Indonesian Islamists join foreign fighters in Syria

According to a new report, Indonesians have joined the thousands of foreign fighters who have traveled to Syria to help extremist groups trying to create an Islamic state there, a finding that analysts said could help revive a weakened jihadi movement in Indonesia and set off more attacks on minority Shiites in the Southeast Asian country.     

The report issued by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, based in Jakarta, said the Syrian conflict had “captured the imagination of Indonesian extremists in a way no foreign war has before.”

The report added that the enthusiasm for Syria is directly linked to predictions in Islamic eschatology that the final battle at the end of time will take place in Sham, the region sometimes called Greater Syria or the Levant, encompassing Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel, pointing out that that atrocities committed by government forces against Sunni Muslims have been given strong play in the Indonesian news media and on radical websites.

The report also noted that at least 50 Indonesians had traveled to Syria via Turkey to take up arms since 2012.