Airstrip One

Bali Complications

Can we say for certain that the Bali bomb was a simple Al Qeada operation? According to Thomas Walkom on the Toronto Star there's more than meets the Bin Laden obsessed eye. First there's the Indonesian nationalists:

Perhaps it was the work of disgruntled military elements connected to the former Suharto dictatorship. According to the Far Eastern Economic Review, retired generals anxious to destabilize Indonesia's civilian government are believed responsible for a series of bombings in 1999 and 2000, including one at the Jakarta Stock Exchange that killed 15 and wounded dozens.

And Jemaah Islamiyah don't seem like a compliant cell of Al Qaeda:

The roots of Jemaah Islamiyah go back to the founding of Indonesia itself, to regional rivalries between the central government and those who — under the banner of Islam — demanded more authority for the outlying islands.

And the ultimate heresy:

Terrorism is not a global abstraction. It occurs for reasons — often local, occasionally mundane.