Need New Approach To Understand Terrorism in Southeast Asia

After Noordin M. Top was killed by the Special Anti-Terrorism Task Force 88 (Densus 88), the public assumed that the threat of terrorism in Indonesia had ended. The official government information indicating a link between recent arrests in Aceh and the attack that killed Dulmatin in Pamulang, (West Java), as reported at Kompas.com in March 2010, have shattered that assumption. Terrorist actions still represent a dangerous threat.

Security personnel have linked the development of the latest threat with Dulmatin and Umar Patek, infamous terrorists who were among the most sought after suspects in Southeast Asia for years. The message is clear: this group still represents a threat in our region. The object of the authorities' search seems to have been a break-off group from Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), or a related organization. The security forces in the region consider that the security risks have risen, as reported by Singapore intelligence on the threat of terrorism in the Straits of Malacca.

Weapons and Funding
The official reports state that JI is a network organization of terrorists based throughout Southeast Asia. Although JI doesn't control all parts of the region where it is based, it is believed to be active in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The JI is also considered to complement Al-Qa'ida in this region, such that the United Nations has classified it as an international terrorist organization.

Since George W. Bush launched a "global war on terror" under the hegemony of the US after the attacks of 9/11, JI has been classified as the main enemy in Southeast Asia. This region is considered the second front of the war on terrorism, although a number of experts question the relevance of this characterization, since the historical, social and political context of the region are quite different from the Middle East, for instance. The governments in the region, especially Indonesia's, with support from the US in the form of training, weapons and funding, are continuing to work hard to fight terrorist activities.

Weaknesses in Approach
There are two matters linked to terrorism in Indonesia that need to be noted. First, our understanding of terrorist activities is extremely limited. Studies on terrorism in Indonesia and Southeast Asia are dominated by studies with a traditional approach that is based on orthodox security studies and counter-insurgency studies. These kinds of studies tend to limit assumptions on the character, causes and solution to terrorism based on the notion of the nation-state. The problem is that the knowledge so far produced needs to be debated, since it is often not supported by strong empirical data (Jackson 2007) and is superficial.

The weakness of academic works on terrorism, especially on JI, has already been pointed out by Hamilton-Hart (2005). He reminds us of the quality of information and the simplification of terrorist activities as the actions of pathological actors. Many studies by terrorism experts are full of footnotes from police reports, prosecutors' charges, court defense statements, judges' decisions and intelligence reports, without fuller investigation of the historical context.

This is made worse by mainstream media reports that repeatedly publish and broadcast news based on these reports or on interviews with security officials who are considered to be authoritative. The main issue, according to Lafree and Dugan (2007), is that government data is full of political judgments about terrorism. Such studies can be confounded by what Herman and O'Sullivan (1989) characterize as the "terrorism industry." With a variety of actors, like government officials and agencies, research institutes, private security companies, this "industry" is actually working to serve the interests of the market.

Second, the resultant weakness of a knowledge base like this is the settling of terrorist actions by governments that rely on "war" approaches alone. It turns out that shooting suspects, jail, surveillance and using a rehabilitative approach on former terrorists does not to put an end to the terrorist threat. There is a need for comprehensive studies that avoid the assumption that violence is something endemic in religious teachings and that gets caught up in trying to unravel rings of terrorist actors.

Application of Neo-Liberalism
However, we need to focus attention on the political and economic environment in a particular period of time in which terrorist activities are taking place. The fact that many of the JI leaders were involved in the mujahidin struggle in Afghanistan in the 1980s signals that radicalism accompanied by violence that surfaces afterwards is strongly rooted in the Cold War. The mujahidin, including Osama Bin Laden, who took part in the counter-revolutionary war in Afghanistan, were praised by Ronald Reagan as heroes. The changes after the Cold War, the economic and political context of global terrorism, all need to be investigated.

The application of neo-liberalism, particularly through the instrument of the US imperialist war in Iraq, has only nurtured global sentiment through interrelated terrorist attacks. In Indonesia, anti-US rhetoric has found a fertile ground, and some of it has been channeled through terrorist actions and dissatisfaction with imperialism expressed through a religiously garbed struggle. This global tendency has mixed with a process of political and economic exclusion that has taken place during the last 10 years.

Sharpening of Class Differences
The sharpening of class differences, in which wealth is accumulated not only into the pockets of a few people, but is channeled to those in rich countries, has resulted in widespread social dissatisfaction. Poverty, unemployment, political and social exclusion are triggers for the rise of the illusion of violence as something sanctioned by religion.

The government needs to change its approach to the combating of terrorism from a "war" approach only to a new basic economic and political policy. It is urgent that the government be able to take issue with the US in relation to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan and see them as the roots of terrorist actions. Barack Obama's visit should be used to convey a new political tone in this regard, not to be stuck in flat diplomacy, reporting the "successes" in combating terrorism, particularly if only done for political imagemaking.