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The Bali Bombings: No one knows who did it, but Al Qaida it is!

ALL WHO MATTER in this global war on terror are in no doubt that what happens anywhere in the world that smacks, in their view, of Muslim terror must be the handiwork of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida and his ubiquitous network of dissipated terror. Find a Muslim group that disagrees with Washington's right to damn it, and you have, almost certainly, a ready made terror network with, surprise of surprise, links to Al Qaida. No one know what the Al Qaida is, or what Osama bin Laden is up to, or indeed if he and his network are behind this terror. But it is taken as read that he is, he must be, and since CNN, BBC, The New York Times, Washington Post, The Times, President Bush, Mr Tony Blair, and the Al Qaida specialist, Dr Rohan Gunaratna, has decreed he and it is, how could it not be true?

So it did not surprise that even before the huge bomb blast in Bali on 12 October 2002, which killed and wounded 500, mostly Australian, tourists and destroyed the area, it was quickly decided it was the Al Qaida through its alleged local offshoot, the Jemaah Islamiyah. Singapore quickly found local Malay Muslims planning to blow up the US embassy and local government establishments. It even found some of those it arrested to have had links with Al Qaida before it was established. Several had visited Afghanistan and visited Muslim groups there, including one led by Osama bin Laden, at a time when the CIA and other US government agencies funded them to force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. In Malaysia, the government has arrested several who had studied in Pakistani madrasas. All are linked to the opposition Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS). It has not admitted that the governent, no less, encouraged this study at Pakistan madrasahs to reduce the dependence on those who went to the Middle East to study.

But the more one looks at the Bali bombings, the more the official explanations looks skewed and plainly wrong. Far from Al Qaida and JI being the culprits, subsequent events point to other more sinister groups. There is the nationalist Indonesian with a bone to pick with Australia for its role in forcing East Timor out of Indonesia. There is the Tentera Nasional Indonesia (the armed forces) still smarting from the secondary role they are forced into after President Suharto was forced out of office in 1997. What about those groups which lost power when President Megawati Sukarnoputi took office, and who want to isolate her? It could be comeuppance, as John Pilger says in a commentary, for the close co-operation Australia has with Indonesia in security matters that enables Jakarta to rein down hard on Muslim groups, and this is a retaliation for that. And let us not forget, that it could be a deliberate attempt by the United States to force both Indonesia and Australia firmly on its side in this war on terror that loses steam by the day.

It now becomes clear by the day that what was used to blow up the two nightclubs in Bali was manufactured in the United States and by Israel, under licence, and sold only to friendly governments. The Indonesian government is one which gets it. It is called C4. If it had been the East European variant, Semetex, Washington would have implicated Russia and others. (Rebels always carry AK-47 and Semetex; never M16s and C4). So, how did C4 come to be used in Bali and by JI at that? There are other doubts. The explosive used looks like a virtual nuclear weapon, which the United States used so profusely in Afghanistan? One explosives expert said the extent of the damage -- 47 buildings destroyed, more than 100 cars destroyed, and the area all but unusable and unoccupiable -- could not have been caused by C4 but by something more sinister. Is it not possible, then, it must be Al Qaida because it passed on this virtual nuclear device to JI to carry out this threat so Washington and the world can be convinced that both are linchpin targets in this war on terror?

Then comes Dr Rohan Gunaratna, a self-proclaimed security expert from Sri Lanka, who is the current darling of the US, Australia, Singapore, the United Nations and the television networks and newspapers who know how Al Qaida operates, and who Osama bin Laden is. He is sure of Al Qaida's involvement in the Bali bombings, and of JI's involvement in it. He will, on cue, express Western doubts as fact, and when it is reported ad nauseum, then come to be accepted as fact. What now gains much worldwide currency is his organisational chart of how Al Qaida works. It is now recycled by the television networks to press home the Washington belief it is Al Qaida. He got into difficulties when he accused the ruling National Front in Malaysia, the opposition PAS, and ABIM, the Malaysian Muslim Youth Front, of being linked to Al Qaida. The UN picked it up, and recycled it into its report to accuse it of links to Al Qaida.

It is this need to demonise an enemy, the oldest rule in the propaganda book, that leads Washington and its sycophantic allies in this egregious war on terror, to make Al Qaida to be a near invincible enemy. It began with blaming it for, to the West, frightening targetting of its economy, political, and military headquarters -- World Trade Centre, the White House, and the Pentagon. It is now almost certain that the aircraft which crashed (or was shot down) in the Pennysylvania fields was headed for the White House. An air attache in a foreign embassy in Malaysia said crashing three planes into buildings could not have been done except by professional aviators, and it involved so tight scheduling and plans that it could not have been possible by proxy, as we are told. Who did it will remain a mystery. But Osama bin Laden is quite happy to take credit for it. He now targets the West's economic targets: the attack on the French tanker on charter to Petronas is one such. It has not attacked soft targets like the Bali bombings. All these accusations fit in with his state agenda of what he sets out to do.

What is not addressed is the motive. In the torrent of informed comment that has flowed since 11 September 2001, the motive is not addressed. All it showed is Western, and American, disorientation of putting its future at risk. It reacts in like mind. It has decided it is Islam which should be sidelined, and without understanding what it is, accuses all and sundry. It is the Crusades reborn. All it has done is to unite the often irreconciliable groups in Islam to unite, for all Muslims, terrorist and otherwise, now feel threatened. As one example, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, is an enthusiastic supporter of President Bush's war on terror. But he now heads, in the view of the instant Al Qaidi expert, an Al Qaida terror network in the BN. It is nonsense, of course, but does truth matter in propaganda?

[I contributed this comment to an informal discussion group I am affiliated to, shortly after the Bali bombings. My views, in the light of subsequent events, have not changed. So, I offer it to Sangkancil, as one more take on it.]

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my