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[Jakarta, 27 June 2024] The Al-Qaeda franchise in Yemen has exerted a small but steady pull on Indonesian jihadis as illustrated by trials that concluded in Jakarta in May 2024.&nbsp;
<a title="Indonesians with al-Qaeda in Yemen" href="https://understandingconflict.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/dashboard/IPAC-Report-95-Indonesians-with-Al-Qaeda-in-Yemen.pdf.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&ldquo;Indonesians with al-Qaeda in Yemen&rdquo;</a>, the latest report from the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), examines a dozen cases of Indonesian extremists who sought training with AQAP from 2012 to 2023. Most departed between 2013 and 2015 with the aim of acquiring military training for a vague future use against Islam&rsquo;s enemies, not for planning terrorist attacks at home.&nbsp;
&nbsp;The attraction of Yemen was in part the belief at the time that the Sunni AQAP would ultimately prevail over both Shi&rsquo;a Houthi and Western-backed leaders.
&ldquo;Belief in the imminent victory of Islamic forces is a powerful pull factor for would-be mujahidin,&rdquo; says Sidney Jones, senior adviser of IPAC. &ldquo;This is something to consider when thinking about the next international battle that Indonesians might be tempted to join.&rdquo;
The recently concluded trials involved six men linked to the organisations Jamaah Ansharul Tauhid (JAT), founded by radical cleric Abu Bakar Ba&rsquo;asyir in 2008, and Jamaah Ansharul Syariah (JAS), a splinter that broke away from JAT after Ba&rsquo;asyir swore loyalty to ISIS in 2014. JAT in East Java was the primary driver of the search for training in Yemen.
While thousands of Indonesians attend schools in Yemen, mostly in the Hadramaut region, neither the traditional Islamic schools there nor the less popular Salafi schools closer to Sana&rsquo;a have been fertile areas for AQAP recruitment. Those known to have sought military training with AQAP were all radicalised at home by groups that viewed al-Qaeda as an ideological ally.
&ldquo;Even if those who went to Yemen did not initially plan to conduct violent attacks in Indonesia, the problem with the skills they learned, from sharpshooting to bomb-making, is that sooner or later, there could be a temptation to use them,&rdquo; says Jones.
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The Al-Qaeda franchise in Yemen has exerted a small but steady pull on Indonesian jihadis as illustrated by trials that concluded in Jakarta in May 2024.

Indonesians with Al-Qaeda in Yemen

[Jakarta, 28 February 2024] The keys to successful deradicalisation programs in Indonesia are careful targeting, sustained personal attention, and provision of selected religious reading materials to those in prison.
<a title="An Indonesian Deradicalisation Program that Works" href="https://understandingconflict.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/dashboard/IPAC-Report-92-An-Indonesian-Deradicalisation-Program-that-Works-rev.pdf.pdf">&ldquo;An Indonesian Deradicalisation Program that Works&rdquo;,</a> the latest report from the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) in Jakarta, examines one program undertaken by a unit of Detachment 88, Indonesia&rsquo;s counter-terrorism police, that has successfully changed the way that a group of formerly hardline ideologues think about violent jihad.
&ldquo;The accepted wisdom for the last decade is that the aim of prison programs should be to change behaviour, not ideology,&rdquo; says Syafiq Hasyim, IPAC research director. &ldquo;But this program has demonstrated that with the right approach, former extremists can come to realise that their interpretation of religious texts is flawed.&rdquo;
The report looks at how a Densus unit, IDENSOS (an acronym for the Directorate of Identification and Socialisation), was apparently able to convince four imprisoned pro-ISIS leaders that they had been misled and that several of their ideological premises were wrong. The four were Kiki Muhammad Iqbal, a two-time recidivist from West Java; William Maksum, a religious teacher from Bandung; Iskandar alias Abu Qutaidah from Bima, West Nusa Tenggara, who had served as spokesman for a prisoner uprising against police and prison staff in 2018; and Ustad Yasin, a cleric whose school became the centre of ISIS activity in central Sulawesi. In all cases, there were other factors besides the IDENSOS program that led them to question their beliefs but the sustained attention from police who themselves were devout Muslims was a crucial element.
The report examines the history of deradicalisation initiatives in Indonesia and how approaches have changed over time. It also notes that even the successful IDENSOS program faces obstacles in implementation. These include corruption in prison that allows wealthy narcotics dealers and white-collar corruptors to pay their way into less harsh prison regimes, taking up space that deradicalised prisoners have been promised. Bureaucratic procedures sometimes mean that those prisoners, promised early release, have to wait until well beyond their scheduled release for paperwork to be completed, creating new grievances. Punishing corruption and streamlining procedures would strengthen the IDENSOS program.
IPAC also recommends that more attention be made to women&rsquo;s networks outside prisons, since the attitude of spouses can be a major factor in whether in-prison transformations of male prisoners can be sustained after their release.
&nbsp;
<a href="https://understandingconflict.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/dashboard/IPAC-Report-92-An-Indonesian-Deradicalisation-Program-that-Works.pdf.pdf">IPAC Report 92 An Indonesian Deradicalisation Program that Works.pdf</a>

