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Peter Kammerer

The militant organisation may try to destabilise region before polls next year

The Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah will try to destabilise the region with political attacks in the run-up to important elections next year, experts warned yesterday.

The warning comes amid fears of a wave of terrorism in the Philippines following the escape from a Manila jail on Monday of a key member of the Muslim extremist group, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, and the detonation of a bomb in Indonesia's parliament building.

Jemaah Islamiah expert Zachary Abuza said the terror network would turn to political assassinations, especially in Indonesia, to bring it closer to its goal of creating an Islamic state.

General elections are expected in Indonesia and Malaysia next April and Filipinos vote in presidential polls in May.

'I'm worried there will be an attempt to destabilise,' the American professor, whose book Militant Islam in Southeast Asia will be published next month, said in Jakarta.

'I'm expecting a lot of assassination attempts, especially in Indonesia in the election year.'

Jemaah Islamiah, blamed for last October's Bali bombings and other attacks in the region, has the highest profile of dozens of Muslim extremist groups.

The group has been linked to international terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. More than 180 of its alleged members - including Indonesian based spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir - have been arrested in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand since December 2001.

Despite increased co-operation among Southeast Asian nations against its operations, intelligence and security experts believe another Bali-style attack is possible. Their concerns were amplified last Friday when Indonesian police arrested nine suspected Jemaah Islamiah militants and seized enough explosives to make 10 Bali bombs  in raids in Jakarta and Semarang, the capital of Central Java province. One of the men killed himself with an M-16 shortly after being arrested near President Megawati Sukarnoputri's home. But police have yet to make any arrests over the parliament bombing and said yesterday it was too early to say if Jemaah Islamiah was responsible.

Anthony Smith, a researcher at the Honolulu-based Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies, said Jemaah Islamiah was a shadowy, secretive group which although apparently seriously damaged by the arrest of its members, remained problematic for the region's governments.

'The threat always seems to be there,' he said. 'Just a handful of people and some explosives can do terrible things.'

Most of those arrested had been low-level foot soldiers assigned to perform a single task and had little knowledge of operations. Higher-ranking members like Ghozi, who had the expertise to acquire funding and weapons and knew the network of safe-houses, were still free.

'I'm not an alarmist, but they don't need a bomb as big as Bali or that can kill as many people to hurt an economy,' said Professor Abuza, who teaches Southeast Asian politics at Simmon's College in Boston.

'They're every bit as determined and actively recruiting. They're not going to go away any time soon.'



Escalation of Jemaah Islamiah's terror campaign forecast