The Jan. 14 terrorist attacks in Jakarta, for which the Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility, echoed the pattern of the sieges that happened in Mumbai in 2008 and in Paris in November 2015: a coordinated assault by a team of suicide bombers and active shooters.

It is already a globally known concept for inciting terror, but for Indonesia, which has been a target of terrorist bombings by al-Qaeda affiliates for more than a decade, this is a new form of attack introduced by IS on the country's soil.

"Definitely, the Islamic State group's strategy is different from that of al-Qaeda, since their ideologies differ as well," terrorism expert Al-Chaidar told thejakartapost.com recently.

Unlike al-Qaeda, whose previous attacks in Indonesia involved massive bombings, Indonesian IS affiliates had never specialized in bomb-making as they never had the chance to learn the skills, leading them to be only able to create small explosive devices, Al-Chaidar said.

Some allies of al-Qaeda'€™s regional leader who was killed in 2010, Noordin M. Top, who conducted military training in Aceh, North Sumatra, have refused to pass their bomb-making skills to IS affiliates in the region.

According to Al-Chaidar, unlike al-Qaeda, which regards only Western civilization as their enemy, IS espouses the takfiri ideology that views non-adherents as infidels, even though they are fellow Muslims.

"IS affiliates in Indonesia lack the knowledge of bomb-making as they are more trained to become guerilla combatants," he said.

Citing the data from social media-based communications among pro-IS groups, IS has prepared for a series of attacks in Jakarta since June 2015, months before they warned the police in November and said "there will be a concert", meaning an attack, in Indonesia, Al-Chaidar added.

Last December, several threats from pro-IS groups in Indonesia called for a strike on government buildings, including the Jakarta Police headquarters and the State Palace, leading the police's elite Densus 88 counterterrorism squad to arrest nine militants who had planned attacks for the Christmas and New Year's Eve celebrations.

On Thursday, however, the assault that left eight people dead targeted one of the busiest commercial districts of Jakarta, where office buildings, five-star hotels and shopping malls surrounded a Traffic Police post at an intersection and a Starbucks coffee outlet, where the blasts took place.

A former specialized staff member of House Commission III overseeing legal affairs, Rakyan Adibrata, said the decision of the IS affiliate to target Jl. M.H. Thamrin, the capital's main thoroughfare, suggested a change in the character of the preparators, showing that the group was now aware of the importance of public coverage through social media to support their objectives.

"Media spread the news, but not as massively as civilians who actively use social media," Rakyan said.

According to Rakyan, as the IS affiliates attacked openly at 10:50 a.m. when people in the surrounding buildings and passersby at the intersection could easily see them, IS'€™ main intention was to get their attacks captured by citizens and let them spread the terror through the internet to grab the world's attention.

By both taking pictures and recording videos with the suicide bombers and the dead bodies as the focus, as well as disseminating them through social media applications such as Whatsapp, Facebook and others, people were actually helping the radical group to spread the terror, Rakyan said.

"Terrorism is the way to create massive terror and fear, a tool for achieving their goals," Rakyan said.

Hours after the attacks, the IS affiliate group claimed its responsibility by publishing its statement in Arabic through the IS-connected Aamaq News Agency, saying that IS soldiers carrying weapons targeted a "crusader alliance", meaning foreigners and security officials who fought the group in Jakarta.

The claim further strengthened experts'€™ opinion that the police and Indonesian Military (TNI) remained the main targets of IS in the country, as the IS members still bore hatred toward security officials who had hunted and killed their fellow jihadists.

"The primary objective was to attack the police [bombing, shooting and throwing grenades], while killing foreigners was the secondary objective," Rakyan said.

Similarly, University of Indonesia (UI) alumnus Adhe Wibisono, who specialized in terrorism studies, said the Indonesian IS affiliates were retaliating against the "ruthless" action of a joint operation that involved the police, the military and Densus 88 that aimed to eradicate the Santoso-led militant group known as the East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) in Poso, Central Sulawesi.

The group changed the time of attacks, which was initially planned for New Year's Eve, because of the heightened security, but then carried out the plan on Jan. 14 after they waited for the officials to relax their guard, Adhe said.

"The scheme of attacks targeted government officials above strategic assets owned by foreign governments," he said.

Since the recent series of attacks in Jakarta were not as massive as the Paris attacks that killed 130 people in November, Adhe said that IS did not care about the number of casualties, but mainly was attempting to create fear.

IS aimed to divert public attention toward them, making their names dominate the news around the world to show off what they were capable of, Adhe said.

"They want to create fear among the people, proving themselves for having been able to penetrate the security in the capital,'€ Adhe added.

He warned that the pattern of terrorism that counterterrorism officials classified as a "Marauding Terrorist Firearms Attack" that had previously happened in several countries around the world might be repeated in the future, as the IS'€™ military logistics got simpler, leading to a potential of higher intensity.

Indonesia had rather poor security as government officials only heightened the safeguards at year's end from September to December, thinking that terrorist groups would schedule their strikes in line with 9/11, the Bali bombing of Oct. 12, 2002 and the long Christmas and New Year's Eve holiday, Rakyan added.

"When the security officials lower their defenses and become careless, the terrorist group will rise and strike," Rakyan said.

According to Al-Chaidar, IS might launch another attack in the months following the recent one, targeting big cities such as Surabaya in East Java and Medan in North Sumatra.(+)

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