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Given Hambali's character traits, police and security officials around the region suspect he may have set in motion elaborate, and as yet undiscovered, terror plots before disappearing in January of 2001, apparently headed for Pakistan. As police investigations continue, each passing week uncovers more of what is now clearly an elaborate umbrella organization for al-Qaeda linked terrorist activity in Southeast Asia headed by Hambali and known as Jemaah Islamiah (JI). After a wave of earlier arrests, the organization's presence in Malaysia and Singapore is now well documented, while the arrest last week of three alleged Indonesian members of JI in the Philippines has confirmed it is still active in both countries (see following story). Though much remains murky about the extent and nature of its activities, it is clear that JI is an organization that devotes much to long-term planning. The attempted bombings in Singapore, for example, were only thwarted late last year by the arrests of 13 key operatives who police say were in the process of assembling the 21 tons of explosives the project required.

That Hambali is somewhere out there planning further havoc is a chilling prospect; four tons of bombmaking material ordered at his direct command in Malaysia and the Philippines are still unaccounted for. "We are just learning how clever he is," says Indonesian Police Inspector General Engkesman Hillep, who heads a team investigating Hambali. A senior U.S. official in the region puts it more bluntly: "We worry about him all the time. It's what keeps us awake at night."

The roots of the fervent faith that underlie Hambali's every action are apparent one recent afternoon in his home village of Sukamanah in West Java. His aunt's voice is reverberating from a loudspeaker through the still, hot air, calling the women of the village to a Koran reading session. Slowly, a group dressed in colorful batik dresses, their heads and necks covered with scarves, stroll through the streets, passing mosques and religious schools every few hundred yards; this is, and for living memory always has been, a devout community. The women converge on the school where the prayer meeting will be held, the same school that Hambali's great-grandfather founded and where he studied.

But this kind of easy assembly to worship is relatively recent for the villagers of Sukamanah. While Hambali was growing up in the 1970s and early 1980s, points out Ridwan a former classmate and current head of the village's oldest religious school, it was difficult and often dangerous to espouse anything but the mildest form of Islam. During the heyday of the long Suharto dictatorship, anyone wishing to preach or even hold an assembly of more than three worshippers had to get permission from the local military commander. "At that time it was very common for our Koran readings or prayer meetings to be suspended because our teachers had been arrested or interrogated," says an old friend from high school who doesn't want to be named.

As a particularly devout youth, Hambali deeply felt this oppression. "He was very religious," says his mother, 60-year-old Eni Mariani, "but also very quiet, aloof and reserved." At first, Eni says, Hambali thought he could continue his Islamic studies in Malaysia, where Islamic activities were relatively unrestrained. But he didn't get a scholarship and, besides, as the eldest male among 12 siblings, Hambali was expected to provide for his family. "We didn't have any money to support him," his mother says, "but he told us that Allah would provide what he needed." In 1985, aged 20, he decided to go to Malaysia anyway, promising his mother that he would find work and send money. It's a path taken by many Indonesian migrants in search of economic opportunity. But in Hambali's case, there would be a major detour. Within a few years of his arrival in Malaysia, he left for Afghanistan.

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