Noor Huda Ismail, a wonderful friend of mine, visited me here in Norwich last week. He was here for 3 days and we had a fruitful discussion about the growth of radicalism in Indonesia and how they are connected to each others and established their network in Indonesia.

Huda is a graduate of Pondok Pesantren Al-Mukmin, Ngruki, an Islamic boarding school in Central Java that was labeled as a ‘breeding ground of terrorism’ in Indonesia. The labeling is absolutely debatable, although some of its graduates (Huda’s classmates) involved in various bombings in Indonesia, including the infamous Bali bombing in 2002. So, he pretty much knows and has been deeply studying about the network, and also had personal relationships with the people behind the terrorist attacks. That makes the discussion becomes interesting!

He stresses the role of kinship amongst the Jihadists as the main factor to bring them together and plan their attacks. He has been studying about how the Jihadists have family relationships and what makes them become radicals in the first place.

For example, one person (sorry, I can’t name the person here) becomes involved in the radical network influenced by his brother who had gone to a military training in Afghanistan. Furthermore, their father was also a member of an earlier radical group involved in an assassination attempt against President Soekarno. There are plenty of examples more to show how familial connections play a significant role in the terrorist network.

However, one question comes up with his approach of the role of kinship; ‘Why the right wing radicals succeeded in establishing their network while the left failed?’

Indonesia’s left in the 60s was the third biggest group in the world and the PKI (Indonesia Communist Party) was the biggest communist party in the world outside the Soviet block. The left was also oppressed when Soeharto came into the power and at least 500,000 people were killed during 1965-1968. After that period, thousands of people were detained in Buru Island, a remote Island in Eastern part of Indonesia. In terms of ideology, they also have a strong and radical cohesion and some of them also had connections to various left wing military groups abroad. Then, why we don’t have, or don’t hear, any left wing radical groups?

We come to conclusion that apart from kinship, there must be windows of opportunities for the right wing radicals to group, regroup and finally establish their network and execute their actions. Where do the windows of opportunities come from? One should also consider the early connections between the right wing radicals and the high rank military officers during the establishment of the New Order regime. The aim was to challenge the dominance of the PKI in the 1960s and later on to completely wipe them out of Indonesia’s political landscape through the massacre mentioned earlier.

Alright, this might be just a hypothesis. Well, Huda should think about it more! :-)

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