in the JI mainstream,” says Sidney Jones, Crisis Group’s South East Asia Project Director in Jakarta.
A dramatic raid on 29 April in Wonosobo, Central Java, was a major success for the Indonesian police. Two men killed in that raid, Baharudin Soleh alias Abdul Hadi and Gempur Budi Angkoro alias Jabir, had been Noordin’s trusted confidantes and recruiters. Noordin had given Abdul Hadi the task of “ripening” the suicide bomber for the Australian embassy bombing in September 2004, and he may have had the same job before the second Bali bombings in October 2005. Jabir, a cousin of Fathurrahman al-Ghozi, killed in the Philippines in 2003, had been in effect Noordin’s chief of staff.
“Noordin has shown remarkable determination and capacity to plan operations even as he loses his closest colleagues to police dragnets and remains the target of Indonesia’s biggest ever manhunt,” Jones says. “But the loss of these two men has to be a huge blow.”
The network of JI schools, administrative structures, family and business contacts remains, and Crisis Group says that Noordin was trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to tap into networks of other organisations, including the old insurgency Darul Islam and the Islamic charity KOMPAK. Both would have given him access to additional funds and fighters, with experience in two areas of communal conflict in Indonesia, Ambon and Poso, as well as Mindanao.
“For four years, Noordin has worked the jihadist networks to build a following of diehard loyalists, and those same networks may be available to others,” says Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia program director.