How threatened is Indonesia by Jemaah Islamiah?
Monday, August 31, 2009 at 12:02AM ASIA: "Terrorism in South-East Asia: After the bombings; The fight against Jemaah Islamiah is going better than it might seem," The Economist, 25 July 2009.
With the recent hotel bombings in Jakarta (7/17), you get a spate of media coverage insinuating that the radical Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah is resurgent, as this is the biggest strike since the Bali bombings in 2002 and a similar Jakarta hotel attack in 2003. The group, according to the article, "cross-pollinates jihadists" from throughout the region (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines) and succeeds primarily on sectarian strife and anti-Western hatreds.
But The Economist argues that the group has been more neutralized, through arrests, than is commonly realized and suspects this strike was a we-are-still-here sort of signal following the re-election of Indonesia's popular president earlier in July.
Indeed, in that election hard-line Islamic groups did poorly--another in a long string of election disappointments for radicals through the Islamic world over the past three years.
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