Abstract
The role of social media in aiding terrorist attacks worldwide has been widely discussed among counterterrorism officials and academics. Since 2014, the idea of ‘crowdsourced terrorism’, whereby the Islamic State (IS) outsourced the conduct of attacks to their followers and attempted to attract them to Syria, has been popularly used by Western policymakers. This article critically examines the phenomenon of crowdsourcing and the IS’s online appeal in the case of Indonesia. The participant–curator crowdsourcing model outlined by Laurie Philips and Daren Brabham explains the online appeal of the IS, with social media facilitating the IS’s establishment of the relationship with Internet users in faraway countries such as Indonesia and allowing them to participate in the making of the IS brand. Participatory culture therefore encourages an e-supporter’s faith in the importance of their individual contribution and social connection that transcend offline realities in areas such as citizenship. IS opinion leaders work alongside online supporters to craft the meaning of martyrdom and imagination of citizenship through social media posts about life in the Caliphate. The land of Syria is imagined simultaneously as paradise for those who take their faith seriously as well as the venue for the Islamic equivalent of Armageddon. Hijrah (jihad by emigration) to Syria and martyrdom are represented as obligatory in the quest for equalization of power and freedom from slavery of those who are against the establishment of the Caliphate. Crowdsourced imaginations of the IS have had implications in several areas of policymaking. The article will discuss the implications of online imaginaries on IS’s approaches to militancy in its operations, Indonesian decision makers’ debate to revoke the citizenship of those who had travelled to IS and for the Indonesian military in its quest for expansion of their role in counterterror operations.
Introduction
On 14 January 2016, loud explosions rocked the Starbucks outlet at the Cakrawala Building and the police post located in the busy Thamrin Road in central Jakarta. As a crowd of onlookers gathered to film the aftermath of the bombings, two men, who were at first within the crowd, slowly made their way to the police trying to diffuse the situation and shot them point blank. The four attackers injured 26, including members of the police, and killed 3 civilians before the authorities finally brought the situation under control. Following the attack in Jakarta, the Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility in a statement widely disseminated on social media. Pointing to an Indonesian citizen, Bahrun Naim, currently believed to be residing in Raqqa, Syria, as the mastermind of the attack, the government responded by closing down his blog as well as some pro-IS websites and social media accounts on Twitter and Telegram.
Although the theory of the Thamrin attacks being coordinated from Syria has since been disproved (IPAC, 2016), the role of social media in aiding terrorist attacks worldwide has been a subject of hot debate among counterterrorism officials and academics for several years. Since 2014, the idea of ‘crowdsourced terrorism’, whereby the IS outsourced the conduct of attacks to their followers and attempted to attract them to Syria, has been popularly used by Western policymakers. The knife attack in Leytonstone subway station in east London and shooting in San Bernardino, the USA, that injured 1 and killed 14 people, respectively, in December 2015, had signalled what the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, called an ‘entirely new phase in the global terrorist threat’ whereby terrorists ‘outsourced attempts to attack’ in many countries worldwide (Baker & Schmitt, 2015). Concurring, James Comey, then Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had cautioned against the IS’s strategy of ‘crowdsourced terrorism’ that invited supporters to either join them in Syria or conduct attacks wherever they are located (Baker & Schmitt, 2015).
The concern over crowdsourced terrorism extended to Indonesia, where, as of January 2016, 384 citizens had gone to Syria (Aprianto, 2016, p. 26). While small compared to other countries, the nation still saw 2.7 million citizens involved in a series of terror attacks, a number that excluded supporters and sympathizers (Tempo.co, 20 January 2016). The impact of crowdsourcing was also worth examining, given that the call to emigrate to Syria and, after 2015, with tightened border controls in Turkey, consideration for conducting attacks back home in Indonesia appeared to have been heeded (IPAC, 2016). The Indonesian National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) had reported that IS-affiliated individuals currently number about 1,000 persons. A survey by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting also revealed that while majority of Indonesians viewed IS negatively (Poushter, 2015), 4.4 per cent of the respondents did not see the organization as a threat, and, indeed, 0.8 per cent supported the IS (Nashrillah, 2016). The impact of social media on support for the IS among Indonesians had been noted (IPAC, 2015), although to date no empirical study demonstrating the linkage has been conducted. Still, considering the magnitude of social media usage among Indonesians (69 million Facebook users and 20 million Twitter users in June 2014), the potential impact of social media in terms of propaganda and recruitment of IS sympathizers should be carefully examined.
