SINGAPORE, 14 September 2003 — When a Bali court sentenced Islamic militant Imam Samudra to death Wednesday for planning the bombing last year of two nightclubs on the resort island, Indonesian investigators claimed another success in rolling up a terrorist underground that many of the country’s leaders had denied existed only a year ago.
But diplomats and terrorism experts warn that the effort to uproot Jemaah Islamiah, a regional militant network linked to Al-Qaeda, could ultimately fall short because of rivalries among Indonesian police, military and national intelligence agencies. As the security services compete for turf and credit, the police are being starved of the intelligence they need to pursue the investigation beyond the clues unearthed through interrogating suspects and old-fashioned detective work, according to Indonesian and foreign sources.
“The fundamental problem from Day One has been (that) they all want to claim the glory. So they don’t bring the full weight of what each agency has to bear, which is quite a substantial amount of resources on the ground,’’ said a diplomat in Jakarta.
While the police complain they are receiving little help from other Indonesian agencies, investigators say many of the key suspects in the Bali case were caught with the help of the Australian Federal Police. Indonesian police have captured 30 suspects in the Bali attacks, which killed 202 people last October. Security analysts said that if the police had an overall snapshot of the terrorist network, they might have had a better chance to preempt the bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last month, which killed 12 people. Police have concluded the Aug. 5 attack was carried out by a Jemaah Islamiah cell on the western island of Sumatra, operating independently of those under police scrutiny.
“Police simply follow leads, and if they’re not led to a cell or a suspect, there’s little likelihood of them stumbling across it. That’s when you need intelligence cooperation,’’ said Zachary Abuza, an expert on Southeast Asian terrorism at Simmons College in Boston. “Till that’s rectified, you’ll probably get more Marriotts.’’
Though the national intelligence agency was the first Indonesian security service to acknowledge terrorists with international links were active in the country, its officials have watched jealously as the police received acclaim for breaking the Bali case, according to sources familiar with the agency. Senior agency officials are lobbying for authority to arrest terrorism suspects. After the Marriott attack, Indonesia’s Senior Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called together top police and intelligence officials to demand that they improve their coordination, said sources familiar with the discussion.
Marty Natalegawa, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, acknowledged the police could use more intelligence from other agencies. “The government feeling is that we can always do more in this area,’’ he said. “I’m not foreclosing the reality that we need more intelligence. But we should not oversimplify the panacea.’’ He added that some of the most useful intelligence might be in US hands. US investigators are holding Hambali, an Indonesian militant considered by intelligence officials as Jemaah Islamiah’s operations chief and main link with Al-Qaeda. Indonesian police are eager to question Hambali, captured last month in Thailand, but have not received permission from US officials.
