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U.S. to Link Indonesian groups with Bin Laden
JAKARTA, Sept 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Indonesian sources on Thursday said the U.S. might link Indonesian groups to the Osama Bin Laden network. The accusation comes amidst reports that a bin Laden envoy has visited Indonesia several times in the past.
The source close to Muslim groups in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country on earth, said that in its search for evidence to link the bin Laden group to the September 11th attacks on the United States, Indonesian
jihad (struggle) groups were also being investigated.
The U.S. has yet to formally ask the Indonesian government to hand over any elements or groups suspected to be close to the Bin Laden network, under the umbrella of the al-Qaeda group.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Thursday that a bin Laden representative had made at least four visits to Indonesia.
It quoted a writer and activist, Al Chaidar, who made the statement to Rakyat Merdeka, an Indonesian daily.
"Actually, a representative of Osama has already been to Indonesia. Twice to Maluku, once to Aceh and once to West Java," Al Chaidar was quoted as saying.
Chaidar did not specify when the bin Laden representative came to Indonesia or his activities. The Indonesian government says it cannot confirm the information, its intelligence and immigration being in a chaotic situation, sources said.
However, Chaidar said bin Laden himself has never been to Indonesia, dismissing reports that the Muslim leader could be in hiding in Indonesia, particularly in the restive province of Aceh.
Bin Laden is believed to be a strong supporter of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) that is fighting for an independent Islamic state in the province.
Indonesian officials reckon that the GAM might have, in the distant past, received training and finance from Libya, but know nothing of links with the al-Qaeda network.
The official GAM position is that it has been trained in Libya and that the financing of its operations in Aceh is not linked to any terrorist groups.
Bin Laden, the main suspect behind the deadly September 11th attacks in the United States, did however assist the insurgency in the Philippines by providing either weapons or training to the Moro Islamic fighters in Mindanao.
Both the GAM and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in statements sent to IslamOnline portrayed the attacks on the U.S. as acts of terror claiming that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam.
The MILF has for years been engaged in guerilla warfare against the armies of the Philippines and does not involve itself in terrorism, the leadership of the movement claims.
The statements from the GAM, or the MILF, do not, however, mention whether they distance themselves from the bin Laden group.
They did not condemn bin Laden as a terrorist but urged the U.S. not to attack innocents indiscriminately in their search for the culprits of the September 11th attacks.
On the other hand, Al Chaidar said the Darul Islam Indonesia network of largely conservative Muslim groups had "a special relationship" with bin Laden, through the thousands of Indonesians who joined the war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Indonesians, in their vast majority, have indicated through demonstrations or polls in different newspapers their support for bin Laden. They say he is a hero and the United States is wrongly targeting him for the attacks.
They also believe that Israel is behind the attacks and says the Zionist state has benefited the most from the repercussion of the attacks. Indonesia has a population of 212 million people, 85% of which are of Islamic faith.
Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of the first president of Indonesia, Ahmad Sukarno, is the president of Indonesia and her vice president is the Islamist, Hamza Haz, who also leads an Islamic party, the PPP.
Sources in Jakarta said Al Chaidar's estimates of 30,000 Indonesians fighting in Afghanistan against the Russian invasion 20 years ago might be exaggerated.
He estimated that 30,000 Indonesians fought in the war, of which 5,000 were sent by the Darul Islam - an activist Muslim group that staged several coup attempts to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state in the years surrounding independence from the Dutch in 1945.
"They have a special relationship with an extremely strong sense of Islamic brotherhood solidarity," Al Chaidar told the daily.
"For a long time they have been inviting Osama bin Laden to Indonesia. They want him to see the situation here and help the Islamic struggle in Indonesia," he said.
Claims by Al Chaidar that the Aceh struggle did not represent a jihad and thus was not supported by bin Laden, were not true, a source told IslamOnline.
The source, who desires anonymity, said Al Chaidar's statement that bin Laden's al-Qaeda network had supplied money and weapons for Indonesians and other Islamic fighters waging a jihad against Christians in the Maluku islands was also not completely true.
The Laskar Jihad, which has been the major defense force for Muslims in the Maluku crisis, said the bin Laden network did not provide weapons. The group defended the Muslims in the Malukus using locally made weapons that were eventually seized by the Indonesian police and army during the conflicts.
"A statement made by Al-Chaidar claiming that Osama bin Laden financed the mobilization of 1,500 troops as well as military infrastructure to Maluku is false.
"In actual fact, the Muslims in Maluku felt the effects of Laskar Jihad's help only after the arrival of more than 3,000 Laskar Jihad troops," a Laskar statement stated.
The Laskar Jihad group, however, declared that it would start an anti-U.S. jihad in Indonesia if the U.S. attacked any Muslim nations. It also said it was not linked to the bin Laden group.
With additional reporting by Kazi Mahmood
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