This article critically examines the phenomenon of crowdsourcing, a term first coined in 2006 to refer to the open call for ideas, innovations and solutions from a large number of people whose identity is usually unknown, and its applicability in the IS’s online appeal in the case of Indonesia. In Indonesia, as the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) argued, radicalization of IS supporters generally takes place offline, in pengajians (religious study sessions), and it is only after familiarity and certainty of intentions that the supporters are invited to secret chat forums on social networking platforms such as Telegram and WhatsApp, where they are persuaded to migrate to Syria (IPAC, 2015). While crowdsourcing in the online-focused sense of the word is therefore less useful to describe the case of IS recruitment of Indonesian supporters, the participatory culture where online imaginaries of utopia, martyrdom and alternative citizenship are fostered by IS media propagandists and their network of online thought leaders and supporters is nevertheless compelling. Here, the participant–curator crowdsourcing model described by new media scholars Laurie Philips and Daren Brabham (2012) is useful in explaining how the IS has been able to retain its online appeal despite the largely relational nature of the Indonesian extremist recruitment process. The participant–dominant interaction between the online supporters and leaders within the IS milieu ensured perpetuity of the message, enabling the production of a credible picture of utopia in the IS and glorification of martyrdom. Therefore, crowdsourcing has certain utility in the case of the IS in Indonesia, but only for the purpose of online propaganda, for which the linkage with the so-called ‘radicalizing’ of individuals remains open for further examination.
This article firstly reviews literature on crowdsourcing. While crowdsourcing tends to be used to refer to a one-way open invitation for contribution, the participant–curator model offers a more complex perspective of interaction between online influencers and participants. It also paints an accurate picture of the IS’s social media strategy, giving some weight to the term ‘crowdsourced terrorism’. Next, it will consider some crowdsourced imaginaries from Indonesian extremist websites and social media accounts. The land of Syria is imagined simultaneously as paradise for those who take their faith seriously as well as the venue for the Islamic equivalent of Armageddon. Hijrah (jihad by emigration) to Syria and martyrdom are represented as obligatory in the quest for equalization of power and freedom from slavery of those who are against the establishment of the Caliphate. Crowdsourced imaginations of the IS have had implications in several areas of policymaking. The article will discuss the implications of online imaginaries on IS’s approaches to militancy in its operations, Indonesian decision makers’ debate to revoke the citizenship of those who had travelled to IS and for the Indonesian military in its quest for expansion of the role in counterterror operations.
Literature Review
The term ‘crowdsourcing’ was first coined by Jeff Howe, a contributing editor of Wired magazine, in 2006 to refer to the outsourcing of labour through the Internet, which offers a quick means of finding suitable responders, to a previously unknown group of enthusiasts or experts who are able to perform quality work yet offer cost efficiency (Howe, 2006a, 2006b). The ‘wisdom of crowds’ suggests that the aggregate response of many people, even amateurs, to a question is frequently more accurate than the views of a few subject matter experts (Surowiecki, 2004). In this respect, a community of individuals with common interests and facing the same tasks are believed to be capable of delivering better products and solutions than experts in the field. Information systems scholars Lebraty, Jean-Fabrice and Lobre-Lebraty, Katia (2013) confirmed that the ‘diversity and independence of the members of a crowd’ is a positive attribute that adds value to crowdsourcing. Howe’s subsequent elaboration of crowdsourcing married what James Surowiecki (2004) called the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ with passionate interest in the task on hand:
Crowdsourcing had its genesis in the open source movement in software. The development of the Linux operating system proved that a community of like-minded peers was capable of creating a better product than a corporate behemoth like Microsoft. Open source reveal a fundamental truth about humans that had gone largely unnoticed until the connectivity of community than it can in the context of a corporation. The best person to do a job is the one who most wants to do that job; and the best people to evaluate their performance are their friends and peers who, by the way, will enthusiastically pitch in to improve the final product, simply for the sheer pleasure of helping one another and creating something beautiful from which they all will benefit. (Howe, 2008, p. 8)
Scholars have also explored the intrinsic motivations of participants in crowdsourcing, seeing factors such as the desire to improve one’s skills, earn money and expand one’s network of friends to be strong drivers for participation (Brabham, 2008, 2010, 2013; Lakhani, 2008; Lakhani & Kanji, 2008). Reasons for participation are widely varied and context dependent. For instance, the case study of InnoCentive.com, a website linking those seeking solutions to scientific problems to experts capable of solving them, showed that personal satisfaction from solving the problems was also important motivation for participation (Lakhani, 2008). Brabham’s study on the reasons for participation in the crowdsourced t-shirt design website, Threadless, showed that the ‘love of the community’ is one of the various factors making participants come back to the website (Brabham, 2010a, 2010b). The behavioural attribute of ‘addiction’ was also reason for sustained participation in crowdsourcing ventures, attracting users to keep coming back and even forming online relationships with other users with common interests (Brabham, 2010a, 2010b). The collective nature of crowdsourcing is therefore one important factor in encouraging the formation of interest groups and appealing to the intrinsic interests of its participants, who believe that their contribution matters.
