Reflections of a reformed Jihadist: the story of Wan Min Wan Mat.

AuthorRamakrishna, Kumar

In recent testimony before a US Congressional Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence on 27 April 2016, the Singaporean scholar Joseph Liow argued that while the threat to Southeast Asia from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as IS) was not to be dismissed out of hand, it was not in his view the greatest challenge to the region. He argued instead that "the greater, long-term threat comes from a rejuvenated Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which has a larger network and is better funded than the pro-ISIS groups in the region". (1) Liow's concerns do not appear unfounded. Just a month earlier it had been reported that the Indonesian police had killed a thirty-four-year-old alleged militant from Central Java named Siyono, said to be commander of a group called "Neo Jamaah Islamiah", or "Neo JI"--ostensibly a "younger cell of Jamaah Islamiah". A police spokesperson told the Jakarta Post that Neo JI --whose members were apparently "more militant than IS recruits" --appeared to have existed for some time, was "well structured" and resourced and even owned "weapons warehouses". (2) The police had yet to find any links between Neo JI and Al Qaeda, ISIS or the other violent domestic militant group called the East Indonesian Mujahidin or Mujahidin Indonesia Timur (MIT) based in Poso in Central Sulawesi in eastern Indonesia. (3) What seemed clear, however, was that Neo JI had emerged from the old JI networks that had been involved in the 2002 Bali bombings for example.

Moreover, given recent indications by some analysts that a Southeast Asian wilayat or province of the so-called caliphate announced by ISIS leader Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi in June 2014 may have been declared in Mindanao in the southern Philippines--with its attendant worrying security implications for the region--policy attention to the issue of ISIS-related terrorism remains fully warranted. (4) Hence while it behooves counter-terrorism specialists to remain wary of the latent potential of the older Indonesian-based, transnationally oriented JI network for significant violence, it is also necessary to be vigilant regarding the current threat posed by ISIS. To this end it is timely that the detailed musings of a rehabilitated senior JI militant, Wan Min Wan Mat (hereafter Wan Min)--a former university lecturer who was intimately familiar with the inner workings of the JI network--have become available. Compared to other better known JI figures such as Nasir Abas (5) and Ali Imron, (6) relatively little has been written about this individual and his views. (7) By drawing on the valuable insights provided by Wan Min on the inner workings of JI--particularly its Malaysian branch--this article explores the ideological rationale and aims of this network, unpacks its recruitment and indoctrination philosophy and methodology and examines what, in Wan Min's view, are potentially useful strategies for rehabilitating JI militants or preventing the further dissemination of JI extremist ideas. While his views illuminate the inner workings of the Malaysian JI chapter in particular, and should not be uncritically applied to either the JI network with its offshoots in Indonesia or for that matter ISIS, some of his insights arguably retain enduring and wider applicability.

First, however, it is necessary to provide some context and background on both JI and the central figure in this article, Wan Min. Thus in the next section the background of JI is concisely explained, and the role of Wan Min, who was very much an integral part of the JI milieu, is examined. The article then proceeds to lay bare his ideas along the lines mentioned above.

Jemaah Islamiyah: A Concise History

JI first came to the attention of Southeast Asian and Western security agencies in December 2001, soon after the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks in New York and Washington D.C., due to a narrowly averted joint plot with Al Qaeda to bomb Western diplomatic and commercial interests in Singapore. Six truck bombs, each rigged with three tons of ammonium nitrate, were to have struck six sites simultaneously. The British, Australian, American and Israeli diplomatic missions, Changi Naval Base and Sembawang Wharves (used by US naval forces), as well as US commercial interests in Singapore, were all on JI's target list. Fortunately, local security agencies disrupted the plot and detained fifteen individuals in December and another twenty-one in August 2002. By mid-2002, JI's presence in Singapore had been all but decimated. (8) To be sure, it would be a mistake to think of JI as simply an Al Qaeda outpost in Southeast Asia, existing at the behest of the latter. JI was in fact older than Al Qaeda, and had emerged from the post-war Darul Islam separatist movement in Indonesia. (9)

