Obamarket

Aleksius Jemadu

Tackling Bombs Will Require Taking a Closer Look at Ideas

Democracy and terrorism can never coexist, as they develop around totally different kinds of power. While the former seeks popular consent as the basis of political power, the latter is based on violence and the spread of panic and fear.

Until the bomb attacks at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels last Friday, the government had managed, since 2005, to prevent a major terrorist attack. Many people thought that with the execution of the three Bali bombers and the arrest of many members of terrorist groups that there was no longer a threat to our national security.

Unfortunately, such an assumption was entirely wrong and now we have to accept the fact that terrorist networks still operate and recruit members in the country in order to do their business whenever an opportunity arises.

The bomb attacks indicate that no matter how rigorously we defend our national security, there is always a way for terrorists to find loopholes in our security system and conduct their deadly attacks.

There has been much discussion among experts on how to deal with the issue of terrorism in order to preserve our young democracy. Before the most recent attacks, the government had been praised by the international community for its success in disrupting the activities of local terrorist networks and for jailing some of their leading figures.

Now the government has to rethink its whole approach in dealing with the issue of terrorism. It is not enough to have a sophisticated police squad and system of gathering intelligence. Those important factors should be complemented by a societal approach to prevent the recruitment of suicide bombers in the first place.

So far, our national security system has focused too much on the idea of deterrence. We have produced a tough anti-terrorist bill and those who are convicted of an act of terrorism will get a maximum sentence of the death penalty.

The normal expectation is that by introducing the threat of the death penalty, would-be terrorists will think twice before acting.

But the heart of the matter is that we’re dealing with people who are prepared to do away with this earthly life. They even openly express a strong desire to have that particular kind of death on the basis of a certain belief system.

Thus, deterrence becomes meaningless. So much so that the more we strengthen this strategy of deterrence, the more the suicide bombers will challenge and fight it.

This is exactly the reason why security alone is not enough and why it can become a boomerang if the excessive use of that approach leads to the alienation of civil society groups — groups that otherwise would constitute reliable allies in accomplishing the government’s policy objectives.

Of course, Indonesia is not in the same category as Iraq or Pakistan, where over the last couple of years there has been a high frequency of suicide bomb attacks against the government and Western targets.

We have reason to remain optimistic that the majority of Indonesians still prefer to achieve their political goals through peaceful means. This was proven by the high level of participation in the legislative and presidential elections this year.

On top of that, major religious-based civil society groups have categorically rejected the use of religious teachings to justify political violence. Thus, there is a solid social foundation of democracy on which we can build a strong tradition of political civility in our society.

However, the occurrence of terrorist attacks is not only determined by domestic factors. External contingencies, like the increase of Western military power in Pakistan and Afghanistan, may continue to inspire local networks of terrorism to retaliate here.

The very nature of terrorism as political violence consists of two interrelated factors: The act of terrorism itself and the ideological predisposition that gives birth to such acts.

If the government wants to increase the effectiveness of its anti-terrorist policy, it must address not only the act of terrorism but also the ideological predisposition that is so prevalent in some sectors of our society.

Unfortunately, both the government and our political parties have failed to encourage social participation, which is extremely important in transforming the minds of the people from violent proclivities to the primacy of social and political reasonableness.

It is now clear that the government cannot work alone in overcoming the terrorist threat. If the government fails to change the indifference of its social partners, we may experience more deadly attacks in the future.



Aleksius Jemadu is acting dean of the School of Social and Political Sciences at Pelita Harapan University.