Otso Iho, Senior Analyst, Jane’s Terrorism & Insurgency Centre (JTIC), IHS Markit
Two suspected male suicide bombers detonated their explosives 10 minutes apart outside the Kampung Melayu bus terminal in Jakarta at around 21:00 local time on 24 May, killing three police officers and injuring five other police personnel as well as five civilians. The police were at the site securing a parade by a local group at the time of the attack. The twin bombings were the most serious attack to take place in Jakarta since the 14 January 2016 Islamic State-linked attacks that killed four people and wounded 20 others.
There was no immediate claim for the attack, but the modus operandi of the latest attack — a coordinated suicide bombing seemingly targeting police officers — is in line with Indonesian Islamic State militants’ targeting patterns. Of the 14 attacks attributed to Islamic State-linked groups by Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre (JTIC) since the start of 2016, 78.6% explicitly targeted security forces. The explosions were described by police on 24 May as “pretty big,” and the number of wounded and dead would suggest a still-crude but developing bomb-making capability for militants in Indonesia. Of attacks utilising improvised explosive devices — excluding the January 2016 Jakarta attack conducted by four perpetrators utilising a range of weapons — four explosives attacks have caused just one death and five wounded, dwarfed by the three fatalities and 10 wounded in the latest attack.
According to JTIC, since the beginning of 2016 all 18 recorded attacks in the country have been conducted by suspected Islamist militants, with Islamic State-linked groups attributed directly in all but four attacks. The perpetrators of these attacks cover a wide range of actors, including individuals most likely inspired to act by Islamic State propaganda – such as the man behind the 28 August 2016 attack at a church in Sumatra that wounded a priest or the 13 November 2016 attack wounding four children at a church in East Kalimantan – to more organised cells of Islamic State-linked militant groups Jamaat Ansharut Daulah (JAD), active mostly in East Java, and Mujahidin Indonesia Timur (MIT), in Central Sulawesi.
As shown by the data, the Islamic State remains the main driver of attacks in Indonesia, and the threat posed by militants linked to the group is likely to escalate in the country as people who have travelled to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria begin to return back to their home countries. Experienced returning militants will be able to provide combat training and transfer knowledge acquired on the battle field to local militant networks, potentially further increasing the attack capabilities of these local networks. On 7 November 2016, Indonesian national police said that approximately 50 militants had returned, of an estimated 400 who have travelled to the region.
