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Southeast Asia | ||||||
New Islamic militia appears in Sulawesi | ||||||
2004-02-04 | ||||||
This sounds a lot to me like Laskar Jihad under a new name, but okay ... A new militant Islamic militia has emerged here, according to a report released Tuesday by the International Crisis Group, just as Attorney General John Ashcroft is scheduled to arrive to address a conference on terrorism. The new group, Mujahedeen Kompak, was formed by hard-liners who split from Jemaah Islamiyah, according to the report, which was written by Sidney Jones, widely considered the leading authority on Jemaah Islamiyah. Kompak, an acronym, translates roughly as Action Committee for Crisis Response. Is this the same thing as the Laskar Khos that Zulkarnaean was reputed to lead? It says they split away from JI, but the way these jihadi groups work that could just be a tactical subdivision. The emergence of the group in central Sulawesi Province, which has been racked by Christian-Muslim violence, "suggests a need to revise assessments about the nature and gravity of the terrorist threat in Indonesia," Ms. Jones wrote in the report. "While the shorter-term prospects are somewhat encouraging, there is an underappreciated longer security risk." The organization presents a possible new partner for Al Qaeda, she wrote. Possible? This is the sixth report about Jemaah Islamiyah and terrorism in Southeast Asia by Ms. Jones, an American who speaks fluent Bahasa Indonesia, the national language.
Al-Qaeda was running training camps in Sulawesi in early 2001, though those were reputedly shut down. There have been recent claims that new camps have been opened up, but no real confirmation one way or another. If those camps are there, then it’s already an international terror hub and needs to be shut down. JI is already churning out new flunkies in Mindanao, we don’t need another version of those MILF camps sprouting up in Indonesia proper. | ||||||
Posted by:Dan Darling |
#2 Much obliged, Paul, that does answer a lot of my questions, though it still looks as though the Mujahideen Kompak is still more or less an affiliate of JI and would probably side with Zulkarnaean or Dr. Azahari in carrying out further terrorist attacks inside Indonesia. The only reason as to why I brought up the Lashkar Khos is because I thought there might be a similarity between that and the Kompak, but it looks like I was wrong. |
Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-2-4 1:17:34 AM |
#1 Hey Dan, you can find most of the answers in the ICC's report here, although I found it difficult to keep track of all the players and groups involved. It essentially says that JI was leery about getting involved in the Christian/Muslim violence in Poso and Ambon, because they detected the hand of the Indonesian Army in the background. They were also slow to act because of the centralised structure that meant everything had to go through a lot of beurocracy before anything could be decided. So a bunch of JI men joined up with Mujahedeen Kompak, which was an independent Jihadi outfit that would accept anyone who wanted to join. They also had a falling out with Laskar Jihad, because the former are Indonesian ultra-nationalists with an Islamist outlook, while the latter are hardcore Jihadis who don't even believe in the concept of the nationstate. Lashkar Khos is said to be JI's 'special forces', and is unrelated to Mujahedeen Kompak. |
Posted by: Paul Moloney 2004-2-4 12:30:46 AM |