An Indonesian court this week sentenced Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir to four years in jail on charges of treason. The relatively lenient sentence has been widely interpreted as a blow to Southeast Asian efforts to combat terrorism. In fact, Indonesia was in a lose-lose position: It risked creating a martyr or, as happened, appearing soft in the fight against terror. More important than jailing Bashir is a rigorous and sustained effort to break the terror organizations themselves. To accomplish that objective, the Jakarta government must acknowledge the threat posed by radical Islamic groups and embrace the need for international cooperation.
Bashir, a Muslim cleric who helped found the predecessor of Jemaah Islamiyah, is alleged to have inherited the mantle of JI spiritual leader in 1999. JI is a Southeast Asian Muslim organization that has engaged in terrorism throughout the region and is linked to the October 2002 bombings in Bali that claimed more than 200 lives, last month's car bombing of the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta and numerous other attacks.
Bashir made no attempt to hide his antipathy toward the United States or his sympathy for extremist acts by other Islamists elsewhere in the world. He has long supported the establishment of an Islamic government in Indonesia that would expand to become an Islamic superstate in the region. But he denied knowing anything about specific acts of terror, or heading JI. Indonesian authorities had been content to ignore his inflammatory statements, denying that terrorism was a problem in their country -- until the Bali blasts.