The Threat of Jaffar

By ANDREW MARSHALL

ate last summer, Indonesia's newly elected vice president, Hamzah Haz, welcomed a string of guests into his official residence, only a short walk from the sprawling American Embassy compound in downtown Jakarta. Among the academics and politicos he greeted was a 40-year-old Muslim cleric named Jaffar Umar Thalib. A photograph in a local newspaper the next day showed him and the vice president locked in a warm embrace. Outside Indonesia, however, this visit by Jaffar -- who was, even then, arguably the most feared Islamic militant in the most populous Muslim nation on earth and who would soon be mentioned in the same breath as Osama bin Laden -- went largely unreported. 

In fact, Jaffar Umar Thalib didn't really blip on Washington radar screens until after the terror attacks. Only then did global attention focus upon the potential threat posed by Muslim extremists in Indonesia -- a sprawling and practically lawless country with porous borders and a thriving black market in weapons and explosives - and upon what role they might play in Al Qaeda's network in Southeast Asia. 

Jaffar is the commander of Laskar Jihad, a Muslim paramilitary group renowned for its fanaticism and brutality. His followers, who number between 3,000 and 10,000, are well drilled, heavily armed and ferociously loyal. Among the plethora of radical Islamic groups that have formed in Indonesia since the three-decade dictatorship of Suharto collapsed in 1998, Laskar Jihad stands out.

''They've got real organization and they've got reasonably capable people,'' says Harold Crouch, an Indonesia expert with the Australian National University. ''You might find an airline pilot or two in Laskar Jihad, but in the others, I doubt it very much.'' According to persistent reports, hundreds of non-Indonesian Muslims -- including, it is believed, Al Qaeda operatives -- have trained at camps run by Laskar Jihad in the jungles of Sulawesi, and American officials are convinced that Al Qaeda ''sleeper cells'' still exist there.

Jaffar got his start in jihad fighting alongside the anti-Soviet mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the late 1980's; around the same time, he met Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. While Jaffar now openly scorns bin Laden as a misguided lightweight, experts say there is little difference between the two. ''He claims to be ideologically opposed to Osama, but his ideology is parallel,'' says Rohan Gunaratna, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. ''They both believe in using violence to achieve their political goals.''

In late December, in an effort to gauge the threat posed by Jaffar, I traveled to Java and made the hour's drive north from Jogjakarta, Indonesia's cultural capital, to Laskar Jihad's headquarters. What I found was less than reassuring. Sounding very much like bin Laden, Jaffar -- who elsewhere has described the United States as ''the biggest enemy of the Islamic people'' -- said that he is convinced there is a global conspiracy of American-led Jews and Christians to destroy Islam and all Muslims. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, which he publicly cheered, he had threatened to declare war on all American facilities in Indonesia.

Jaffar, who oversees a network of pesantren -- Koranic schools that, like the madrassas of Pakistan, produce countless young militants schooled in jihad -- preaches that democracy is ''incompatible with Islam'' and that Indonesia's 210 million people should be governed under strict Islamic law. He practices what he preaches too: last year, he presided over a makeshift Islamic court in Maluku that passed judgment on an adulterer. The 30-year-old man was buried up to his waist in the ground and stoned to death by a mob. Jaffar was arrested but never prosecuted for the murder.

''All of these factors have led U.S. policy makers to conclude that Jaffar is a radical demagogue infused with a worldwide Islamic credo,'' says Peter Chalk, an analyst with the RAND Corporation in Washington. Furthermore, he adds, Laskar Jihad is seen as one group that might be prepared to aid ''the logistical relocation of Al Qaeda forces, post-Taliban.'' Even the name his father bestowed on him seems custom-made to jangle Western nerves: Jaffar, the evil sorcerer who deceived Aladdin; Thalib, as in ''Taliban,'' from the Arabic for ''religious student.''

Jaffar is by no means the only worrisome figure in Indonesia. For example, the police there recently questioned Abu Bakar Baasyir, another well-known Muslim cleric. Baasyir, who has hailed Osama bin Laden as ''a true Islamic warrior,'' is suspected of leading Jemaah Islamiyah, a Qaeda-linked terror group in Southeast Asia. (Baasyir denies any links to terrorism.) While his group is smaller and more secretive than Laskar Jihad, it apparently has stronger ties to the global jihad movement.

