Asian Jihadis to Fight without bin Laden

But while some of Al-Qaeda’s links to Southeast Asia were deep and long-lasting, analysts say bin Laden’s global network never controlled regional outfits and his death would not hamper their operations.

“I think there are limited implications for Indonesia because Al-Qaeda has lost its foothold in Southeast Asia,” regional security analyst Adam Dolnik, of the University of Wollongong in Australia, told AFP.

“Bin Laden himself hasn’t played much of a role for a number of years. Al-Qaeda has separated from Jemaah Islamiyah which has separated from the actual people who go about the terrorist attacks on the ground."

“There are so many degrees of separation.” An April report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said the terror threat facing Indonesia was no longer in the form of large, Al-Qaeda-linked networks such as JI but small, independent groups.

A suicide attack at a mosque in an Indonesian police station last month fits a pattern of “individual jihad” aimed at local targets by small groups of extremists, it said. A trend was emerging that favoured targeted killings — particularly police and religious minorities — over indiscriminate bombings, local over foreign targets and small group action over more hierarchical organisations.

“Information about these groups is only available because their members were caught. This raises the question of how many similar small groups... exist across Indonesia,” the report said.

University of Indonesia security analyst Andi Widjajanto said bin Laden’s death might even galvanise Southeast Asian militants into action. “Osama’s death doesn’t mean their struggle will end because Al-Qaeda’s power is not centralised on its leader but on its jihadist ideology,” he said.

Another University of Indonesia analyst, Sri Yunanto, said Southeast Asian militants did not even need Al-Qaeda as an ideological inspiration. “In terms of ideology, there are many other independent extremist movements which existed here well before bin Laden,” he said.

“Terrorism and religious extremism will continue to thrive here.”