Yet, despite scholars’ understanding of the utility of the wisdom of the crowd and knowledge of participants’ motivation, crowdsourcing has tended to be viewed as a one-way Internet-based act of invitation. Subsequently, little attention has been paid to the participatory culture fostered in crowdsourcing initiatives, which gains continuity precisely due to the strong feelings by Internet users that their contribution matters (Jenkins et al., 2009). Daren Brabham’s combined study of the It Gets Better Project with new media scholar Laurie Philips and Daren Brabham (2012) offered a perspective of how such crowdsourcing initiatives operate: instead of a top-directed initiative, participants are encouraged in this new public relations model to participate in the communication about and the making of the branding of these contemporary organizations (p. 6). Calling it the ‘participant–curator’ model of crowdsourcing, the authors noted that the role of the organizations has become akin to curators in a museum, immersed among members of the online community to nudge them along in participation (Philips & Brabham, 2012, p. 10). The goal of communicating ‘[i]n this multi-communicator, multi-audience, and multi-dimensional world, then, […] is not persuasion, in the classical sense, but influence in the broadest sense’ (Manheim, 2011, p. 139).
This dispersed communication style with the dominant role of social media participants has been noted by scholars of the IS as well. For example, security scholar Yannick Veilleux-Lepage (2015) observed that ‘the IS’ extensive reliance on unaffiliated sympathizers, who either retweet or repost content produced and authorized by the IS leadership can be seen as groundbreaking paradigm shift in the evolution of jihadism in cyberspace’ and that,
[I]nstead of a single source acting as the monolithic voice of the organization, multiple messengers collaborate to communicate its message thus lending the appearance of authenticity and wide acceptance. It also creates a huge problem for the people attempting to curb the spread of ISIS’s messages.
Concurring, Charlie Winter stressed the fact that the propagators of IS online messages are not formally appointed but instead self-select themselves into the virtual community, with the satisfaction of activism as their sole reward (Winter, 2015a, p. 7). He also observed that these ‘jihobbyists’ reinterpret the official content produced by the IS, remaking them into their own version of unofficial propaganda (Winter, 2015a, p. 7).
Participant–Curator Crowdsourcing and IS Supporters in Indonesia
Crowdsourcing in the traditional, online-focused sense does not fully describe the complexity of recruitment of IS supporters in Indonesia. Compared to countries such as Malaysia or the Western nations (Atwan, 2015, p. 18), the involvement of Indonesians in IS and their decision to leave for Syria are far more dependent on personal acquaintances and people-to-people engagement fostered in pengajians that are easily organized all around the archipelago (IPAC, 2015). Social media has been employed by Indonesian IS opinion leaders and supporters as a form of online self-expression which may prove attractive to their target audience, thereby turning into propaganda, making passive readers into committed members (Winter, 2015a, pp. 7–8).
The term ‘crowdsourced terrorism’ therefore has some utility in explaining how IS propaganda gained traction, especially through the role of the participants in not only appropriating the objectives of the organization but also in the dissemination. As noted by scholars of the online social movement, online communities sharing passion for particular causes are united by a combination of social and technological trust (Haciyakupoglu & Zhang, 2015). Participants of the online participatory culture are also convinced of the utility of their contribution and tend to ‘feel some degree of connection with one another (Jenkins et al., 2009, p. 3)’, something that participants of crowdsourcing also experience (Brabham, 2010, p. 1140). In addition, the development of these collective identities and, thereafter, collective action has been known to have been reinforced by frames or schemas of interpretation (Goffman, 1974, p. 21; Snow et al., 1986). My own research on Kawalpemilu.org, an independent crowdsourcing initiative established in the aftermath of the disputed 2014 Indonesian presidential election, revealed shared narratives among administrators and participants that propelled their participation in the initiative, which they believed to be the way to achieve a certain ideal vision of Indonesia. The crowdsourced online imaginary thus unites IS supporters and opinion leaders and may ultimately gather them for the purpose of collective action.
Crowdsourced Imaginaries of Indonesian IS Supporters
Terrorism communication scholar Charlie Winter (2015a) observed that IS propaganda comprised six themes: brutality, mercy, victimhood, war, belonging and utopianism. For the case of Bahasa Indonesia IS-related social media accounts and websites, the following prominent themes emerged: anti-state rhetoric, apocalypse and the call for hijrah, utopianism and martyrdom.
Anti-state Rhetoric
One theme that is often not discussed in papers about extremist websites is their anti-state nature. Granted, states have always faced challenges in terms of their legitimacy, authority and territory, and contemporary Indonesia is no exception to this rule, with separatist movements calling for independence in some parts of the country. The idea of an IS is one such stream of anti-state ideology that goes back to the proclamation of Darul Islam (DI) during the Indonesian national revolution by Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosoewirjo in 1949. As terrorism expert Sidney Jones argued, offshoots of DI ‘continue to constitute the core of militant Islam in Indonesia, and the idea of an IS continue to resonate with new generations’ (Jones, 2010). The Reformasi (Reformation) period after the fall of former Indonesian President Suharto also allowed the anti-state sentiment to be expressed more easily.
Online, the Indonesian IS supporters continued the anti-state rhetoric exhibited by the previous generation of extremist groups. For example, Abu Jandal, one of the first Indonesians to leave for Syria, released a video in December 2014 where he threatened to attack the Indonesian military and police to avenge convicted terrorist inmates as well as threatened the paramilitary wing of Nadhlatul Ulama (NU) for its commitment to uphold the state ideology of Pancasila. Ridwan Agustin, a former AirAsia pilot now believed to be residing in Syria, called the police ‘ansharu thogut’ or helpers of the tyrannical government (Winter, 2015b). A video on YouTube, Berangkatlah Baik Dalam Keadaan Ringan Atau Berat (Whatever State You are In, Just Leave), dated 17 October 2015, showed a man who was currently living in Syria, noting that Indonesian Muslims have been unable to implement the syariah due to the apostate government:
I was just an ordinary man who didn’t really know much about the religion. I don’t have a background in formal sha’ri education. I just joined some study forums which taught the Qu’ran and the religion, like many people had done. From the studies, I learned about Islam, about Shari’ah, the law of Allah. But finally, I learned that Muslims in Indonesia were unable to implement the Shari’ah. I was wondering, how come they are unable to implement Shari’ah while they are a majority? From that point, I began to learn about taghut. The tawaghit reject and forbid the implementation of Shari’ah. Muslims in Indonesia are a very big population, but why can’t they implement the Shari’ah then? They actually were oppressed, but most of them didn’t feel this oppression. Why? Because they had begun to feel comfort under the taghut. I felt worried that Allah had locked our hearts. Why?! Because we had an obligation to implement the Shari’ah, but instead we felt comfort under the laws of taghut. For a long time the Muslims (in Indonesia) were ruled by the taghut Pancasila, since birth we had an obligation to raise the law of Allah above everything.
Conspiracy theories also abound on Indonesian language extremist websites and social media accounts. Many of these perceive terror-related events and the current government stance against the IS as a form of rekayasa (engineering by the authorities) to paint Islam in a negative light, for instance, online rumours abound in the aftermath of the Thamrin attacks, with Facebook and Twitter users commenting that it was a staged action by the Indonesian intelligence to discredit Islam. Similarly, extremist website Panjimas.com called the judges presiding over the trial of Abu Bakar Ba’asyir thoghut and believed Allah did not approve of the apostate judges. These conspiracy theories are neither new nor unique to the IS. However, the IS, with its views of impending apocalypse that will take place in Syria, had given these anti-state sentiments new lease by linking them with the call to leave the corrupt land.
