Al Qaeda's new frontier: Indonesia

The chubby-cheeked Jibril and his colleagues introduced a centralized command structure in the provincial capital of Ternate, delivered money for communications equipment and better weapons, and provided ideological inspiration, according to a Western investigator. By the middle of 2000, the fighters Jibril helped to organize had routed local Christians with a series of well-coordinated attacks on Christian targets using speedboats from Ternate and local militias.

The worst massacre was in Galela on July 19, 2000, which claimed more than 250 lives. "This was self-defense,'' says Fauzan Al-Anshari, a Jakarta-based MMI leader, who acknowledges that the MMI sent fighters to the region in 2000. "We had to strike back."

Mr. Al-Anshari says the MMI wasn't worried whether its actions were illegal.

"When Muslims are attacked by Christians, it's our duty to act. No one else will stand up for us." The reorganization of the Muslim militias by outsiders had profound consequences, turning what had been a balanced and predominantly local conflict fought with homemade weapons into a national issue fought with mortars and M-16s. The fiercer fighting completely separated the Muslim and Christian populations of the two provinces, a separation that prevails today. Suspicion of Christians and other non-Muslims is a key tenet of both the teachings of Jibril and Bashir, a close colleague during most of the 1980s and early 1990s. Jibril's and Bashir's religious vision is of a vigorous, aggressive Islam that brooks no insults from nonbelievers.

"We are not terrorists – the US and the Jews are trying to frame us,'' says Bashir in a recent interview with the Monitor. "They don't like us because we teach true Islam, one that stresses dying a martyr and jihad. The US doesn't like that because it makes Muslims strong. I'm just a teacher. I'm not a violent man.''

Bashir says throughout history, Muslims "never start trouble – we are always attacked first."

US officials view Malaysia and Singapore's claims as credible and have been alarmed by Indonesia's refusal to arrest Bashir. While Indonesia has helped deport some alleged foreign terrorists, it has refused to act against Indonesians who are alleged to have ties to Al Qaeda. Analysts say the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri is afraid of losing political support from Muslims if she takes a harder line.

"There are people here who, whatever the evidence against them, are clearly a major threat, judging solely by their statements,'' says a Western diplomat. "But there are a lot of people here who feel that some of these groups have legitimate grievances, so that makes the government reluctant to crack down."

Jibril's 2000 sermon was on one of his first visits to his homeland in nearly a decade. After serving a jail sentence here in the early 1980s for promoting the creation of an Islamic state, he exiled himself to Malaysia.

Outside of militant circles, he was not a well know figure. Jibril returned to Malaysia, where police officials allege that he set about arming and financing a group there called the Malaysian Militant Group (KMM). Then in May 2001, two men with ties to Jibril and Bashir were killed and a third was captured in a failed bank heist. The captured man described Bashir and Jibril as leaders of a terror group who had ordered the robbery. Jibril was arrested soon after and is still in custody in Malaysia. Bashir, however, was already living in Indonesia, and Indonesian officials have refused to extradite him, saying they don't feel Malaysia's evidence is strong enough.

Throughout the allegations of terrorism, Bashir has kept an open door with journalists, saying it's been a good opportunity: The time is ripe, he says, to make Indonesia an Islamic state, and he needs to use every avenue possible to make his views known.

• Tomorrow, Abu Bakar Bashir.

Indonesia is in the midst of a painful transition. It left the Suharto dictatorship behind four years ago, and is undergoing a transition to democracy.

But destabilizing social forces have reemerged in the more open political climate, and one of them is militant Islam.

Three Indonesian clerics – all exiles in the Suharto years – are accused of building a terror network with Al Qaeda assistance. Their stories show the challenges that political Islam is posing to the elected government and how complicated the US relationship with Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, has become in the wake of Sept. 11.

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