Scene of devastation: The Kuta blast leveled an entire block of bars and
clubs
When U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce entertained a group of mostly foreign businessmen at his residence in Jakarta on Thursday, Oct. 10, two days before the bombings in Bali, his visitors were shocked. The affable career diplomat, widely admired for his relaxed wit, was grim. "He was completely unlike his usual self," says one of the guests at the leafy residence that evening. "No jokes at all. Very, very serious. He wouldn't talk about anything but security and the threat of a terrorist attack."
Boyce had reason to be somber. Earlier in the day, he had delivered a civilly phrased but nevertheless tough message in a meeting with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri: crack down on Islamic militants in the country who the U.S. believed were harboring al-Qaeda-linked terrorists, or Washington would be forced to close its embassy in Jakarta. Boyce didn't give a firm deadline. But official U.S. sources say he did indicate that it would be "in her interest" if Megawati could have an answer by the time she and President George W. Bush met at the APEC summit in Mexico two weeks later.
Boyce's ultimatum was a potent threat. If carried out, it would plunge Indonesia into a diplomatic crisis, and could be catastrophic for its economy. Many U.S. multinationals are legally obligated to adhere strictly to threat warnings issued by the U.S. State Department, and an actual closure would mean they would have to follow suit too. With them would go dozens of other foreign companies, gouging a deep wound in an already sickly economy.
But like a series of earlier attempts over the past year to put pressure on the famously taciturn and immovable President, Boyce's carefully couched warning was met with polite interest but no sign that anything would change. Then came the three detonations in Bali on Oct. 12 that killed nearly 200 young revelers and wounded and maimed hundreds of others. Suddenly, the war against terrorism had acquired, for Jakarta, a sharp new urgency—and danger. "We've been talking with (the Indonesians) for a long time about the seriousness of this problem and the need to take it on seriously," says Paul Wolfowitz, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense who served as the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia from 1986 to 1989. "(Bali) is a heavy price to pay to come to grips with reality, but maybe this will serve as a wake-up call."
It apparently has. Six days after the blasts, Megawati pushed through a special presidential decree that now allows police to question and detain terrorist suspects for up to six months without trial or charge. They didn't waste time using their new powers. The next day, police arrested Abubakar Ba'asyir, the 64-year-old Muslim cleric widely considered by security forces outside Indonesia to be the founding father of Jemaah Islamiah, a regional grouping of Islamic radicals whom Western and regional intelligence agencies suspect of complicity in the bombings in Bali and previous such attacks. Police placed Abubakar under arrest while he was lying in a hospital bed in his hometown of Solo in central Java—not for what happened in Kuta but for a series of bombings during Christmas 2000 and for conspiring to assassinate Megawati. Abubakar was being treated after collapsing at a press conference the day before. Police said they were sending doctors of their own to examine him to see if he was fit enough to travel to Jakarta for questioning. "We don't believe he is sick," was the comment from National Police spokesman General Saleh Saaf. "He might be pretending."
Indonesian police initially said the decision to move against Abubakar was taken based on testimony by Omar al-Faruq, a suspected al-Qaeda operative now in U.S. custody. A team of police and intelligence officers traveled from Jakarta last week to interview al-Faruq, a Kuwaiti national who, until his arrest on June 5, was living in a tiny hamlet in west Java with his Indonesian wife and two children. After his apprehension, he was quietly handed over to U.S. officials and bundled out of the country. As first reported by TIME, al-Faruq held out under intense interrogation until Sept. 9 when he broke down and confessed to having been a key al-Qaeda representative in Southeast Asia, operating out of Indonesia for the past four years.
Senior police officials in Jakarta say their investigation confirmed the details of al-Faruq's confession, in which he fingered Abubakar for complicity in planning and funding a series of terrorist attacks in Indonesia. (Abubakar has repeatedly and strenuously denied any ties to terrorism or al-Qaeda, and is suing TIME.) The allegations, which involve ordering and planning attacks against Megawati and U.S. naval targets, also include a damning charge that appeared to connect the white-bearded cleric to the Bali bombings. Al-Faruq alleged that Abubakar used some $74,000 given to him by an unnamed Saudi sheik to purchase four tons of explosives from corrupt Indonesian army officers. That allegation is "very, very important" says Scotland-based Rohan Gunaratna, terror expert and author of a recently published book on al-Qaeda, because he believes, if true, it may link Abubakar to the Bali bombings. The cocktail of explosives used in the main bomb in Kuta was apparently a mixture of several elements—possibly including C4 plastic explosive, whose sale is theoretically restricted to military customers.
In what appeared to be another direct result of the changed atmosphere in Indonesia, the country's most feared Muslim militia, Laskar Jihad, announced its dissolution a few days after the Bali bombings. Hundreds of Laskar fighters boarded boats to return home to Java from the city of Ambon, where they have played a key role in perpetuating the Christian-Muslim fighting that has left some 10,000 dead in the past three years. In Indonesia, though, nothing is ever quite what it seems, and the abrupt disbanding of Laskar was greeted with skepticism by some analysts. "This is nothing more than a p.r. tactic," says Zachary Abuza, who teaches political science at Simmons College in Boston and is completing a book about al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia. "Laskar Jihad knows when to lay low." Now that they have dispersed, Abuza and others point out, keeping track of the militants will be harder than ever for the country's intelligence agencies.
There is skepticism, too, about whether Jakarta's new resolve will last. Scores of Islamic militants who have fled to Indonesia to escape a yearlong crackdown in other Southeast Asian countries are still on the loose. Gunaratna wonders whether Indonesia's leadership has the will to go after them. Megawati, he says, is "still marking time. There will be no real crackdown in Indonesia." If so, both Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia will remain vulnerable to more terrorist attacks.
The bombings in Bali were a terrible crescendo in what appears to be an orchestrated campaign by fundamentalist Islamic groups in the region. Worst hit prior to the Kuta blasts was the Philippines, where 21 people have died in a series of explosions since Oct. 2, including a U.S. Green Beret. The most recent bombing came on Oct. 18, killing two commuters on a bus in Manila. Those attacks, too, have been blamed on Islamic militants with links to al-Qaeda and to Jemaah Islamiah. Underscoring the militants' regional reach, Malaysia—which has so far managed to frustrate plans by several extremist Islamic groups from launching attacks in the country—arrested a further five alleged militants the same week as the Philippine attacks, bringing the total number detained by Kuala Lumpur since August 2001 to nearly 70. Even the usually phlegmatic Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told reporters that his country might be the next target in the wave of terror.
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