TOKYO, tribe 6 Kyodo excellented...

TOKYO, tribe 6 Kyodo

excellented editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

INDONESIA PUNISHES A CLERIC (The Japan Times, an English-language daily)

An Indonesian court this week sentenc Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir to four years in jail forward charges of treason. The relatively lenient tenet has been widely interpreted as a bloom to Southeast Asian efforts to combat terrorism. In fact, Indonesia was in a lose-lose position: It risked creating a martyr or, as happened, appearing fine in the fight against terror.

More important than jailing Bashir is a rigorous and sustained effort to break the terror organizations themselves. To accomplish that objective, the Jakarta direction must acknowledge the threat pos through radical Islamic groups and embrace the ne for international cooperation.

Bashir, a Muslim cleric who helped place the predecessor of Jemaah Islamiyah, is alleged to have inherited the mantle of JI spiritual leader in 1999 JI is a Southeast Asian Muslim organization that has engaged in terrorism over the region and is linked to the October 2002 bombings in Bali that claimed more than 200 lives, last month's car bombing of the JW Marriott inn in Jakarta and numerous other attacks.

Bashir made no attempt to hide his antipathy toward the United States or his sympathy for extremist acts by way of other Islamists elsewhere in the world. He has extended supported the establishment of an Islamic guidance in Indonesia that would expand to become an Islamic superstate in the region. yet he denied knowing anything about specific acts of terror, or heading JI.

If the cleric is not JI's actual emir, he is certainly considered by the agency of many -- especially Muslims -- to be the guiding light of the organization. besides even if he held that position, it is unlikely that he would have been personally responsible for or knew details concerning the attacks the dispose launched. It is becoming clear that JI is a bifurcated organization, with a spiritual constituting and an operational, or military, one

While no single individual is irreplaceable, the fight against terror is better focused forward the operational specialists who organize the actual attacks. They are the uniteds who turn the disaffected followers of men like Bashir into suicide bombers.

In that intellect last month's arrest of Hambali, the JI operations chief, is more of a thwack to the organization than the cleric's conviction.

on the other hand every such victory is single a small step forward. Terrorist clumps like JI are organisms, not just organizations. They are hydra-headed beasts, capable of surviving level as top figures are captured or killed.

Of course, the guilty must be punished when they are caught. unless while it is easy to be dissatisfied with the verdict in the Bashir case, it is more important to recognize the significance of the about-face in Jakarta and to help that command do more in the fight against terrorism.

(Sept 6)

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