Yesterday's bombing at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta offers an important lesson about fighting al Qaeda world-wide: It won't happen through law enforcement alone. If, as is expected, the investigation shows that the blast was the work of Jemaah Islamiyah -- the al Qaeda- affiliated group responsible for October's Bali bombing -- it will reinforce the fact that law enforcement must go hand in hand with education reform. Governments in Islamic countries can't delay taking action against those who are spreading messages of hate among their young people.
Since the Bali blast, Indonesia has finally gotten serious about fighting terror. Last month, police arrested nine suspected Jemaah Islamiya members and uncovered a large cache of arms and explosives. JI's alleged leader is on trial for a series of church bombings in 2000. All of this took considerable political courage on the part of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose own vice president openly sympathized with the group's leaders.
Yet yesterday's attack showed that JI remains a formidable force. Good intelligence and police work can prevent many attacks, and Indonesian authorities had recently warned the public to be on the lookout for JI operatives planning a fresh offensive. But if this war is to be won decisively, it's not enough to lock up the terrorists. The supply chain that provides fresh recruits must be disrupted.
There is no mystery about how JI operates. Its core organizers are veterans of the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan or were trained at al Qaeda camps there. They recruit among the alumni of a network of Indonesian religious schools, or pesantren. Many of the radical schools are funded by Saudi Arabian charitable foundations and preach the intolerant Saudi form of Islam, known as Wahhabism. In the five years since the fall of Suharto, the Saudis have dramatically scaled up their presence in Indonesia, trying to repeat their success at radicalizing the Pakistani and Afghan populations.
The senior JI members responsible for the Bali bomb had ties to a religious school in Malaysia that is one of the original JI institutions and reportedly had a Wahhabist orientation. Several of the plotters have now been put on trial in Indonesia and a verdict on the most important defendant is expected this week.
The majority of Indonesia's population practices a tolerant form of Islam and rejects the idea that there is only one way to salvation. But Saudi money is allowing the agitators to occupy a niche left open by the post-Suharto chaos. In many cases, poor kids do not have access to education and the religious schools represent their only chance to learn to read and write. Once there youths are steered down a dead-end street of violence and hatred.
In Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf has tackled the same problem by bringing the local religious schools under a central licensing regime, creating a new standard curriculum and monitoring their activities. Something similar could be attempted in Indonesia. Foreign charities seeking to fund pesantren could be forced to give their money to government-controlled foundations that would then call the tune.
Indonesia deserves ample credit
for its law enforcement efforts since October. But Saudi Arabian
money is sabotaging Indonesia's future stability and prosperity,
and unless the Wahhabis are stopped the war on terror in Southeast
Asia will be hard to win.