Posted on 07/24/2004 9:07:29 PM PDT by Valin
Jemaah Islamiyah has tried in the last year to carry out terror attacks in Southeast Asia, but failed because of a lack of funds and support from other militant groups, and an absence of planners among its ranks, officials said.
The al-Qaida-linked organization's ability to mount attacks was severely dented by the arrest of scores of militants after September 11, 2001, including Hambali, the group's alleged operations chief, a Malaysian government official told The Associated Press on Friday.
Remnants of Jemaah Islamiyah have made several unsuccessful attempts to regroup in Indonesia so they could launch more strikes, the official said on condition of anonymity. One of their biggest problems was they "could not agree on a leader to take over from Hambali," he said.
Hambali, an alleged high-ranking al-Qaida leader and the brains behind Jemaah Islamiyah, was Southeast Asia's most-wanted fugitive before his August 2003 arrest by Thai police, who turned him over to U.S. custody.
Hambali is suspected of orchestrating the October 12, 2002, Bali bombings that killed 202 people, and of hosting at least two of the September 11, 2001, hijackers in Kuala Lumpur ahead of the attacks in the United States.
A Malaysian security official acknowledged that the network had been severely crippled by arrests in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia in the last two years, but said this was not the time to be complacent.
"The threat has subsided but there is still a small group out there which could pose problems if authorities in the region let down their guard," he said.
The first government official said authorities in Southeast Asia have in the past year gained the upper hand in cutting off Jemaah Islamiyah's support from militant groups in the Philippines, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said in an interview with the BBC broadcast Saturday that Southeast Asia was winning the war against terrorism.
"I think we are winning that war, not completely but we are watching very, very carefully and we believe that soon we should see no more threat," Abdullah said.
Abdullah also said that Indonesian authorities "are working very hard to trace and nab" several alleged Jemaah Islamiyah operatives who were on the run. Two of them are Malaysian explosives experts Azahari Husin and Nordin Mohamad Top.
Malaysian intelligence chief Yusuf Abdul Rahman said Indonesian police last month discovered a will written by Nordin for his wife expressing his intention to be a suicide bomber, The Star daily reported.
That's good news indeed. It shows that preempting threats early can be effective.
We could be seeing "The end of the begining".
But, we need to remember that the more marginalized the terrorist become, the more dangerous they become. Nothing more dangerous than someone living in a fantasy world when the fantasy starts to collapse.
That's a darn good point. When mass movement terror becomes impossible, or very difficult, they will have to find ways of attacking that are cost and labour effective. That's not good.
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