Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** The new Islamist threat in Indonesia.  Since about 2009, there has been a noticeable shift in the organization of violent jihadism in Indonesia.  The big groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT) are concentrating more on building up a mass base of support rather than engaging in major bombings that lead to the loss of innocent Muslim lives.  However, parallel to this, a number of small independent groups have sprung up, particularly in Medan and Lampung on Sumatra and in Bandung and Klaten on Java, that are targeting officials seen as enemies of Islam.  Their favoured tactic is ightiyalat, or targeted assassinations.  Police top the list of targets, as seen with the 15 April 2011 suicide bombing of a police station in Cirebon.  There has not been a mass-casualty bombing in Indonesia since the bombing of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in 2009.

In response to the new threat, the Indonesian military (TNI) has been tasked with using its huge network of territorial commands to counter the spread of hate speech and radicalism during Friday prayers.  The army maintains bases at the district, regency, municipal, and provincial levels and has more than 400,000 active personnel.  The military also has a long history, under Soeharto, of suppressing domestic opposition, whether communist or religious.

*** Putin-Medvedev rivarly extends to arms procurement.  Russia’s President Dmitriy Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are engaged in a vigorous behind-the-scenes contest for the 2012 presidential election.  Putin, having served a term as prime minister can now stand again for the presidency.  Medvedev, however, wants a second term and is no longer behaving as Putin’s obedient poodle.  This week saw yet another example of the all-pervading nature of this contest.  On 26 July, Putin re-emphasized his view that the Russian army should buy its weapons from Russian manufacturers, and he said that in order to improve the quality of Russian arms the state was allocating a massive 50% more for the purchase and modernization of weaponry in 2011.  He said: “The government hopes and expects that these enormous funds will be used to improve the quality of the work of the defence industry...”  In contrast, on 12 July, Medvedev told Defence Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov that the defence ministry should not buy “junk” and should instead import weaponry of the requisite standard.

*** Nasrallah warns Israel.  Israel and Lebanon’s disputed maritime border has increased in significance because of the oil and gas finds in the Leviathan Basin.  On 26 July, Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said: “We warn Israel not to attempt to steal this area or Lebanon’s resources from its territorial waters...It is necessary to warn Israel.”  The US Geological Survey estimates the Basin has 1.7m barrels of recoverable oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas.