Brandishing AK-47s, the group of men march along the shoreline with religious music playing and a voice-over calling on followers to join their cause.

“We are your brothers from Indonesia who have come to the Islamic State,” declares Abu Mohammed Al Indonesi in his native tongue Bahasa Indonesia, when the camera cuts to the next scene. Al Indonesi goes on to make an impassioned plea to his countrymen to follow in his footsteps.

The sleek, eight-minute video produced by ISIL, entitled “Join the ranks”, is just one of many tools used by the extremist group as it revs up its propaganda machine to radicalise potential followers from South-East Asia.

… “The growing reach of Katibah Nusantara could lead to its expanding influence in ISIL’s decision-making process, in turn leading ISIL [to give] greater priority to South-East Asia as its war zone,” warned Jasminder Singh, a terrorism analyst at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.