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A Reason to live
Tapping on his laptop computer, wearing a white polo shirt and Rolex, Nasir Abas looks like an ordinary Asian businessman -- until he begins to talk about his days as a terrorist.The 36-year-old Malaysian admits he was a leader of Jemaah Islamiyah and that he trained some of Southeast Asia's worst terrorists, notably the bombers who blew up Western tourist hangouts in Bali in 2002. Mr. Abas is on the United Nations list of "individuals belonging to or associated with al-Qaeda." He is also on Canada's list of terrorists. So is Jemaah Islamiyah, which Ottawa calls the "most extensive transnational radical Islamist group in Southeast Asia." But Mr. Abas says he has left Jemaah Islamiyah and is remorseful. To make amends, he is co-operating with police and speaking out against terrorism to students, community groups and anyone else who will listen. "I feel guilty for what I have done," he says over lunch at an Indian restaurant in Jakarta, where he lives with his wife and four daughters. "I feel I have sinned." Mr. Abas and others like him are becoming key weapons in the war on terror in Southeast Asia, where they are helping spread the word that terrorism is wrong and not part of Islam's true teachings. After making hundreds of arrests, governments in the region have concluded that terrorism cannot be fought properly without confronting the ideology behind it. And to help get out the anti-terrorism message, they are making use of a powerful tool: reformed terrorists. Leading the pack is Singapore. The city-state has set up a program that is challenging the ideological underpinnings of Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda. The program originated in late 2001, when Singapore's Internal Security Department thwarted a terrorist plot by local members of Jemaah Islamiyah and Canadian al-Qaeda operative Mohammed Mansour Jabarah. Following the arrests, the Singapore government wanted to know what was motivating Muslims to turn to terrorism, so it brought in prominent Islamic scholars to try to understand their thinking. What they found was that the captured terrorists shared an extremely limited interpretation of Islam. "These people, they just adopted one school of thought and that's it," said Muhammad Haniff Bin Hassan, a research analyst at the Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. "Either they did not want to hear from others or they were not given the privilege because they studied under very strict secrecy." He said the terrorists had not been properly instructed. "Most of them are born-again Muslims and because of their narrow understanding of Islam, they were easily swayed." Their core beliefs were that to be a good Muslim they had to: hate non-Muslims; strive to create an Islamic state; and engage in armed jihad. Another common belief was that they could not break the bayat, or oath of allegiance, that they had sworn to the cause. Taken together, these made for a potent ideology. To tackle it Singapore formed a Religious Rehabilitation Group, made up of about 20 Islamic scholars known as ustadzs. One of the duties of an ustadz it is to ensure that Islam is properly interpreted. The Singaporeans also put together a manual on terrorist ideology and how to confront it. "In the initial stage of the counselling program, we listen to them, we let them talk," said Mohamed Bin Ali, an ustadz who works on the program and is also a research analyst at NTU. "Then if we feel there are concepts that need to be countered, we step in." Since the terrorists tend to cite classical Islamic texts such as the Koran to support their radical interpretation of their religion, the ustadzs use those same texts to show the detainees they have actually misread the message of Islam. "The main aim of the program is to provide an avenue for the detainees to overcome the ideas of Islam that they may have misconstrued, and also to make them aware of what are the consequences if they attack a city like Singapore," said Mr. Ali. Those involved in the program say that while some of the detainees have not responded to counseling, the counter-ideology effort has generally been successful. Those deemed to no longer pose a threat have been released on a restriction order, which requires them to stay in the country and continue counseling under strict supervision. On Oct. 24, for example, the government released Andrew Gerard, a Muslim convert who had scouted bombing targets for Jemaah Islamiyah. Officials said that since his arrest in 2002 he had cooperated with investigators, responded positively to rehabilitation and religious counseling and was no longer a threat to Singapore. But if he violates the conditions of his release he could be placed under arrest once again. As part of the program, counselors work with the families of detainees to ensure the children stay in school and do not follow the same path to radicalization as their fathers. The ustadzs have also held several public meetings with both the Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Not only have several detainees been deprogrammed, but more importantly Singapore