Terrorism in Indonesia is now carried out by “entire families, including mothers and children”, one local police chief noted, three weeks on from the suicide blasts on three churches and a police station that claimed 27 lives, including 13 attackers, like reported by worldwatchmonitor.org.

In raids following the series of bomb attacks, Jakarta security forces arrested 41 suspected terrorists, while four others were killed in counter-terrorist operations, AsiaNews reported.

But Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian told local media on 1 June that the rapid response of the security forces should encourage Indonesians.

The attacks in Surabaya, the capital of East Java province, were executed by two familiesbelonging to Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), Indonesia’s largest militant group, which was formed in 2015 and has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

Zachary Abuza of the National War College in Washington DC called the use of children in the attacks “absolutely unprecedented” in the region, and told the BBC it showed the “ideological indoctrination” of the group, which has sought to expand globally since losing territory in the Middle East, according to the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research.

According to official figures, 1,200 former IS fighters have returned home from Syria, though “unofficially” there are “at least 2,000”, a counter-terrorism official told Channel News Asia.

“The damage caused by ISIS was expected to last longer than its caliphate proper, and in Indonesia the group’s impact already seems to have been to expand and transform local extremist movements,” reported the New York Times. “Local Islamist extremists still go after the same targets: religious minorities and law enforcement. But their tactics have shifted: now women and children are participating in suicide attacks.”

The paper noted that the recent attacks came at the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, which it said was “typically a time of renewed militancy among extremists”. It quoted one message circulated via the popular social media app Telegram following the prison attack: “Support in your own cities the mujahedeen [Islamic fighters] who caused the riot! Burn the assets of non-believers, idolaters, apostates and hypocrites! Burn their malls! Destroy the economy of the non-believers by withdrawing your money from their banks! The momentum only comes once; don’t fail to use it.”

Ian Wilson, a lecturer in Politics and Security Studies at the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, told Asia-Pacific magazine The Diplomat the recent attacks also exhibited increasing sectarian division ahead of the 2019 presidential elections.

“The attack on religious minorities, previously a hallmark of Jemaah Islamiyah, has returned, it seems, rather than the singular focus on attacking the police that we’ve seen in recent years,” he said.

Jihad in Indonesia

Islamic terrorists are relocating from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, home to the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, Indonesia, China’s state-owned Global Times warned this week according to breitbart.com.

The flow of jihadis from the Middle East into Southeast Asia has rendered the region “the hub of world terrorism activities,” Zhang Chi, an associate professor at People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s National Defense University, told the Global Times at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, which the United States attended.

Acknowledging that Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists are “adapting” to the fall of their so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. State Department cautioned in March that the terrorist group had established a presence in Southeast Asia with its main stronghold located in the Philippines.

Clashes between ISIS-linked terrorists and authorities in the Philippines’ Marawi City left nearly 200 security forces and civilians dead last year alone.

Zhang urged Southeast Asian countries to cooperate with China on fighting terrorism in the region.

Global Times reports:

China and some Southeast Asian countries have already begun joint anti-terrorism drills and will expand cooperation in the near future, Zhang noted.

Terrorism spreads fast, Zhang said, and Southeast Asia’s religious landscape and relatively less developed political and economic conditions make the region “a hotbed for extremists.”

Li Wei, a counter-terrorism expert at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, told the Global Times that China faces a threat from terrorists trying to infiltrate the Asian giant through the country’s southeastern and eastern borders.

In August 2017, Voice of America (VOA) reported that ISIS was establishing a growing footprint in Southeast Asia, noting:

Analysts say as IS militants are losing ground in Syria and Iraq, the terror group is attempting to expand in Southeast Asia, which is home to a number of separatist and militant groups.

Some analysts say that many extremists in [the most populous Muslim-majority country of] Indonesia who wish to join IS [Islamic State] are now heading to the Philippines instead of Syria and Iraq, because conditions in the terror group’s former strongholds have degraded due to the ongoing multi-front military campaign against the group in the region.

Southeast Asian countries have reportedly expressed concern about the battle-hardenedfighters who are returning home after traveling to engage in jihad in Iraq and Syria.

