From Ambon to Poso: comparative and evolutionary aspects of local jihad in Indonesia

This article looks at the first two local jihads in Indonesia after the fall of President Suharto: the 1999-2005 Ambon jihad and the 2000-7 Poso jihad. Both jihads were launched by Javanese mujahidin in response to the eruption of Christian-Muslim communal violence. The Ambon jihad was characterized by disagreement, infighting and lack of strategic direction, while the Poso jihad was comparatively better led and linked to the broader goals of establishing an Islamic state in Indonesia. This article explores the differences between the two jihads and asks to what extent the better organization of the Poso jihad was the result of lessons learnt from the “mistakes” of the Ambon jihad. The article advances two arguments. First, the Ambon jihad was undermined by the lengthy debate within Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) on how to respond to the Ambon conflict as well as by the shifting dynamics between JI, Mujahidin KOMPAK and Laskar Jihad. Second, that the Poso jihad was more organized than the Ambon one because JI’s leadership had a more comprehensive approach to the Poso jihad; because JI and Mujahidin KOMPAK had learnt from the mistakes of the Ambon jihad in the areas of leadership, training and using local jihads to achieve national aims; and because the intra- and inter-mujahidin dynamics and with it the “state of jihad” had evolved between February 1999 and September 2000

Why they join: pathways into Indonesian jihadi organisations

Why do Indonesian Muslims join Islamist extremist groups? This article explores four pathways to entry into Indonesian militant groups: study groups, local conflict, kinship and schools. It argues that within all four of these pathways, social bonds and relationships are the common thread both in encouraging entry as well as in fostering commitment. Specifically, these relationships contribute to the formation and eventual consolidation of the identity as a member of the jihadi group through regular participation in activities, attending meetings, narrowing the circle of friends to those within the group, and participating in increasingly risky and possibly violent activities together. Drawing on original fieldwork including 49 interviews with current and former members of Jemaah Islamiyah, Mujahidin KOMPAK, Darul Islam, Mujahidin Tanah Runtuh, Indonesia’s pro-ISIS network and other jihadist groups as well as 57 depositions and court documents, this article explores the development and evolution of these pathways and how relational ties play a role in each

Militant Islam in Southeast Asia: new insights into jihad in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines

After more than two decades of existence, Contemporary Southeast Asia (CSEA) has entered a new phase of specialization to reflect more directly the changing priorities of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) as well as to cater to an increasing demand among our subscribers for a focus on issues related to domestic politics, international affairs, and regional security. This primary emphasis on political developments, socioeconomic change and international relations is in keeping with the rapid advances in the field of strategic studies concerning not just Southeast Asia but, indeed, the larger Asia-Pacific environment. Contemporary Southeast Asia comprises up-to-date analyses of important trends and events as well as authoritative and original contributions from leading scholars and observers on matters of current interest. It is also the policy of the Editorial Committee of CSEA to produce special issues in order to focus attention either on particular national situations or on major strategic trends in both Southeast Asia and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Contemporary Southeast Asia is published three times a year, in April, August, and December

The “ethnic” in Indonesia’s communal conflicts: violence in Ambon, Poso, and Sambas

This article looks at the communal violence in Ambon, Poso and Sambas in post-Suharto Indonesia from a comparative perspective. It explores why Ambon and Poso were seen as religious while Sambas was seen as ethnic despite the fact that in all three conflicts different religions and ethnicities fought each other. Examining the ‘ethnic’ elements, this article advances three arguments: First, that the Poso and Ambon conflicts were no less ethnic than the Sambas conflict as they had similar ‘ethnic causes’. Second, that the religious narrative dominated in Ambon and Poso because it reflected the Islamic resurgence in Indonesia since the 1990s while the narrative in Sambas reflected that it was the latest round of a pre-existing anti-Madurese conflict which had already been ‘defined’ as ‘ethnic’. Third, that the narratives were framed strategically, thus influencing the trajectory of the conflict but also responding to it

Making jihadis, waging jihad: transnational and local dimensions of the ISIS phenomenon in Indonesia and Malaysia

This article examines the ISIS phenomenon in Indonesia and Malaysia. It aims to explain how, where, and why the transnational and local intersect as well as the role of religion, particularly in the ideological narratives and recruitment strategies of local jihadi groups. At the heart of this analysis is the question to what extent Indonesians and Malaysians were lured into joining ISIS as a result of its "universal" ideology and global recruitment strategy or whether they were instead propelled by local Indonesian and Malaysian dynamics into Syria and into "importing" and "indigenising" ISIS to advance their own agendas. The article argues that the potency and appeal of the extremist narrative of ISIS derives from how it animates and feeds off prevailing debates within Indonesia and Malaysia. These debates revolve around issues such as the nature of Muslim identity and what it means to be a "good Muslim", the place of Islamic law in society, relations within the ummah as well as with non-Muslims, and Islamic eschatology. While there is clearly a transnational dimension, the motivations for Southeast Asians to sympathize with or join the Syrian jihad and their engagement with ISIS are ultimately the product of local Indonesian and Malaysian dynamics rather than the "lure" of ISIS per se. This article thus contributes to the broader scholarly debate on how "global" the global jihad actually is and the phenomenon of "glocalisation"

How do three-year-olds use relevance inferencing to interpret indirect speech?

If a child asks a friend to play football and the friend replies “I have a cough”, the requesting child must make a ‘relevance inference’ to determine the communicative intent. Relevance inferencing is a key component of pragmatics, that is, the ability to integrate social context into language interpretation and use. We tested which cognitive skills relate to relevance inferencing. Additionally, we asked whether children’s lab-based pragmatic performance relates to children’s parent-assessed pragmatic language skills. We tested 3½- to 4-year-olds (Study 1: N = 40, Study 2: N = 32). Children were presented with video-recorded vignettes ending with an utterance requiring a relevance inference, for which children made a forced choice. Study 1 measured children’s Theory of Mind, their sentence comprehension and their real-world knowledge and found that only real-world knowledge retained significance in a regression analysis with children’s relevance inferencing as the outcome variable. Study 2 then manipulated children’s world-knowledge via priming but found this did not improve children’s performance on the relevance inferencing task. Study 2 did, however, find a significant correlation between children’s relevance inferencing and a measure of morpho-syntactic production. In both studies parents rated their children’s pragmatic language usage in daily life, which was found to relate to performance in our lab-based relevance inferencing task. This set of studies is the first to empirically demonstrate that lab-based measures of relevance inferencing are reflective of children’s pragmatic abilities ‘in the wild’. We argue that real-world knowledge is a necessary (but not sufficient) for relevance inferencing

Dispersal ability, trophic position and body size mediate species turnover processes: Insights from a multi‐taxa and multi‐scale approach

Aim: Despite increasing interest in β-diversity, that is the spatial and temporal turno-ver of species, the mechanisms underlying species turnover at different spatial scales are not fully understood, although they likely differ among different functional groups. We investigated the relative importance of dispersal limitations and the en-vironmental filtering caused by vegetation for local, multi-taxa forest communities differing in their dispersal ability, trophic position and body size.Location: Temperate forests in five regions across Germany.Methods: In the inter-region analysis, the independent and shared effects of the re-gional spatial structure (regional species pool), landscape spatial structure (dispersal limitation) and environmental factors on species turnover were quantified with a 1-ha grain across 11 functional groups in up to 495 plots by variation partitioning. In the intra-region analysis, the relative importance of three environmental factors related to vegetation (herb and tree layer composition and forest physiognomy) and spatial structure for species turnover was determined.Results: In the inter-region analysis, over half of the explained variation in community composition (23% of the total explained 35%) was explained by the shared effects of several factors, indicative of spatially structured environmental filtering. Among the independent effects, environmental factors were the strongest on average over 11 groups, but the importance of landscape spatial structure increased for less disper-sive functional groups. In the intra-region analysis, the independent effect of plant species composition had a stronger influence on species turnover than forest physi-ognomy, but the relative importance of the latter increased with increasing trophic position and body size.Main conclusions: Our study revealed that the mechanisms structuring assemblage composition are associated with the traits of functional groups. Hence, conserva-tion frameworks targeting biodiversity of multiple groups should cover both envi-ronmental and biogeographical gradients. Within regions, forest management can enhance β-diversity particularly by diversifying tree species composition and forest physiognomy

Optimierung der Risiko- und Krisenkommunikation von Regierungen, Behörden und Organisationen der Gesundheitssicherung – Herausforderungen in lang anhaltenden Krisen am Beispiel der COVID-19-Pandemie [Optimisation of risk and crisis communication of governments, authorities and public health institutions—challenges in long-lasting crises illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic]

Die COVID-19-Pandemie illustriert die besondere Bedeutung von Risiko- und Krisenkommunikation. Behörden und Politik stehen vor der Herausforderung, in einer dynamischen Lage mit einer Vielzahl von Daten umzugehen, diese zu überprüfen und zielgruppengerecht zu kommunizieren. Verständliche und eindeutige Informationen zu Risiken und Handlungsoptionen tragen maßgeblich zu einer Steigerung der objektiven und subjektiven Sicherheit der Bevölkerung bei. Es besteht daher ein großer Bedarf, die Erfahrungen aus der Pandemie in die Optimierung der Risiko- und Krisenkommunikation einfließen zu lassen. Die Digitalisierung ermöglicht multimodale Arrangements – also die Kombination aus Text, Abbildungen, Grafik, Icons und z. T. Bewegtbilder, Animationen und Ton. Diese spielen auch in der digitalen Risiko- und Krisenkommunikation eine zunehmend wichtigere Rolle. Von Interesse ist, inwiefern das kommunikative Zusammenspiel von Behörden, Medien und weiteren Öffentlichkeitsakteur/-innen in Vorbereitung auf und zur Bewältigung von Krisen angesichts einer komplexen Öffentlichkeit mit Hilfe zielgruppenspezifischer Kommunikation verbessert und wie Rechtssicherheit für die behördliche und mediale Praxis gewährleistet werden kann. Dementsprechend verfolgt der Beitrag 3 Ziele: 1. Er beschreibt die Herausforderungen, vor denen Behörden und mediale Akteur/-innen in der Pandemiekommunikation stehen. 2. Er zeigt, welche Rolle multimodale Arrangements spielen und welcher Forschungsperspektiven es bedarf, um die Komplexität des kommunikativen Krisenhandelns im föderalen System zu erfassen. 3. Er begründet, wie ein interdisziplinärer Forschungsverbund aus Medien‑, Kommunikations- und Rechtswissenschaft Erkenntnisse zum evidenzbasierten Einsatz multimodaler Kommunikation gewinnen kann