Warning of Threats in Indonesia Left Off Travel Advisory (Bali, Australia)

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | October 15, 2002

[Shermy]

The Department of Foreign Affairs did not upgrade its travel advice for Bali despite a chilling US State Department warning of credible threats against Westerners in Indonesian "bars, restaurants and tourist areas" just three weeks before Saturday's terrorist attack.

The warning, disseminated by the United States embassy in Jakarta on September 26, urged all American and other Western tourists to "avoid large gatherings known to cater primarily to a Western clientele".

The notice was based on information gleaned from a senior al-Qaeda operative captured in Indonesia, Kuwaiti-born Omar al-Faruq. It was relayed directly to Australian authorities in Jakarta and to Foreign Affairs officials in Canberra.

The warning remains posted on the US department's website, alongside three other notices issued within the past six weeks, cautioning of the dangers of travel in Indonesia.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, said yesterday Australia had been aware of general warnings that "soft" targets such as bars and cafes could be at risk.

Those concerns had been reflected in the official travel advice issued to Australians on the Foreign Affairs website and through travel agents, he said.

However, the Australian updates were issued a week before the State Department notice and the travel advice made a point of noting that tourist services in Bali were "operating normally".

In a travel advisory issued on September 20, Australians in Indonesia were cautioned to "maintain a high level of personal security awareness", because bomb explosions had occurred in "areas frequented by tourists" and may happen again.

"We had no advance warning of this particular incident obviously or else we would have moved heaven and earth to stop people going to Bali," Mr Downer said.

"I had another look at the consular advice my department had in place for Saturday evening and, yes, I'm satisfied that there is appropriate warning there."

The reference to tourist services operating normally in Bali in the advice was simply "a statement of the facts", Mr Downer said.

Intelligence experts said yesterday Australia had not conducted a full assessment of security in Bali since the fall of the Soeharto regime in 1998.

A holiday playground frequented by about 20,000 Australians at any one time, it made an obvious potential target for terrorist activity after last year's September 11 attacks, they said.

Mr Downer said intelligence services had been ordered to go over all the material on Indonesian terrorist activity and threats to see if they missed something. Nothing had come to light "so far".

Ron Huisken, of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, said few people would have thought an attack so vicious, indiscriminate and huge was likely.

"We are probably guilty of not being able to conceptualise a threshold like this," said Dr Huisken, a former defence intelligence officer who oversaw Pine Gap.

A senior lecturer of international relations and strategy at ANU, Michael McKinley, said it was unreasonable to expect that warnings from intelligence about general terrorist threats against "soft" targets could be acted upon.

"It means that any Club Med, any bar, anywhere in the region could be a target," he said. "Unless it's intelligence of a specific threat you can't go around pretending everything is a prime target."