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The Southeast Asian Al-Zarqawis Published on April 01, 2006
For several years, Riduan Isamuddin (an Indonesian better known as Hambali), the operational chief of Al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), had been the region�s most-wanted terrorist. Since his arrest in 2003 by the Thai authorities, however, the title has passed to two Malaysians suspected of masterminding a string of terrorist attacks in Indonesia, including the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, which killed 202 people. The two wanted fugitives are: Noordin Mohamed Top (35), known as the �Moneyman� for his skills in fund-raising and recruiting bombers, and Azhari Hussain (45), dubbed the �Demolition Man� for his reputed expertise in explosives. To some degree, both men seem to be copying in Indonesia what Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi has been doing in Iraq since the collapse of Saddam Hussain�s regime. This, of course, is not surprising as they share the same miserable goals and violent culture and have many things in common. Apart from being fanatics, sharing the idea of establishing an Islamic caliphate, serving Al-Qaida�s agenda of jihad against infidels, and having the skills of eluding capture, they are waging jihad from countries adjoining their own. Like Al-Zarqawi who fled to Iraq after Jordan tried him in absentia and sentenced him to death, Noordin and Azhari fled Malaysia to Indonesia to escape a police crackdown on their JI in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Another common factor is the Afghan connection. Both Al-Zarqawi and Azhari reportedly were in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where they received bomb-making and other advanced training. Yet there are a number of dissimilarities between the Iraqi insurgency�s barbarian leader and the two most-sought Malaysian fugitives. While Al-Zarqawi is known by many in Jordan as a simple and barely literate gangster, both Malaysians have an excellent educational and vocational background. Azhari, a former university teacher, studied mechanical engineering at Adelaide University in Australia before getting a doctorate in property valuation from Britain�s Reading University in 1990. And Noordin, a former accountant, is a graduate of the Malaysian Technical Institution. There is also a difference concerning their positions within the two terrorist organizations. While Al-Zarqawi is the undisputed leader of the Al-Qaida organization in Iraq, the two Malaysians� positions in the JI leadership are a matter of arguments among observers. Some believe that Noordin is the strategist planner and chief recruitment officer and Azhari is the most prominent field commander of JI, ruling out any suggestion that they are top leaders of the group. This has been based on information collected in recent years, all of which indicated that the two men have always been instructed to go ahead with bombings by figures believed to be senior JI officials. One of these figures is Zulkarnaen, for whom Indonesian security forces have recently intensified their hunt in east Java on the basis of telephone interceptions. Another is Dulmatin, an electronics specialist with training in Al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, who is believed to be hiding in southern Philippines, where many of JI�s cadres, including Azhari, received bomb-making training. Perhaps what confirms he is a key JI leader is a recent decision by Washington to put a $11 million bounty on his head. Two other men can be added as certainly part of the group�s central command: Abu Dujana and Qotada. Both had been seen holding two meetings with Noordin and Azhari: one shortly before the 2003 suicidal attack on the Jakarta Marriott hotel to finalize the plot, and the other shortly after the plot was carried out to evaluate its performance. Other observers are of the idea that Noordin and Azhari now lead a new generation of terrorists and head a newly founded organization that is more hardline than the JI. This could be true, given what Sidney Jones, the Southeast Asia director of the International Crisis Group, described as a split in JI between pro-bombing and anti-bombing factions, combined with weakness in the group�s administrative structure, finances and logistics. Add that several prominent figures in JI, including its spiritual leader Abu Baker Bashir and its top operational planner Ali Gufron, have been arrested and persecuted. The October 1 suicide attack in Bali, which killed at least 26 people, therefore, could be the first operation carried out by the new group.
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