Indonesians love a conspiracy theory
By Ansley Ng, TODAY | Posted: 18 July 2009 0805 hrs

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JAKARTA: Some terror experts may be pointing the finger at Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), but try speaking to residents in the Indonesian capital and you get a sense that these experts could only be half right.

At the airport taxi queue, engineer Adae Peahlavi did not believe JI militants were behind the twin hotel blasts.

JI, he said, had been decimated due to the tough anti-terror measures taken since President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono took over in 2004.

Since the last terror attack in Bali in 2005, the government has shown that it is serious about ending the terrorist threat by setting up counter-terror squads and sending its personnel to undergo anti-terrorist training from foreign governments.

The Yudhoyono government had been so successful, said Mr Peahlavi, that he could not even remember the name of the top guy in JI "because we have had peace for quite some time".

On the streets of downtown Jakarta near the Maga Kuningan business district where the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton are located side-by-side, the police presence on Friday was limited only to the areas affected by the blasts.

There were no roadblocks outside of where the two hotels stand, and people were free to roam near the blast sites.

Hundreds of soldiers and police stood guard at the sites, some smoking cigarettes, eating boiled peanuts from streetside vendors and chatting among themselves.

The apparent lack of a siege mentality even at ground zero might have something to do with the fact that within hours of the bombings, word had gone round that the blasts were not the work of any terror organisation. Rather, some link it to the election, which President Yudhoyono is projected to have won by a landslide.

After national police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri addressed a huge crowd or reporters and news crews outside the bombed Ritz Carlton on Friday night, one journalist noted that after Marriott Hotel was first bombed in 2003, the authorities were quick to blame JI for the attack.

However, this time, they were silent.

In fact, an Indonesian reporter told me, Mr Yudhoyono had said at his press conference earlier in the day that "somebody might be laughing" at Friday's bombings, referring to a possibility that the attacks were carried out to make him look bad.

But Mr Danuri also made a more important point at his press conference - by confirming that the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers who had stayed for two nights in the hotel rooms before carrying out their mission.

"The possibility of politicians and terror groups working together is a frightening thought," the reporter said. "What if certain people were really funding terrorists to carry out such attacks?"

A possibility, indeed. But then again, Indonesians, like many of us, do love a good conspiracy theory.

- TODAY