Omar Ibn al Khattab held the field glasses steady, observing a Russian truck wind its way through a herd of grazing cows, towards the building where his Chechen rebels waited in ambush. Khattab scanned the sky then returned to the unfolding scene, the sound of gunfire reaching his ears from across the snow-covered field as soldiers poured from the truck moments before the vehicle erupted in a massive explosion.
‘Let’s go!’ he snapped, climbing into the front of a Russian GTS-M tracked vehicle his men had captured during the 1994-1996 war with Moscow. They broke from the forest and crossed the field, Khattab in high spirits as they approached the burning wreckage.
Within minutes the skirmish was over, the winter landscape strewn with Russian dead, his men forcing two of their captives to their knees. Khattab climbed down from the light utility carrier and schlepped around the ankle-deep snow checking bodies, removing the 9mm Gurza handgun holstered at his side as he approached the prisoners.
The soldiers looked up at Khattab’s huge frame and shaggy features and trembled on their knees. Khattab held his weapon at arm’s length and fired point blank, the sound of the weapon discharging puncturing the air as the first soldier’s lifeless body collapsed slowly to the ground. Then Khattab signaled one of his men. When the rebel stepped forward brandishing a blade the soldier sobbed, words spilling from his mouth as he begged for his life – rebel laughter accompanying his execution when the Russian’s head toppled to the snow and lay face upwards, in shocked surprise. Khattab re-holstered his Gurza, the weapon taken from the body of a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agent days before.
With his name listed high on Moscow’s most-wanted list the FSB had been hot on his trail since the restart of the Chechen war in 1999. Moscow had already claimed to have killed him several times before, the bearded Khattab smiling as he tugged at unruly growth covering his face.
During interrogation, the FSB agent had revealed plans of imminent raids on the Kisti ethnic Chechens, living in the Pankisi Gorge who were suspected of haboring rebel fugitives. This bit of information had forced Khattab to accelerate the plans, hatched by Mohammed Atef, the alleged mastermind behind the September 11 suicde attacks. Atef’s plans called for relocation of the precious cargo that Khatteb still had in his possession.
The late FSB agents information turned out to be correct. After the interrogation, the Russians commenced bombing the Pankisi Gorge on the border off Georgia and Russia. Home to seven thousand Chechen refugees the lawless gorge was infamous throughout Eurasi and Russia as an area that harbored Islamic Chechen militants, al-Qaeda mercenaries and criminal warlords. It would seem that, with pressure from both Moscow and the West, the safe haven was nearing its end.
When the Georgian President, Shevardnadze visited Washington two months earlier the U.S. President, George W. Bush had assured Shevardnadze of substantial material and financial assistance in dealing with Pankisi’s rebels. Khattab’s contacts in Grozny had warned that, as a result of President’s visit, the United States would soon announce the deployment of American soldiers to train more than a thousand Georgians to help fight the war against terrorism. At first, Khattab had scoffed at the suggestion of U.S. troops being sent into the region. However, when the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld had visited Tbilisi to finalize the American military assistance package, Khattab accepted it might be time to reconsider his position, now believing that the disguised American putsch would result in Chechen rebels losing their Pankisi stronghold, which would ultimately seal their fate.
‘Load the equipment!’ he ordered, leading the way into the farmhouse where his four-hundred-kilo Radio Thermal Generator had been secreted for the past six years. It was time to relocate the RTG to a safer depository – one outside Georgia, a place where engineers could fully realize the potential the RTG’s core offered with its capsule of strontium 90 still intact.
The vehicle was loaded, and its precious contents transported to another safe house, where the RTG was disguised amongst a timber shipment and carried across the embattled Caucasian state until reaching its first destination, a warehouse in the Black Sea port of Sokhumi.
Atef ’s deadly cargo was on its way.
Mohamed Aziz Derashid replaced the SIM card in his cell phone with the prepaid card he had received in the mail, then stood in semi-darkness surveying the pedestrian world below, his view of the Kim Yong Market partially blocked by the Novotel Central Sukhontha on Sanehanusorn Road. The sun blinked, then disappeared, transforming the tropical setting from dusky grey to blood-red. The Malaysian entrepreneur amused himself whiling time by counting the number of hotel room lights across the way, as each came to life. With his tally complete, Derashid lost interest and abandoned the scene, returning to the reclusive world of his apartment where he waited patiently for the Sheikh’s contact to call.
Another hour passed. Derashid fell into a cogitative mood as he analyzed the events of the past seven years, grateful that Malaysia, under Dr Mohammed Mahathir’s leadership, had been relatively insulated from the aftermath of the Asian financial and economic crisis.
Following the failure of their Bojinka operations in Manila, Mohammed Atef had kept Derashid informed as Hambali’s operations appeared to unravel, with the al-Qaeda Malaysian front company’s closure sending Hambali scurrying temporarily to ground – Derashid subsequently even more cautious than before when communicating with Atef after Hambali’s co-conspirator in the Philippines operation, Wali Khan Amin Shah had been arrested in Malaysia’s Langkawi.
Derashid considered the role played by Hambali’s men-tor, Abu Bakar Bashir – the coincidence of Bashir and Osama both being of Yemeni descent, interpreted as a prophetic sign. Although Derashid had never met Bashir in person he was, nevertheless, well informed as to the cleric’s activities both in Malaysia, and abroad, including the Jemaah Islamiyah spiritual leader’s visits to Australia. He knew that Hambali, Bashir and Sungkar had slipped in and out of the country on more than eleven occasions without raising any alarms, their visits arranged within the framework of extending the JI’s presence across the Australian continent.
With growing interest Derashid had followed Bashir’s further exploits when the cleric returned to Indonesia, where he ensconced himself at the pesantren he and Sungkar had co-founded near Solo in Central Java. Derashid considered Bashir’s timing propitious as the nation’s more established Muslim organizations were splintering, and it appeared that he intended to seek leadership of the Indonesian Mujahideen Council – the MMI an umbrella group for like-minded organizations that wished to make Indonesia an Islamic state.
Then his thoughts turned to the string of houses and apartments he had acquired over the past five years. Situated in the Ahai province of Songkla, the Hat Yai city apartment was one of a number of safe houses Derashid had purchased through Malaysia’s offshore financial centre in Labuan – the Offshore Companies Act of 1990 providing the wealthy entrepreneur with adequate firewalls that disguised his interests in the acquisitions. He had selected this location for two reasons: it was only one hundred kilometers across the border from his Kelantan country hideaway in northern Malaysia; and Songkla, along with its four neighboring provinces, was predominantly Muslim therefore, relatively safe.
Derashid understood that Hambali’s hand had played a significant role in the recent resurgence of separatist fervor in Thailand’s southern provinces, channeling funds from Saudi supporters into ponohs, the local independent Muslim schools. Now, with many ponohs teaching the extremist Wahabi interpretation of Islam as practiced across Pakistan, the schools had become recruitment centers for Jemaah Islamiyah. Those selected trained in bomb construction at JI’s secret military border camps, under the watchful eyes of Hambali, Dr Azahari Husin and Afghan Taliban instructors.
Derashid’s cell phone rang twice then stopped. Minutes later the device sprang to life again and the Malaysian responded, uttering his two-word identification code before disconnecting the call. He then inserted a third replacement chip into the cell phone and waited. The cell phone rang again, and Derashid immediately recognized the Egyptian’s voice at the other end of the line.
‘April Sixteen, “Cosco Qingdao”, Port Klang,’ was all Osama bin Laden’s military operations’ commander said before the line went dead.
Derashid appreciated the necessity for the complicated precautions. Telephone contact remained the most expedient method of communications. However, as an additional precaution and out of respect for the West’s advanced eavesdropping technology, conversations were always kept brief, and enigmatic. The Malaysian made a mental note of the incoming shipment’s arrival then destroyed the chips used to facilitate the contact with Mohhamed Atef.
When the al-Qaeda military commander had informed Derashid of the Sheikh’s request Derashid had reluctantly accepted the responsibility of ‘key holder’ for Osama’s proposed S.E. Asian sensitive weapons depository.
Derashid remained deep in thought as he drove back across the Thai-Malaysian border to his isolated villa in Kelantan, the journey providing the opportunity to excogitate a way to conceal the insidious cargo once it had been cleared through Port Klang, and transported to the countryside.
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) analyst handed the morning intercept report to his British counterpart. ‘We checked the Lloyd’s Ship Register. The “Qingdao” is one of COSCO’s container fleet. She sails under a Panamanian flag.’
The British defence expert shook his head in frustration. ‘What’s the connection?’
The American opened another file and extracted a photograph of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. ‘Remember him?’
‘He’s back in Saudi?’ the Brit was surprised but, could not resist the dig, ‘bet you guys wish you’d never released him.’
The NSA analyst acknowledged the comment. ‘Yeah, we screwed up, big time back in ’94.’ He looked up at his colleague. ‘Do you know that, at the time of his arrest the goddamn INS and the FBI found training manuals in Arabic covering all aspects of terrorist training, from bomb-making to assassination tactics? Now this prick’s brother-in-law, bin Laden, is on the FBI’s most-wanted list with a twenty-five-million dollar tag on his head over last year’s bombings of our embassies across Africa.’
The British analyst recalled that more than two hundred had died in the 1998 Nariobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam attacks, another reason that Khalifa’s name had been introduced into the Echelon database as a ‘trigger’ that would activate intense surveillance procedures whenever he picked up a phone.
Major domestic fiber-optic telephone trunk lines were wired through Menwith Hill providing the capability to monitor up to one hundred thousand calls simultaneously. Once captured, the signals were fed through super-computers that were programmed to identify keywords from the Echelon “dictionaries”. Khalifa and the eremitic Sheikh, Osama bin Laden’s names but two of the many millions of keywords that triggered further action whenever their voices were identified as being online. Surveillance satellites scooped up the electronic communications and transmitted these back to the primary downlink facilities at Menwith Hill and Pine Gap in the Australian Outback, whilst other satellites orbited as high as two hundred miles above the earth’s surface, enabling the downlink stations to produce twelve-centimetre resolution photographs of any designated target.
Just months before, when intelligence had determined that bin Laden was in the Zahawar Killi camp in Afghanistan, (which, in another time he had built for the CIA) the Echelon system provided the targeting information that led to the U.S. launching sixty Tomahawk missiles at the site.
With the alarming prospect of the West’s number one enemy having acquired portable nuclear devices, weapons, with which one single person alone could kill more than one hundred thousand, Echelon’s highest priority had been raised as a result of intelligence reporting bin Laden’s presence in Chechnya. The report had been given even more credence when ‘in-country, on-the-ground’ MI6 assets confirmed that Osama had paid the Chechens thirty million dollars in cash along with two thousand kilograms of Afghan heroin, to sweeten the deal presumably for portable nuclear devices. When the former Russian security chief, Alexander Lebed, revealed to the U.S. House of Representatives that some forty-three suitcase-sized nuclear weapons had vanished from the former Soviet Union arsenal, it galvanized the Americans and British intelligence forces into action.
Now, the most recent intercepts indicated that al-Qaeda had an operation afoot in Malaysia. The British analyst took a copy of the report. “I’ll flag this for the SIS lads over at Vaux-hall Cross,’ he said, referring to the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. They’ll no doubt insist that the Malaysians provide a copy of the ship’s crew and cargo manifests when it docks.’
Hambali’s usual upbeat disposition had collapsed into a mood of self-recrimination with the news of Jabarah’s arrest in Oman. Although the information relating to the incident had been sketchy, Hambali prepared for the worst, resigned to the probability that his prime fund raiser would end up in American hands, thereby temporarily severing his financial links with the Saudis.
He called Wan Min bin Wan Mat. ‘Have you already given Ghufron those funds?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ the Malay businessman who acted as the Jemaah Islamiyah treasurer confirmed. ‘I gave him thirty-thousand, five-hundred American.’
‘Better let him know that there won’t be anything more for a few months.’
‘Problems?’ Wan Min pried.
‘It’s serious…’ Hambali hesitated, ‘I’ll fill you in later but not on the phone.’
Hambali then returned to deliberate on the matter of Jabarah’s arrest. Deeply concerned that Jabarah would reveal his whereabouts, the JI commander decided he would relocate, and commenced making arrangements, notifying Ali Ghufron who was now in Java, that he had provisional command of all JI operations.
The men moved stealthily under cover of night, offloading the crate into a smaller vessel which had been motoring alongside. The cargo swung precariously as it was lowered from the container ship, those paid to smuggle the shipment ashore suspecting that weapons were involved. With the transfer complete, Amir Ibn-ul-Khattab’s internuncio paid the Chinese captain and returned to the solitude of his cabin, leaving the cargo to disappear into the night.
