In the mid-morning of 28 March, worshippers filled the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral in Makassar—the largest city on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi—for a Palm Sunday service marking the start of the Holy Week leading up to Easter. At 10.30am, just as mass was ending, the force of a powerful explosion ripped through a side entrance to the church, injuring 20 people. No churchgoers were killed, but found among the debris were the body parts of two people who had not attended the service that morning—they were Islamist suicide bombers, who had pulled up on a motorbike and detonated their device.
Authorities said the attackers, later revealed to be a husband and wife, were affiliated to local militant group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD). Indonesian president Joko Widodo—leader of the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation—condemned the assault as an “act of terror” that went against Islamic values.
Just three days after the bombing, on 31 March, a woman radicalized by ISIS ideology opened fire in a “lone wolf” attack before being shot dead by police officers at the headquarters of the National Police in Jakarta. This led to fears of repeat attacks over Easter, which fortunately did not materialize; yet the attacks last month were among the most serious in Indonesia since a spate of suicide bombings in the East Javan city of Surabaya in May 2018, which killed scores of civilians. Like the Makassar attack, those blasts were perpetrated by families of bombers linked to JAD. Is the militant threat now rising again?
Disparate terror networks
Investigations in the aftermath of the Makassar blast have revealed much about the nature of militant activity in Indonesia. The couple who perpetrated the attack were born in the 1990s, and were recently married. They have joined a growing list of Indonesian jihadists to have blown themselves up in suicide attacks together as a couple, while some have even involved their children in attacks. The phenomenon reflects ISIS ideology that glorifies involving children in jihad and seeking martyrdom as a family unit.
In the Surabaya blasts three years ago, which also targeted churches, six of the attackers came from the same family, including several young children. A similar attack in January 2019 on a Catholic cathedral in Jolo, in the southern Philippines, was also carried out by a young Indonesian couple who had joined Abu Sayyaf. That attack left 22 people dead and more than 100 injured, in addition to dozens killed earlier in Surabaya. Indonesian authorities have said the bombers in those incidents also had close ties to JAD.
JAD is more of a collection of cells, inspired by jihadist ideology and online propaganda, than a coherent or hierarchical organization, making it difficult for intelligence agencies to track and disrupt. The militant network can be thought of as an unstructured alliance between small, radical groups, in which members are often related to one another, or have close links through friendship and online activity. ISIS ideology unifies JAD with a separate group, Mujahideen Indonesia Timur (MIT), operating out of Poso, Sulawesi.
The Makassar suspects used a pressure cooker bomb, which the head of Indonesia’s National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT), Boy Rafli Amar, said was constructed after “online training on social media,” which allowed the two suspects to “develop the procedure for making explosives.” Others likely aided the couple ahead of the bombing, and police have since detained four members of a Koran study group attended by the attackers. After those arrests, National Police chief Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo said each had played a role to “spread doctrine, plan for jihad” and “buy materials” used to make the bomb.
