Indonesia's 9/11 happened on an October evening in 2002, in the sweltering heat of Kuta, a well-known Bali resort and a favourite spot for foreign tourists. A triple bomb attack by Jemaah Islamiyah, a terrorist organisation founded in 1993, killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, and injured hundreds more.
Ten years later, the shadow of terrorism still dogs the world's largest Muslim country (90% of the population of 240 million). But terror has become less obtrusive. "It now consists of young self-taught Islamists, in particular via the internet, who are not influenced by al-Qaida," says Andrée Feillard, a specialist on Indonesian Islam and joint author of The End of Innocence? Indonesian Islam and the Temptations of Radicalism.
In the early hours of 3 November a suspected militant was shot dead by security forces in the Poso Pesisir district of central Sulawesi, an island that has seen violent clashes between Muslims and Christians, particularly in 1999-2001. On 31 October an elite police unit carried out a similar operation, during which an alleged terrorist was killed and two others arrested. Homemade bombs, a revolver and some chemicals were also seizedat their home, according to the local police chief, Dewa Parsana.
The raid followed the murder, a fortnight earlier, of two police officers who had their throats slit while investigating a camp run by Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid, a group that the US blacklisted at the start of the year. This fundamentalist group, founded in 2008, was led by the radical imam Abu Bakar Baasyir, now behind bars following a supreme court ruling.
Indonesia has scored some major successes in its battle against religious extremism, launched in 2003 and stepped up the following year when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono became president. The highly rated, 400-strong Densus-88 counter-terrorist unit, set up with US assistance after the Bali attack, has been instrumental in the arrest of more than 600 suspects. Most of the Jemaah Islamiyah groups, particularly those active in 2002-2005, have been broken up. One of the most serious blows to the jihadists was the break-up of a training camp discovered in early 2000 at Aceh, Sumatra.
But the many-headed monster is still dangerous. Its threat has become more pervasive since the twin attacks on luxury hotels in Jakarta, in July 2009, which caused nine deaths and 50 injuries. "Destruction of organised networks affiliated to Jemaah Islamiyah has made room for smaller, unco-ordinated groups, even isolated individuals ... with little technical experience. Almost all the attacks, mounted using tricks learned on the internet, have failed," says Rémy Madinier, a French researcher on Indonesia's Muslims.
Their isolation is a challenge for the security forces. Lone terrorists are hard to detect and even more difficult to arrest. So how dangerous are they? "In strictly security terms they are a limited hazard. They don't disturb the travel trade or business links with the west," Madinier says. "But they reflect Indonesia's inability to pose as a leading player in moderate Islam, despite [this aspiration] being solidly rooted in society."
The radicals all have much the same ideological profile. "These days they are much more concerned about condemning the west and Zionism than establishing the caliphate or an Islamic state, which would be totally unrealistic anyway as the people of Indonesia are strongly nationalist," Feillard says.
The loss of the country's Muslim identity in the face of growing Christianity is also a key motive among Islamists. This anxiety goes back to the early days of the Suharto regime, when atheism was banned and various officially recognised faiths – Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism – were gradually instituted. Religious instruction was made compulsory and ID papers indicated the holder's faith. This only become optional last summer. But some Abangan (Javanese Muslims) became Christians, fuelling a sense of persecution among Muslims.
Low-intensity terrorism flourishes because the soil where it first took root is still fertile. "Indonesia is a victim of its own contradictions: it has waged a successful war on terrorism, avoiding the pitfall of blind repression ... But at the same time it tolerates the aggrieved stance adopted by Islamist writers, on the net and even in schools, depicting Islam as the victim of the west. This fosters extremist and certainly very sectarian attitudes," Madinier says.
Although the country is relatively openin other respects, outbreaks of religious intolerance do occur. An Indonesian NGO, the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, registered 135 violations of religious freedom in 2007, 265 in 2008 and 216 in 2010; almost half were committed by the authorities. Those found guilty of violence against religious minorities are treated with remarkable clemency.
In September the increasingly unpopular government announced a deradicalisation plan for government bodies but it lacked any firm content. To combat the language of hatred, some commentators advocate stricter rules on freedom of speech, but as Feillard says, "Indonesians are very attached to such freedom and fear that any restrictions will lead to a return to the days of Suharto."