Mail Bomb from collection of National Postal Museum, courtesy Wikipedia Entry "Letter Bomb"

Indonesian terrorists are decentraling networks, scaling down cells, and varying modes of attack. From the Jakarta Post:

The International Crisis Group (ICG) said in its latest report issued on Tuesday that Indonesian law enforcers’ aggressive clamping down on terrorism had driven terrorists to act in smaller groups independent of larger organizations.

“The suicide bombing inside a police station mosque on April 15, 2011, and a spate of letter bombs delivered in Jakarta in mid-March are emblematic of the shift,” the group said.

Dynno Chressbon, intelligence expert and director of the Study Center for Intelligence and National Security said Wednesday that the shift meant acts of terrorism would likely be harder to monitor.

“[These acts] will be harder to detect because the database the police have is limited to the old terrorist networks. New players from smaller groups will be difficult to detect until post-bombing,” he added.

Another terrorism expert, Noor Huda Ismail, told The Jakarta Post that smaller terror groups meant bomb attacks would be conducted on a minor scale with a smaller explosion impact but more sporadically.

“Terrorists today are ‘just-do-it’ terrorists,” he said.

Dynno said the change in terrorist movements in Indonesia started as early as 2008, and as terrorists shift to act in smaller groups, they cut the usual long chain of command.

“It was decided in a consolidation in 2008, followed by [the military-style] training of Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid [JAT] in Aceh, that there was no longer a need to have a long chain of command. Now small groups can act on their own to launch executions,” he said.

Their targets were clear: law enforcers and Muslims whose ideology differed from theirs, or in short, secular Muslims, Dynno added.

The ICG said while police still top the list of targets in attacks conducted by small-scale terror groups, it also pointed out there were other new targets in such attacks.

Terror groups get smaller, harder to detect (21 April, 2011, The Jakarta Post)