Apocalypse and the Call to Hijrah
While not new to the Indonesian extremist discourse, social media reinforced Indonesian extremist groups’ discussion about the impending apocalypse that many believed would take place in the Sham region, which is also called Greater Syria or the Levant that includes areas such as Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel. The outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2013 further lent urgency to the belief that the end of times was near and the conviction that all Muslims should partake in jihad there to aid the redeemer, who is referred to as the Mahdi. Those who were unable to undertake the journey to Syria were called to donate resources to support the war in Syria. The IS-issued Dabiq magazine had been instrumental in explaining the organization’s view about the impending Armageddon and the call for Muslims all over the world to move to Syria to join the fight against the Dajjal (antichrist). It should be noted that every issue of the Dabiq magazine had been very quickly translated into Bahasa Indonesia for the purpose of attracting Indonesian readership. Each issue was also widely shared on Bahasa Indonesia IS-related social networking platforms and blogs.
The notion of hijrah has been given urgency by the IS online narrative. Following the establishment of the IS, in August 2014, a blog post entitled Kewajiban Hijrah ke Darul Khilafah dari Negara-Negara Kafir (Responsibility of Migration to the Islamic Caliphate from Unbelieving Nations) stated that the Islamic Caliphate had been established and that now Muslims possessed a physical state that was feared by the unbelievers, which was the reason why unbelievers had persecuted the faithful who supported the IS. Hijrah was therefore obligatory in order to avoid being disturbed by the unbelievers. The post stated that the Caliph called on every able-bodied Muslim to migrate to the IS as it was the will of Allah. In a video entitled Bergabung Dengan Barisan (Join the Ranks) YouTube, 2014 made by the IS’s media wing, Al-Hayat Media Center, Indonesian militant Bachrumsyah called on his viewers to muster all their physical and financial abilities to emigrate to the IS as hijrah is an obligation decreed by Allah. Fascination with Syria and interest in leaving were often expressed among IS-linked Twitter users, with many references to the Sham region either in the username, profile pictures or comments. In spite of measures by the authorities to prevent Indonesians from leaving to Syria, opinion leaders showed no sign of abating the call for hijrah. For instance, on 5 January 2016, jailed extremist cleric Aman Abdurrahman continued to call on his followers to emigrate to the IS via mobile phone apps (IPAC, 2016). An old, four-part article about the journey of an Indonesian family to Syria penned by a lady called Siti Khadijah (alias Ummu Sabrina) had also received renewed interest among female Twitter users since late January 2016, suggesting that interest in leaving for Syria persisted despite knowledge of increasing difficulty to go there.
Utopia in the Caliphate
The idea of an Islamic caliphate has been mooted by groups in Indonesia, most notably the Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), for a long time. The IS’s territorial conquest, coupled with its eschatological allusions, proved to be a strong pull for supporters worldwide. Social media complemented the IS’s military strategy through crowdsourced imaginaries of ‘the practical basis of a society’ (Lewis, 2014, pp. 11–12). Online, the picture of Islamic utopia was painted to attract followers.
In the aforementioned video, Berangkatlah Baik Dalam Keadaan Ringan Atau Berat, the IS member disproved negative media reports about the IS, noting that the territory was complete with all amenities of a modern civilization such as traditional markets, shops, police stations, Islamic courts and hospitals. Indeed, the sense of the Caliphate being the land of plenty was carefully crafted in Indonesian IS online discourse. The video, for example, showed the protagonist shopping for grocery in a market filled with all kinds of food and necessities.
Furthermore, the IS discourse reinforced the narrative that all Muslims, even a handicapped man like the protagonist in the video, will have a place in the Caliphate, no matter how insignificant he or she may be. He stated that he was tasked with installation and repair of electricity, as well as helping the families of fighters who had left for the warfront, suggesting that no contribution was too small in building the IS. Contribution was a strong theme in the narrative of utopia among IS supporters online. For example, a video dated June 2015 discussed healthcare services in the IS, portraying modern and high standards of healthcare there. It ended by calling for qualified healthcare professionals around the world to come to IS to contribute their skills there. The vision of brotherhood and comradery was also often painted in Indonesian IS propaganda videos and photos. For example, in the video Kobarkanlah Semangat Mukminin Untuk Berperang (Flame the Fires of War) dated 20 August 2015, the Indonesian IS fighters were shown to be partaking of communal meals and training for battles.
