There seems to be no escaping the vortex of violence and words again fail me after the brutal killings in Bali. One asks oneself why? Why do innocents have to die? Perhaps one has to have an understanding of the act of terrorism itself. Those concerned, have a compulsive need for revenge. They don’t count the cost. It is all or nothing. Always. For them there is no in-between. There’s no one truth. They have no moral distinctions. They are fanatical, ruthless and uncompromising, stupid, blind and deadly. The bottom line is that they believe, absolutely and without question, that terror is the one legitimate weapon they have left. It gives them a licence to terrorise and the way to remove the problem is to destroy the source. Evil, when allowed to grow, develops into the grip of a hypnotic spell. Evil is no mystifying concept, it is the inability to change for the good. We have notions of good and evil, reward and punishment which is converted into religions or when not capable of even that much, what we call Law. Again, we should not let those who are responsible for this atrocity go unpunished.

Newspaper reports come across as a rambling incoherent, hotchpotch of generalised statements, vague allegations and innuendos, without any substantiation and are based on half-truths and the like. I suppose what we learn from newspaper articles is a heavily truncated version of the truth. You know something and you guess some more thinking you have the whole story and it’s as if you’ve baked the perfect cake standing tall with evidence but once removed from the oven it sinks in the middle! I have to admit though, I begin to wonder if the pieces don’t add up because adding up isn’t a part of the plan. I have all too little evidence of any substance upon which to base my surmises - and even, ironically enough, the word “imaginations”. Making connections out of very little is one thing but the pieces I’ve produced seem to belong to a different puzzle. I’ve run through in my mind everything that’s happened. The proof is not there and not likely to come. That kind of proof only surfaces afterwards. I suspect it’s buried somewhere amongst the raw data that’s intercepted, partially processed and filed away each day. They just don’t know they have it - that one clue linking a circle of death and duplicity that stretches from the Middle East - terror in Yemen and Kuwait - a part of a trail with no beginning and the very deadliest of ends in Bali. A series of coincidences that probably can be rationally explained but the more I try and force my thoughts in another direction the stronger I find myself being pulled back to what I don’t want to accept. I don’t like anomalies. I always consider them suspect. My mind goes off on unsubstantiated tangents with nothing even remotely pulled forward to tie it together. It’s like one of those Russian metrushka dolls - a doll within a doll within a doll. Everything highly compartmentalised but no one has the complete picture!

Are Al Queda and Jemaah Islamiah moving towards a common strategy as has been suggested in some news reports? Recent events have led me to do some serious thinking. It is my belief that they are pursuing a number of different strategies. One strategy is no doubt a consolidation of assets. Their strategies, individually, vary greatly and will change continuously in the foreseeable future. They will continue to focus heavily on creating unrest within the Asian region and they will penetrate even more deeply. Primarily they will focus on consolidation of operations, rationalising and achieving greater co-operation and coordinating between groups. Their goal is to develop strong and profitable long-term relationships with carefully targeted individuals. In the past such a partnership could not have been foreseen because of differences between countries. Today, they are moving towards each other as they see profitability in achieving their aims. No doubt such co-operation will prove useless, in some instances, and seem highly uncertain when considered alone, but when viewed together, as a portfolio, it takes on a different significance. It will give them a dominant position within the region.

There have been fears that sensitive information was being held back by the Indonesians. The American’s have privately condemned the inadequate, imprecise and quite unhelpful nature of the information given to them recently. There are those within the Indonesian Government who are fully aware what was going on and who are ensuring no-one peels away any more layers and I ask myself why are the Indonesians protecting the information? The Indonesians haven’t given anything like the hard information that the American’s want/need. The whole thing is too pat. There’s something very rotten somewhere. Furthermore, their evasiveness suggests an ulterior motive. It’s unpalatable, unnecessary and hardly prudent. The Indonesians cannot afford to be stubborn, neither can they afford to stick their heads in the sand. One thing is certain, it isn’t a good habit to bite the hand that feeds and curiously, it is my belief, the intelligence barriers the Indonesians have erected will work against them in future years. I struggle away at the questions I have in my own mind. In the end, aren’t all the answers a matter of simplicity, even to the extent of over-simplification? Simplicity, I guess, is only arrived at after so many devious excursions, like Goethe’s drunken beggar on horseback, through complexity.

Indonesia may be forced to react to domestic developments. There are many deeply troubling issues besetting Indonesia. The growing influence of Islamic fundamentalism is just a small part of what is occurring and Islamic fundamentalism is likely to present considerable challenges in the future. There is no doubt that terrorism will impact Indonesia from an economic and financial point of view. Megawati will continue to walk a fine tightrope. And when the shock wears off ... it will become a grotesque carousel, carnal, cruel and brutal. The current situation is not only very fluid but highly critical. The struggle ahead is going to be overwhelming for the current government. A failing economy will create general disillusionment within Indonesian society, which may rally popular support behind a menacing ideology. You cannot neglect or have disdain for the Indonesian military. Events of change can easily trigger a violent response on the part of powers bent on preserving the prevailing status quo. It will require considerable sensitivity to the dangerous political dynamic in the region.