Assessing the Impact of ISIL
The success of ISIL since 2014 has revived the threat of terrorism in Malaysia and Indonesia. It has led to an estimated 600-1,000 Southeast Asians to travel to Syria and Iraq to gain jihadist experience and given a new generation of members a pedestal. Some 169 Indonesians alone have been turned back by Turkish authorities, and many more cannot get to Syria and Iraq because of the logistical logjam caused by proactive measures by regional security forces.
But ISIL has increased the rate of indoctrination and induction. Importantly they have broadened the traditional base of JI’s recruitment, and have members representing the entire spectrum of society, including women. Some, such as the MIT and Ba’asyir’s Jemmah Anshaur Tauhid (JAT), have publicly pledged bai’yat to ISIL. (In early January, Ba’asyir, through his lawyer, renounced his ties to ISIL, but that came just days before his 12 January court hearing to appeal for an early release for his 2011 conviction for supporting JI’s Aceh training camp).
And ISIL’s slick and Hollywood visual style propaganda, increasingly in Bahasa, has had great appeal and influence over Southeast Asian militants. To date, Southeast Asian jihadists, other than the ASG, have never engaged in hostage taking, and no group has videotaped the act of decapitation or glorified it. As ISIL videos are viewed and shared, the threshold lowers and their base of support no longer finds it to be anathema to Southeast Asian culture.
And as Charlie Winters has argued, what we see as grotesque barbarism in ISIL videos, its supporters see “triumphalism and vengeance” against those who have harmed their interpretation of Islam. “Islamic State’s most brutal propaganda serves as a vehicle by which to convey vengeance and supremacy,” says Winters. And such acts are well suited to be disseminated through social media, which in Southeast Asia have some of the highest rates of use in the world.
There is a concern that the returnees from Iraq and Syria will have acquired the skills to carry out a new wave of bombings. One cell was in the final stages of preparing to bomb the Carlsberg brewery in Kuala Lumpur. Of greater concern, suspected returnees were responsible for an attempted chlorine bomb at a Jakarta mall in February 2015. In September 2015, both the U.S. and Australian embassies in Kuala Lumpur issued very specific warnings of terrorist attacks, and a three man cell was arrested soon after. It was the third active plot in Kuala Lumpur, which saw no active JI plots during that group’s reign of terror in the decade following the Bali bombing in 2002.
And while the specter of mass casualty bombings is not to be trivialized, focusing on it may miss the more immediate threat posed by ISIL cells or inspired individuals. Most Southeast Asians fighting for ISIL have been used as cannon fodder, which is a point not sufficiently recognized or exploited. Very few are going to return home with advanced bomb-making or terrorism skills. Not everyone returns a Dr. Azahari. Yet most have sufficient training in small arms and a willingness to martyr themselves.
Thus, there is a well-founded fear that the spectacle of violence demonstrated by ISIL will take root, because of the low technical capacity of the returnees and the need to perpetrate bold attacks both to win over popular support and to assume the leadership of a dispersed, leaderless movement.
Hostage taking and barricade style attacks, are perfect for both the skill set and the short-term goals of ISIL. And unlike bombings, which are indiscriminate, kidnappings, executions and assassinations are very targeted. Malaysian security officials have stated, though without providing evidence, that ISIL members are actively targeting senior politicians and security officials.
The case of Malaysians Murad Halimmuddin (49) and his son Abu Daud (25), who were plotting to kidnap politicians after returning home from fighting with ISIL, is a case in point. But they were not alone; their cell included four others.
Another small cell that included one returnee from Syria, which Malaysian authorities broke up in July 2015, was also planning a wave of non-bombing terrorist attacks. The cell intended to target VIPs and engage in barricade-style attacks that have been recently used in Sydney, Paris and Tunisia.
More importantly, two Malaysians, Mohd Faris Anwar (20) and Muhamad Wandy Muhamad Jedi (26), were featured in in a grisly ISIL video of mass beheadings released on 20 February 2015. Though it caused fear amongst the national leadership, the video was widely shared across social media platforms in the region. If people were shocked by the act, they were quiet about it, as there was little public backlash. Though Mohd Faris Anwar was killed in Syria in late 2015, his brutality remains widely disseminated on line.
In mid-December 2015, Indonesian authorities arrested six suspected members of ISIL and JI who were planning a wave of bombs and small arm attacks on Christian and Shia communities. The plot had direct funding from ISIL, according to Indonesian security officials.
Russian authorities have recently passed intelligence – though one certainly can question its veracity – to Thai authorities regarding an ISIL cell dispatched to Thailand to perpetrate barricade style attacks against Russian tourists.
Conclusion
Most Southeast Asians will never see hostage taking as a legitimate act. Indeed, Malaysians look to the ASG kidnappings in Sabah as a sign of the lawlessness of the Philippines, not as anything part of a legitimate ideological struggle. Kidnapping has de-legitimized the group in the eyes of many.
Moreover, “disappearances” are things more often attributed to state security agencies across the region. Most militants want to distance themselves from the practices of these instruments of state oppression.
But hostage taking and beheading could appeal to a certain segment inspired by or themselves returned from fighting with ISIL. As we saw in France on 26 June 2015, a single beheading of a captive, got enormous media attention. And well executed barricade-style attacks such as in Paris on 13 November 2015 garner enormous media attention.
For a small cell with limited technical capacity to pull off a sophisticated bombing, including lone wolves merely inspired by ISIL, a kidnapping and beheading or barricade style attack is cheap, simple, easy to disseminate, and would instantly garner massive public attention. Moreover, it would help that group stand apart from rival militants by “out bidding” them through violence to prove their jihadist credentials; essential as Islamist militants have never been as fractured as they are today.
Security forces in the region may also have to brace for a wave of targeted assassinations of foreigners, as what happened on 28 September 2015 in Bangladesh, when ISIL militants gunned down an Italian aid worker. While not as headline grabbing as bombings, they are low cost, low risk, and effective.
ISIL is ultimately containable and their sheer brutality and limited governance arguably sows the seeds of their long-term demise. And yet, in the short-run, their brutal tactics and savagery may be emulated by affiliates and groups hoping to outbid their rivals and consolidate leadership of the jihadist movement. And as they continue to gain adherents and followers in Southeast Asia, their tactics will be replicated.
Zachary Abuza is a Professor at the National War College in Washington, DC, where he specializes in Southeast Asian security and politics.
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