A sense of continuity of the IS as a state was also exhibited with the inclusion of children in these online imaginaries of utopia. For instance, Berangkatlah Baik Dalam Keadaan Ringan Atau Berat ended with the narrator posing with a group of Indonesian children, saying that they would be the next generation of mujahideens in the Caliphate. A YouTube video dated 15 March 2015 also showed the IS training of Indonesian children in self-defence techniques and shooting. At the end of the video, a fighter said that these children are the ones who will go back to the unbelieving countries to raise the flag of martyrdom.
Martyrdom
Martyrdom among online Indonesian IS supporters has been given renewed fervour by the end-of-times discourse taking place within Indonesian extremist circles and territorial conquests in Syria. By December 2015, the BNPT recorded the deaths of 53 Indonesian IS members in Syria. Although security officials believed that IS members embraced death with unparalleled intensity, the theme of martyrdom is not new to Indonesian language in extremist websites and has figured prominently in their discourse since pre-IS days (Yang Hui, 2010). Scholar on Islamist violence, Irm Haleem (2012, p. 95), also observed that martyrdom in the extremist discourse meant one of freedom from the slavery of the apostate:
‘Life’ becomes defined in radical Islamist rhetoric as worthy only if it is a life free of servitude to the other (as free of chains, metaphorically speaking), so that a life of servitude is considered the ‘death’ of self-consciousness, the death of one’s identity, the death of the very essence of being, namely that of autonomy and independence. In this way, radical Islamist rhetoric argues that physical death is better than the ‘death’ of the essence of being, since in the former scenario an individual challenges the master’s subjugation of the self and thereby attains a self-transcendent recognition, in the latter the individual looses all sense of his worth and becomes merely an object for the master to use and abuse to his advantage.
To Indonesian IS online influencers and supporters, martyrdom is therefore represented as a power equalizer, freeing them from the thoghut that is repressing devout Muslims. Psychologist Jon Cole and international affairs analyst Benjamin Cole (2009) affirmed that martyrdom is a community construct that is viewed by extremists as ‘a form of altruistic suicide, an act of hope rather than an act of despair,’ and is instrumental in galvanizing new support for the cause (p. 260). Death also puts down Muslims who are perceived to support the apostate governments, challenging them to raise themselves up to the standard of allegiance to the point of sacrificing one’s own lives (Cole & Cole, 2009, p. 260). For instance, in the video Kobarkanlah Semangat Mukminin Untuk Berperang, such imageries of death and martyrdom in search of freedom from the oppressive apostates were apparent. Abu Ibrahim Al Indunisy’s speech in the clip reinforced the idea that the IS fighters would show the unbelieving nations that the former love death as much as the latter love life. He called on them to hand over their lives to Allah, the giver of life, and outlined two paths that this course of action could take: ‘Before long we will meet with Allah the great One, or else we will return in victory and greatness.’ Through the narrative of death, the legitimacy of the apostate government was therefore torn apart while the courage of IS fighters in the face of death provided them this very legitimacy.
Online imaginaries of martyrdom were reinforced through the sharing of photos and videos of bodies of suspected terrorists. It should be noted that funerals of suspected terrorists have always tended to attract much attention in real life, with attendees eagerly looking out for signs of martyrdom both on the bodies and in their surroundings, recording these with smartphones (Osman, 2013). The online imaginary of martyrdom seemed to have changed little with the advent of the IS, save for its relation with the Caliphate in Syria. For instance, extremist websites have been claiming that the body of a Thamrin bomber, M Ali, remained fragrant even after two weeks in the police morgue, implying his death as a martyr. Other signs of martyrdom that were widely liked and shared among online IS supporters included those who had died with a smile and a generally peaceful countenance, despite their otherwise bullet-/bomb-ravaged bodies and the one-finger IS salute. On 9 February 2016, the photos of the body of Abu Ismail aka Eyang Kung, an IS fighter from Indonesia who had died in Syria, were circulated. Thus, photos and videos of bodies displaying these signs reinforced Indonesian IS imaginaries of martyrdom through the accounts of those who were supposedly able to record these experiences first-hand.
In the aftermath of the Thamrin attacks, the IS online community reacted against mainstream media reports that the bodies of the attackers had been rejected by their families and villages. Several articles claimed that the families and hometowns readily accepted the burial of these ‘martyrs’, disproving the notion that these attackers represent vagabonds who had acted contrary to the values held by those closest to them.
Implications on Policymaking
Crowdsourced imaginaries in the Indonesian IS milieu perpetuated itself due to the crucial role of online supporters in disseminating them. While the argument for linking online imaginaries with the actual decision to support or join IS-related organizations in Indonesia is currently weak, cultural visions as reflected in the aforementioned online imaginaries have determined the organization’s approach towards militancy and citizenship as well as the Indonesian military’s response towards them in the current fight against the IS.
IS Approach to Militancy
Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler, Daphna Canetti and Ehud Eiran (2016) highlighted the crucial role of social networks in translating religious identity to violent actions. Although the impact of online participatory culture on real-life extremism has not been demonstrated, crowdsourced imaginaries of IS supporters displayed propensity to glorify violence. The previously discussed anti-state rhetoric commonly found in the IS online milieu meant that violence against representatives of the state as well as groups advocating differing visions from them are particularly celebrated.
For example, the IS has continued previous generations of Indonesian extremists’ modus operandi of attacking the police, which had been in place since 2011. As an illustration, police seemed to have been especially targeted during the Thamrin attacks. Indonesian IS militant Abu Jandal also released a video in December 2014 that threatened to attack the Indonesian military and police to avenge the jihadi terrorist inmates as well as lambasting the paramilitary wing of the NU, an Islamic mass organization known for its anti-extremism stance. IS supporters’ reactions to the news of police death were also extremely positive. For instance, Facebook commenters rejoiced over the news that one member of the police mobile brigade (Brimob) had died in the crossfire with the MIT in February 2016, largely ignoring the fact that two members of the extremist groups were also killed! Sentiments gleaned from social media users supportive of the IS show that in general, they were in favour of more casualties among the police and military and that local zones of security interest such as Poso in Central Sulawesi would continue to be the burial ground for those who are anti-IS. The Indonesian police in particular seemed to have been targeted by the extremists in their desire for revenge due to the former’s role in countering terrorism in the post-1998 era (Solahudin, 2013). However, it should be noted that community hostility towards the police had always been deep-seated (ICG, 2012) and had indeed been reinforced by anti-police rumours and conspiracy theories (Yang Hui, 2012). Among comments of social networking platform users, for instance, the phrase ‘halal darahnya’ was widely used, meaning that killing these representatives of the infidel government was permissible by Islamic law. Death in this imaginary was therefore not only the death of the IS militants themselves but also taking the lives of the thoghuts who were seen to be working against the establishment of the IS.
This militant attitude is targeted not only at security personnel but also towards state figures and groups seen to champion policies contrary to IS’s vision as well as communities that are supportive of it. For example, commenters on Facebook openly talk about killing office holders such as the Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Politics, Legal and Security Affairs, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, when he released preliminary details on the impending revision to the current terrorism law. Following the news of the outlawing of pro-LGBT movements in Indonesian university campuses, murderous intentions were targeted at prominent figures who were seen to be pro-LGBT as well. These supporters created memes that mimicked IS’s execution of alleged homosexuals by throwing them down high buildings in Syria, sharing these among their social media networks. Anti-Shi’ite, Christian and Jewish sentiments also ran high on IS-linked social media accounts and websites.
Issues of Citizenship
With the discovery of Indonesians fighting for the IS and leaving the country for good to stay in Syria, the issue of citizenship became increasingly pressing for policymakers. In August 2014, ISIS officially established the Katibah Nusantara, or the Malay Archipelago Combat Unit, in Al Shadadi in southern Hassakeh province in Syria. The unit aimed to unite Bahasa-speaking fighters through military training in Syria before sending them back to Southeast Asia to establish a branch of the IS in the region. An estimated 200 Indonesians and Malaysians were in the Katibah Nusantara, in which identical cultural heritage such as language and food united the fighters. IPAC also suggested that some Malaysians and Indonesians are providing support to the Ansar al-Khilafah (supporters of the Caliphate) in the Philippines (AKP) in Mindanao, southern Philippines (IPAC, 2016).
