Conflicts in Ambon, Poso similar, says think tank
M. Azis Tunny and Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, The Jakarta Post, Ambon, Jakarta
February 08, 2007

The conflicts in Ambon, Maluku and Poso in Central Sulawesi are linked by similar characteristics and all involve Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) and Mujahidin KOMPAK radical groups, a think tank said Wednesday.
The Southeast Asia project director of the International Crisis Group (ICG), Sidney Jones, told The Jakarta Post in Ambon Wednesday that a number of Muslim militants in Poso were also involved in violence in Maluku from 2003-2005.
Among them, she said, were three police fugitives involved in the 2005 attack on a Mobile Brigade (Brimob) police post in Lokki, West Seram, Maluku.
The three -- Muklis, Andi and Jodi -- were from the Poso branch of Mujahidin and had joined the group in Ambon for a training camp on Mount Olas to prepare them for a holy war.
However, following the arrests of a number of Mujahidin members, the group in Maluku had been weakened.
"Although some of them stayed in Maluku after marrying local women, they are no longer involved in radical acts ... I think its activity is almost over," Jones said.
In its report late last month, the group said JI terrorists had been recruiting and training on Sulawesi island and could turn it into the center for a jihad on the government.
JI veterans who fought in Afghanistan and the southern Philippines have found fertile ground among Muslim fighters nursing grievances against Christians in religiously divided Poso, a focal point of violence between Muslims and Christians that claimed about 1,000 lives in 2000-2001.
"Many Mujahidin Kompak and JI members received their war training in Ambon. They then went to Poso, which they see as more fertile ground for conflict than Ambon," she said.
In Poso, she said, the situation would get better following the clash last month between police and militants accused of a series of anti-Christian attacks in Poso.
In the past three years, until the arrest of militant Hasanudin in Poso, police did not know who was behind the violence in Poso, but it was later disclosed that they came from the same group.
"In Ambon it was the same, the perpetrators were not apprehended at first. But after the Lokki incident, it's all in the open and police have become aware of the group and its composition.
"And there is hope Poso can be safe too, since the militants there were taught by outsiders. If they're captured, I think the conflict can be contained. In Poso, the danger lies in an outside group getting in," Jones said.
The JI has been linked to al-Qaeda and blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings and a series of other attacks across the country.
Meanwhile, 17 men accused of killing two Muslims during the sectarian conflict in Poso are soon to be tried. The men were transferred Sunday to National Police Headquarters as police said they wanted to avoid inciting further unrest in Poso.
"They will be tried for murder under the Criminal Code and the Terrorism Law," Central Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Badrotin Haiti told AFP.
Six other suspects wanted for attacks on Christians were also transferred to Jakarta on Sunday.
In Jakarta, National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Anton Bachrul Alam said Basri, one of the men captured during the clash, had confessed that a number of "teachers" from Tanah Runtuh district, who had been trained in Mindanao in the Philippines and Afghanistan, had spread extremist ideology to the people.
He said they had also distributed firearms.
"According to Basri, the people also learned how to build bombs from the teachers, whose names are Rian, Hiban, Mahmud, Yahya, Sahal, Rifki and Hasanudin," Anton said.