Special Report: Who is Hanbali?

Ever since last week when President Bush announced the capture of an al-Qaeda operative named Riduan Isamuddin who used the nom de guerre of Hanbali or Hambali (depending on one's source), there has been a media frenzy, with many press outlets following Time Magazine in declaring him "the bin Laden of Southeast Asia."

Yet who is Hanbali? Why does his capture mean so much for Southeast Asia, the so-called "second front" in the war on terror? And if he's out of the picture, who's left?

According to Rohan Gunaratna's Inside Al Qaeda, Hanbali was the highest-ranking non-Arab member of al-Qaeda, the debate over whether or not Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a Kuwaiti, Iraqi, or a Pakistani notwithstanding. He first appeared on the global scene as an established Islamist terrorist in Southeast Asia in 1994, when he assisted Ramzi Yousef and Wali Khan Amin Shah in the planning of Oplan Bojinka, a plot to destroy over a dozen US airliners over the Pacific that served as the prototype for the 9/11 attacks. At that time Hanbali ran the Kosojaya Trading Company, a front corporation that served a financial conduit for al-Qaeda operations in the Philippines. Along with bin Laden's brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Hanbali provided the cash that created al-Harakat ul-Islamiyyah, better known in the West as Abu Sayyaf.

After Oplan Bojinka was thwarted by Filippino authorities, Hanbali provided Yousef and Khan the money they needed to escape the Philippines dragnet. In addition, he is said to have raised money and recruited Muslim fighters against Filippino and Indonesian Christians, creating connections between al-Qaeda and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines as well as hardline Islamist organizations that are spread throughout Indonesia.

While it is likely that Hanbali has had a role in every major outbreak of Islamist violence in Southeast Asia during the last decade, his role as a player on the global level took a clearer shape when it became clear that he attended the al-Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 whose attendees included Tawfiq Attash Khallad and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as well as two of the 9/11 hijackers. It is also known that he supervised the creation of al-Qaeda training camps outside of the organization's traditional base in the southern Philippines, spreading them into the northern Philippines, Indonesia, and possibly even Australia before 9/11.

In January 2002, an al-Qaeda plot in Singapore was thwarted and the cell leader, Yazid Sufaat, revealed Hanbali as the highest-ranking al-Qaeda leader in Southeast Asia. It also revealed that a triumvirate composed of Hanbali, Abu Bakar Bashir, and Abu Jibril were responsible for organizing over 200 al-Qaeda operatives and affiliate members in Malaysia through the Kumpulan Militan Malaysia and Jemaah Islamiyyah.

The arrests in Singapore led to the capture of Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi in the Philippines, as well as the revelation that despite his own status as a former head of a MILF training camp in the southern Philippines, al-Ghozi too was under orders from Hanbali. Unfortunately, the Indonesian government refused to acknowledge the existence of Jemaah Islamiyyah and as such ignored its robust organization in Indonesia as well as in Southeast Asia as a whole.

In the aftermath of the Bali bombings ordered by Hanbali, a number of Jemaah Islamiyyah leaders were arrested by the Indonesian authorities. Those arrested included Abu Bakar Bashir and Imam Samudra, a number of senior leaders including Hanbali, and his al-Qaeda liaison Syafullah, an apparent alumni of the Khobar Towers bombing as well as al-Qaeda's Islamic Army of Aden affiliate in Yemen.

Even so, Hanbali's intended terrorist campaign in Southeast Asia was far from over: vid. the arrest of suicide bombers in Malaysia in November, bombing a McDonalds in December that killed three, and yet another bombing in February 2003, this one directed at the Indonesian National Police Headquarters. Other attacks that appear to have been commissioned by Hanbali include the Davao City airport bombing that killed twenty-one, the Jakarta airport bombing, and the most recently the Mariott Hotel bombing, also in Jakarta. There also appear to have been thwarted plots against churches and shops in Jakarta that were disrupted by the Indonesian authorities.

As a result of these attacks, Jemaah Islamiyyah continued to remain strong in Southeast Asia, in large part because the organization has shifted to using Thailand as base after crackdowns in Malaysia and Indonesia. Hanbali, however, appears to have gone to Cambodia, possibly for plastic surgery, between September 2002 and March 2003. This was prior to the expulsion of the Cambodian Wahhabi contingent and the dismantling of the Jemaah Islamiyyah infrastructure in the country, including the closure of the Om al-Qura organization that appears to have been the nation's primary al-Qaeda node. After returning to Thailand, Hanbali was hard at work planning an attack on October's APEC summit in Bangkok.

He was finally captured in Thailand by the CIA, along with his Malaysian wife after being betrayed by one of his own men, a Malaysian named Zubair who decided that Hanbali had wasted the money he sent to Thailand to finance a local suicide bombing. He is being interrogated in secret, probably at Baghram or Diego Garcia.

With Hanbali now out of the picture, the remaining Jemaah Islamiyyah leaders are now Azahari Husin (the new leader), Noordin Mohammed Top (the money man), Zulkepli bin Marzuki (the logistics chief), Zulkarnaean (the military commander), and Dulmatin (the top explosives expert).

Ultimately, the loss of Hanbali is a definite blow to Jemaah Islamiyyah as well as to the larger al-Qaeda network in Southeast Asia. As can be seen from his resume, the man was a terrorist who has worked across the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia. As such, removing him from the playing field is on par with the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Riduan "Hanbali" Isamuddin stood only a step below bin Laden himself in the organization's hierarchy, and a short step at that.