Such differences in imaginaries of citizenship were also reflected online, where Indonesian IS supporters’ anti-state stance was expressed through encouraging followers to place their allegiance to the Caliphate in Syria and defy expression of support for the Indonesian state. For example, some online extremists claimed that any form of respect to the state such as saluting the state flag was forbidden in Islam (Panjimas.com, 2015). The formation of the Khatibah Nusantara was also in itself a reflection of the IS’s imaginary of citizenship, which was contrary to real-life post-colonial conception of statehood. Tensions over shared heritage have frequently taken place between Indonesia and Malaysia, for example. In 2009 alone, the two countries battled over territorial and cultural issues: the ownership of the Sipidan and Ligitan islands, the song ‘Rasa Sayange,’ the pendet dance and the treatment of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia. In contrast, the Khatibah Nusantara redefined citizenship, uniting supporters from various Southeast Asian backgrounds with its brand of the Islamic faith centred on the Caliphate located far away in the Middle East region. Indeed, concern over citizenship appears to no longer be a priority for those intending on crossing over to Syria: on 29 January 2015, 16 Indonesians, out of which 11 were not carrying passports, were captured in Gaziantep, Turkey (Tempo Magazine, 2015).
In consideration of this imaginary, the Indonesian authorities had been debating over revocation of citizenship of citizens who had left for Syria or other countries such as Mindanao in southern Philippines for IS-related military training. This debate had intensified and been given further impetus by the Thamrin attacks. This citizenship consideration for IS supporters will be included in the revision of the Terrorism Act No. 15/2003. The Minister for Legal and Human Rights Affairs, Yasona H. Laoly, announced that the draft revision to the Terrorism Act No. 15/2003 would include the revocation of passports for Indonesians that participated in both local and overseas military training camps and were part of organizations that conduct acts of terror (Budilaksono, 2016). As discussion for the revised law was currently underway, it remains to be seen how the IS’s conception of citizenship would influence the new bill.
Military Role in Counterterrorism
Since the separation of the Indonesian National Police from the military in April 1999, the police have been tasked with overseeing internal law enforcement that included counterterrorism while the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI) 1 dealt with external threats. The end of Indonesia’s biggest secessionist war with the signing of the Aceh peace agreement in 2005, though, meant that the TNI has been on the lookout for its operational raison d’être (Laksmana, 2015). The current IS challenge in terms of its supporters’ imaginaries of citizenship meets the TNI’s search for new purpose in the post-Reformation era. Terrorism has been viewed largely as a threat arising from within the nation. Previous generations of extremists might have trained in other countries such as Afghanistan and the southern Philippines, but the focus of these militants had always been back in Indonesia. Therefore, while TNI-police counterterrorism cooperation had always been in place, the extremist threat has been largely handled by the police.
The emergence of Syria as the focus of the end-of-times discourse that was reinforced online and the recent discoveries of Indonesian citizens actually making the attempt to go there have given justification to the TNI’s years of insistence that terrorism was a threat to the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI). While activists have raised fear of human rights violations akin to what took place during Suharto’s New Order should the military be given a greater role in areas such as counterterrorism, there was currently no signal of its intention to do so (Laksmana, 2015). Indeed, the TNI’s intelligence capabilities and continuing utility of some of its pre-1998 territorial command functions meant that it may be able to contribute to the resolution of the problem caused by the exodus to Syria, although the organization would have a steep learning curve after being largely left out of counterterrorism for the past decade.
Conclusion
This article discussed the applicability of the term ‘crowdsourced terrorism’ in the case of Indonesia. While a purely online-focused view of recruitment does not appear to hold water given the prevalence of offline social networks in attracting Indonesian supporters to the IS cause, the theory of crowdsourcing may still be applied in the case of dynamics that leads to the perpetuation of IS propaganda online. Drawing from the participant–curator model, the dominant role of social media participants ensured the organic perpetuity of online discourse over a longer period of time that may play a role in persuading certain individuals to the IS view. Online imaginaries that consist of a combination of anti-state rhetoric and impending apocalypse leading to the call to emigrate that is combined with visions of utopia and remaking martyrdom as an instrument of freedom and equalization of power have dominated the Indonesian IS narrative. Crowdsourced imaginaries of the IS supporters have had implications in several areas of policymaking: the IS’s approaches to militancy in its operations, Indonesian decision makers’ debate to revoke the citizenship of those who had travelled to IS and the Indonesian military’s quest for the expansion of role in counterterror operations.
Footnotes
1.
Indonesian National Armed Forces.