But Jaffar, whose violent activities have so far been confined to the domestic sphere, heads a much larger organization whose members operate openly and with virtual impunity. ''It's about potential,'' says Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism official. ''If these groups are allowed to grow, unchecked by local authorities, they could pose a threat.''

askar Jihad's headquarters are located in a pesantren, a huddle of ramshackle buildings reached by a rutted back road and guarded by sentries in black commando outfits.

I am met there by Eri Ziyad Abu Zaki, the group's public-relations officer, a shyly grinning young man in a knee-length tunic. The holy warriors are part of the ''human resources division,'' Eri Ziyad tells me, and all new recruits are expected to undergo military training at several ''secret places'' in Java. He also shows me the group's twice-monthly tabloid, called Bulletin Laskar Jihad. It is well written, slickly produced and venomously anti-American. ''America Starts Digging Its Own Grave,'' screams one front-page headline (in Indonesian), referring to the Afghan campaign. ''You're Dead, America,'' howls another.

Laskar Jihad also runs a Web site, in both Indonesian and English, that makes pleas for donations and describes its work in sometimes erratic English (''Jihad Troopers at Glance''). The tabloid publishes no pictures of humans or animals. Like the Taliban, Laskar Jihad considers recreating images of living beings a blasphemy against God. Flipping through back issues, the only human form I could find was a picture of the Statue of Liberty -- decapitated, naturally.

About 400 men, women and children stay on the compound, where the usual vices -- alcohol, gambling -- are banned. So are television and music. ''Music is a distraction from God,'' Eri Ziyad says. The group imposes Taliban-like restrictions on its women, who must cover their faces with Saudi-style veils and remain largely housebound. Jaffar himself has four wives -- the maximum Islam allows -- and 11 children.

Eri Ziyad leads the way to a modest house near the mosque and knocks on the door. We are ushered into a sparsely furnished anteroom by a beaming Jaffar Umar Thalib himself.

He is tall and certainly plumper than his reputation as an ascetic would suggest. He wears a white skullcap, a crisp, checked sarong and a long, diaphanous cream shirt with embroidered pink trim. Beneath it is a white T-shirt bearing what looks like Laskar Jihad's clashing scimitars logo. He is pale- skinned, with dark brown eyes, and when he smiles (which is often), he is disarmingly handsome. His mustache is neatly trimmed, and he has a straggly, graying beard, which he constantly combs between his thumb and forefinger, like a pantomime villain.

Jaffar is tired. He returned late the previous evening from the eastern Javanese city of Surabaya, where the police arrested 102 Laskar Jihad members for trashing gambling clubs in December. Squads of Jaffar's long-robed followers regularly patrol Indonesian cities, raiding liquor stores and suspected brothels. ''The idea behind this action is to clear up all the vice, especially during Ramadan -- the gambling, the prostitution, the drinking,'' he says. ''We are not the only group doing this. But when we do it, the authorities always overreact. It is one of the many attempts being made to discredit us.''

Also out to discredit Laskar Jihad is the international media, which Jaffar says he believes is ''controlled by Jews and Christians.'' But he obviously enjoys the attention he has received since Sept. 11. ''We heard that when Megawati visited the U.S., George Walker Bush warned her to be careful of Laskar Jihad,'' he says, referring to the Indonesian president, Megawati Sukarnoputri. ''He called us 'jihad forces.' Also, Colin Powell called us an organ of the Qaeda network. And then Robert Gelbard, the U.S. ambassador in Indonesia, made a statement saying that Jaffar Umar Thalib was'' -- and here Jaffar speaks mockingly in English -- ''a quite dangerous man.'' Eri Ziyad, who is sitting nearby taking notes, guffaws dutifully.

Our meeting took place the day after Afghanistan's interim government was sworn in. Jaffar has a predictably low opinion of it. ''It is a puppet government established to abolish so-called Islamic radicalism,'' he says. ''It will only prolong the suffering of the Afghan people. I believe the war will continue. All the anti-American powers are still united, are still strong. They are rebuilding their power outside Afghanistan, particularly along the Pakistani border.''

''So the Taliban aren't finished yet?''

''No, in my opinion they are still a big threat to the U.S.,'' he replies. ''George Walker Bush said it himself after Sept. 11: this is a crusade. The U.S. has since tried to withdraw this statement and express friendship to Muslim people. But it has not been forgotten by the mujahedeen.''

