Joining Foreigners Fighting in Syria - Pepe Tey Pugés

Indonesian Militants Join Foreigners Fighting in Syria                                       (JAN. 31, 2014)

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesians have joined the thousands of foreign fighters who have traveled to Syria to help extremist groups trying to create an Islamic state there, according to a new report, a finding that analysts said Friday could help revive a weakened jihadi movement in Indonesia and set off more attacks on minority Shiites in the Southeast Asian country.

The report by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, based in Jakarta, said that the Syrian conflict, approaching its third anniversary in March, had “captured the imagination of Indonesian extremists in a way no foreign war has before.”

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As many as 11,000 foreign fighters have poured into Syria by way of the Middle East and North Africa. The fighters include radicalized young Muslims with Western passports from Europe, North America and Australia.

Ms. Jones said Indonesian fighters could easily fly on commercial airlines to Turkey, where Ahrar al-Sham, one of the Islamic groups fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, helped them cross the border into Syria. Some Indonesian extremists have also been linking up with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a hard-line group linked to Al Qaeda, she said.

“There are two main concerns for Indonesia,” Ms. Jones said. “One is the return of foreign fighters and what that could mean to providing leadership to the very weak and incompetent jihadi movement here.”

“Second, the process of raising funds for Syria could strengthen the resource base of groups in Indonesia, such as Jemaah Islamiyah,” she said, referring to the Southeast Asian terrorist network linked to Al Qaeda that carried out the Bali bombings in 2002, and whose members and splinter cells carried out other terrorist attacks in Indonesia from 2000 to 2009. She said Jemaah Islamiyah had used its network to recruit and send Indonesian fighters to Syria.

Indonesian extremists are known to have trained and fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s and ’90s, in the southern Philippines and possibly in Bosnia. The involvement of Indonesian fighters in Syria became more prominent after an extremist from the Borneo Island of Indonesia named Riza Fardi was killed there last year, according to the report from the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict.

 “The Indonesian Shiite groups are worried about these movements,” Mr. Noor said. “It creates ramifications where you see tensions between the Sunni and Shiite communities in Indonesia.”

Ms. Jones, of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, said another major concern was that Jemaah Islamiyah, which had fallen off the radar after ceasing terrorist attacks on Western targets in Indonesia in 2007 because of, among other things, an internal backlash over the fact that the majority of its victims were Indonesian Muslims, was increasing its prestige by helping to send fighters to Syria.

The revival of Jemaah Islamiyah as a jihadi organization could have significant consequences in the long term, she said.