In 2016, Indonesia’s government alone reported that “between 169 and 300 Indonesians who fought for IS have returned home,” VOA noted.

Zhang acknowledged that China, India, and other Asian countries have joined forces to fight terrorism in the region under the framework of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

The Afghanistan-Pakistan region, which borders China’s Muslim-majority Xinjiang province, is home to the “highest concentration” of terrorist groups in the world, according to the Pentagon.

As the U.S.-led coalition and local forces push ISIS out of Iraq and Syria, the group’s members are also looking to move into South Asia, according to some news reports.

A Pakistani police official says two suicide bombers tried to storm a security post in the southwestern town of Mastung, killing three officers and wounding two in an attack that was claimed by the Islamic State group, like reported by foxnews.com.

Police official Wali Mohammad says the attackers tried to push their way into the Frontier Corps’ post. One detonated his explosives when the officers asked them to stop. He says the second attacker was killed by a sharpshooter.

A statement posted on an IS-affiliated website says two of its “martyrdom seekers” were behind the attack.

Mastung lies about 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, south of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.

Baluchistan has also been the scene of a low-level insurgency by separatist groups that demand a greater share of the province’s resources.

At least three children were killed in an explosion triggered by an improvised explosive device (IED) in eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, like reported by khaama.com.

The provincial government media office in a statement said the incident took plae at around 10 am local time in Haska Mina district on Sunday.

The statement further added that the IED was planted by ISIS militants on a main highway in Shirullah area and was detonated while the children were crossing the area.

According to the provincial government, the children killed during the explosion are between 12 to 13-year-old.

The anti-government armed militant groups including ISIS militants have not commented regarding the report so far.

This comes as counter-terrorism operations are underway in Haska Mina district to eliminate the ISIS militants who are attempting to expand their foothold Haska Mina and other parts of the province.

The provincial government said Sunday at least 9 ISIS militants were killed during the operations and airstrikes in Haska Mina district a day earlier.

Indonesia authorities have arrested 41 suspected terrorists linked to a series of bomb attacks in Surabaya, like reported by channelnewsasia.com.

According to a report by Antara News, Indonesian police chief Tito Karnavian told reporters on Thursday (May 31) that four suspects were shot dead because they resisted arrest.

“We moved fast after the suicide bombings in Surabaya and Sidoarjo on May 13 and 14 and have identified the perpetrators.

“One suspected terrorist in Probolinggo surrendered to the local police because he could not live peacefully and was always being chased,” he added.

Tito revealed that 13 perpetrators and 14 civilians were killed in the attacks on three churches and a police headquarters. About 40 other people were injured.

Although Tito cautioned that terrorism had come to involve “family, including mothers and their children”, he said the police’s quick response to the bombings should create a sense of security among the public, Antara News reported.

On May 25, Indonesia passed a new law that will give police more power to take pre-emptive action against terror suspects.

The bill had been stalled for almost two years but the wave of deadly suicide bombings hiked pressure on lawmakers to pass the legislation.

 

That parents could use their children to carry out suicide bombings, as happened in Indonesia earlier this month, is difficult to comprehend. In the archipelago, it’s an unprecedented terror tactic, like reported by abc.net.au.

It’s believed the family acting in Surabaya belonged to a cell of the Islamic State-inspired group Jemaah Ansharut Daulah.

Two possible reasons for the attacks are ISIS propaganda and an increased number of extremist women in Indonesia.

Whatever the causes, at least one expert says there is a clear need for new de-radicalisation methods in the country.

The ISIS approach

The whole-family attacks distinguish ISIS from terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda, which attracted single men to combat.

“It’s incomprehensible for us. Even for the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) generation,” said Nava Nuraniyah, an analyst at the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta who consults on government deradicalisation programs.

“Since ISIS came about, their dream has been to migrate as whole families to the caliphate [Islamic state] land.”

But not everyone who wants to is able to migrate.

“For those who are stuck in Indonesia, they still had the same dream, and maybe [the families’ suicide bombing] was their way of going to a better place together as a whole family,” Ms Nuraniyah said.

Extremism on the rise among Indonesian women

The Surabaya terrorist attack could not have happened “without the willingness of the women themselves”, Ms Nuraniyah said, which highlights another of ISIS’s points of difference.

