March 28, 2025

SHARE |

How Terrorism Ends: Lessons From Southeast Asia

AP Photo/Aaron Favila

Southeast Asia often receives short shrift in studies of terrorist and insurgent disengagement and demobilization. However, with the disbanding of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the decommissioning of the armed wing of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and the surrender of entire factions of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), it is more apparent than ever that the world learns lessons from Southeast Asia about how terrorism ends. Both Indonesia and the Philippines have struggled with terrorist threats. According to the Global Terrorism Index, Indonesia ranked in the top 30 countries most affected by terrorism in 10 of the last 14 years, while the Philippines consistently ranked among the top 15 countries most affected by terrorism in 11 out of the last 14 years. However, they’ve begun to turn the corner in the past five years. In Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiyah, the country’s most prominent terrorist group, disbanded on June 30, 2024. In the Philippines, approximately 26,132 members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s armed wing, the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF) have been decommissioned, according to Presidential Peace Advisor Secretary Carlito Galves Jr, with another 13,868 slated for demobilization in 2025. Moreover, another 1,866 combatants from various other groups surrendered to the Philippine Armed Forces between 2018 and 2023.

Such strides have been a result of the government’s policies in both countries of employing both kinetic and soft approaches. Kinetic responses are a necessary component of a larger strategy aimed at disrupting terrorist groups and ending terrorist campaigns. They are necessary to create the conditions for an extremist group to think demobilization. Kinetic operations in Indonesia and the Philippines limit the ability of extremist groups to conduct normal activities like recruiting new members, performing dakwah (Islamic propagation), holding meetings and events, fundraising, as well as paramilitary training, jihad, and terrorist attacks. However, they are not sufficient on their own for demobilizing a terrorist group. When kinetic operations are paired with dialogue and an incentives-based soft approach, however, organizational demobilization becomes possible. Both the Indonesian and Philippine governments have combined kinetic responses with “soft” approaches, and this tandem method has borne fruit.

For example, in the Philippines, the 2017 takeover of central Marawi city by a coalition of pro-Islamic State (ISIS) groups constituted a critical juncture in the longstanding battle between the Philippine National Army and Islamist extremist groups in the Bangsamoro region. When the Philippine National Army finally recaptured central Marawi from pro-ISIS militants, many went on the run, away from family, community and resources. For ASG members on Basilan, the death of their amir, Isnilon Hapilon, during the recapture, created space for a holistic reintegration program to fill. The Program Against Violent Extremism (PAVE) offered those who were willing to defect from the ASG an alternative path, including counseling, housing, vocational training and food assistance. According to the Institute for the Policy Analysis of Conflict, more than 200 members of the Abu Sayyaf Group surrendered to the Philippine Army in the first two years of PAVE with 139 doing so in the first batch. IPAC asserts that PAVE, and subsequent reintegration program iterations, likely prevented a resurgence of violence by the Abu Sayyaf.

In developing programs, the experience of Indonesia and the Philippines has shown that a localized approach to disengagement programming, monitoring and aftercare is best, as different localities have different needs and respond to different incentives. Local governments and civil society organizations (CSO) tend to understand the needs, assets and ground conditions better than province-level or national-level ones.

According to Taufik Andrie, co-founder of the Institute for International Peacebuilding, the greatest gains come from investments in local institutions: the family, the mosque, or the neighborhood. Directing funds to a wife to pay for children’s school fees can build rapport with a prisoner. Disrupting pro-ISIS study sessions in a mosque can end, or at least reduce, ISIS recruitment at that venue. Local government and civil society organization partners are, therefore, critical to the success of facilitating disengagement.

Moreover, there may be obstacles specific to a locality that need to be addressed in order to create an environment conducive to demobilization. For example, one impediment to disengagement of militants in the provinces that comprise the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in the Southern Philippines has been rido or clan wars. According to Abdul Majid Nagamura, community affairs officer for the Ministry of Public Order and Safety-BARMM, family members affected by rido may join Islamist extremist groups in order to gain some measure of protection. Thus, addressing this local dynamic is key to encouraging disengagement in some parts of the BARMM. To that end, local clan-level community mediation organizations like Tumikang Sama Sama work to resolve rido by conducting shuttle mediation between the affected families in their localities. These efforts are imperative to creating an environment conducive to surrender and demobilization by reducing the threat of violence and harm.

