EDITORIAL - A continuing threat

The attacks were staged six years ago and the suspected mastermind is still at large. Early yesterday Indonesia went ahead with the execution of the three men convicted of carrying out the nightclub bombings on the holiday island of Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists. Imam Samudra and brothers Amrozi and Mukhlas were executed by firing squad in an orange grove near their prison on an island off Java. Relatives of the three men were not given prior notice about the exact time and place of the executions.

Security forces are now on high alert for possible retaliatory attacks not just in Indonesia but also in other parts of Southeast Asia. The three men were members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terror network loosely linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, which seeks to set up a pan-Islamic state. The continuing threat posed by JI is felt in the Philippines.

JI has teamed up with the Abu Sayyaf and has used camps of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to train recruits on the ways of terrorism. Two JI bomb makers linked to the Bali attacks, Dulmatin and Umar Patek, are believed to be in hiding in Mindanao. JI and the Abu Sayyaf have been blamed for several bombings in the Philippines, including the attack on a SuperFerry vessel in Manila Bay that killed over 100 people, with more still unaccounted for.

Counterterrorism officials used to lament that each time a terrorist cell was decapitated, someone else always came along to assume the mantle of leadership. But as events in recent years have shown, it can take time before leadership vacuums are filled, and some terrorist leaders are irreplaceable. The hunt for terrorists must continue relentlessly, because this scourge likes to strike when it thinks its targets have let down their guard.

Equally relentless must be the effort to address the problems such as poverty and illiteracy that breed extremism. Communities should also have a stake in seeing to it that terrorists are deprived of safe havens. The pool of potential replacements for mass murderers like Samudra, Amrozi and Mukhlas, none of whom ever showed remorse for their atrocious crime, should keep shrinking.