TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
RI wants to learn from Denmark’s counterterrorism policy
Indonesia wants to learn from Denmark in countering violent extremism, an official has said, as the European nation has used a successful formula that has helped it excel in the last decade
Change Size
I
span>Indonesia wants to learn from Denmark in countering violent extremism, an official has said, as the European nation has used a successful formula that has helped it excel in the last decade.
Andhika Chrisnayudhanto, the National Counterterrorism Agency’s (BNPT) deputy for international cooperation, said Indonesian stakeholders such as the BNPT were expected to set up cooperation with Denmark, the latest in a series of counterterrorism initiatives that officials have signed with 16 other countries.
“The cooperation may include information or intelligence sharing, the handling of [terrorist] returnees and law enforcement training,” Andhika told reporters on Wednesday after a seminar held by the Danish Embassy in Jakarta.
For the last 10 years, Denmark has garnered praise from the international community for a strategy to prevent violent extremism that relies heavily on multi-agency collaboration and underscores the importance of the early detection of individual exposure of radicalist ideologies.
In 2014, Copenhagen alone recorded 22 cases of radicalization involving its residents, sparked by the rise of the Islamic State (IS) group. The number dropped to just 13 cases in 2018.
The Danish government has developed a prevention model for radicalization and extremism – known globally as the Aarhus model – which was initiated by the Aarhus municipality in 2007. Adopted nationally in 2014, the model involves multiple institutions such as schools, the social services department, police and healthcare agencies. It operates in every municipality in Denmark and mainly focuses on dissuading youth from joining radical groups.
Each agency is allowed to take its own approach but is mandated by Article 115 of the Danish Administration Justice Act to share, for instance, necessary and relevant information among the network of eight national agencies, said Muhammad Ali Hee, special adviser to the City of Copenhagen’s CVE unit.
The initiative mainly targets youngsters by introducing counternarratives, because in Copenhagen alone, radicalism and extremism was becoming “more underground and more security aware” than before, especially after the fall of IS in 2018.
The Institute for Economics and Peace’s annual Global Terrorism Index 2019 ranked Denmark as the 101st country most impacted by terrorism, down from 100th last year, while Indonesia is ranked 35th, up from 42nd last year.
The Jakarta Post recorded at least six major terrorist incidents that have occurred in Indonesia between 2018 and 2019. The latest incident was a suicide bombing at Medan Police headquarters on Nov. 13 – confirmed to be carried out by the IS-linked homegrown Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) group.
The recent death of IS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi is feared to have sparked a wave of retaliation from sympathetic groups around the world.
The Danish government announced on Oct. 11 that it would fast-track legislation allowing people with dual citizenship who had gone abroad to fight for militant groups such as the IS to be stripped of their Danish nationality, Reuters reported.
According to the report, authorities believe 158 people from Denmark have joined militant Islamist groups in Syria or Iraq since 2012, with 27 still in the conflict zone and 12 believed to be imprisoned.
And while the likes of Denmark and other European nations assertively reject IS sympathizers seeking to return, Indonesia has yet to decide on the fate of foreign terrorist fighters and their families, most of whom are still held captive in refugee camps in Syria.
“As long as there is no national decision to enable them, we cannot move forward [with the deradicalization process] even though we already have the necessary tools,” Andhika said.
He did not elaborate on the mechanisms that needed to be in place but the BNPT previously worked with the Social Affairs Ministry to reintroduce former terrorists back into society.
In 2018, the government repatriated 17 IS returnees in a process that involved various stakeholders, including the BNPT.
In March, the Foreign Ministry stated that repatriation efforts might turn out to be a lengthy and complicated process, as most IS sympathizers departed illegally.
The BNPT is likely to leverage the cooperation with Denmark – once an agreement is in place -- to also include the handling of foreign terrorist fighters, Andhika said.
“There are around 80 countries [to be approached for collaboration besides Denmark] from which we can learn how to handle such cases,” he said, referring to a study by the Soufan Center that looks at countries with citizens who have flown to Iraq and Syria to become IS combatants.
