Mainly terrorism in Indonesia: catch all

[Dayuhan]

They fight with the same tenacity their brothers in the ME do, so much for the argument they're not as susceptible to radicalization.

Yes, they fight hard, and there are radicals. As in most places, the inner circle will not de-radicalize and they will not change. They will eventually have to be killed or imprisoned. What can be done, however, is to isolate that radical core from the broader societal base to the greatest possible extent, which makes it harder for the radicals to hide and to recruit replacements for those arrested of killed. In Indonesia the reduction in domestic sectarian conflict has not eliminated the radical core, but it has succeeded to some extent in isolating it from the broader population.

They have no qualms about killing those from other ethnic groups, and creating communal strife is still part of their strategy, this wasn't a flash in the pan.

Clearly they want to re-ignite the sectarian fighting, but so far they are not succeeding. 12-15 years ago an incident like that would have generated an instant flare-up. That of course is what the radicals want. Hopefully they won't get it.

I do agree that the vast majority of Indonesian muslims do not support this, but Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation but the 3-7% that are estimated to support these radical views still equates to tens of thousands. Of those a much smaller percentage will be motivated to participate in violent acts, but is still signficant.

3-7% of Indonesia is a lot of people. How many of those will actually give support up to the point of embracing terrorism remains to be seen, though. My guess is that a focus on Syria will prove to be a poor tactical move, as Syria is a long way from Indonesia and not a matter of immediate concern to most Indonesian Muslims... but as always, we will see. Not much to be done about it anyway, beyond keeping an eye on who goes and who comes back. That's the job of the Indonesians, and they are able to do it, though I'd assume that the US and other players will feed them any intel they can on movements of their nationals.