“They were a traditional hierarchical organisation and only men could pledge allegiance, because they thought the main role of women is to become mothers of future jihadists.

“To them, it’s just not strategic to get women involved in war, in combat, because that would decrease your chance of having more children.

“Whereas with ISIS, one big difference is that you’ve got a lot more women from Europe, America, even Australia, very active as propagandists on social media.”

These foreign propagandists became role models for Indonesian women.

“They [said], if these women can do that then so can we — and they did it in 2016.”

That was the year Indonesia saw its first would-be female suicide bomber, Dian Yulia Novi, whose plans to blow herself up at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta were thwarted by Indonesian police.

Women promised redemption

The idea of redemption is another factor behind women’s radicalisation, and was a motivation for Dian’s bombing attempt.

“She believed her father had committed a sin…so that was her way of helping her father,” Ms Nuraniyah said.

Another suicide bomber, Ika Puspitasari, was seeking redemption for alcoholism, but had other reasons, too.

“She used to give [ISIS] money as part of her ‘financial jihad’, as they say.

“But because she lost her job…she offered herself, because she could no longer give money for the jihad.”

Belief in Armageddon

ISIS promotes the idea of a world’s end, coinciding with the coming of the Messiah, both said to take place in Syria.

Indonesians drawn to Syria, therefore, “intended to die there and not to come back”, said Ms Nuraniyah.

ISIS uses social media to spread this Armageddon message, as well as to promote the benefits of migrating to Syria.

Ummu Sabrina, who wrote a blog about her experience of migrating from Indonesia to Syria with her husband and children, described arriving in Syria to be met with a new apartment and free groceries, healthcare and education for her children.

Ms Nuraniyah said benefits such as these were an important attraction for women.

“That image of a state that will provide you welfare as well — it’s not just for the men to fight.”

How to de-radicalise a family?

Ms Nuraniyah said there is no one common reason for radicalisation, which makes an effective de-radicalisation program hard to achieve.

“Our de-radicalisation program usually refers to the program in prison for terrorist inmates, not preventative ones.”

In Indonesia, in-prison programs are successful and the rate of recidivism is low, she said.

“But obviously that’s not the only measurement.”

Ms Nuraniya said Indonesia lacks a program to address the whole family.

“In the past when the police tried to de-radicalise the men sometimes they tried to use the women, give them some kind of financial aid to survive so that they could pressure their husbands to cooperate,” she said.

“But you can’t do that if the whole family is getting radicalised now. We have no experience in that.”

She says mentoring, which has been a useful strategy with terrorist inmates, could be prove useful.

The mentor would preferably be a former-jihadi, but that’s not essential — what’s important is that it is someone experienced in how to handle radicalised people, Islamic or otherwise.

“You need dedicated social workers who are trained in this mentoring program.

Deportees could provide clues

Between 2013 and 2017, 500 Indonesians were deported from Turkey trying to cross the border into Syria.

Of that group, a huge number — 60 per cent — were women and children.

On returning to Indonesia, the primary concern of deportees is rebuilding their lives.

Before trying to migrate to Syria they often sell everything they own and return with nothing, Ms Nuraniyah said.

“First they need an ID card and then they need to get a job. They need a school that would accept their children without stigmatisation. So just all those basic needs first.”

Ms Nuraniyah says it is essential that deportees and their families are better tracked and that women deportees, particularly, are focused on more by government.

That group could be examined, she said, to explore why they wanted to leave as a whole family and also what they expected to do in Syria.

“It’s still at that experiment, trial and error phase I think for us now.”

At least 17 Daesh insurgents were killed in a foreign troop’s drone strike in eastern Nangarhar province, 201 Selam Military Corps said in a statement according to tolonews.com.

The airstrike took place in De Bala district of the province after a foreign troops drone targeted safe havens on Wednesday, according to the statement.

However, the statement did not provide further details about the strike.

More than 50 senior Taliban commanders were killed in an artillery strike on a meeting in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, a U.S. military spokesman said, as fighting continues across the country, like reported by reuters.com.

