Word: indonesia
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...officials also helpfully (for Megawati) referred repeatedly to al-Qaeda, and the idea that foreign terrorists were using Indonesia as a safe haven - a line enthusiastically embraced by some Indonesian officials, and certainly helped by forensic evidence suggesting the blast had been caused by sophisticated C4 plastic explosive, suggesting the perpetrators had international links. Still, the problem for the Indonesian president is that her country's radical Islamist movement is mostly homegrown, despite strong links with al-Qaeda to the highest level...
...Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) organization, which has been named as the prime suspect in the attack, is a case in point. The secretive body accused of involvement in scores of terrorist attacks and attempted strikes against Indonesian Christians and Western interests in Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore, has roots that date back to the 1970s. Islamist groups who dreamed of an Islamic state centered in Indonesia - whose 90 percent Muslim population makes it the world's largest Muslim nation - stretching from southern Thailand and Malaysia all the way to the southern islands of the Philippines eventually found their way into...
...While U.S. and Asian leaders have grown increasingly alarmed at signs of al-Qaeda-linked activity in Indonesia, they've tended to avoid publicly challenging Megawati. And when U.S. sources have pointed to links between JI and al-Qaeda, the mainstream Muslim parties have cried foul and demanded that Megawati stand up to this American "propaganda." A recent TIME report caused consternation in Jakarta by revealing that the CIA interrogation of confessed al-Qaeda operative Omar al-Faruq, a Kuwaiti whose role was to liaise with Indonesian groups, had linked JI and specifically Abu Bakr Bashir, a charismatic cleric alleged...
...military may, in fact, benefit from Washington's concern to crack down on Indonesia's radicals. Human rights abuses in the course of East Timor's recent struggle for independence had forced the Pentagon to curtail its longstanding ties with the Indonesian military, but there is mounting pressure in the U.S. defense establishment to restore those links in order to more effectively fight terrorism in Indonesia. Australia lifted its own human-rights-inspired curbs on military ties this week...
...symptom of the often volatile diffusion of power in Jakarta that began in 1998 with Suharto's ouster, when a nation deeply riven by political, social and ethnic divisions began moving awkwardly towards democracy. Now, as in Pakistan, terrorism, and the fight against it in Indonesia, may slow that transition...