He leans back and interlocks his fingers, then cracks them extravagantly. ''I hope the Americans share the same fate as the Soviets.''

Afghanistan is very close to Jaffar's heart. He earned his warrior credentials there along with hundreds of other Indonesian Muslims who fought with the mujahedeen. According to Laskar Jihad lore, Jaffar once shot down five Soviet helicopters in the Lowgar valley south of Kabul with a single rocket- propelled grenade. ''With the help of God, I got one of the helicopters from quite close range, and it exploded. At the same time, the other four tried to escape and in their panic crashed into each other.'' He throws up his hands in mock incredulity. ''All of them -- destroyed!''

For Jaffar, then in his mid-20's, Afghanistan was a liberation. To that point, he had spent his entire life in the suffocating environs of various Islamic schools. He was born in 1961, the seventh of eight children, in east Java. His formidable father, Umar Thalib, was a veteran of Indonesia's independence war who later ran a pesantren with the same martial ferocity, beating a religious education into his son with a rattan stick. ''Learning Arabic from my father was like learning boxing,'' Jaffar has said.

At age 19, in an apparent act of filial rebellion, he left his father's pesantren to study Arabic at a Jakarta institute but failed to complete the course because of a disagreement with a teacher. In 1987, for similar reasons, he dropped out of another Islamic college in Lahore, Pakistan. He spent the next two years with Afghan mujahedeen and recalls the period with obvious affection.

''We were not there to learn,'' he says, ''but to fight.'' But actually he did learn: he learned how nasty little wars are waged and he learned that superpowers could be vulnerable. ''From my two-year experience in Afghanistan, I concluded that the whole concept of a superpower was only created by the mass media,'' he says. ''It did not fit with reality at all.''

Another Muslim who was reaching much the same conclusion was Osama bin Laden. Jaffar met him in 1987 in Peshawar, the Pakistani town near the Afghan border. His recollection of the encounter is prefaced by a deep, resonant belch. ''At that time, he still shaved his beard,'' Jaffar says. ''He was a spiritually empty man. He had no religious knowledge at all.'' He adds that bin Laden was an arrogant fellow who poured scorn on Saudi Arabia, which Jaffar regards as a model Islamic state. ''Because of this, we distanced ourselves from him,'' Jaffar says. ''We only knew of the Qaeda network after the Sept. 11 attack.''

Is this true? While it is hard to find concrete proof of meaningful collaboration between Laskar Jihad and Al Qaeda, either before or after Sept. 11, strong suspicions linger. Apparent confirmation of a link came in mid-December, when the head of Indonesia's National Intelligence Agency publicly acknowledged that Al Qaeda members had probably trained in Poso, a district in central Sulawesi. But a few days later he retracted this statement, almost certainly under pressure from Indonesia's radical Muslim lobby. Then there is Laskar Jihad's Web site, which once featured links to Web sites of other radical organizations. These included Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based outfit accused by India of participating in the assault on the New Delhi Parliament, as well as Hezbollah, Hamas and groups in Bosnia and Chechnya. These links no longer appear on Laskar Jihad's Web site.

Still, none of this adds up to an indictment, and Jaffar knows it. He happily admits that in the weeks preceding Sept. 11, ''someone close to Osama bin Laden'' visited Laskar Jihad's offices in Maluku to offer financial help. Bin Laden's offer was not only rejected, Jaffar insists, but his emissary was threatened with death should he ever set foot on Maluku again.

Gunaratna, the terrorism expert, says he believes Jaffar's open contempt for bin Laden is disingenuous. ''Publicly, he's against Osama,'' Gunaratna says, ''but privately he has told Muslim leaders that he's willing to send fighters to Afghanistan if Osama requested.'' Jaffar told me that a unit of 10 Laskar Jihad ''observers'' was currently stationed in Afghanistan, although he wouldn't elaborate on their activities there.

Even if Jaffar's contempt for Al Qaeda's mastermind is genuine, how reassuring is that? If the world's most wanted man is, as Jaffar suggests, a lightweight -- at one point in our interview he even questions whether Osama bin Laden is ''truly anti-American'' -- what does this say about the quality of Jaffar's radicalism?

His views on the Sept. 11 terror attacks provide a clue. While refusing to name suspects (he is clearly reluctant to feed the Osama legend), Jaffar heaps praise upon the perpetrators.