The attack on a meeting of commanders in the district of Musa Qala in Helmand, one of the heartlands of the Taliban insurgency, was a significant blow to the insurgents, said Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

“It’s certainly a notable strike,” he said, adding that several other senior and lower level commanders had been killed during operations over a 10-day period this month.

The Taliban dismissed the report as “propaganda” and said the attack had hit two civilian houses in Musa Qala, killing five civilians and wounding three.

“This was a civilian residential area, which had no connection with the Taliban,” spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi said in a statement.

The U.S. military said the May 24 meeting involved commanders from different Afghan provinces, including neighbouring Farah, where Taliban fighters briefly threatened to overrun the provincial capital this month.

US forces have conducted airstrike against the Taliban command and control node for high-level Taliban leaders in the Musa Kala district of southern Helmand province, a statement from the Task Force Southwest said, according to pajhwok.com.

The structure was a known meeting location for prominent Taliban leaders, where they planned and facilitated attacks against Afghan National Defense and Security Forces supporting election security in the area, the statement said.

“One way we support our Afghan partners is with kinetic strikes so that they are able to maintain the offensive,” said Brig. Gen. Benjamin T. Watson, the commanding general of Task Force Southwest.

“Strikes like this one not only degrade Taliban operations, but also give our partners the ability to maintain continuous pressure against a weakened enemy.”

Task Force Southwest has been deployed to Helmand Province since April 2017 to train, advise and assist the Afghan National Army 215th Corps and 505th Zone Afghan National Police.

One year after the devastating siege of Marawi City, ISIS-aligned militant groups are believed to be recruiting and plotting from the shadows, like reported by atimes.com

One year after Islamic State-aligned Filipino and foreign militants laid siege to Marawi, the war-torn city has yet to rise from the ashes. With over a score of extremist groups that still pledge allegiance to ISIS lurking in the shadows of the southern island of Mindanao, the restive region is on a knife’s edge in anticipation of a next big attack.

Maute and Abu Sayyaf Group rebels first launched their surprise siege on May 23, 2017, an attack that exposed the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ ill-preparedness for full-scale urban warfare. It took President Rodrigo Duterte’s government five months to liberate the Muslim city from the ragtag militants’ clutches.

Marawi’s central core was left in ruins in a battle that killed some 1,100 people, mostly militants. Over 350,000 civilians were displaced by the battle, more than half of whom remain displaced one year on. It’s a dire situation social media-savvy extremist groups are now exploiting to recruit new members with the lure of money, guns and ideology, analysts and officials say.

Key to the extremist groups’ narrative is the notion that Marawi’s devastation was inflicted mostly by the state, through indiscriminate aerial bombardments and mortar fire they say was intentionally disproportionate to destroy the country’s only Muslim majority city.

The government, which has yet to begin the rehabilitation of the city’s so-called “ground zero” center that remains restricted to civilians, utilized overwhelming air, artillery and ground assets that flattened buildings and residences in an area spanning 250 hectares. The battle’s destruction left behind more than three million tons of debris, according to official estimates.

One year on, analysts say the government’s declared victory at Marawi was far from decisive and that a new, devastating militant assault could be on the cards as ISIS-aligned militants regroup and potentially join forces.

“The threat is real,” says security analyst Rommel Banlaoi, chair of the Manila-based Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research. Citing government intelligence reports, he notes that there are at least 23 armed groups based in Mindanao that still pledge allegiance to ISIS, though it’s unclear how many receive direct support from the terror group.

On May 15, in an event organized by the military in cooperation with the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Development Academy, Banlaoi told assembled soldiers, police and Muslim religious leaders that ISIS elements have deeply penetrated major Mindanao cities and that some are believed to be planning attacks during Islam’s fasting month of Ramadan, which started in the Philippines on May 17.

He claimed that foreign ISIS fighters from Indonesia, Malaysia and even China who cannot return home after the group’s defeat in Syria and Iraq are likely to seek refuge in the southern Philippines.

Banlaoi also claims that ISIS extremist ideology is starting to influence certain camps operating in the bailiwick of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Philippines’ largest Islamic armed group that forged a peace agreement with the government in 2014 after decades of fighting for ancestral lands.

