A shadowy leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) regional terror group is believed to be hiding in a JI camp in Mindanao to avoid arrest with the help of other foreign militants in the region, a regional security analyst said on Tuesday.

Sidney Jones of the security think-tank International Crisis Group (ICG) said she had received unconfirmed reports from several sources that Zulkarnaen, the chief of JI’s military operations, is leading a faction of militants in the southern Philippines.

“Over the last six months, and I’m interested to know if you’ve heard anything, we heard that Zulkarnaen, the leader of JI military operations, was back in the Jabal Kuba area. I have no confirmation of that but it’s quite interesting because we heard it from several sources now,” she told reporters at a forum in Makati City.

Zulkarnaen (real name Aris Sumarsono) is a protégé of Abdullah Sungkar, the founder of JI. He is believed to have helped prepare the bombs used in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.

He is also believed to have led a squad of militants called Laskar Khos, or special force, whose members were recruited from among 300 Indonesians who trained in Afghanistan and the Philippines.

At one point, he was considered one of the dangerous terrorists in the region because of his alleged links to the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.

According to Jones, Zulkaernan has been out of sight for several years after the 2002 Bali bombings. She said the JI military chief was reported to have visited Indonesia in 2007. 

“We don’t know how long he’s been out of sight since the first Bali bombings. There were rumors that he was back in Indonesia to visit his wife in 2007. He’s been this mythical figure that just hasn’t surfaced, and now, there are all these rumors that he’s in Jabal Kuba in Mindanao,” she added.

Foreign militants stranded 

Jones said there are about 50 foreign jihadists, mostly Indonesians, who have been stranded in Mindanao after training in a JI camp. A military source, however, said only 20 to 26 foreign militants are operating in the southern Philippines. 

Apparently cash-strapped, she said the foreign jihadists have joined more than 50 Filipino counterparts who have close links with the Abu Sayaff, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and even the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

She said most of the new “arrivals” were trying to get training and combat experience, and that the 40-year-old separatist conflict in Mindanao could be a factor for the continuing presence of Islamist militants on the island.
 
"As long as there's an active war in the south, there will be a small percentage of  jihadis there," Jones said.

The ICG adviser said the militants were broken up into six to seven units and were constantly moving from Jolo to Western Mindanao and Central Mindanao. 

She also said authorities had information that a group of around a dozen Islamists, led by Bali bombing suspects Umar Patek and Dulmatin was trying to link up, and possibly move its operations, to southern Thailand, but has been initially rebuffed by local militants there.

"The Thais have people who were trained locally, speak their own dialect, and shown a very clever ability to improve their own explosives training just through experience," Jones said.

"There has been a desire to shift from Mindanao to southern Thailand, but that has not happened." 

Dulmatin was last year reported killed in Mindanao by the local army, a claim that has never been verified.

Jones said that a day after Dulmatin was reported killed, intelligence sources reported him having made a call to a contact in Indonesia.

She acknowledged however that Dulmatin has not been heard of in months, and that security experts remain unsure about where he is exactly.

JI weakening but still dangerous
 
Jones said JI, which wants to establish an Islamic caliphate in Southeast Asia, had been weakened by arrests in Indonesia and the dismantling of its network in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, but its operatives at large remained very dangerous.

"The JI as an organization is growing progressively weaker and it's now divided by internal rifts. But nobody should say that JI is close to extinction, because as a social network it is still quite strong," she said. 

Despite the recent executions of three jihadists linked to the 2002 bombings in Bali, as well as the arrests of over 400 other Islamists across Indonesia in recent years, JI would continue to recruit members.

"If I were to predict what radical group could be emerging again in Indonesia in the next 20 years, JI would be on top of that list," she said.

She noted that there were about 40 Islamic schools associated with JI scattered across Indonesia that continue to teach members'  children.

The organization has "enough strength and resiliency to be able to withstand a long dormancy." 

She also said one group formerly with JI that remains loyal to the Darul Islam movement is the Akram faction led by Indonesian Taufik Abdurakhman. 

She said Abdurakhman had received training in Afghanistan and is in the same class as JI leader Hambali, the alleged mastermind of the Bali bombings. 

She said the Akram faction is believed to be sending people to work in Sabah, Malaysia before eventually being deployed in Mindanao. 

“This is the group that needs watching,” she said. -- With Reuters