In devising a strategy for disbanding a terrorist group, Indonesia and the Philippines also teach us that it’s important to examine the specifics of the group, its organizational structure, its approach to violence and the context in which it operates. As Dr. Omar Ashour notes, charismatic cohesive leadership is far more likely to be successful in demobilizing a group compared to fragmented decentralized leadership. In the former case, representatives of the state and the movement can negotiate a solution and then socialize it among rank-and-file members. In the latter, it is impossible to negotiate dissolution of the entire organization; faction level or individual level disengagement outcomes are plausible, however.

The Indonesian authorities were successful in facilitating the disbanding of Jemaah Islamiyah for several reasons. First, Jemaah Islamiyah had a cohesive leadership and a hierarchical organizational structure. Second, JI had independently revised their position on the use of violence on Indonesian soil over the previous 16 years, rejecting terrorism and ultimately issuing a fatwa prohibiting violent actions on Indonesian soil. While they continued paramilitary training both domestically via a home-based “gym” program and internationally by sending members for training in Syria and their long-term plan still included violent takeover of the state, they had abandoned terrorism and political violence in the short and medium term as viable strategies. Third, after reckoning with the ramifications of the sweeping arrests of not only their amir and vice amir but 620 rank and file members, which paralyzed the organization’s ability to conduct any normal activities, a team of Jemaah Islamiyah leaders both inside and outside of prison agreed to engage with members of the police counter-terrorism team, Densus 88, to discuss ideological points of contention and ultimately, the network’s future.

Over two years of dialogue, JI negotiated an agreement with the authorities whereby their organization would be sacrificed, but the community that underpinned it would survive. JI disbanded its structure and turned in its weapons caches, as well as the names of members of their military wing, those in hiding, and in Syria. The government permitted JI members to keep their schools, in exchange for removing extremist content from their curriculum. However, JI members were not prohibited from forming new organizations, doing dakwah activities, or joining existing organizations provided they swore loyalty to the Indonesian state. To increase the likelihood of member compliance, JI leaders socialized the decision through dialogues with their members in their strongholds and their schools.

By contrast, Indonesian authorities could not use an organization-level strategy with pro-ISIS Jemaah Ansharud Daulah (JAD) because JAD is decentralized, fragmented, violent, and takfiri (extremists who declare other Muslims as apostates, thereby justifying violence against them).  Thus, Indonesian authorities focused on individual-level behavioral and ideological change. To do so, they paired a kinetic strategy of arrest into submission with individual-level incentives, humane treatment by prison authorities, and one on one and small group discussions aimed at deradicalization on a limited set of metrics. The Institute for the Policy Analysis of Conflict highlights one such program at the Nusakambangan prison complex. A group of former pro-ISIS prisoners, who call themselves Safari Dakwah, held discussions with receptive hardline prisoners who have sworn loyalty to ISIS and offered them books by Ibn Tayymiyya and other Salafi scholars. These texts and one-on-one conversations have successfully convinced several hardline ISIS supporters to revise their understanding of takfir and to reconsider their perception of government officials as infidel.

A final key point of note that we can learn from Indonesia involves the staffing of disengagement and reintegration programs. While we may see program staffing as the purview of the practitioners, Indonesian organizations have incorporated reintegrated former extremists (formers) into many countering violent extremist (CVE) organizations. Formers often work as part of multi-sectoral teams both in and out of prison. Some have co-founded organizations in collaboration with academics and practitioners. Others work as staff in pre-existing ones. For example, the counter-narrative organization, Ruangobrol, employs many formers as contributing writers, analysts, or in administrative and planning roles, alongside its core team of practitioners and activists. These formers make important contributions to disengagement programming as they understand the unique facets of the extremist groups, the ideology, and the community in a way that outsiders can only attempt to grasp.

Julie Chernov Hwang is a Senior Research Fellow at the Soufan Center, an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Goucher College and a Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar.