Bali blasts are sign of weak terror crackdown

Ned Colt Correspondent • Profile

LONDON - Suspicion in the explosions on Saturday that killed at least 22 people and injured over 100 in the popular Indonesian resort island of Bali has turned to Jemaah Islamiyah, a shadowy militant group with ties to al-Qaida.

NBC News’ Ned Colt discusses the investigation into the recent blasts (which follow an even more deadly attack in 2002), the strength of Islamic militant groups in Indonesia and the likely negative effect the latest attacks will have on Bali's biggest industry, tourism.

Colt, an NBC News correspondent currently based in London, covered the 2002 Bali bombings for NBC News and spent eight years as NBC's Far East correspondent based in Hong Kong. 

Why has suspicion immediately pointed to the Jemaah Islamiyah militant group in Indonesia in the most recent attacks there?
This attack has all the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiyah, known as JI as to those who follow the group closely. It is the same group that has links to the 2002 nightclub bombings.

In this case, suicide bombers carrying waist packs or wearing vests loaded with explosives — we don’t know for certain which — may have been detonated simultaneously by mobile phones. That is somewhat similar to what we experienced in 2002 when more than 200 people were killed in another string of bombings quite similar to this.

What’s curious is that there apparently hasn’t been the crackdown on terrorists that was promised by the government of Indonesia two presidents ago. Megawati Sukarnoputri, the former president, promised to crack down on suspected militants.

There had been some work to make sure that Islamic religious schools were not cultivating radical fundamentalism, but that may still be going on. We are hearing that some are still open and creating martyrs for the cause. But, it’s not surprising that in the world’s largest Islamic nation there are those willing to die for the cause.

What’s most disturbing about latest attack in Indonesia is that this has been allowed to happen again.

Remember that it wasn’t just the Bali bombings that we’ve seen in Indonesia. We’ve seen attempted attacks against Western diplomatic targets — the U.S. embassy, the Australian embassy. In the recent past, the attacks have not been very serious in terms of the loss of life, but clearly they were targeted. The Marriott hotel in Jakarta was also targeted a couple of years back, and a number of people were killed as well. So, it’s been an ongoing problem in Indonesia.

For the long term it’s going to really hurt tourism in Bali, which was so badly damaged by the bombings of 2002. This attack, coming almost three years later to the day since that attack, is going to have a chilling effect on what is really is the lifeblood of Bali.

This has clearly been an ongoing problem in Indonesia, but the attacks by Islamic fundamentalists in Indonesia seemed to have been on the wane since the Bali bombings in 2002. What does the latest attack say about the strength of the insurgents?
They’ve been able to show — as terrorist groups are fond of saying worldwide — that they can hit targets anywhere, at anytime.

As a matter of fact, there were warnings about this over the past month — that Indonesia should be on the watch for terrorist attacks — but they were able to do this without any trouble whatsoever.

You said earlier that there hasn’t been a massive crackdown. So what has the government done to stop the spread of fundamentalism there?
They’ve put laws into place which really didn’t even exist prior to 2002 that target bombers and give police a lot more rights in terms of tracking down would-be terrorists.

But the economy in Indonesia, which is still recovering from the 1997 economic meltdown in Asia, doesn't really mean there is a lot of money to go into the high-tech job of trying to stop terrorism.

The Indonesians been dependent to some extent on Australia — many of those who visit Indonesia are from neighboring Australia. So, the Australian police have been involved quite often in helping out the Indonesians in these investigations.

But the relations between Indonesia and Australia are not exactly warm, so that’s been a bit of an issue. There is a certain amount of national pride in Indonesia involved in these investigations. They would like to think that they can undertake these investigations, and make progress on their own.

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