The following day when the “Cosco Qingdao” docked at Port Klang the vessel was subjected to the most intense search by Malaysian and Interpol officers. At the end of the day the bewildered investigators apologized to the ship’s captain and abandon their inspection, concluding that their intelligence had been incorrect.
‘We had no warning,’ the Political Counselor replied. ‘Why weren’t they kept under surveillance?’
‘They were, but when the government vehicles picked them up and drove them away, our surveillance team assumed that the group were being taken into custody and didn’t follow.’
The counselor shook his head at the blunder. ‘And we have no idea whatsoever where they might be?’
‘We’ve put out an alert across all Asian airports but they’ve had far too much lead time for that to be effective.’
‘If this is any indication of how Megawati will run things in the future then relationships with the new President are going to be bumpy.’
‘Could it be that she didn’t give it enough consideration, after all, she’s been President less than three days?’
The counselor considered the question. The Indonesian political scene was still fluid having been subjected to the vacuum created subsequent to Suharto falling, Wahid failing and Megawati ascending to the throne. ‘The new President certainly doesn’t have much experience to bring to the leadership. She doesn’t appear to have much political savvy as we could see from the manner Wahid manipulated her out of the running before. Looking at her profile one can only hope that she will surround herself with those who can bring some understanding of how the economy works, as she’s not very well educated.’
‘The TNI seems to have taken the change quietly, in stride.’
‘And why wouldn’t they?’ the counselor retorted, ‘the generals know that the international arena is watching to see if they’ll interfere in the democratic processes. My guess is that they’ll continue to mark time until Megawati’s tenure has passed and then make their move. We shouldn’t misinterpret their mood as one of ambivalence towards terrorism, in spite of the apparent lack of enthusiasm we’ve witnessed in their rounding up those responsible for the Christmas bombings.’
‘Has to be the old guard,’ the chief claimed, ‘they’re the ones with the money and clout.’
‘Pity about Wahid departing the scene so quickly,’ the counselor grumbled, ‘he wouldn’t have screwed us around like this.’
‘I still can’t believe they let those bastards go,’ the CIA chief complained, ‘we were so damn close…’
The counselor inhaled deeply. U.S. efforts to round up five members from the al-Qaeda network who had arrived in Indonesia from Yemen earlier in the month had been thwarted by the President’s refusal to have the men arrested. U.S. intelligence sources had tracked the team to Jakarta and, from satellite intercepts had corroborating evidence that the Yemenis planned to attack the U.S. embassy there. The counselor appreciated that Megawati, only days after being appointed President, would have found it difficult being caught between Washington upon whom Indonesia was dependent for aid, and Indonesian-Mus-lims’ anti-U.S. hostility over Afghanistan.
‘Her lack of support doesn’t bode well for the future,’ the exasperated Langley chief repined.
For one brief moment Agus Sumarsono’s hand hesitated as he held the gold Conway Stewart fountain pen in the air. Then, with a flourish disguising his air of despair, he commenced signing the contracts which, effectively, consummated their arrangements and passed control of the Bimaton Corporation to Mohamed Aziz Derashid’s Malaysian conglomerate: Bulan Sabit Holdings Sdn Bhd.
‘Congratulations, Aziz,’ Agus extended his hand, the moment captured by staff photographers.
‘To the marriage of our two great enterprises,’ Derashid offered diplomatically.
‘And a mutually rewarding relationship,’ Agus responded, the sense of decrepitude and failure at having surrendered his family interests burning deep into the pit of his insides.
* * * *
Derashid bid Agus farewell following the celebratory luncheon then returned to his residence where he remained alone in the privacy of his penthouse overlooking Kuala Lumpur’s hazy skyline. His successful acquisition of the Bimaton Group would not only greatly enhance his commercial reach across S.E. Asia, but would also provide the Malaysian billionaire with the political clout necessary for his secret quest to mould the region’s socio-religious structure in pursuit of a Pan-Islamic state.
Greg Young appreciated how difficult surrendering control must have been for Agus Sumarsono and felt saddened by the outcome, pleased that at least Agus would retain the chairman-ship of the Bimaton Group.
With his replacement as Chief Financial Officer, Young was tempted to sell his holdings and bail out all together. However, although the acquisition had only marginally lifted the value of his stock, the company’s shares were no longer traded on the open market and were therefore difficult to offload. And, even had the company been re-listed, he doubted that their potential would have been recognized by the traders in the current mood of economic and political crises.
The bitter power struggle between rival factions of Indonesia’s ruling elite had ended, with the Peoples’ Consultative Assembly’s nine-month campaign to oust Abdurrahman Wahid succeeding in replacing the President with his deputy, Megawati Sukarnoputri. However, Greg Young doubted that the inexperienced daughter of Indonesia’s founding President Sukarno would be capable of finding a solution to the country’s deep economic and social crises. During Wahid’s tenure the population had experienced an unconscionable deterioration in living standards and increased instability, the combination of which had spilled more than fifty mil ion into an environment where they were obliged to live below the poverty line. Since the currency crisis of four years before, more, than eight million workers had joined the huge pool of thirty-five million unemployed.
Young knew that his credentials in the construction industry were sufficiently strong for him to break away and re-establish his own operations. Nevertheless, as his stock holdings remained significant, he decided to remain with the restructured Bimaton, hopeful that past demands upon construction revenues would cease with the injection of new capital from the Malaysian investors, permitting the profitable arm to grow. Notwithstanding the deplorable state of the domestic non-oil and gas construction industry, Young remained confident of the construction arm’s prospects and, consequently, would swallow his pride and call Agus to accept the new board’s offer of Director of Operations, Construction and Property Development (Indonesia).
With construction cranes idly adorning partially-completed, grandiose shopping malls and office towers, Young accepted that he would need to redirect the construction group’s energies more towards the oil and gas sector, where profits could still be made – and where the income stream was guaranteed in dollars. Security issues would remain of concern he knew, recalling the recent Exxon-Mobil shut down of their Arun, LNG operations in North Aceh where fighting between separatist guerrillas and government troops continually threatened the stability of the province.
Young expected with Megawati’s ascension to the presidency, that the TNI would move swiftly and crack down even more brutally on secessionist movements than they had under Wahid. He also counted on Indonesia’s ruling class to ensure that the outlying resource-rich provinces of Aceh, which produced one-third of the country’s exports, and West Papua, the sixth-largest contributor to Indonesia’s national income, would remain within the fold.
Greg Young accepted also that it was axiomatic in such a politically corrupt environment, that business would continue as usual, and Megawati’s Presidency would result in few, if any, changes for Indonesia’s neglected masses.
Understanding that the country faced growing anti-Java-nese dissent, the depletion of oil reserves, the destruction of forests and an increase in religious militancy, the Republic would come under increased pressure and could ultimately fracture with the exit of Aceh, or West Papua, from the unitary state. And, in view of these long term expectations, Young recognized that he would be faced with a most difficult road ahead.
He checked the time before making the call to Agus. It was 2048 hours on 11th September 2001 – morning, in New York where the first pictures of the burning World Trade Center were being broadcast live to television viewers across the globe.
An eight-metre long Predator streaked through the sky twenty-thousand feet above the earth, beaming a continuous live video feed to the operator sitting at his console hundreds of kilometres away. Equipped with missiles directed by a laser-targeting system, the Predator’s belly-mounted video camera scanned the terrain, recording, searching for its target, launching its Hellfire missiles upon receiving the operator’s command.
On the ground, an unsuspecting gathering of al-Qaeda leaders was incinerated in a flash when the Rockwell warhead struck. Amongst the eight killed, Osama bin Laden’s designated successor Mohammed Atef, the former Egyptian policeman.
The list of names of those who knew Mohammed Aziz Derashid’s connection to al-Qaeda had suddenly been reduced to four.
Jack McBride was far too distracted to appreciate Poso’s Dutch-inspired churches and government buildings as he made his way down to the harbor, stopping repeatedly to bend down and scratch where scrub mites had attacked, the maddening itch around his sandaled feet driving him to despair.
Concerned with the further escalation in sectarian violence Jack traveled to the city to ensure Netty’s safety when she arrived from Gorontalo. It was evident that the Laskar Jihad had now divided their attention between neighboring Moluccas and Sulawesi, the death toll in Ambon and its surrounding islands now exceeding nine thousand. Over the past week thousands of homes, schools and churches had been destroyed across Sulawesi when the Jemaah Islamiyah, the Laskar Jihad and the more-recently formed Laksar Jundullah, armed with machine guns, rocket launchers and bulldozers swept through the provinces, pillaging and burning Christian villages. Even Poso’s largest church had not been spared; it was bombed, then set ablaze.
In the aftermath of the September, al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, Indonesia’s militant groups had become more determined, raising the level of conflict between Muslims and Christians across the archipelago in an attempt to garner greater popular support within the country.
Jack had caught a minibus from Tentena – now partially under siege, the journey delayed when demonstrators blocked the main arterial roads entering the city and forced passengers to alight. Angered by the inconvenience he had continued on foot, his apprehension growing when it became apparent that Poso was now under the control of the seven-thousand strong, TNI-backed Laskar Jihad – and the Laskar Mujahideen, the Jemaah Islamiyah’s armed forces which totaled some two thousand men. The Laskar Mujahideen, although smaller in numbers than the Laskar Jihad, were significantly better trained. The two groups clashed often.
The Christian community’s conspiracy claim that the recent cycles of recrimination and revenge were the handiwork of outside provocateurs had been substantiated, with evidence of Afghani hardened Taliban soldiers arriving to train local Muslim militants, at a newly created al-Qaeda training center.
A group of six Afghan and Pakistani “observers” were caught during an attack on the Christian village of Pendolo, then arrested by the TNI only to be released without questioning. The reports pertaining to their arrest would soon disappear within the military bureaucracy. McBride concluded that Jakarta’s apparent indifference to their presence was a direct result of pressure from the country’s fundamentalist Islamic parties which had played a major role in keeping former President Wahid in power, before switching their alliance to Megawati. The new President’s failure to act, foreshadowed an ominous future for the eastern provinces, as the Laskar Jihad continued to engage Christians with its policy of religious cleansing.
Jack McBride accepted that the violence was not all one-sided, with reports of Muslim women and children being stripped naked and their genitals inspected, and Christian vigilantes supported by their ‘Black Bat’ so-called ninja raiders, perpetrating some of the province’s worst violence. Earlier, when he had journeyed towards Poso he had passed a mosque, the site of one of the Christians’ killing grounds. A charred, headless body lay outside in the eerily quiet of the day; the blood-spattered walls a sinister reminder of the depth of hostilities that flowed through here.
McBride knew that being American brought considerable risk. Walking slowly into Poso, he felt the chill of the Jihad militants’ hate-filled glares, and was careful not to provoke confrontation with eye contact – aware that any perceived aggression on his part would undoubtedly bring swift reprisal.
He reached the city’s center, his attention drawn momentarily to a sign advertising Internet services, and he recalled that the Laskar Jihad now maintained its own website, which enunciated claims of Christians forcibly converting Muslims with others being subjected to rape, torture and kidnap for use as sex slaves – these accusations loading Muslim minds with suspicion and hatred towards the Christian community. On the Internet café’s walls were posters of Osama bin Laden with writing proclaiming ‘This is our Leader’, the armed TNI soldiers lounging around outside apathetic to the locals’ woes.
Shielding his eyes against the midday sun, Jack waved at the incoming ferry, pushed through a throng of persistent hawkers, and took his assistant by the hand when she disembarked.
‘I hadn’t expected to see you here,’ Netty gushed, genuinely relieved.
‘Thought you might be safer with me by your side.’
Netty squeezed his arm. ‘Thank you, Jack. To tell you the truth, I was really nervous, not knowing what the situation was here.’
‘How’s Gorontalo faring?’ he probed.
‘Recovering, as I left.’ She fought back tears. ‘I just can’t believe what is happening!’
Jack raised his leg and scratched furiously, the relief immediate. He removed Netty’s overnight bag from her shoulder then took her by the arm. ‘Poso is becoming more volatile by the hour. Best we don’t dally. I had trouble getting into the city so it might be an idea if we walk over to one of the hotels and grab a taxi.’
‘It’ll be expensive,’ she warned, picking up the pace to match Jack’s long strides.
