While national, regional and international attention has been focussed on the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the dormant Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) has found the environment conducive for its own growth and expansion. By 2010 and 2011, there was some satisfaction in Southeast Asia that JI had not only been crippled but was also largely defeated. Its key military and ideological leaders were either dead or detained. They included Abu Bakar Bashyir, Aman Abdurrahman, Abu Rusydan, Al Aqaeda operatives Hambali, Dulmatin, Umar Patek, Abu Dujana as well as Malaysian fighters such as Nordin M Top and Dr Azahari Husin.

However, even though the last JI bombing in Indonesia was in 2009, it did not mean that the group had renounced terrorism. On the contrary, it had adopted a strategic decision to lie low in line with the concept of I’dad that advocated in-depth preparation to participate in a future jihad. This partly explains the intermittent reports of JI members being arrested or detained ever since, including the four that were detained in Indonesia in December 2016.

… Bilveer Singh is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.