It was from this pesantren that Jaffar raised the
Laskar Jihad (Army of the Holy War), a militia that rallied the faithful for battle in the Moluccas.
Laskar Jihad's presence in Ambon is a good example of how external forces can take advantage of a local conflict for its own ends.
Laskar Jihad, or ''Holy Warriors'' was founded by Jafar in 2000 with the aim of defending Muslims in the Moluccas from attacks by Christians who form a slight majority there, amid the lawless conditions prevailing then in the eastern islands.
Members of
Laskar Jihad are also close to al-Qaeda, and leader Jafar Umar Thalib is of Arab descent and has personal ties to Yemen and bin Laden's ancestral homeland.
Prominent among the attackers is the
Laskar Jihad, a force of 30,000 guerrillas, mainly from Java, equipped with ultra-modem weaponry and with a supporting network throughout Indonesia.
This article argues that the Ambon jihad was undermined by disagreements within one of the main jihadi organizations, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), as well as by the shifting dynamics between JI and the other key jihadi groups, Mujahidin KOMPAK (4) and
Laskar Jihad. This article further posits that the Poso jihad was more organized than the Ambon jihad because JI's leadership had a different, more comprehensive, approach to the Poso jihad; because JI and Mujahidin KOMPAK had learnt from some of the mistakes of the Ambon jihad in the areas of leadership, training and using local jihads to achieve national aims; and because the intra- and inter-mujahidin dynamics, and with it the "state of jihad", had evolved between February 1999 and September 2000.
Noorhaidi Hasan,
Laskar jihad; Islam, militancy, and the quest for identity in post-New Order Indonesia.
For example, Ja'afar Umar Thalib, leader of the now disbanded
Laskar Jihad; Abu Bakar Ba'asyir and the late Abdullah Sungkar, founders of Jemaah Islamiyah; Islam Defenders' Front head Muhammad Habib Rizieq, and others.
During the 1990s, however, extremist Muslim groups began to form, such as the KMM,
Laskar Jihad, Laskar Mujahidin, Laskar Jundallah, and similar groups in Indonesia.
(Presumably this 'behaviour' refers to human rights abuses or ties to Islamic militia such as
Laskar Jihad.) Downer dismissed criticisms of Kopassus's deplorable record of atrocities as an 'esoteric debate'.
In the eastern islands of Indonesia, for example, white-uniformed militiamen of
Laskar Jihad are forcibly converting Christians to Islam.
At least until very recently,
Laskar Jihad, an Islamic organisation pledged to lethal persecution of Christians, was active in Irian Jaya.
Jafar, 41, who led the now-disbanded
Laskar Jihad paramilitary group, was arrested in May after addressing an illegal rally in Ambon, the capital of Maluku Province, where fighting between Christians and Muslims has claimed thousands of lives since early 1999.
And the leader of another group
Laskar Jihad is led by, Jafar Umar Thalib, who fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan and there are rumours that al-Qaeda members are training his forces.
