Two attacks in quick succession in Indonesia: what is going on? To understand this, you must know the country's history.

The attacks in the Indonesian city of Surabaya in Java have apparently been carried out by returning IS fighters from Syria. Just like Al Qaeda ten years ago, after the defeat in Iraq and Syria, the IS terror group is attempting to recruit local groups of radical Muslims in Southeast Asia.

Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world with 260 million inhabitants of which 87 percent is Muslim. Yet it is a secular republic with rights for the minorities, even though some Muslims are up against it. To understand this, you have to go back to the groups that emerged in the twenties of the last century, who were standing up for Indonesia’s independence (then called Dutch East Indies). Ideologically they were very diverse: Islamic, communist, ethnically oriented or ultimately secular and nationalistic, which means focusing on the independence of Indonesia as a single country.

After the Japanese occupation (1942-1945) overthrew Dutch colonial authority, the nationalist leader Sukarno in 1945 proclaimed the "Republik Indonesia". Four years later that was recognized by the Netherlands.

Leader of the Indonesian National Party Achmed Sukarno (1902-70) demanding independence from the Netherlands in an undated photo. Source

Sukarno and his nationalists envisioned a unified and secular Indonesia that had to unite all (rather diverse) people and religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, animism and so on). A somewhat artificially simplified "bahasa Indonesia" (Indonesian language) should achieve the unity which it desires. Religion should not be a spoilsport, despite the large Muslim majority.

The "Republik" clashed with Sharia

That wasn’t to the liking of Islamic groups who wanted to organize the new Indonesia as a religious state based on Sharia, the Islamic law. In 1948 they founded the "Darul Islam" (home of Islam), a radical group that wanted to establish a "Negara Islam Indonesia" (Islamic State Indonesia) instead of the secular republic of Sukarno.

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The young country was immediately embroiled in a bitter civil war for its own identity. The uprising began in the conservative west of Java, but Darul Islam soon got the support of Muslim groups in the south of Sulawesi and in Aceh in the north of Sumatra. The Darul Islam recruited more than 15,000 fighters in 1957 and also attempted to assassinate nationalist President Sukarno.

In the early 1960s, however, the Darul Islam was defeated everywhere and the army regained control of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi. The coup of 1965 established the military regime of General Suharto, who controlled the country with an iron fist. A remnant of the Darul formed the "Komando Jihad" which in 1981 hijacked a plane from the airline Garuda Indonesia and transported it to Thailand, where the plane was attacked by Indonesian commandos.

The shadow of Al Qaeda, IS (and the Saudi's)

A much more dangerous movement arose in 1969 from a number of sympathizers of Darul Islam around the radical spiritual Abu Bakar Baasyir. That "Jemaah Islamiah" (Islamic Community) was suppressed under the dictatorship of Suharto, but gained more ground in the turbulent years after his fall in 1998.

Jemaah Islamiyah militant group. Source

Jemaah Islamiah wanted to establish an Islamic state or "Daulah Islamiyah" throughout Southeast Asia, which should include not only Indonesia, but also Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines. To this end, the Jemaah were able to establish direct links with Muslim terrorist groups in those countries and Al Qaeda. The most notorious of these are the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the terror group Abu Sayyaf in the south of the Philippines where a revolt of the Muslim minority has already been raging for a long time.

In Indonesia, Jemaah is considered to be a driving force behind a number of ethnic-religious riots between Muslims and Christians in Sulawesi and the Moluccas, where churches and mosques were torched over and over again. The group was especially notorious for the bloody bombings in Bali in 2002 and 2005 against Western hotels such as Marriott and the Australian embassy in Jakarta.

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Ten years ago, most of the Jemaah's leaders were either killed or arrested by the Indonesian police. The leader Abu Bakar Baasyir is serving a 15-year sentence for terrorism. Another leader, Hambali, was arrested in Thailand and extradited to the United States.

However, the rise of IS has inspired a new generation of radical Muslims. That turned out last year with the months-long battle around the city of Marawi in the Philippines. A thousand Malaysians and Indonesians would have traveled to IS in Syria and some of them are now returning. Among them are apparently the perpetrators of the attacks of the past days in the Indonesian city of Surabaya. These attacks would be the work of the Jemaat Ansharut Daulah, one of the many radical splinter groups of the Jemaah Islamiah, who is on the side of IS.

Superpower at a strategic turning point

Indonesia has more than 17,000 islands and 260 million inhabitants. Because most inhabitants are Muslim, it is considered the largest Muslim country in the world. Most Muslims are ethically conservative, but usually moderate and there is a broad tolerance towards the minorities. These are mainly Christian Bataks on Sumatra, Toraja and Minahasa on Sulawesi and Moluccans, but also the Hindus on Bali and Buddhists elsewhere. Nowhere else can you find such a variety of religions. This, next to the beautiful wildlife and natural areas, makes it such a fantastic country to travel.

The country is a regional superpower with a very influential army. Indonesia is also an important producer of oil and natural gas. Apart from that, it controls the major straits, namely those from China, Japan and Korea to Australia and those from the Indian ocean to the Pacific. If it was a military dictatorship for a long time, Indonesia has evolved over the past decade into a democracy.

Having said this, most Indonesian Muslims support the republic. The largest Muslim groups in the country, such as the Nahdlatul Ulama, have more than 60 million members and they have proved to be very moderate in recent years. Yet there is a worrying trend towards stricter Islamization, which has come mainly under the influence of Saudi Arabia-sponsored education and "social" activities.