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In New Report, Group Says ‘Inactive’ JI Members in Philippines Under MILF Protection

Published: May 4, 2007   |     |     |   Subscribe: RSS or Email    

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3. Lamongan

Lamongan is an important component of the East Java wakalah, in part because it is home to two JI-affiliated schools, Pesantren al-Ikhlas in Paciran and Pesantren al-Islam, the home base of Bali I bombers Amrozi, Mukhlas and Ali Imron. Al-Islam is a place where some senior JI leaders have taught, sent their children or found their wives. Ali Imron and Mukhlas may be competing for influence there from their places of detention. A series of cassette tapes of Mukhlas’s jihadist teachings, recorded while he was in Kerobokan prison in Bali, proably around early 2005, were produced and marketed in Lamongan. Mukhlas has since been moved to a prison on Nusakambangan, off the south coast of Java, where security is said to be tighter, but communication with the outside still takes place. At the same time, Ali Imron, the “repentant bomber”, has been quietly trying to persuade fellow detainees, and colleagues at al-Islam, that the thrust of his brother’s arguments is wrong, and there is no religious justification for attacks on civilians who have not themselves attacked Muslims.

If Ali Imron’s thinking prevails, it might help reduce the militancy of the East Java wakalah. But paradoxically, it might also aid JI’s reconsolidation efforts by bringing al-Islam into line with the anti-Noordin approach of the JI mainstream.

4. Released Prisoners

The East Java wakalah has seen a number of its top leaders arrested, most for assisting Noordin Top and his late partner, Azhari Husin, to hide from police. But because most of those caught were not directly involved in violence, their sentences were relatively light and many have been released. These include:

 Usman bin Sef alias Fahim, from Surabaya, former head of the East Java wakalah, who helped hide Noordin;
 Syaifudin Umar alias Abu Fida, from Surabaya, a religious teacher;
 Adi Suryana alias Qital, from Surabaya, an Afghan and Mindanao veteran involved in the 2003 special forces training;
 Ashari Dipo Kusuma, from Lamongan, a teacher at al-Ikhlas who helped hide arms after Bali I; and
 Yudi Lukito Kurniawan alias Ismail, from Surabaya, a Mindanao veteran.

Son Hadi, Fahim’s successor as wakalah head, is due for release soon.

All former prisoners will be under some form of surveillance, at least for a while, and may not want or be able to resume their former activities. But loyalty to the organisation whose leaders they are sworn to obey may trump any other consideration; no one should assume released prisoners will shy from efforts to bring JI back to organisational health.

D. JAKARTA

In 1999, the wakalah for the greater Jakarta area had about 100 members, divided between two katibah, one in Bekasi, one in the capital; those katibah still existed in early 2004. Some JI members left to join Khilafatul Muslimin, a non-violent Lampung-based group working for restoration of the caliphate that has a Bekasi branch; at the height of the Ambon and Poso conflicts, others may have left to join KOMPAK. Recruiting continued, however, and the net loss, at least through 2004, may not have been significant. Arrests in 2003 included a few members of the wakalah’s ten-person military unit, including its head, Ahmad Sofyan alias Tamim, now released, but not enough to disrupt the structure. Since Abu Bakar Ba’asyir’s June 2006 release, activities in the Bekasi area have intensified, particularly large rallies (tabligh akbar) at the al-Azhar mosque in Kalimalang, but it is not clear these necessarily benefit JI. The Jakarta leadership from the outset has emphatically opposed Noordin Top’s activities. No one from this wakalah, for example, helped the Australian embassy bombing; that Noordin had to go outside the JI structure to find field operatives is testament to the lack of cooperation in Jakarta.

E. WEST JAVA

JI never developed the strength in West Java as elsewhere in Java, in part because of the presence of jihadi groups with a solid local base. In Bandung, with some of the country’s premier universities, JI seems to have lost out among students to PKS and other organsations. In the Banten and Sukabumi areas, the Darul Islam splinter group, Ring Banten, predominates. JI’s influence is strongest near the Central Java border, in part because of its schools in the Cirebon-Indramayu area. One of the most important – Pondok al-Hussein in Jatibarang, Indramayu – was established by Muhammadiyah, the eminently respectable, nationwide Muslim modernist organisation with several million members. After being taken over in effect by JI ustadz, it was recovered by Muhammadiyah in 2004, and the JI teachers moved to the smaller Nurul Hadid school in Cirebon. An al-Hussein teacher set up a small pondok of his own with about ten students elsewhere in Jatibarang. Pesantren al-Muttaqien, in Gronggong, Cirebon (not to be confused with the school of the same name in Jepara), is another JI-affiliate in the area, with its own network of members. Without the schools, JI membership in West Java would be negligible, but it could reach 40 to 50. In 2003, the head of the West Java wakalah was Abdul Gofar, a teacher at al-Muttaqien.