In thinking about how to respond to the Bali bombing, the biggest single danger is that of ‘fighting the last war’, that is, seeking to model our response on the (broadly correct) US response to S11. In that case, Al-Qaeda was operating, more or less openly, with the protection of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Although there were plenty of disputes about the details, the basic policy of overthrowing the Taliban and destroying as much of Al-Qaeda as possible was agreed on by everybody outside the fringes of the left and far-right. And the maxim of ‘either with us or against us’ could be applied fairly straightforwardly, allowing most of the local warlords who’d accepted the Taliban to change sides, while offering no quarter to foreign Al-Qaeda operatives.
The situation in Indonesia is quite different. In fact, a closer parallel is that of the Oklahoma City bombing. While we don’t know precisely whether the bombing was the work of Al-Qaeda or of ‘domestic’ extremists, the situation of the terrorists is similar to that of Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh came out of the network of right-wing Christian militias, which in turn was (and is) embedded in a much larger group of people adhering to extreme fundamentalist Christian views and conspiratorial political theories. This group shades into the broader Christian right of people like Jerry Falwell, which in turn shades into mainstream American conservatism in which (moderate) Christianity is taken as the norm. Substitute ‘Islamic’ for ‘Christian’ and you have a pretty fair description of the situation in Indonesia. A simple ‘with us or against us’ approach is not likely to work here, any more than a decision by the US government to disarm the militias and arrest their members would have worked after Oklahoma City.
The problems are further complicated by the role of the various factions in the Indonesian army and police. Some have fomented religious discord, and particularly Islamic extremism from a variety of motives, while others have brutally suppressed Islamic opponents of past and present governments. Yet this is the group that is going to have to most of the work of chasing and catching the terrorists.
The basic problem is going to be one of ‘hearts and minds’. Unlike the Middle East, Indonesia already has a moderate, and basically pro-Western, Muslim majority, and a democratically elected, if imperfect and fragile, government. The problem is to keep their support while doing as much as possible to root out the extremists. This is not going to be achieved by the kind of military response some people seem to be contemplating.