<

Who Were the Nightclub Bombers of Paradise Isle?
Sunday, October 20, 2002
(1:15 AM BDST)
By Raymond Whitaker
The Independent

"Al-Qa'ida doesn't have a membership list. It is as much a movement as an organisation, a collection of like-minded individuals who all know each other. Our problem in countering al-Qa'ida is that it is highly adaptable. When it sees an opportunity, a target such as Bali, an informal network coalesces around it."

In retrospect, the most remarkable thing about the Bali bombing is how inevitable it seems. Where else in the Islamic world would so many Western tourists even consider going on holiday? Yet when America looked around for possible terrorist havens after the attacks of September last year, it noted Indonesia's failure to crack down on extremist groups. Bali may be a Hindu enclave in the world's most populous Muslim nation, but that was no hindrance to the killers who struck last weekend. "It's amazing nobody thought of the danger before," said Magnus Ranstorp, deputy director of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism at St Andrews University.

Journalists based in the region say that when they speculated where a terrorist atrocity might occur, Bali seemed one of the most obvious places. There had, after all, been previous attacks on tourist targets in Indonesia. But Westerners had become so accustomed to seeing the island as insulated from the upheavals of South-east Asia – even before the Vietnam War -- that many visitors imagined that there was a country called Bali.

The car bomb that devastated the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar, killing Australians, Britons and Americans by the score, was far more ophisticated and powerful than anything seen in Indonesia before. That alone, to Dr Ranstorp and others, signifies the involvement of al-Qa'ida. There are many other pointers, however, starting with the patient reconnaissance, detailed planning and meticulous execution that appear to have gone into the attack. Indonesian sources have speculated that an eight-man team, possibly led by a Yemeni and including two explosives experts, arrived in the country two days before the bombing, and slipped away immediately afterwards. Some have even spoken of a mysterious European being involved.

Whether or not these details are correct, outside experts agree that the logistics and reconnaissance are most likely to have been carried out by Indonesian allies of al-Qa'ida, over a period of months or even years. The C-4 plastic explosive would have been easy to obtain locally, possibly from sympathisers in the military, along with the van in which it is believed to have been carried to the target.

But the expertise required to pack the C-4 into the sides and roof of the van in such a way as to cause maximum devastation -- and the callous willingness to kill as many Balinese as might be necessary -- would probably have had to come from outside. With the bombers apparently having left as quickly as they arrived, only the small fry are likely to end up in the hands of the local police, despite the reinforcements they have received from Britain and other Western countries. Few of those Balinese who delivered cash, or supplied transport or accommodation would have known what was about to happen.
(More: Independent.co.uk News Source)
2002 © Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.

Dan