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JAKARTA: The return of deadly suicide bombings to Indonesia's capital after years of quiet has turned attention on a complex web of schools and marriages that provide militants with succour and recruits.
Authorities have been under pressure to explain how suspected Islamists linked to the radical Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network managed undetected to carry out double suicide bombings in Jakarta hotels that killed seven people, the first major attack since 2005.
Most astounding has been how close police appeared to be to catching Noordin Mohammed Top, the Malaysian extremist who leads a violent JI splinter faction believed to be behind the bombings.
A raid on a reported Noordin hideout in a bucolic Javanese village just days before the attacks turned up bombs "identical" to those used in Jakarta, police have said.
The raid also turned up something less usual for one of Asia's most wanted men: a new wife and two young children, they said.
Noordin's married life on the run is typical of how JI is held together by strong social bonds forged largely through schools and marriage, International Crisis Group analyst Sidney Jones said.
These bonds mean militants in Noordin's network can evade capture, despite the fact that the majority of JI disapprove of spectacular and bloody militant attacks on foreigners, Jones said.
"I think there has always been a sense that family alliances are a key element that preserves the unity of the network," she said.
"There is no question that when you marry into a family you add another layer of protection."
There are around 50 schools in Indonesia with some link to JI, Jones said, providing a pool of recruits - as well as the husbands and wives that have kept generations of JI families together.
The most famous of these schools, the al-Mukmin Islamic boarding school in the Central Java city of Solo, was visited by police within days of the latest attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels.
Nur Hasbi, a close associate of Noordin being sought by police over the bombings, is a member of the school's infamous class of 1995, Jones said.
Asmar Latin Sani, who blew himself up in a 2003 attack on the Marriott also allegedly planned by Noordin, was a member of the class. So was Muhammad Rais, who was jailed over the first Marriott attack and whose sister is Noordin's first wife.
The school's co-founder, firebrand cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, continues to preach hatred for the West and denies any link between the school and the latest attack.
"It was a deed of the CIA. As with the Bali bombs, the CIA rode on the backs of holy warriors who planned for jihad," he told AFP.
Former JI militant Nasir Abas said that even if Bashir's school was now closely watched by police, many others with JI links were available to provide refuge - and young recruits - to Noordin.
"Almost all schools have a small part, a small percentage, of people who agree with Noordin, so this is how he moves around," Abas said.
One of the two unidentified suicide bombers, who police estimate is 16-17 years old, was likely recruited by Noordin from the alumni of a JI-linked school, Abas said.
"I belive he is not recruiting inside the schools, but is recruiting from graduates of the schools," said Abas, whose brother-in-law Mukhlas was one of three JI members executed last year for 2002 bombings on Bali that killed 202 people.
"I think this suicide bomber was a young person in high spirits who followed someone who called him a mujahid (holy warrior)."
The government has won praise for arresting hundreds of dangerous JI members and using "deradicalisation" programmes to convince others to reject violence.
But al-Mukmin alumnus Noor Huda Ismail said this approach could do nothing to break kinship bonds and the "culture of protection" that allows hardcore extremists like Noordin to continue to wreak havoc.
"In Islam there is an obligation (for a guest), even though they have done something wrong, they have to be protected for three days," said a former JI militant, who refused to be named.
"For example, with Osama bin Laden, America was after him... but the Taliban looked after him.
"If I were able to tell Noordin to go, I'd tell him to go, but I wouldn't hand him over to the police."
- AFP/yb
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