Posted on 08/06/2003 10:00:41 AM PDT by knighthawk
JEMAAH Islamiah's infrastructure was still very much intact and more attacks could be launched within weeks, terror experts said yesterday.
Author Rohan Gunaratna said JI was the only group capable of the carnage witnessed in the biggest bomb attack to hit Indonesia since October's Bali blasts.
Dr Gunaratna said Indonesian authorities had left the nation vulnerable to attack because they had failed to give police the power to arrest all members of JI.
"In Indonesia it is not a crime to be a member of JI, so it is impossible for police to have the power to arrest enough JI members," he said.
"Other attacks will occur. JI is still able to mount large-scale attacks . . . they have both the capability and the intention."
Michael McKinley, a strategic analyst at the Australian National University in Canberra, said the fact that the terrorists had managed to hit what should have been a safe and protected area demonstrated JI was operating with impunity.
"Questions have to be asked about how effective the security warning system is in Indonesia. It is so easy in a big city and a complex society to target anything from water treatment plants to something like this.
"You need better intelligence, and some members of the security forces are sympathetic."
David Wright-Neville, senior lecturer at the school of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University, said while the attack seemed to bear all the hallmarks of JI, it could also have been an al-Qa'ida attack.
"It bears all the al-Qa'ida trademarks from attacks they've launched in Africa, and we know they are active in Indonesia. They run an autonomous program, independent of JI," Dr Wright-Neville said.
Dr Wright-Neville said that despite moves to crack down on JI, there had been a failure to address the growing popularity of terrorism.
"After every arrest there's always someone else ready to fill the hole. What's fascinating is that we seem to have a situation now where terrorism and terrorists are being seen as sort of heroes."
Dr Wright-Neville said new JI recruits had been trained quickly to fill crucial operational gaps.
"Sadly, Bali was just a taste, it was really the first suicide bombing . . . I think we will see a lot more of this," he said.
Boston-based JI expert Zachary Abuza agreed, saying JI's operations were getting better because they were learning from their mistakes and outsiders were coming in to replenish their ranks following arrests in the region.
He said the scale and complexity of the Marriott bombing would have required training and input from the al-Qa'ida network.
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