Foiled terrorist plot exposes Indonesia’s vulnerability

Indonesia's arrest of 11 suspected militants it said planned to attack the US Embassy and a plaza near Australia’s Embassy is evidence that legal extremist groups are turning to violence, analysts said yesterday.
The arrests could also step up pressure on the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, criticized for doing too little to curb religious intolerance in the country.
Anti-terrorist squad Detachment 88 squad seized bomb-making equipment and one bomb ready to be used by a militant group, National Police spokesman Suhardi Alius said.
The arrests by the elite squad on the island of Java were the latest in a crackdown against militants during which dozens have been arrested and at least seven killed. They come 10 years this month after a bomb attack on Bali killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.
“The first piece of evidence was found at a housing complex in Madiun (Java), a bomb ready to detonate, as well as raw materials for bomb making and instruction books on how to make bombs,” Alius said. He listed targets as the US consulate in Surabaya, East Java, its embassy in Jakarta, Plaza 89 in Jakarta, which is in front of the Australian embassy, and the offices of prominent mining company Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold. The militant group also planned to attack the Mobile Police Brigade in the central Java city of Srondol, he said, adding that the spiritual leader of the group had been arrested.
The State Department in Washington declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the US Defense Department said she was unaware of any request by the State Department to increase security at its embassy in Jakarta.
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade declined to comment on security at its Jakarta embassy and a spokesperson said it had no information to suggest Australian citizens or interests were the group’s intended target.
“The apparent choice of the US embassy as a target shows that the so-called ‘far enemy’ is still a desirable target among Indonesian militants ... and not just Indonesian police or the so-called ‘near enemy’ who have been preferred in recent times,” he said.
The group’s name links them to a militant group operating in Kashmir and it is possible that some of its members may have trained with the Kashmiri group, said Damien Kingsbury, a professor at Deakin University in Australia. The militant group’s members would also likely have at least informal links with other militants in Indonesia and the group’s existence is further evidence of the continuing threat, said Kingsbury, an expert on Indonesia.
The 2002 Bali bombings, which in turn came just over a year after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, were a watershed for Indonesia. They forced the secular state to confront the presence of a small but dedicated group of followers of Osama Bin Laden bent on attacking Western targets.
Indonesian forces has since worked with Australia and other countries to crack down on the Al-Qaeda-linked Southeast Asian militant group Jemiah Islamiyah that was behind the bombs.
The hunt led to the arrest of hundreds of militants. Many were killed in shootouts and the three main perpetrators of the bombings were convicted and executed by firing squad in 2008.
Indonesia has been largely successful in containing militant attacks and there have been no large-scale attacks on Western targets since 2009 when suicide bombers blew themselves up in two Jakarta hotels, killing nine people and wounding 53.