Jemaah Islamiyah has not returned after the attack in Malaysia – The Diplomat

It was never planned for it to be Jemaah Islamiyah.

On May 17, Malaysian police announced that a police station in Ulu Tiram, Johor state, had been besieged by a lone gunman wielding a machete. The gunman killed two police officers and was then shot dead at the scene.

On the same day, Malaysian authorities dropped a bombshell: the attacker was a member of the radical Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which allegedly has members in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia and the Philippines.

What followed was a firestorm of interest. JI, once one of Southeast Asia’s deadliest terrorist groups, was apparently back after decades of dormancy.

But as the news continued to trickle out, the reactions of former Indonesian JI members and counterterrorism experts could be summed up in a single word: Really?

Almost immediately afterwards, Bali attacker Ali Imron stated that in his view it was unlikely that it was a JI attack.

Bomb maker Umar Patek went a step further and called it “impossible.”

When the basic details of the events in Malaysia emerged, they largely seemed to disagree with the group’s statements. Mode of operation.

First, the JI, founded in 1993 by Indonesian clerics Abu Bakar Ba’asyir and Abdullah Sungkar, was particularly feared during its heyday in the early to mid-2000s, when the group, trained and funded in Afghanistan, carried out a series of large-scale attacks in Indonesia.

These include the Christmas Eve church bombings in 2000, which killed 18 people, the Bali bombing in 2002, which killed 202 people and injured more than 200 others, and the attack on the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2003, which killed 12 people.

However, JI has never attacked the police.

Over the years, numerous police and army posts have been attacked across Indonesia, including one in Cirebon in 2011 and one in Medan in 2019. However, these attacks were carried out by perpetrators linked to other hardline groups such as Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, which in turn is loosely inspired by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

ISIS has encouraged its followers (a broad term that includes anyone who watches their videos online) to attack whenever and wherever they can, and by any means possible. This has led to a spate of low-level attacks, often by lone gunmen who lack the skills, training and access to weapons to cause major bloodshed.

For example, the small-scale siege of a police station in Malaysia by a single perpetrator had all the hallmarks of an IS-inspired attack – or an outbreak of violence by an individual with a personal agenda and no connection to a radical group.

JI has not attacked anyone since 2009, anywhere, and the organization has now largely concentrated on dakwahor proselytizing – a decision caused by the imprisonment, execution, and death of some of its oldest former members that crippled the group in the mid-2000s.

In 2007, the JI was officially banned in Indonesia, adding to its problems and further fragmenting the group, which was already plagued by infighting stemming from its widely unpopular decision to target civilians in attacks such as the Bali bombing.

In Malaysia, however, police continued to support the theory that JI had resurrected, claiming, among other things, that they had found “JI paraphernalia” in the suspect’s house.

The police did not provide any further details, but the JI does not have any clear “paraphernalia” such as its own flag, nor does it have a range of goods such as T-shirts or other badges.

The police also said that the perpetrator’s father was a “known former member of the JI” – which, for all the reasons mentioned above, tended to support the hypothesis that this was not a JI attack.

In addition, the JI has never officially carried out an attack in Malaysia before. Instead, the country has long served as a transit hub for JI members and funds. Prominent members such as Encep Nurjaman alias Hambali, as well as Abu Bakar Bashir and Abdullah Sungkar lived there in the 1980s and 1990s.

A sudden alleged JI attack on a police station therefore raises obvious questions: Why here? Why now?

Then there was some kind of retraction or at least a clarification from the Malaysian authorities.

According to the Interior Minister, the attacker was a “lone wolf” and did not belong to any terrorist organization.

It seems that Jemaah Islamiyah has not returned after all.