ANALYSIS: Indonesia crackdown may have foiled major attack

By Ahmad Pathoni Mar 12, 2010, 7:28 GMT

Jakarta - The killing of a fugitive bomb-maker this week and a recent crackdown on terror suspects may have prevented a major attack in Indonesia, analysts said.

Indonesian anti-terrorism police killed Dulmatin, a bomb expert who allegedly made the devices used in the 2002 Bali bombings, and two other militants in separate raids near Jakarta on Tuesday.

The killings followed a major anti-terror operation in the westernmost province of Aceh, where 18 militants allegedly under Dulmatin's command were arrested between between February and early this month.

'I think because the police were able to break up the network early, they may have been able to prevent a kind of major attack,' said Sidney Jones, an expert on Islamic radicalism in Indonesia.

'It's possible that this group was planning something big,' she added.

The killing of Dulmatin marked another success for Indonesian police in the fight against members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a South-East Asian Islamic radical network blamed for a string of attacks in the world's most-populous Muslim country since 2000.

Last year, police shot dead Noordin Mohammad Top, a Malaysian-born militant said to have played a leading role in attacks in Indonesia, including the bombings of Jakarta's Marriott hotel in 2003 and 2009. Six other suspected militants were also killed in a series of raids last year.

Experts said Jemaah Islamiyah may have split into different groups with no clear organizational structures.

Indonesian police have arrested more than 400 Islamic militants since the Bali bombings, in which 202 people were killed. Three people were executed for that attack.

Andi Widjajanto, a security analyst from the University of Indonesia, said Dulmatin's group might have considered new methods of attack, possibly involving hostage-taking and a coordinated campaign similar to one that hit the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008 when multiple sites were attacked with bombs and guns.

'Dulmatin's death is significant,' Widjajanto said. 'If police had not been able to break up the group, we could have seen a new terror group with a new character.'

He said the spectre of a Mumbai-style attack had prompted the police and military to conduct a joint exercise this week, in which such a scenario was to be simulated.

Another tactic that the militants might have considered was hijacking ships in the Strait of Malacca, a major shipping route between Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, Widjajanto said.

'They may have been inspired by events in Somalia,' he said, referring to cases in which ship crews were taken hostage by Somali pirates for ransom. 'Pirate attacks are a good source of money because companies are willing to pay huge ransoms.'

Experts said Dulmatin's bomb-making skills surpassed those of his mentor Azhari Husin, a Malaysian professor turned militant who was killed in a shootout with Indonesian police in 2005.

Dulmatin fled to the Philippines in 2003 and only returned to Indonesia late last year, possibly with another militant who also allegedly played a key role in the Bali bombings, Umar Patek.

Jones described the two as 'very dangerous.'

'The fact that they they were able to return without the Philippine government knowing about it or the Indonesian government knowing they had arrived just shows how easy it is for terrorists to move back and forth within the region,' she said.

Jones said before the recent raids, Dulmatin's group was setting up a base in Aceh, from which they planned to extend their 'jihad' and lay the groundwork for an Islamic state.

She said she expected police to make many more arrests of suspected militants in the coming days.

'I think the network is much more extensive than we realized,' she said.

'There are major operations going on and I think we're going to see some other major names arrested by the police.'

The anti-terror crackdown came days ahead of a visit by United States President Barack Obama to Indonesia, scheduled for March 20-22.

But experts doubted that the militants had Obama in sight.

'I don't think that this group was specifically planning to attack Obama, but there's been extraordinary intelligence activity ahead of his visit and this may have helped police to detect Dulmatin's presence,' Widjajanto said.