believes the program is helping immunize its broader Muslim community against extremist ideology. Mr. Hassan is not sure if the work in Singapore can be applied elsewhere. "I would not basically want to say whether the experience could be adopted in Canada or not, but there are lessons to be learned." The most important lesson may be the importance of involving the Muslim community in the fight against terrorism, and that one way of doing that is to encourage Muslim scholars to take the lead in identifying and correcting dangerously extreme interpretations of Islam. A recent report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), however, suggests that radical Islamic terrorists have been so heavily indoctrinated they may be beyond reform. It notes that some detainees released from Guantanamo Bay have quickly returned to militancy. To be rehabilitated, someone must believe that violence is morally wrong and fear punishment if they are caught, but for Islamic extremists, "these social parameters do not apply," says the "Secret" CSIS report, released under the Access to Information Act. "Individuals who have attended terrorist training camps or who have independently opted for radical Islam must be considered threats to Canadian public safety for the indefinite future." For Nasir Abas, his arrest in April 2003 marked the end of a lifelong commitment to armed Islamic struggle. Born in Singapore and raised in Malaysia, Mr. Abas was studying at an Islamic school when extremists offered to pay his way to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. He underwent training at a camp south of Sadda, Pakistan, and was sent into battle, at one point suffering a bullet wound to his hand. For the next six years, he worked as a training camp instructor, teaching recruits how to use weapons ranging from small arms to artillery. In 1993, he returned to Malaysia to look for a job, but after stints in construction and carpentry, he went to the southern Philippines to set up a training camp for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. He got back to Malaysia in 1996, married and worked as a cab driver in Johor Bahru, on the border with Singapore. In August 1997, he was appointed a chief of Jemaah Islamiyah and was later named commander of Mantiki 3, one of the group's regional divisions. When Jemaah Islamiyah ramped up its terrorist bombing campaign in 2000, striking churches, Mr Abas said he became uneasy with the group's change in direction. He said the group had fallen under the spell of Osama bin Laden, who had started calling for attacks against Western civilians, which Mr. Abas said is a deviation from Islam. The following year, one of the JI members Mr. Abas had trained, Fathur Rahman Al Ghozi, worked with his Canadian al-Qaeda accomplice Mohammed Jabarah to attempt to blow up the American and Israeli embassies in Singapore, a plot that was stopped by authorities. In October, 2002, another two men trained by Mr. Abas, Imam Samudra and Ali Imron, killed 200 people in Bali, mostly Australian tourists. The police investigation that followed led to the arrests of Jemaah Islamiyah members who identified Mr. Abas as their boss. By the time he was arrested on April 18, 2003, Mr. Abas said he had already turned against JI because of its targeting of civilians. "What they had done was not in the battlefield, not in the conflict area," he explained. Almost immediately, he began cooperating with police, providing inside details of Jemaah Islamiyah's structure and ideology. He identified Abu Bakar Bashir as the top leader of JI (Bashir calls Mr. Abas a traitor and denies the existence of JI). Mr. Abas was freed in November, 2004, but he is still paying off his debt to Indonesia. Whenever JI members are arrested, Mr. Abas is brought in to speak to them. He tries to convince them to co-operate with police. As a former commander and trainer, he knows many of them personally. He has also written an Indonesian-language book about JI and gives public talks about the group and its misguided ideology. He said his main challenge is to convince Indonesians that there really is a JI when to this day some still believe that the Bali and other bombings were orchestrated by the West to tarnish Islam and justify the war against terror. "Firstly, I want to explain that JI is not created. JI exists. Second thing, I have to explain that what they have done, the Bali bombings, that they have deviant ideologies. Third thing, I always explain that Islam does not teach violence." Inspector-General Ansyaad Mbai, a senior Indonesian counter-terrorism official, said close to 300 arrests have taken place since the bombings in Bali and at the Australian embassy and JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. But that JI still somehow survives suggests that attacking the ideology is the best long-term solution. "The use of only 'high-power' in terms of law enforcement, arrests and even military retaliation is not a good answer. We need to touch the root causes through the approach of 'soft-power.' " Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-02-26 |
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