Jakarta terrorist attacks are a warning about the drive of the Islamic State to carve out a territorial foothold in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, which is a sprawling land of many islands and ethnic groups. The concerns of some Russian and Western scholars about the growth of the Islamic State in Asia are justified.

       Indonesia is not a failed state like Iraq and Syria, where the Islamic State can seize territory and establish its own political structures. The country may have the largest Muslim population in the world, but only a few of its people become terrorists, a much better per capita figure than the smaller Muslim communities in Europe, where radicalism is more common.

       The government successfully defanged Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a former militant organization. However, while JI has largely renounced violence, some of its former members have joined new terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State. There has been open-source warnings for weeks of preparations for a terrorist attack in Jakarta.

       According to the Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Terorisme (the National Anti-Terrorism Agency), hundreds of Indonesians have gone to the Middle East, joined the Islamic State, and been trained to wage jihad in Syria and Iraq. Now some dozens of them have apparently returned to carry their fight to the homeland.

       However horrific, we were lucky that yesterday’s terrorist attacks in Jakarta did not cause more casualties. Like many modern cities, there were many defenseless civilians in shopping malls cafes, and the other locations of yesterday’s shootouts. But the attackers chose the police as their target, rather than tourists as in the 2002 Bali bombings. Nonetheless, in the future we may very well see an effort to recreate the horror of the Paris attacks in Asia with better trained terrorists.

       The Indonesian authorities have received both praise and criticism for employing primarily law enforcement rather than military tools against terrorism. Human rights groups are impressed that convicted terrorists can be released from prison and retuned to society if they change their lives. Critics complain that the country’s prison system has become a protected zone for terrorist indoctrination and recruitment.

       The government’s tolerance for Islamic civil society groups may have helped keep some people outside terrorist groups by providing them with means of nonviolent association. But such NGOs as the Forum Pendukung Daulah Islamiyah and the Forum of Islamic Law Activists, while avoiding any formal affiliation with ISIL, have freely endorsed the creation of an Islamic state and other Islamist principles.

       Despite yesterday’s attacks, there still does not appear to be a strong Islamic State structure in Indonesia--the way there is in Iraq and Syria--but this could change.

       Russia and the United States can help prevent this disastrous outcome in many ways, such as by sharing intelligence with the Indonesian authorities about Indonesian nationals active in Syria. Iraq, and other regions of Islamic state influence.

       Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.