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| Southeast Asia |
| Fighting back: How Indonesia's elite police turned the tide on militants |
| 2016-12-26 |
| [Reuters] As the world battles a spike in assaults and plots by Islamist militants, Indonesia's anti-terrorism unit is drawing praise for stemming a wave of bloody attacks in the sprawling Muslim-majority nation. Indonesia has foiled at least 15 attacks this year alone and made more than 150 arrests, disrupting plots ranging from suicide attacks in Jakarta to a rocket attack from Indonesia's Batam island targeting Singapore. Going back to 2010, a Reuters analysis of data shows the elite unit, Special Detachment 88 (Densus 88), has prevented at last 54 plots or attacks in the nation of 250 million people, the world's fourth largest. "Densus 88 has become better than pretty well any other counter-terrorism group in the world," said Greg Barton, a terrorism export and research professor in Global Islamic Politics at Alfred Deakin Institute in Melbourne. "They have had an incredible workload and they have become remarkably good at what they do." In the last six years, there has been only one major attack in Indonesia that caused civilian deaths, when assailants hit a Jakarta mall and police post with gunfire and bombs, resulting in the deaths of three Indonesians and a dual Algerian-Canadian national. All four attackers were also killed in the January 2016 attack. Between 2002 to 2009, there were nine major attacks by militants, leaving 295 dead and hundreds of others wounded. Since its formation in 2002, the unit has put a premium on clandestine intelligence gathering. Now much of that intelligence work is done online, by infiltrating and monitoring chat rooms, social media and messaging apps popular with militants. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #2 they didn't though. They're losing massively. 200,000 Islamists rioted in Jakarta because they think the Koran says a non-Muslim can never govern a muslim. Christian governor Ahok said that interpretation was wrong so they rioted because he "disrespected the koran" He's now on trial for blasphemy. That's what LOSING looks like Those 200,000 people want sharia So who gives a flying fat crap if the police foiled an attack or two? They're losing the ideological war. |
| Posted by: anon1 2016-12-26 23:47 |
| #1 Since its formation in 2002, the unit has put a premium on clandestine intelligence gathering. While here in the US, the administration's emphasis has been on closing GITMO, denying the existence of Islamic terrorism, and the integration of the Muslim Brotherhood into gov't. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2016-12-26 01:56 |