Between 2014 and 2017, one faction of the old insurgency Darul Islam in Bandung, West Java became one of the most virulent branches of the pro-ISIS network in Indonesia known as Jamaah Anshorul Daulah (JAD). Violence took off in 2016 with the call to wage war at home after it became difficult to get to Syria. The desire for revenge against the police for arrests and killing of members kept attacks going even after ISIS defeats in the Middle East. By early 2018, most of the members of JAD Bandung were inactive, in prison or dead. Extremism in Bandung, however,...

The JAD Bandung cell emerged from a Darul Islam faction that was initially seen as being immune to extremist influence.

Under Tahmid Rahmat Basuki, son of Darul Islam founder Sekarmadji Kartosoewirjo, the NII organisation was divided into regional commands, known as komando wilayah (KW). KW7 covered the region known as South Priangan, including Garut, Bandung, Cianjur and Sukabumi. In the 1990s, its members established a school in South Bandung that became to KW7 what the far better known Az-Zaitun pesantren in Indramayu, West Java was to Region 9 or KW9. Just as KW9 was sometimes referred to as “NII Az-Zaitun”,...

The declaration of a new Islamic State and caliphate on 1 Ramadhan 1435H on 29 June 2014 shook KW7 to the core. The declaration and the various propaganda videos it disseminated showed that ISIS controlled large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria where Islamic law was applied in full. The videos also claimed that Al-Baghdadi’s government supplied generous public services such as free housing, healthcare and education as well as food and fuel subsidies. They promoted ISIS as khilafah ala minhajul nubuwah or the caliphate of the Prophet that would come at the end of time.

Activists of NII...

ISIS had also attracted an NII group from Cukang Gentang, Ciwidey led by Germanto alias Abu Rosyid, a man with links to many other networks including MMI, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), Jamaah Anshorul Tauhid (JAT) and other NII factions.⁵ Germanto ran a religious discussion group (pengajian) that included several men later to emerge as JAD Bandung operatives: Rijal Dzurrohman, from a pesantren in Garut run by the Muslim modernist organisation Persatuan Islam (Persis) was one; Ridho Budi Santoso alias Abu Sofi, who married Germanto’s older sister, was another.

The Ciwidey group studied the writings of Aman Abdurrahman. When Aman stated his...

Through Rijal, the new ISIS members from NII Zakaria were introduced to the Jamaah Ansharul Daulah (JAD) network. JAD itself was the largest faction of ISIS supporters in Indonesia and consisted of the followers of Aman Abdurrahman and Abu Bakar Ba’asyir through Ba’asyir’s organisation, JAT.⁸ In November 2015 JAD had adopted JAT’s organisational structure which had a central management at the top, followed by managers at the provincial (wilayah), district/kabupaten (mudiriyah) and subdistrict (qoriyah) levels. The man chosen by Aman Abdurrahman as the first JAD amir was Hari Budiman alias Abu Musa, one of Aman’s closest associates.⁹ For JAD West...

The immediate challenge after the formation of JAD Bandung was to indoctrinate members. There was no one who really understood the Islamic State’s “method” (manhaj) or interpretation of the faith. The leadership decided to have regular monthly instructional sessions to which they would invite leading clerics of JAD’s central committee including Khairul Anam, Syamsul Hadi, and Munawar Kholil alias Usdul Waqa (later to play a key role from Syria in financing the travel of Indonesians to Syria and the Philippines). JAD members also arranged trips to prisons to meet with pro-ISIS leaders such as Aman Abdurrahman, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, and...

JAD Bandung members did not just focus on religion. They decided to duplicate the NII Zakaria model of social and economic activities that had made it immune to outside recruitment. They wanted to turn JAD into an exclusive organisation that could serve the needs of its members while as far as possible avoiding contact with other Muslims whom they condemned as kafir.

The key person for this task was the businessman Jajang Iqin Shodiqin who was also the brother-in-law of Soleh Abdurrahman. He had started out as a security guard for a store that sold Muslim garments in Jakarta and...

One goal of JAD at the end of 2014 had been to send members to Syria. In Aman Abdurrahman’s view, hijrah to Syria was an obligation for all ISIS supporters. The caliphate had been established and Islamic law was being applied in full — it was therefore violating Islamic law to stay in Indonesia. JAD encouraged members to set up physical training programs for members planning to emigrate, and JAD Bandung wanted to follow suit. But this was something new for the former activists of NII Zakaria because up till now they had not focused on military training and they...

The arrest and killing of JAD Bandung members rattled the group’s leaders. One of the Jatiluhur group’s last testaments was circulated on a Telegram group they used, and several feared they would be exposed. Some decided to become inactive for the time being. One of these was Teguh, the group’s treasurer. But others were angry over the deaths of Deden and Budi and wanted to avenge them. Yayat Cahdiyat, the amir of JAD South Bandung, was one; Budi had been his close friend.

“Our brother has died, we have to respond,” he told Agus Sujatno, a member of JAD Bandung...

The Kampung Melayu bombing resulted in a wave of arrests, including four senior JAD Bandung leaders: Muslih Afifi, Jajang Iqin Shodiqin, Fani Suherman and Kiki Muhammad Iqbal.²⁷ JAD Bandung was close to extinction. But crushing the organisation did not mean the end of the threat from individual pro-ISIS members because several went underground and created their own cells. This is a model that has regularly appeared in Indonesia — an extremist organisation is temporarily crippled when it loses its leaders; members then decide to wage “individual jihad” (jihad fardiyah) through small cells, until the organisation regroups. This happened with some...

There are four striking lessons from the NII Zakaria story.

Providing social services can be a way of protecting the group against outside influences. Groups like HAMAS and Hizbollah in the Middle East recognised this years ago, but it is striking how rarely extremist groups in Indonesia have tried to do the same. It worked for NII Zakaria until ISIS came along, and then JAD Bandung tried use the same approach, but not as successfully. Still, it suggests that one model to explore for communities with histories of extremism might be to focus on social service delivery through leaders who...