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The keys to successful deradicalisation programs in Indonesia are careful targeting, sustained personal attention, and provision of selected religious reading materials to those in prison.

An Indonesian Deradicalisation Program that Works

Executive Summary:
[27 June 2023] Violent Islamists in Poso, Central Sulawesi, are weak but still active. Although government leaders have declared this former conflict area &ldquo;secure&rdquo;, it is vulnerable to re-radicalisation for several reasons.&nbsp;
Extremist networks, some of which go back decades, are still strong. The two best-known groups, Mujahidin of Eastern Indonesia (Mujahidin Indonesia Timur, MIT) and Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) have deep roots in the community, even though both have been decimated by arrests over the last five years. The police and military operations in the area for the last seven years have resulted in many deaths and arrests, creating potential new recruits from angry family members. The district (kabupaten) of Poso has one of the largest concentration of released terrorism offenders in the country and more will be released from prison in 2023 and 2024. Some of the deradicalisation programs have created new grievances.
The latest report from IPAC, <a title="&ldquo;Militants in Poso: Down But Not Out&rdquo;" href="https://understandingconflict.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/dashboard/a50d83c4f6838767106103f4f94e044a.pdf">&ldquo;Militants in Poso: Down But Not Out&rdquo;</a> examines the current status of violent extremism in an area that in 2000-2001 was the site of deadly communal conflict between Christians and Muslims and a stronghold of Islamist extremists thereafter. It became the only territorially-based Islamist insurgency in Indonesia and as such attracted fighters from around the country. MIT, founded in 2012, became one of the first groups in Indonesia to declare allegiance to ISIS &ndash; not so much because of ideological affinity but because its leader, Santoso, believed he might be able to secure more funds and fighters by doing so.
The report examines how the security forces changed tactics, not only in response to MIT attacks on police and Christians that included beheadings but also to an order from Indonesian President Jokowi in late 2015 to end the violence in Poso once and for all. Police, backed by the military, moved to a shoot-to-kill policy, and both this change in procedure, as well as a refusal to let the bodies of anyone killed be buried in their home villages for fear of mass protests, alienated local families.
At the same time, the Poso branch of Jamaah Islamiyah, which had been decimated after a wave of arrests in 2007, began to rebuild from 2009 onward, and particularly after the release from prison of its leader, Hasanudin, in 2016. Even as Hasanudin was being lauded as an example of successful deradicalization, he was serving as JI&rsquo;s coordinator for Poso and Palu, systematically recruiting new members and encouraging the spread of JI teachings. He also reactivated military training for members. He was rearrested in August 2021 and later sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The new IPAC report also looks at potential sources of new extremist activity in Poso. They include high-risk former prisoners who were released or will soon be released after serving their full term, without ever asking for sentence reductions or conditional release (because to do so would acknowledge the legitimacy of a non-Islamic legal system). Top of the list is Ust. Awaludin, scheduled for release in 2023, who prior to his arrest in 2019 for planning a bomb attack was a teacher at the pesantren Darul Anshor Putri in Kayamanya, Poso that served as a major support center for MIT.
That pesantren itself, now renamed Iman Nafian Qur&rsquo;anic Memorization School, is under the watchful eye of the police but the possibility that teachers there will continue to disseminate extremist teachings is high.
It is also critical that local government and civil society continue to work on reducing the communal tensions that lie just below the surface in Poso. They can also quickly erupt, triggered by minor incidents like brawls between youths of segregated neighborhoods. Only if more work is done to bridge the Christian and Muslim communities and the police are quick to act if an incident occurs will more serious violence be avoided.
Finally, the government needs to understand and correct the flaws in its deradicalization programs, which include lack of careful evaluation of needs, clear criteria for beneficiaries, or independent assessment of results, including auditing of expenditures. In some cases, the weaknesses of these programs, particularly those run by the National Counter-Terrorism Agency (Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Terorisme, BNPT) are becoming a new source of resentment against the government.&nbsp;
The report concludes that militant groups remain a threat, even though severely weakened by law enforcement operation. Poso has a chance to leave violent extremism behind, but it will require more targeted interventions and willingness to make corrections and improvements in ongoing programs to ensure that the gains made by law enforcement are sustained.
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Violent Islamists in Poso, Central Sulawesi, are weak but still active. Although government leaders have declared this former conflict area “secure”, it is vulnerable to re-radicalisation for several reasons.

