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s terrorists in the country shift from forming larger to smaller groups, the police’s early terror-plot detection ability becomes more challenging, experts say.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) said in its latest report issued on Tuesday that Indonesian law enforcers’ aggressive clamping down on terrorism had driven terrorists to act in smaller groups independent of larger organizations.

“The suicide bombing inside a police station mosque on April 15, 2011, and a spate of letter bombs delivered in Jakarta in mid-March are emblematic of the shift,” the group said.

Dynno Chressbon, intelligence expert and director of the Study Center for Intelligence and National Security said Wednesday that the shift meant acts of terrorism would likely be harder to monitor.

“[These acts] will be harder to detect because the database the police have is limited to the old terrorist networks. New players from smaller groups will be difficult to detect until post-bombing,” he added.

Another terrorism expert, Noor Huda Ismail, told The Jakarta Post that smaller terror groups meant bomb attacks would be conducted on a minor scale with a smaller explosion impact but more sporadically.

“Terrorists today are ‘just-do-it’ terrorists,” he said.

Dynno said the change in terrorist movements in Indonesia started as early as 2008, and as terrorists shift to act in smaller groups, they cut the usual long chain of command.

“It was decided in a consolidation in 2008, followed by [the military-style] training of Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid [JAT] in Aceh, that there was no longer a need to have a long chain of command. Now small groups can act on their own to launch executions,” he said.

Their targets were clear: law enforcers and Muslims whose ideology differed from theirs, or in short, secular Muslims, Dynno added.

The ICG said while police still top the list of targets in attacks conducted by small-scale terror groups, it also pointed out there were other new targets in such attacks.

“Police are at top of the list, partly to avenge the deaths of suspected terrorists in law enforcement operations; the April 15 suicide bombing at a police station mosque in Cirebon is the most recent example. Other targets include Muslim officials who are deemed oppressors, as well as prominent non-Muslims,” the ICG said, adding that Christians and members of the Ahmadiyah sect were included in the list of targets.

The targets of the small-scale terror group “are increasingly local”, the Brussels-based group said.

The reports said the shift in violent extremism in Indonesia is in part a response to effective law enforcement that has resulted in widespread arrests and structural weakening of Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), JAT and other organizations accused of links to terrorism.

But ideological shifts within the communities of Islamic extremists in Indonesia have also played a role in their change of strategy.

Extremists in the country, ICG said, were divided between those who upheld organized jihad (jihad tanzim) and those who advocated individual jihad (jihad fardiyah).

The second group, it said, believes that if jihad is defensive in nature, such that war becomes an individual obligation for all Muslims, no leader or organization is necessary. Thus, “Children can wage war without their parents’ permission, wives without their husbands.”

The ICG urged the government to develop prevention strategies to reduce the likelihood of more groups emerging.