20 years after 9/11, is Southeast Asia’s feared militant group Jemaah Islamiah on the cusp of a revival?

JI, which was behind every major terror attack in Indonesia from 2002 to 2010, has re-emerged from the shadows with a recruiting drive and solid funding sources

While analysts say former JI members from the likes of Malaysia and Singapore are unlikely to go back to Afghanistan, the country may again become a haven for such groups

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Police and onlookers at the site of a bomb blast in the tourist area of Kuta where over 200 people were killed. Photo: AFP

Published: 12:00pm, 11 Sep 2021Updated: 4:55pm, 13 Sep 2021

The world changed forever after September 11. Suspicion and security trumped trust and privacy, and another attack seemed imminent. It came more than a year later, in Southeast Asia, in a chilling reminder of the insidious reach of extremism.

On October 12, 2002, Jemaah Islamiah (JI) – the Southeast Asian branch of al-Qaeda, the terrorist group behind the attacks in the United States – set off a series of bombs on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali. Two of the explosives were detonated in the buzzing tourist district of Kuta, killing 202 people from more than 20 countries in the deadliest terrorist attack in Indonesian history.

JI was virtually unheard of before the Bali bombings, but its notoriety spread rapidly. It had cells in locations including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, with the latter two countries bearing the brunt of its attacks.

From 2002 to 2010, the group was behind every major terror attack in Indonesia, including the 2003 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta and the car bombing a year later at the Australian embassy in the capital.

“JI was the most consistently lethal al-Qaeda-affiliated organisation in the world between 2002 and 2010 … they perpetrated large, complex, mass-casualty attacks,” said Zachary Abuza, professor of Southeast Asia studies at the National War College in Washington, who specialises in terrorism and insurgencies.

Stung by JI’s rise, the authorities swung into action. Detachment 88 (Densus 88), Indonesia’s elite police counterterrorism squad, was formed in the wake of the Bali bombings. It led a spate of raids and arrests that weakened JI to the point that little was heard of the group from 2014, with Islamic State (Isis) affiliate Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) becoming the new face of terror in Indonesia.

“There were several major attacks that were in the final stages of planning that security forces thwarted, in large part because of international cooperation [with the likes of Australia, Malaysia, and the US],” Abuza said. “Were it not for law enforcement and intelligence cooperation, there would have been more attacks.”

But JI had not gone away – it had gone underground. Worse, it has gone legitimate, radically restructuring its ragtag funding efforts. No longer does it rely on robberies – the new JI owns oil-palm plantations, hotels, and schools.