Jack negotiated the fare and they drove out of the city slowly, the sense of dread remaining as they headed back to Tentena, the journey taking three hours due to the number of check points scattered along the way. The smouldering remains of the Tentena mosque passed by. Netty slipped her hand into his as she looked away from the charred body still lying alongside the road, the corpse now under attack from a pack of village dogs.
‘The country’s going to implode,’ Jack whispered forebodingly ‘if this senseless slaughter across the country’s eastern provinces isn’t stopped.’
‘Jakarta is to blame,’ Netty implied, ‘they could bring this to an end if they really wanted to.’
‘I know,’ Jack agreed, ‘but when are they going to act?’
‘Only the generals can answer that,’ she responded cynicaly.
‘The other day I did a tally on the number of churches attacked over the past twelve months.’ He looked over at his companion. ‘The figures are outrageous. There have been more than one hundred bombing incidents in less than one year, and these don’t include non-sectarian attacks such as the Atrium Mall bombings in Jakarta.’
‘Aren’t the authorities claiming that some Malaysian group was behind that? Netty asked.
‘Don’t believe that Jakarta really wants to know,’ Jack replied, irritably. ‘What we need is more international attention.’
‘We live in the shadows out here, Jack,’ Netty said, resignedly, ‘most of the outside world doesn’t even know we exist.’
‘An unfortunate fact of life,’ he muttered. ‘Even Theys’ death in West Papua doesn’t seem to have attracted the attention it deserves.’
Netty considered the lack of international comment relating to the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of the popular West Papuan independence leader. ‘Why do you think there’s so little interest in what’s taking place in Indonesia?’ she asked.
Jack had already considered this issue. ‘What’s happening here has been eclipsed by the attack on America. I guess that in the aftermath of September Eleven priorities have changed…and that is understandable. Let’s face it, most Westerners couldn’t find Jakarta or even Bali on a map let alone Poso or Ambon.’
Netty remained silent, sickened that without international pressure on Jakarta and the TNI, the slaughter would continue.
SID’s Deputy Director read down the list of proposed targets mentioned in the interrogation reports, hesitating when arriving at the Australian High Commission. He muttered something disrespectful before continuing, the senior public servant still resentful over the ABC TV’s ‘Lateline’ program which suggested widespread espionage by Singaporean agents in Australia.
At the time, there were grave concerns that the report might influence the Australian Treasurer’s deliberations over whether to permit the sale of the country’s second largest communications carrier, Optus, to Singapore Telecom. Before the Australian government would approve the sale, Singapore had been required to sign separate agreements with Australia’s defence and intelligence organizations. Although the acquisition had proceeded, Singapore Telecom’s shares had fal en sharply and that, in turn, had affected the health of the country’s sacrosanct superannuation fund.
SID’s job was to gather and assess information related to external threats to Singapore. It was a highly secretive unit, known only to the most senior military and government officers. The SID maintained at least one agent at the Republic’s embassies and consulates, these officers selected from all branches of the civil service and most with extensive military experience. The identity of SID officers was a closely guarded secret, many maintaining secondary workplace entities with government ministries and agencies such as Foreign Affairs, Defence, Singapore Airlines and the Tourism Board to enable them to operate undetected.
The Deputy Director reflected on the recent successful operation which had resulted in the arrest of fifteen Muslim militants from a relatively obscure group, the Jemaah Islamiyah.
When a field operative, Eddie Kwang, had alerted his superiors to information he had received whilst interviewing students at a Malaysian madrasah, the SID had passed the intelligence to the Internal Security Department. The ISD’s operation charter restricted the unit to matters of internal security; it was not empowered to operate overseas. That was SID’S domain. ISD officers had moved quickly, detaining the group before they could implement their plans to bomb foreign assets in Singapore.
Alongside the name of Hambali, the group’s leader, the Deputy scribbled a note, asking for further information about a detainee’s statement that the organization was funded by al-Qaeda. When he read further and discovered that Hambali had stockpiled enough ammonium nitrate to build seven truck bombs for the planned Singapore attacks, the Deputy Director’s jaw fell measurably, envisaging the flow-on effects to the Singaporean economy if the attacks had been successful.
Without hesitation the SID director instructed operatives attached to Singapore’s embassy in Jakarta and the High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, to determine whatever links existed between the Jemaah Islamiyah, and other known militant organizations operating across the country’s borders.