''Of course, I feel sad that there were so many Muslim victims,'' he says. (An estimated 800 Muslims died in the World Trade Center.) But he is heartened that the anti-Islamic stance of America got a ''hard slap.''

''When we see the global impact of the attack, of course we support it.'' Jaffar chuckles to himself. ''In fact, we offer our applause.''


A red curtain in the corner of the room parts slightly and a disembodied female hand extends a tray of glasses filled with a sweet cordial. Jaffar takes a glass and with an expansive gesture encourages his guests to do the same. I ask him if the killing of innocents is ever justified, and Jaffar responds with another question: were the victims of Sept. 11 really innocent to begin with?

''The policy of any government,'' he explains, ''especially a democratically elected government like the U.S., is also the responsibility of all the people who supported it. The people run the risk of the results of those policies.'' Furthermore, he says, ''economic facilities'' like the World Trade Center are legitimate targets according to the Koran and the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammed.

And if there are civilians in those facilities? ''If there are civilians,'' Jaffar says, ''even Muslim civilians . . . well, that is the risk of war.''

And yet for all his talk about America's ''parasitic'' Jewish lobby and Washington's support of ''Zionist terrorism'' and his labeling of Americans as ''belligerent infidels'' whose deaths are justified by divine imperative, Jaffar may not be quite the threat he cracks himself up to be. Harold Crouch insists that the dangers posed by Laskar Jihad beyond Indonesia's borders is overblown.

''They've got no interest internationally,'' he says. ''They're certainly anti-American, but that's the rhetoric of all radical Muslim groups.'' Jaffar is a vocal opponent of his country's various armed separatist movements. Recent reports suggest that he is training about 100 fighters in Papua, an independence-minded province in easternmost Indonesia.

Jaffar's avowed goal is the establishment of an Islamic government in Indonesia, although many believe his true agenda is more personal. ''Part of him wants fame, respect and influence,'' says Jacqui Baker of the Australian National University, who spent three months studying Jaffar and his followers. ''Although Jaffar rejects overt politics, he still wants to be a prominent figure on the Indonesian political landscape.''


Since December, Singapore and Malaysia have arrested dozens of Muslim radicals with apparent links to Al Qaeda, while the Philippines has invited American troops to come in and help wipe out Abu Sayyaf, another militant outfit with possible Al Qaeda ties. So far, Indonesia has done little, apart from question Abu Bakar Baasyir, the cleric suspected of running a Qaeda-linked terror group.

Meanwhile, Jaffar and his ultraviolent followers continue to operate with impunity. Jaffar, unlike Baasyir, ''is not an international jihadist, but could graduate into one,'' Gunaratna says. ''There is a pattern with these groups. They start nationally, go regional, then go international, which is precisely why they must be stopped while they're still small.'' Laskar Jihad has already rapidly grown into what Gunaratna believes is a military outfit with definite capability to conduct terrorist activities. ''If the Indonesians don't crack down, it will become a large group with real political force,'' he predicts.

Washington has warned that Indonesia could become a target in the war on terror, a prospect that ''scares the heck out of the Indonesian government,'' as a Western diplomat puts it. For now, however, it seems that Jaffar scares the Indonesian government more. Buoyed by a resurgence of popular fundamentalism and protected by sympathetic political and military figures, he has become a striking symbol of Indonesia's inability to confront the threat from home-grown militancy. No one, apparently, has the power or inclination to rid Indonesia of its most turbulent priest.

Jaffar glances at his gold wristwatch and makes apologies. It is almost time for prayers at the compound's mosque, and Jaffar plans to deliver the sermon. The amplified drone of a muezzin's call soon fills the room.

''I don't want to get carried away with this issue of anti-Americanism,'' he says, almost as an afterthought. ''That would be wrong. We oppose the policies of the U.S. government, not the people themselves.'' He thinks for a moment. ''Because some Americans are Muslims, too.''

Then he stands up and stretches, and for the first time the logo on his undershirt is clearly visible. It is not, as I had initially thought, the clashing sabers of Laskar Jihad. It is a Playboy bunny.



Andrew Marshall, who writes frequently about war and politics in Asia, is the author of ''The Trouser People,'' a book about contemporary Myanmar, to be published this month by Counterpoint.