Building Resilience through Multi-stakeholder Collaboration to Prevent Violent Extremism, Indonesia, United States Department of Counter Terrorism (CT) Bureau, 30 September 2020 – 30 September 2022
A suicide bombing attack that killed the perpetrators and injured 20 people by a newly married pair at the cathedral church in Makassar, South Sulawesi, in March 2021 was the last major terrorist attack in Indonesia. Since then, the number of terrorist attacks has declined significantly in number and scale. Thanks to Indonesia’s successful countermeasures against operations and networks of violent extremism (VE) actors in the country and the loss of ISIS’s physical territories abroad. Despite the declining number of terrorist attacks, less frequent and small-scale terrorist attacks continue. In addition to being on the grounds, the VE actors seek support in the digital space. The tactics used by VEOs include online propaganda by spreading a wide variety of narratives that have successfully targeted individuals at different stages of support towards VE actors or organizations.
In response to this situation, Search engaged multi-stakeholder actors of Prevention and Counter Violent Extremism (P/CVE) from government and non-government institutions, including the Directorate General of Corrections (DGC), Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA), National and Political Unity Agency (Kesbangpol), Social Services Bureau, and many local civil society organizations. The program emphasized addressing both prevention and countering sides of VE problems through non-adversarial, non-security, and multi-stakeholder approaches.
