REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, By: Toni Ervianto *)
The Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) has reported that overseas fund transfers into Indonesia allegedly linked to terrorism last year and this year amounted to well over 10 billion rupiah (S$1 million), of which about six billion rupiah was from Australia. The money was used to help finance the living costs of widows and families of slain terrorists, buy weapons from the southern Philippines, fund paramilitary training, and promote violent ideology by way of gatherings and discussions.
The total number of money transfers suspected for terrorism-related purposes had been 13 since last year, and PPATK had reported them to Indonesian anti-terror Detachment 88 for follow-up. Some overseas funds were detected only after they were invested in businesses in Indonesia. They approached local entrepreneurs with existing business, became their partner, managed to grow the business faster and used the profits to finance terrorism.
Terrorism analyst Adhe Bahkti said fund transfers were also instrumental in financing the trips of Indonesians going to Syria to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). These types of transactions had mostly not been detected by PPATK.
Previous on January 2nd, 2015 an investigation carried out by the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) has found that a lack of supervision by financial authorities has caused the country to see increasing numbers of cash transfers allegedly channeled to fund terror activities in the country during 2014. That most of the cash transfers took place in Jakarta, West Java, East Java, Central Java, Central Sulawesi, Banten, Yogyakarta, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) and South Sulawesi. The transferred cash was also used to fund activities related to programs to maintain the existence of radical groups across the country. “Corporations or enterprises, especially foundations, pose a higher risk of being used as tools to launder terrorist funds. In terms of actors, students and unregistered NGO officials are those who are prone to being involved in the process of money laundering for terror,” said Muhammad Yusuf, the Chairman of PPATK.
The PPATK findings reveal that, in a move to avoid their identities being tracked by financial authorities, terrorist supporters opened bank accounts using fake identities, or bought bank accounts from third parties that had no connection to their groups.
The cell of terrorist wasn't broke
The history of homegrown radical Islamic groups dates back to the late 1940s, when Kartosuwiryo led the Islamic State of Indonesia (NII) movement, a radical group that led to the formation of the al-Qaeda affiliated Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) in 1993, a group responsible for the deadly 2002 Bali bombings.
Since JI's charismatic leader Abu Bakar Ba'asyir was arrested in August 2010, experts believe that younger JI members separated from the group when senior members decided to lie low, as they believed that Indonesia was no longer a land for jihad.
The influence of the Islamic State (IS) in Indonesia has become more apparent along with the rapid increase of radicalization within society since IS declared a caliphate in June 2014, the year that marked the rise of one of the most deadliest terror groups ever to exist.
By December 2015, about 800 Indonesians had been reported to have departed for Syria and Iraq, with 169 people being caught on the Turkey-Syria border and deported by the Turkish government, before these potential foreign fighters had the chance to join IS, according to the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT).
One of the homegrown terrorist groups, the Santoso-led East Indonesia Mujahidin based in Poso, Central Sulawesi, still poses a major threat to the government as the group was responsible for the killing of several police officers and local farmers in 2015 and has pledge allegiance to IS.
This led to the rise of the East Indonesia Mujahidin - a terrorist group that allegedly created terror in Poso - led by the former JI members who are presently being hunted by 1,500 security personnel.
Terrorist expert Rakyan Adibrata said with the threat of radicalized Indonesian returnees increasing over the past few months. Actually homegrown terrorist groups that had initially spread radical ideology among members, leading them to depart as foreign terrorist fighters for IS only to return to be a threat to the nation. Mujahidin shares the same vision as IS to establish an Islamic caliphate. However, there was still romanticism among the group's members about establishing their own caliphate in Poso as it was the location where they had previously been trained by al-Qaeda and the place where Santoso ran an extremist training camp.
Over the past three months, the authorities have labeled Poso as the nation’s hotbed of terrorism, which may be a cradle and training ground for extremists to launch violent jihad in other part of Indonesia — the world’s largest Muslim majority country. Poso regency, with a population of around 215,000, was plagued by bloody clashes between Christian and Muslim communities between 1997 and 2001, which claimed around 1,000 lives and displaced 25,000.
After a peace pact in 2001 that ended the conflict, extremists linked to the al-Qaeda affiliated Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), and its radical ideology, have been largely left undisturbed in the Christian-majority regency. The extremists’ network in Poso was actually weakened and fractured following the 2001 peace accord.
However, the government’s failure to thoroughly root out radicalism, coupled with alleged police brutality in counterterrorism raids has reunited the Islamic fighters, boosting the spirit needed to radicalize traumatized residents. Security personnel, amid concerns that a ravaged Poso would become a base for Islamic extremists to breed and launch attacks in other parts of the country, have been trying hard to prevent Poso from lapsing into another round of bloody conflict.
In Poso, like the Santoso-led group, they are more contextual as the group consists of people who have been involved in conflicts and suffered from injustice and violence.
With national security at stake, counterterrorism forces are stepping up measures to protect the nation against possible militant attacks that have the potential to plunge the nation into violence.
According to terrorist expert Rakyan Adibrata, the government should try a new approach by adopting psychological and medical perspectives to better assess the thinking of radicalized Indonesian returnees, as they share similarities with soldiers newly returned from conflict zones and suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
A similar approach should be implemented by the BNPT to counter the intensified dissemination of terrorist groups' propaganda through the internet and social media, as the current counter-narrative measures taken by the BNPT through its online platform called "Peaceful Year in Cyberspace" had been deemed weak and ineffective in preventing radicalization. Counter-narrative measures against the IS campaign in Indonesia were instead actively taken by other radical groups that are against forming an IS caliphate, such as Jabhat al-Nusra and senior members of JI who were against IS but still wanted to establish a caliphate in Indonesia.
Furthermore, Indonesia should engage moderate groups to actively take counter-narrative measures in their respective areas, while at the same time cooperate with internet service providers to tackle radicalization through the internet.
Australia adopted this method, as the government engaged all moderate groups in the country to create counter-narrative measures in cooperation with giant search engine Google and it had been very effective in curbing the spread of radical ideology.
New methode adopted to tackle terrorist problem because recently that various radical media outlets disseminated IS propaganda by re-making videos or audio statements in Indonesian and spreading the links through the internet every day, making effective use of Indonesia as the fourth leading Facebook user in the world with over 84 percent of users active Twitter users by 2014.
With IS now having thousands of supporters across Indonesia as well as other radical groups such as Mujahidin, experts have warned that the threat of terrorist attacks in December 2015 could be bigger and different from previous years.
Terrorist threat still jeopardize so that the government must involve all national stakeholders in the actions against terrorism. Along with these, socialization about state ideology, Pancasila and the realization of training program to save the coutry in the context to minimizing negative impact from assymetric threat such as combating and reducing IS propaganda in social media must be excellerated.
*) The writer earned his master degree from the University of Indonesia
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