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| Southeast Asia |
| Jakarta attack highlights regional Daesh leadership jostle |
| 2016-01-18 |
| [Reuters] Last week’s attack on Jakarta showed for the first time that Daesh violence has arrived in Indonesia, but experts believe the group’s footprint still has limited influence here because militants are competing to be its regional leader. Police have identified Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian based in Syria, as the mastermind of the attacks that left all five attackers and two civilians dead on Thursday. But perhaps the region's most influential jihadi is a jailed cleric, Aman Abdurrahman, who with just a few couriers and a cell phone is able to command around 200 followers from prison. Abdurrahman sits at the head of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, an umbrella organization formed last year that experts believe could become the unifying force for Daesh supporters. Police believe that Naim, an Abdurrahman supporter, was trying to prove his leadership skills to Daesh leaders in Syria by plotting the Jakarta attack. Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said Naim's vision was to unite now-splintered groups across Southeast Asia that support Daesh. Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah was the last transnational group to successfully launch large-scale attacks in the region, including the 2002 Bali bombings. JI, founded by Indonesian and Malaysian militants who returned from battling the Soviet Union in the the 1980s and early 1990s, has largely fallen apart due to internal rivalries and a sustained crackdown by security forces. Regional governments fear that Malay-speaking militants returning from Syria and Iraq could form a similar regional organization. In Malaysia, former university lecturer Mahmud Ahmad is thought to be behind recent attempts to unite militant groups, including the Abu Sayyaf, from three Southeast Asian countries. Abdurrahman remains perhaps the weightiest contender for Daesh leadership in the region. While serving a 9-year prison term for funding a militant training camp in Indonesia, he has managed to encourage hundreds of Indonesians to join the jihad in Syria and Iraq. Prison authorities have tried repeatedly to silence Abdurrahman. According to the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, ten phones were seized from his cell in September 2014, but just a month later he got hold of a new phone and his sermons to followers resumed. |
| Posted by:ryuge |