Jemaah Islamiyah :: The W2N.net

Jemaah Islamiyah
Operational	1993 - Present

JI has its roots in Darul Islam (DI, meaning "House of Islam"), a radical movement in Indonesia in the 1940s. JI was formally founded on 1 January 1993 by JI leaders, Abu Bakar Bashir and Abdullah Sungkar⁶ while hiding in Malaysia from the persecution⁷ of the Suharto Government. After the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, both men returned to Indonesia.⁸ where it gained a terrorist edge when one of its founders, the late Abdullah Sungkar, established contact with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. ⁹

JI’s violent operations began during the communal conflicts in Maluku and Poso.¹⁰. It shifted its attention to targeting US and Western interests in Indonesia and the wider Southeast Asian region in response to the US-led war on terror. JI’s terror plans in Southeast Asia were exposed when its plot to set off several bombs in Singapore was foiled by the local authorities.

Recruiting, training, indoctrination, financial and operational links between the JI and other militant groups, such as al-Qaeda, the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Misuari Renegade/Breakaway Group (MRG/MBG) and the Philippine Raja Solaiman Movement (RSM) have existed for many years, and continue to this day.¹¹

Jemaah Islamiyah is known to have killed hundreds of civilians in the Bali car bombing on October 12, 2002. In the attack, suicide bombers killed 202 people, mostly Australian tourists, and wounded many in two blasts. The first, smaller blast by a suicide bomber using a backpack, killed a small number of persons in a nightclub and drove the survivors into the street, where the vast majority were killed by a massive fertilizer/fuel oil bomb concealed in a parked van. After this attack, the U.S. State Department designated Jemaah Islamiyah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Jemaah Islamiyah is also strongly suspected of carrying out the 2003 JW Marriott hotel bombing in Kuningan, Jakarta, the 2004 Australian embassy bombing in Jakarta, and the 2005 Bali terrorist bombing. The JI also has been directly and indirectly involved in dozens of bombings in the southern Philippines, usually in league with the ASG.

History

The JI was established as a loose confederation of several Islamic groups. Sometime around 1969, two men, Abu Bakar Bashir,and Abdullah Sungkar, began an operation to propagate the Darul Islam movement, a conservative strain of Islam. Darul Islam was almost eliminated in the 1950s after members belonging to that sect instigated a rebellion in an effort to create an Islamic state in parts of Indonesia.^{citation needed}

Bashir and his friends created a pirated radio outfit to preach to the poor and oppressed in Indonesia^{citation needed}. Bashir created a boarding school in Java. The school's motto was, "Death in the way of Allah is our highest aspiration."^{citation needed}

Bashir and Sungkar were both imprisoned by the New Order administration of Indonesian president Suharto as part of a crackdown on radical groups such as Komando Jihad, that were perceived to undermine the government's control over the Indonesian population. The two leaders spent several years in prison. After release, Bashir and his followers moved to Malaysia in 1982. They recruited people from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. The group officially named itself Jemaah Islamiyah around that time period.

In the mid and late 1980s, many members of JI, including Sungkar and Hambali (see below) joined the Mujahideen in the resistance movement against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.^{citation needed} They were joined by radical Muslims from extremist groups worldwide. Many of the connections that define the global network of Islamist groups that exists today, including those between al-Qaeda and JI, were made during the conflict in Afghanistan.

Back in Southeast Asia, the members of JI distributed pamphlets. Bashir preached jihad but he would do very little violent action. This changed in the 1990s. Bashir met Riduan Isamuddin, a.k.a. Hambali sometime in the early 1990s at a religious school that Bashir set up. Bashir became the spiritual leader of the organization while Hambali became the military leader. Hambali wanted a large Islamic caliphate to be established across Southeast Asia, incorporating Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Brunei, and Cambodia.^{citation needed}

JI first formed itself into a group of terrorist cells that provided financial and logistical support when needed, to Al-Qaida operations in Southeast Asia. Hambali formed a front company called Konsojaya to help launder money to such plots, including the Operation Bojinka plot, which was foiled on January 6, 1995.^{citation needed} The leaders of JI went back to Indonesia in 1998, when Suharto's government was toppled. Hambali went underground while Bashir publicly promoted jihad.^{citation needed}

In 2003 Indonesian police confirmed 'the exitence of Mantiqe IV "-the JI regional cell" which covers Irain Jaya and Australia." Indonesian police saya Muklas has identified Mantiqe IV's leader as Abdul Rahim -an Indonesian born Australian'.

Indonesian investigators revealed the JI's establishment of an assassination squad in April 2007, which was established to target top leaders who oppose the group's objectives, as well as other officials, including police officers, government prosecutors and judges handling terrorism-related cases.¹²

In April 2008, the South Jakarta District Court declared JI an illegal organisation when sentencing former leader Zarkasih and military commander Abu Dujana to 15 years on terrorism charges.¹³

Timeline

Contents

History

Timeline

See also

Notes

Further reading

External links