Militant Groups in Poso: Down But Not Out

[Jakarta, 31 March 2022] Charities have emerged as an important source of funds for violent extremist organisations in Indonesia over the past two decades. Funds raised through humanitarian appeals, both from committed supporters as well as the unsuspecting public, defray organisational expenses,&nbsp; finance terrorist operations and support arrested members and their families. The Indonesian government has made major progress in stemming the flow of funds to terror groups since the adoption of a comprehensive anti-terrorist financing law in 2013. But more needs to be done to monitor charitable organisations suspected of terrorist links.
<a href="http://cdn.understandingconflict.org/file/2022/03/Report__76_Extremist_Charities.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Extremist Charities and Terrorist Fund-Raising in Indonesia</a>, the latest report by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), examines how charities have evolved to serve as an important source of funding for violent extremist organizations in Indonesia and the measures that are needed to curb their activities.&nbsp;&nbsp;
&ldquo;Although there are important differences between various extremist organizations, they have followed a similar model for using charities,&rdquo; says Sidney Jones, IPAC Senior Adviser. &ldquo;This involves identifying a concrete humanitarian need; giving it a religious justification; raising funds as broadly as possible; claiming transparency by periodically publishing accounts; and then diverting funds for jihad and support to arrested members.&rdquo;
The new report analyses three violent extremist organisations that have used charities to raise funds. The first was KOMPAK, which collected funds from the general public for arming and supplying Muslim fighters in Ambon and Poso, during the communal violence in 1999 and the early 2000s. The second and the most formidable was Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which raised funds not just for short-term needs, such as sending members for combat training in Syria, but also to build a mass base. JI charities include the Hilal Ahmar Society of Indonesia (HASI,) whose head, Dr. Sunardi, was recently killed by the police during an arrest operation, as well as the Abdurrahman bin Auf Foundation (ABA) that amassed a small fortune from donation boxes placed in minimarts across the country. The third consists of the many pro-ISIS groups that used funds raised through humanitarian appeals to aid the families of imprisoned and killed ISIS supporters and to fund jihad operations. The funds were also used to maintain ideological conformity by denying support to those who cooperated with Indonesian authorities.
Indonesian law enforcement measures against extremist charities are linked to its efforts to meet the international standards on combatting terrorist financing and money laundering set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Indonesia was removed from the FATF blacklist after enacting its first comprehensive law against terrorist financing in 2013 and putting a few other regulatory measures in place. Despite these improved measures, Indonesia remains the only G-20 country that is not a full member of the FATF.
Since it is hosting the G-20&rsquo;s 17th Heads of State and Government Summit in Bali in November 2022, Indonesia is making a concerted effort to earn that membership by improving its enforcement record. The FATF standards, however, are tied to the process for freezing the assets of individuals and organisations designated as terrorists on a U.N. list that is deeply flawed. There are also domestic political factors to consider, as stricter regulation of religious charities may result in a backlash from mainstream Islamic groups that have been historically opposed to government interference. For now, the best solution would be a technical one: to increase the capacity of the National Zakat Agency (BAZNAS), the Center for Reporting and Analysis of Financial Transactions (PPATK), and the Ministry of Finance to perform detailed audits on charities suspected of ties to extremist organisations.
&ldquo;Thanks to declining ISIS influence, massive arrests, and improved government efforts at disengagement, extremist groups are weaker now than they have been in many years,&rdquo; says Jones. &ldquo; This could be a particularly opportune time to try new technical measures to curb&nbsp; extremist charities, but critical to their success will be a clear and credible definition of &ldquo;violent extremist&rdquo;, so that legitimate Muslim charities, or indeed any other humanitarian charities, are not inadvertently penalised.&rdquo;

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Charities have emerged as an important source of funds for violent extremist organisations in Indonesia. Funds raised through humanitarian appeals defray organisational expenses,  finance terrorist operations and support arrested members' families.

