Recruitment Problems? ISIS Stumbles in Jakarta
ISIS’ recruitment machine has long been the focus of Western governments. Although the Islamic State’s recruiting success has been perhaps most visible in the West, it is global in reach. Despite these ambitions, ISIS is having a hard time replicating its success in Western Europe in majority Muslim countries outside the Middle East. Even though Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, with a Muslim population of nearly 222 million, only around 700 have been recruited by ISIS.
While recent forensic evidence points to communication between cells in Malaysia and Indonesia just prior to the Jakarta bombings, Malaysia counts only fifty of its citizens believed to be fighting in Syria. These numbers stand in stark contrast to the estimated flow of European citizens into ISIS’ front lines. Up to 1600 fighters have joined ISIS from France alone. Belgium leads western countries in per capita enlistment in ISIS, with 46 fighters per million. Compare this to Indonesia’s three fighters per million.
This is significant because the recent terrorist attacks on January 14 in Jakarta were relatively ineffective. The attack was conducted by seven militants, and left two tourists killed and 22 injured. While the attacks appear to be have been funded and directed by Indonesian citizens from Syria, the relative distance and weak connection between ISIS and homegrown Islamic militant groups in Indonesia have exposed the weaknesses of ISIS’ global reach. Higher ISIS recruitment in a specific state increases ISIS’ ability to send fighters back to that state, strengthen and link its domestic terror cells to ISIS’, and carry out major terrorist attacks. This is one of the reasons why the Paris attacks could not be replicated in Jakarta.
Significantly, Indonesia has a large domestic Muslim population opposed to the fundamentalist brand of Islam that ISIS and al-Qaeda embrace, with only 4% of the Sunni Muslim majority declaring their support for the Islamic State. From 2009 Indonesia refocused their security strategy, creating new counterterror intelligence and police units, including an elite Special Forces unit Detachment 88. This, combined with grassroots Muslim advocacy for more tolerant and interpretive brands of Islam, has helped radically reduce the capabilities of terror cells.
Indonesia is in many ways a success story. It has managed to minimize the flow of its citizens to Iraq and Syria, and in doing so hurt the ability of the Islamic State to strengthen and direct its domestic terror cells. The two are directly related, and the latest terror attack showcases this. It is notable that ISIS’ recruitment efforts perform better where Muslims are marginalized minorities. Large Muslim populations in France, Belgium and the UK may have health care, education, and a higher standard of living than Muslims in Jakarta, but they increasingly sense the weight of not feeling French, or Belgian, or British. If there is a lesson to be learned from Jakarta, it is that the domestic fight against ISIS is closely linked to a large, stable, and socially cohesive Muslim population.