The core of that agreement, namely the establishment of a new Bangsamoro region that will replace the current ARMM, is still stuck in Congress despite Duterte’s vow to give it legislative priority. As the deal remains unimplemented, Banlaoi fears ISIS is now making inroads and winning sympathies in the extensive areas over which the MILF holds sway.

“MILF-controlled areas are deeply penetrated by Islamic State-inspired groups,” Banlaoi told Asia Times, referring in particular to the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).

BIFF, one of the 23 active Muslim groups that pledge allegiance to ISIS, broke away from the MILF after it signed an autonomy-devolving Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain with the government that was eventually ruled unconstitutional and upended by the Supreme Court in 2008.

The MILF holds sway over Maguindanao and North Cotabato provinces in Central Mindanao, areas where the outlawed BIFF also operates. Many MILF and BIFF members are linked to each other either by blood or through intermarriages. Some analysts feel the area is a likely target for a next ISIS-inspired attack.

Maguindanao became known as a haven for Islamic militants when the notorious Malaysian terrorist and bomb-making expert Zulkifli bin Hir alias Marwan was killed there in 2015. He had been coddled by BIFF elements, according to reports.

Forty-four members of the government’s elite police Special Action Forces were killed in the area when the commandos encountered MILF and other private armed groups during a raid to arrest Marwan in the Muslim-dominated province’s Mamasapano township. Then President Benigno Aquino III now faces potential charges for his oversight role of the deadly botched raid.

Speaking to the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines in Manila in February, MILF chieftain Al Haj Murad Ebrahim abhorred the ideology espoused by ISIS, assuring the government it would help to flush out violent extremism in their stronghold. But not all analysts and observers are convinced.

On May 11, Duterte visited Marawi for the 10th time since the siege to ceremonially receive recovered firearms and distribute assistance to 27 members of the vanquished Maute Group who surrendered to the government.

The mercurial leader asked the city’s residents for patience while calling on other ISIS supporters to come above ground and assist in the city’s peaceful redevelopment.

“Give us time to rebuild, give us time to establish the goodwill,” Duterte said in apparent recognition of the growing animosity towards the state among displaced residents.

He also expressed regret for declaring martial law for the entirety of Mindanao in response to the Marawi siege, a rights-curbing measure that will remain in effect until the end of the year. “I was not very happy with it,” Duterte claimed while in Marawi. “It was a decision most painful to me because I know that lives will be wasted.”

Critics, however, say his reconstruction plans are tone deaf to local sentiments. His government has provisionally chosen a Chinese-led consortium to lead Marawi’s rehabilitation, although its proposal may be challenged by other contractors until the end of May.

The government aims to commence rehabilitation of the city’s “ground zero” in June. The reconstruction is estimated to cost 51 billion pesos (US$1 billion) and will take around three years to complete, according to the government’s plans.

China’s lead role in the reconstruction, however, does not sit well with many residents. Banlaoi, for one, believes that the war in Marawi would not have been won if not for the technical assistance of other nations, particularly the United States. China, to which Duterte has pivoted in pursuit of a rebalanced foreign policy, also supplied firearms to defeat the militants.

Peace advocate Eliseo Mercado Jr, a priest from the Oblates of Mary Immaculate congregation, has consistently and strongly criticized the government for the lack of any development at Marawi’s “ground zero” seven months after the city’s so-called liberation.

“If you don’t allow them to return and rebuild their homes according to their heritage, they will have rebellious hearts,” he said, warning that ISIS-aligned groups will actively exploit to their advantage the government’s neglect of local voices in the rehabilitation process.

Drieza Lininding, chair of the Marawi-based Moro Consensus Group, a community organization, says that the government’s multi-agency task force created to lead the state’s rehabilitation efforts has not yet held any significant public grassroots consultations with locals.

“We welcome all the help and interventions as long as they are socially cohesive and that affected residents are consulted from the planning to the implementation of projects that respect our religious and cultural beliefs,” Lininding says.

Based on a rehabilitation plan presented earlier by the government, reconstruction works will include a new lakeside promenade, economic zone, cultural and convention centers and hotels.

Banlaoi and others, however, have urged the government to restore Marawi to its original form rather than a centrally planned vision that fails to take into account the wishes and aspirations of those who continue to suffer one year after the siege.