Word: indonesianness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fall of the dictator Suharto in 1998 left the world's most populous Islamic country in a state of turmoil and turned it into a fertile breeding ground for potential al-Qaeda terrorists. Al-Faruq married Mira, the daughter of a former Islamic activist, and linked up with an Indonesian businessman named Agus Dwikarna, who was active in the Indonesian Mujahedin Council (MMI). A purportedly nonviolent political organization, the MMI was founded by Abubakar Ba'asyir--the Indonesian cleric also believed to be the spiritual leader of JI, which is run by Ba'asyir's former student Riduan Isamuddin, known...
...Christian villages in central Sulawesi province. Beginning in mid-1999, al-Faruq claims, he launched a succession of audacious but generally unsuccessful terrorist plots. In May of that year, al-Faruq met with several potential accomplices at a villa in west Java and hatched a plan to kill current Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who was then a candidate for the presidency. The plot involved buying weapons in Malaysia and the Philippines, but the group failed to get the guns into Indonesia. Last year a second assassination scheme--it involved detonating a bomb at a meeting of Megawati and other ruling...
Around that time, al-Faruq began running into trouble. He had been living near Dwikarna in Makassar, in South Sulawesi province, but because of his poor language ability, he never managed to acquire an Indonesian passport. In mid-2001, immigration authorities detained al-Faruq temporarily and prepared to deport him. Al-Faruq skipped town, heading to Cijeruk with Mira and their baby daughter. After Sept. 11 he stayed in contact with Abu Zubaydah during the U.S. military campaign against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Abu Zubaydah told al-Faruq that he should plan to return soon to Kuwait...
What al-Faruq may not have known was that in early 2002, U.S. and regional intelligence officials had picked up his signal. On Feb. 25, according to intelligence reports, the CIA informed regional counterparts that three Indonesian-based Islamic militants had established a training school for terrorists on the island of Borneo. Indonesian investigators discovered that four MMI operatives, including al-Faruq, had held training exercises at the same location. While al-Faruq initially managed to stay beyond the reach of authorities, some of his closest associates ran out of luck. In March Dwikarna was arrested in Manila after airport...
Investigators soon realized al-Faruq was a man with connections. An al-Qaeda prisoner at America's Camp X Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, also had al-Faruq's number. The same intelligence report says the CIA traced a number dialed by Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, an Indonesian JI militant arrested for suspected involvement in last December's Singapore bomb plot, back to al-Faruq. In May, the report continues, the CIA found that Ibin al-Khattab, the late Chechen commander with ties to al-Qaeda, had once placed a call to al-Faruq on his cell phone...