Extremist Charities and Terrorist Fund-Raising in Indonesia﻿

[Jakarta, 21 January 2021] Support for Islamic State is declining among Indonesian extremists, and Jemaah Ansharul Daulah (JAD), once the largest of the country&rsquo;s many pro-ISIS groups, has become largely inactive. At the same time, a process of regrouping and splintering is producing new cells, and some Indonesians believe their oath of loyalty to ISIS leaders obliges them to continue fighting in any way they can. The overall picture is of a manageable threat, even as there is no end in sight to the emergence of small, poorly trained groups with the intention to do harm.
&ldquo;There are no extremist groups operating in Indonesia today that present a serious threat to Indonesian stability or that are beyond the capacity of the police to manage,&rdquo; said Sidney Jones, director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC).
<a href="http://cdn.understandingconflict.org/file/2021/01/Report_69_final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Decline of ISIS in Indonesia and the Emergence of New Cells</a>, the latest report from the examines the status of the major pro-ISIS organisations in Indonesia and a selection of smaller ones to understand the dynamics that have weakened them and caused discontent and departures. The arrest of many top pro-ISIS leaders (an appendix lists more than 70) has led to disruption in the ranks and a sense among some members that the costs of involvement are too high. The difficulty of getting to Syria or any other jihad theatre has taken away a powerful ISIS draw. In a few cases where key extremist leaders have been persuaded to disengage, ordinary members have followed.
New cells continue to pop up, however, including some formed through social media and in areas that have no history of extremist violence. Most are weak, in the sense of having few skills, resources or strategy, but weakness has never been any deterrent to violence in Indonesia. Many terrorists have taken to heart the maxim, &ldquo;Better to be a lion for a day than a sheep for life.&rdquo;
The report notes that many pro-ISIS groups emerged from existing extremist groups committed to an Islamic State in Indonesia. Even if some return to their pre-ISIS focus, it may be with a harsher ideology and a vision of a state shaped by ISIS propaganda.
The revolving door of Indonesia&rsquo;s prisons remains a concern, with some 250 convicted terrorism offenders scheduled for release in 2021. Many were arrested in &ldquo;preventive strikes&rdquo; following the application of a strengthened anti-terrorism law in 2018. While police surveillance and monitoring capacity has improved significantly in recent years, the danger remains that some of those released will return to their old networks.
The report concludes with ten concrete policy recommendations for the Indonesian government from more attention to Qur&rsquo;anic memorisation schools for children in known extremist areas to changing the incentive structure in the police to reward successful disengagement efforts.

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Support for Islamic State is declining among Indonesian extremists, and Jemaah Ansharul Daulah (JAD), once the largest of the country’s many pro-ISIS groups, has become largely inactive. 

The Decline of ISIS in Indonesia and The Emergence of New Cells

[Jakarta, 21 September 2020]&nbsp;Indonesia has managed a rising number of women extremists in prison reasonably well, but the need for more women-specific protocols and more recognition of the work of women case officers (wali) is increasingly apparent.
These are among the findings of the latest report by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), <a href="http://cdn.understandingconflict.org/file/2020/09/EXTREMIST_WOMEN_BEHIND_BARS_IN_INDONESIA.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Extremist Women Behind Bars in Indonesia</a>. Only four women had been imprisoned on terrorism charges before the declaration of Islamic State in June 2014. The number has steadily gone up and in the two-year period 2018-2019, police arrested more than 30 women, all ISIS supporters. As of September 2020, 39 women were awaiting trial or serving sentences for terrorism in eleven different facilities around Indonesia.
The report notes that the experience of women during their incarceration can be critical to their future disengagement from extremist organisations. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the personal interactions with prison staff and fellow inmates, more than any specific programs, that can be key to moderating behaviour,&rdquo; says Dyah Kartika, IPAC analyst and primary researcher for the report.
The report highlights the vital role that women&nbsp;wali&nbsp;play as they try to build up a relationship of trust with the inmates in their charge. Indonesian authorities need to ensure that there are opportunities for professional advancement and higher pay for those who take particularly creative approaches toward managing extremist women or who succeed in encouraging more flexible attitudes.
The new IPAC report examines the different clusters of women in prison, looks at the dynamics between wali and inmate in several women&rsquo;s prisons and includes several case studies of women in detention.

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Indonesia has managed a rising number of women extremists in prison reasonably well, but the need for more women-specific protocols and more recognition of the work of women case officers (wali) is increasingly apparent.

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