Said Nasution: Soft Approach Does Not Mean We Support Terrorism

He said that the government has been unfortunate thus far as solutions offered from time to time proven to be ineffective.

"For example, the 'old order' which relied heavily upon the method of military intervention was not working, and then the 'new order' one which suggested for the intensification on the intelligence agency’ unfortunately not working well either," he shared.

"In 1984-1985, we started to become introduced to foreign terrorist fighters, while other countries have been introduced to terrorism just fairly recently, we have been encountering problems with them since the era of our independence," he further shared.

According to Saud Nasution however, in spite of having largely ineffective methods from time to time in managing such increasingly alarming issue, Indonesia is fortunate enough to have been introduced to such heinous acts a long time ago as the law enforcers as well as the people are now mentally aware and prepared for whatever is coming their way. Moreover, 'such experiences in the past have made our authorities and law enforcers a lot stronger and have equipped us with the right strategy to prevent reliving those nightmares'.

"We have found one concept, concept of de-radicalization. Putting terrorist in jail would not solve the problem, how to change their mindset, at first we have offered such concept to European nations but we were immediately judged as supporting terrorism instead. We are the victims of terrorism not supporting it," he stated.

According to Saud Nasution, there are many reasons that can potentially become the driving forces leading terrorists into committing such heinous acts. Potential reasons and motivations include revenge, injustice, inequality, widened social gap, poverty, inability of government to satisfy population’s needs and wants, discrimination and many others. He believes that in order to contain and eradicate the very idea of ‘terrorism’ as well as the acts carried out as the ramification to such thinking, law enforcers ought to probe over the fact that drives them towards committing such act. This is primarily because their acts are governed by their minds that are sometimes dissatisfied or clouded by other problems.

"Many of the attacks in Indonesia were caused by extreme anger of Jemaah Islamiyah group against foreign government," he informs.

He said that Indonesia is now looking at another approach that would likely to become much more effective than that of military intervention.

"For the terrorists we have detained in jail, we will perform identity profiling, finding out who they are diagnosing their mentality, rehabilitating them by inviting religious leaders that could help de-radicalize them with the proper teachings and moral support from psychologists," he further informs.

"As for the ones who are seen to hold the potentiality of becoming one or for the general population that has not been touched by the very idea, it is best that the government controls social media and block sites that look suspicious enough to glorify terrorism," he concluded.