Indonesia Seeks To Boost Counter-Terror Cooperation With India

JAKARTA: Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s biggest nation, is seeking wide ranging counter-terror cooperation, including strengthening intelligence cooperation mechanism with neighbouring India, also a victim of terror, in the wake of last week’s yet another lone wolf terror strike and growing trends of Wahabi ideology.

India and Indonesia are stressing the importance of existing counter-terror mechanisms and strengthening intelligence cooperation systems amid rising violence and spread of radical ideologies, a senior Indonesian government official told ET. Such consultations are being held at regular intervals between Indonesian authorities, Indian foreign ministry and National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), according to the official who did not wish to be identified.

New Delhi and Jakarta have also put in place an arrangement of Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty and instrument of extradition to deal with terror operatives who are a threat to both countries.

“A new phenomenon is emerging in terror attacks in Indonesia where children and women are being used to carry out terror strikes. The existing mechanism may not be adequate to counter this trend. We had modified our counter-terror legal mechanisms last year and this may need further modifications,” indicated the official referring to the fact that extremists and radicals are constantly inventing new methods to target innocent citizens.

“The suicide bombing in Sibolga dealt a blow not only to our efforts to fight terrorism, but also to the idea that the nuclear family is without exception an anchor to a strong nation. Regardless of what motivated Solimah, wife of terror suspect Husein, aka Abu Hamzah, to detonate a bomb that killed her and her 2-year-old child on Wednesday, terrorists are clearly working to hijack the family institution to propagate their extremist ideologies,” Indonesia’s biggest English daily Jakarta Post wrote in an editorial after the recent terror attack in the country’s North Sumatra province.

Last May, a family blasted three churches in Surabaya, East Java, and another family perpetrated a bomb attack in the city’s police headquarters, while three members of a family were killed in an apartment in neighboring Sidoarjo after pipe bombs, which the police believed were planned for an attack, went off.

Terrorists and terror operatives are willing to recruit their wives and children, demanding absolute loyalty from them as supporters and protégés, according to persons familiar with the matter.

Husein, a regional leader of the Islamic State-affiliated Jamaah Ansharud Daulah (JAD), who was arrested last Wednesday, is suspected to have followed such a model in spreading his teachings. Husein had also planned for his second wife to become a suicide bomber, according to one of the sources quoted above.

“Wahabi ideology is on the rise in pockets of Indonesia. Ideology espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood is also being noticed. The government has not only modified anti-terror law to prevent youth from joining terror and extremist groups but has also put in place a robust de-radicalisation program to send back youth into mainstream,” explained the above mentioned official.

Also, 800 ISIS members have returned to Indonesia since the end of crisis in Syria and Iraq, and they are being put through de-radicalisation course to help them return to mainstream life. Besides, the local government has launched an initiative to inspire youth leaders to spread the message of peace. Terror operatives who have been imprisoned have also been separated and put in separate chambers from other criminals to prevent the spread of radicalisation among other steps put in place by the Indonesian government.

Source: ET

Image Courtesy: ET