jemaah islamiyah in south east asia: damaged but still ... - SEAsite

Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia: Damaged but Still Dangerous
ICG Asia Report N°63, 26 August 2003 Page 6
A fifth group, of about fifteen, arrived in 1988.
That year, however, premier and mujahidin
supporter Zia ul-Haq was killed and succeeded by
Benazir Bhutto, who tried to expel the mujahidin
from Pakistan. That coincided with the Soviet
withdrawal, however, and the mujahidin just
moved across the border, the Indonesians into a
Sayyaf camp in Jaji, near Khost. Because of
political uncertainties in Pakistan, no one came
from Indonesia in 1989, but the pace picked up in
1990, with about 25 recruits.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were an important
time for developing ties with like-minded
individuals from other organisations who went
through the Sayyaf camp, such as the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF). Abdurajak Janjalani of
the Abu Sayyaf Group named his organisation after
the camp’s patron; he apparently was there from
some time in 1989 through December 1990.
The final group of recruits who received the full
three-year training came in 1991. It appears to have
been one of the largest groups, with many
Malaysians and Singporeans as well as
Indonesians. By then, fighting between the
mujahidin had already broken out, the Soviets were
gone, and not long afterwards, the funds from the
Middle East started drying up. There was also a rift
in the Indonesian ranks.
Sometime in 1992, the two senior leaders of the
Darul Islam movement, Abdullah Sungkar and an
Indonesia-based man, Ajengan Masduki, fell out.
Sungkar accused Masduki of having Shi’ite and
sufi tendencies and therefore of having strayed
from salafi teaching. The rift spilled over into
Afghanistan when Sungkar flew to the Sayyaf
camp to ask those there to choose between him and
Masduki. Everyone chose him, save for one who
abstained – Imam Samudra. It may not be a
coincidence that Imam Samudra got to Afghanistan
not through Abdullah Sungkar but through another
DI leader, Gaos Taufik, who maintained good
relations with Masduki. For fence-sitting, Imam
Samudra was forced to leave before his three years
were up. 27 The rift between Sungkar and Masduki
resulted directly in JI’s creation as an organisation
separate and distinct from Darul Islam.
In 1992, a mujahidin coalition government was set up
27 Ibid.
in Afghanistan under the leadership of Burhanuddin
Rabbani, but to the huge disappointment of all the
mujahidin, who saw their hopes for a true Islamic
state being dashed, it quickly fell apart. Before the
real warfare reached eastern Afghanistan, however, JI
set up another camp in the hills outside Torkham. A
veteran told ICG:
After the Najibullah regime fell, I think it was
in 1993, Sheikh Rasul Sayyaf acquired an
allotment of land in the area around Torkham.
Torkham is in a rocky, mountainous region and
was very, very hot. We got permission from
Sheikh Sayyaf to turn the land into a military
training centre. We were freer here, not just
because we could supervise ourselves but we
could undertake any kind of training. Torkham
was far from anywhere, so any kind of
experiment was possible. You could blow up a
mountain and it wouldn’t bother anybody. We
had to sleep in tents, and it was even hotter. 28
A leader of the reportedly extremely well-equipped
camp was Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi, a Ngruki
graduate and JI member. He had a reputation of
being an extraordinary Qu’ran-reading teacher, as
well as having well-honed military skills. (He has
also consistently lied in his interrogation
depositions. When one veteran learned that al-
Ghozi had told interrogators he studied in Lahore
from 1990 to 1994, the veteran laughed and said,
“From 1990 to 1994, he was in Afghanistan
without a break – if he studied, it was at Rasul
Sayyaf University!”) 29
Al-Ghozi became friends in Torkham with two
MILF fighters, Salahudin and Habib, who worked
with him on the Rizal Day bombing in Manila in
December 2000. 30 Indeed, it may have been here
where the MILF leadership incurred an obligation
to JI, in terms of having its members trained by JI
instructors. Its decision to allow JI to set up its own
camp within Camp Abu Bakar in Mindanao may
have been simple reciprocity. In any case, it
appears to have been al-Ghozi who was designated
by the JI command to shift the training to
Mindanao when fighting made further training in
Afghanistan untenable.
28 ICG interview, March 2003.
29 ICG interview, April 2003.
30 Tactical Interrogation Report on Fathur Rohman al-
Ghozi, January 2002.