The fear of active terrorist groups has resurfaced in Indonesia’s Papua province following the arrest of an alleged terrorist and seizure of homemade explosives on December 5 in Sentani district, Jayapura.

National Police spokesman Argo Yuwono confirmed on December 6 that the Papua Police and the police’s counterterrorism squad, Densus 88, had made the arrest.

Papua Police spokesman Ahmad Mustofa Kamal directly confirmed with The Jakarta Post that one terrorist suspect had been arrested, and denied that the police had arrested eight suspects with ties to the Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (Jad) as reported in several media.

Ahmad declined to give further details of the arrest, saying that it was part of an ongoing investigation.

Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict director Sidney Jones said that the easternmost province was not an area of focused terrorist activity.

“The recent arrests are linked to members of Jad cells in Bekasi [West Java] and Lampung who fled to Sentani after the rioting at the headquarters of the Police Mobile Brigade [Mako Brimob] in May 2018,” she told the Post on Friday.

Jones added that the alleged Jad members had not conducted any extensive training so far.

However, other experts have cautioned that Papua authorities should remain on the alert, even though the arrest of one suspected terrorist was not particularly alarming, warning that extremist groups could exploit Papua’s sociopolitical volatility and geographical features.

Terrorism expert Al Chaidar told the Post on Friday that migrant communities in the region were vulnerable to radicalisation.

“There are more migrant workers at present [in Papua] and they receive relatively high wages there. At the same time, they’re currently facing a ‘conservative turn’ so they could be lured by Jad’s ideology,” said Chaidar, referring to a general shift in Indonesian society toward a stricter, more conservative religious view.

Another terrorist expert, Noor Huda Ismail, said that he did not have enough evidence to say whether migrant communities were prey to radicalism.

“I still don’t have a strong understanding of whether [the alleged terrorists] are from migrant communities, or if they deliberately went to Papua from other island or something else, because they have not been identified,” he said.

Intelligence analyst Stanislaus Riyanta at the University of Indonesia warned that recent social conflicts in the region could inspire terrorist groups to settle in Papua and use the conflicts to recruit new members.

“Social conflict, such as the one in Wamena, could be a trigger for sleeper cells to go there because the victims in conflicts are residents and negative sentiment toward certain group could be flourishing,” he said.

Chaidar said some Islamic extremist groups had expanded to Papua in recent years.

“Our data shows that [terror groups] have been increasingly moving to Papua since 2017, when [then-coordinating security affairs minister] Pak Wiranto spoke about the presence of terrorist groups in the province. Following his statement, we traced the extremist groups [in Papua] and profiled their members,” he said.

Chaidar added that the Jad was the most prominent Islamic extremist group in the province, while other, smaller terrorist groups were also present in the region.

“In West Papua, there are other small groups that remain unidentified, but they may have links to the Western Indonesia Mujahideen, which has around 16 members. There is also the Free Papua Movement, which should also be counted as a terrorist group,” he said.

Although Islamic extremist groups appeared to be expanding in the province, he said that their membership and the size of their operation remained small.

Besides social instability, the dense jungles of Papua posed a surveillance challenge to security personnel in terms of their difficult access, which also increased the risk that extremist groups were using the jungle as a training ground.

“They’re looking for places to . . . train,” Chaidar said. “That’s why they chose Poso and Aceh before, and they could see Papua the same way because it can’t be accessed easily by security forces.”

To prevent extremist groups from infiltrating the region, the experts urged the government to focus on maintaining stability and peace in Papua through dialogue with local leaders.

“Terrorism is rooted in radical ideologies, which can only be detected by family and close relatives. We used to miss that part. The government should build resistance from within families, within communities,” said Stanislaus.

Huda echoed the statement, saying that taking the social approach was important to prevent social upheaval and radicalism while increasing the role of intelligence operations.

“The police are right to be vigilant because the presence of so many mining companies that use explosives in their operations could be an attraction for some terrorists,” said Jones.

THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK