http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20050106-0716-tsunami-radicalislam.html
Radical Indonesian Islamic group moving into tsunami-devastated Aceh
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By Chris Brummitt
ASSOCIATED PRESS
7:16 a.m. January 6, 2005
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia – A radical Islamic group once headed by the
alleged leader of a Southeast Asian terrorist group has set up a
relief operation in tsunami-stricken Aceh province.
The Laskar Mujahidin group, which campaigns for an Islamic state in
Indonesia and is fiercely anti-American, established a camp close to
hundreds of other local and international volunteers at the military
airport in Banda Aceh, beneath a sign in English that reads "Islamic
Law Enforcement."
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About 50 Laskar Mujahidin members are collecting corpses still buried
beneath debris in the provincial capital, distributing food and
spreading Islamic teachings among refugees, one of its members said
Thursday.
They would not interfere with foreign troops – as long as the
foreigners kept strictly to humanitarian operations, Jundi said.
"We are here to help our Muslim brothers," said Jundi, who like many
Indonesians goes by a single name. "As long as they (foreign troops)
are here to help, we will have no problem with them. There is no need
for any friction."
Separately, the South Korean government warned on Thursday that
tsunami relief workers in Indonesia could become a target for terror
attacks – the first such warning since thousands of agencies and
organizations began rushing into the area to help it recover after the
Dec. 26 disaster.
"We have acquired intelligence that our relief groups in Indonesia and
some other areas are becoming a possible target of terror attacks,"
Foreign Ministry spokesman Lee Kyu-hyung said in a statement.
South Korea had sent a "strong request to the related countries" to
take security measures for South Korean aid workers, according to the
statement, which did not elaborate.
A foreign ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity in
Seoul, said no specific threat had been received but the warning was
issued as a precaution because of the Christian-leaning of some relief
organizations.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, is predominantly
moderate but hosts dozens of radical Islamic groups. It formed the
main base for Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group
that operated across Southeast Asia and is blamed in a string of
bombings in recent years that have killed hundreds of people.
The airport, on the outskirts of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital,
is full of international troops and aid workers helping the province
recover from the earthquake and tsunami ravaged the coast, killing
around 100,000 in Indonesia. U.S. Navy and Marine helicopter crews
have flown scores of aid delivery into remote villages in Sumatra,
sometimes bringing infirm tsunami survivors back to the airport.
A spokesman in Thailand for the U.S. military task force that is
taking part in the relief effort declined to comment on the Laskar
Mujahidin's relief effort.
Sidney Jones, a Jemaah Islamiyah expert with the International Crisis
Group, however, said Laskar Mujahidin was "raising concerns that the
presence of U.S. and Australian troops in Aceh to help the
humanitarian aid effort masks a hidden agenda" of converting people to
Christianity.
"They appear to see their role not only as helping victims, but as
guarding against 'kafir' – infidel – influence," Jones said at a
regional forum in Singapore.
Laskar Mujahidin forms the security arm of a larger much group, the
Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia. Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia was once
headed by Abu Bakar Bashir, who is currently on trial as the alleged
leader of Jemaah Islamiyah.
Bashir faces charges related to the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that
killed 202 people and the 2003 attack on the J.W. Marriott hotel in
Jakarta that killed 12. The group is also blamed for last year's
bombing outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta, though Bashir has
not been charged in that case.
The group, from Indonesia's main island of Java, is unlikely to
attract much support among native Acehnese, who are a fiercely
independent people. Three years ago, another radical Islamic group,
Laskar Jihad, tried to open branches in the province but locals drove
it out.
The Muslim Justice and Welfare party, a small but growing Islamist
party that has campaigned for Islamic law in secular Indonesia, has
also pledged to send 800 volunteers to Aceh. Party leaders claim it
was among the first organizations to distribute food, water, medicine
and hundreds of prayer kits to survivors.
––
Associated Press Writer Wee Sui Lee in Singapore and Sang-hun Choe in
Seoul contributed to this report.
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