Darul Islam, led by the mystical and charismatic S.M. Kartosoewirjo between 1948 and 1962, had sought to establish a Negara Islam Indonesia (Nil, or Indonesian Islamic State), centred in the restive province of West Java. However, with the capture and execution of Kartosoewirjo by the Indonesian security forces in 1962, Darul Islam fragmented. However, this did not mean that the movement was dead. By the early 1970s, two Kartosoewirjo followers, Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, were engaged in political and at times violent agitation against President Soeharto's authoritarian New Order regime. These men were further radicalized during their incarceration from 1978 to 1982. (10)

Another factor contributing to the intensifying extremism of these two figures and their growing support base was Soeharto's decision in 1984 to require all social and political institutions to abide by the policy of asas tunggal--or sole loyalty to the state ideology of Pancasila (11)--rather than Islamic or other motifs. Worse, the heavy-handed treatment by the security forces of Muslim disturbances at the port of Tanjong Priok in Jakarta in 1984, further hardened the increasingly virulent us-versus-them worldview of Sungkar, Ba'asyir and their followers. This incident, together with the decision of the Indonesian Supreme Court in February 1985 to re-arrest both men for their earlier Darul Islam activities for which they had first been arrested in November 1978, helped precipitate a mass exodus the following year across the Straits of Malacca into Malaysia. (12)

During the long Malaysian hiatus (1985-99), thanks to their preaching prowess and uncompromising call for a genuine Islamic community, Sungkar and Ba'asyir gradually developed a network of supporters in Malaysia and Singapore. Importantly, they also sent their followers to participate in the multi-national jihad against Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan to secure the training to ultimately overthrow the Soeharto regime by force. (13) The Afghan experience also introduced Darul Islam fighters to the ideas of the charismatic Palestinian-Jordanian ideologue Abdullah Azzam, who emphasized that quite apart from the so-called near enemy of un-Islamic home governments, jihad should be waged globally to liberate Muslim lands currently occupied by non-believers, such as Palestine, the Philippines and Kashmir. (14)

At any rate, after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989, Sungkar began to distance himself from the Indonesian Darul Islam leader Ajengan Masduki for a variety of reasons, ranging from discomfort with the latter's mystical Sufi leanings--anathema to Wahhabi-oriented individuals like Sungkar (15)--to his alleged misuse of funds. This led to the formal inauguration in January 1993 of JI as a separate entity from Darul Islam, though the former still focused on establishing an Islamic State in Indonesia. Gradually, however, part of the JI network that had been exposed in Afghanistan to Azzam's more global Jihad orientation would adopt the "far enemy" of the United States and its allies as the key target, an ideological trajectory that would eventually culminate in the 2002 Bali bombings. (16) In any case, following the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, and the demise of the New Order in May 1998, Sungkar and Ba'asyir returned to Indonesia, exploiting the newly emerging democratic space to maximum benefit. Sungkar died in November 1999, leaving Ba'asyir and his acolytes to steer JI, which had from 1995 onwards been set up as a hierarchical entity with a well-defined administrative structure. (17)

Thus constituted, and in response to the Christian attacks on Muslim communities in Poso and Ambon that peaked during 1999-2000, (18) JI embarked on a campaign of terror attacks within Indonesia in August and December 2000 and, through exploitation of its transnational network of cells that had been set up during the Malaysian exile, attempted the foiled December 2001 Singapore plot described earlier. In fact, the Singapore plot was Plan A, and its failure led directly to Plan B: the JI suicide bombing attacks on Bali nightclubs that killed 202 civilians, including 88 Australians, on 12 October 2002. (19)

The Bali bombings highlighted the very real threat that JI posed in Southeast Asia, a point driven home by further deadly attacks by the network and its splinters--particularly the very active one led by Malaysian militant Noordin M. Top--throughout the rest of the decade. These included the first Jakarta Marriott bombing (August 2003); the attack outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta (September 2004); the second Bali attacks (October 2005); and, after a four-year hiatus, the July 2009 twin suicide bombings of the Jakarta Marriott hotel again and the nearby Ritz-Carlton hotel. (20) Since then, because of internal dissension among the group's leading personalities, as well as successes against it by Indonesian security forces, the JI network has evolved, spawning new entities, most notably Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT) led by Ba'asyir, who was jailed for terrorism-related offences in August 2010; and more recently, a virulent JAT off-shoot...

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