Hi all - I'm back from holiday, but sadly back to tragic news. Yesterday Bali had its predicted but still shocking bomb blasts.
Latest count is 32 dead but some are still missing. 3 Aussies including one 16 year old youth were killed. 5 are still unaccounted for. The blasts were the work of 3 suicide bombers whose dismembered remains have been identified.
Indonesian anti-terror offcials asserted that two Malaysians Azahari Husin and Norodin Mohammed, fugitives from the law in several countries, masterminded the terror attacks.
Dr Azahari is not your everyday mindless terrorist. He holds an engineering degree and a PhD from Reading University in England. He was a lecturer at Malaysia's University of Technology before going underground after the official swoop on militants after 9/11. He sits very high in the top echelon of Jemaah Islamiah.
The Australian and Indonesian governments have been expecting the repeat bombings by members of the Jemaah Islamiah militant group but with such terrorist attacks, it's extremely difficult if not impossible to prevent their occurrences.
Apparently the local word was out in Bali that "whites" would be targeted on Saturday night. An Australian living in Bali for the past decade warned his visiting rugby mates as early as Thursday to keep out of Kuta.
International anti-terrorist expert Rohan Gunaratna said that this was the bombing season for Jemaah Islamiah. While he praised the Indonesian and Australian government for generally good intelligence and preparedness (hence the low casualty figures) he urged Australia to pressure Indonesia into declaring Jemaah Islamiah as a terrorist organization, which has been the case in several other nations.
Indonesia is reluctant to do so because of local politics. The government is afraid of alienating many Indonesians because of the popularity of Jemaah Islamiah and its leader Bashir Ahmad.
Declaring Jemaah Islamiah as a terrorist organization facilitates monitor, control and restriction of the organization's terrorist plans and activities. Let's see how the Indonesian government plays it this time.
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