Rivalry threatens Indonesia's intelligence network
From CNN Jakarta Bureau Chief Maria Ressa
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JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- Although the Indonesian police have been praised for their counterterrorism work after the Bali bombings, critics point out information is getting lost between police and military intelligence in the midst of inter-governmental rivalry.
Since the Bali blasts last October, nearly 90 members of Jemaah Islamiyah, Al Qaeda's arm in Southeast Asia, have been arrested.
But Indonesian intelligence sources tell CNN crucial information has often not been shared because of rivalry between the police and the national intelligence agency, BIN.
"I would say the hostility between the two organizations could be cut with a knife," Jemaah Islamiyah analyst Sidney Jones says.
It wasn't until April 1999 that the police force was separated from Indonesia's powerful military, which was largely blamed for blatant human rights abuses under the rule of former President Suharto.
Now the police force, relatively inexperienced in terms of intelligence operations, is the lead agency in Indonesia's war on terror.
"There's resentment on the part of BIN and military intelligence about the amount of resources that have gone to the police since the Bali bombing," according to Jones.
Police conduct the actual operations and investigations, but BIN analyzes the information and determines the scope of the threat and how to deal with it.
If information is not shared, action is delayed and the threat response is flawed.
Six weeks before the Marriott bombing, police intercepted an email from the alleged suicide bomber Asmar Latin Sani to another JI member about a suicide operation.
But it is unclear what, if anything, happened to that information.
And in Bali, police knew the makeup of the entire cell that carried out the bombing six months earlier, according to an intelligence document obtained by CNN.
Like Indonesia, the United States faced a similar problem.
The 9/11 Commission Report focused on the barriers to information sharing between the FBI and the CIA.
Indonesia, so far, has not shown the political will to even acknowledge this rivalry within its intelligence network.
