Can Indonesia Keep Philippines Assault Rifles Out of Indonesian Militants' Hands?

Suryadi Mas’ud was allegedly scanning the news coverage of the 2016 terrorist attacks in downtown Jakarta when something in the video jumped out at him. The guns, the ones in the hands of the ISIS-linked terrorists attacking a Starbucks outside Jakarta's oldest mall, were smuggled into the country and sold by him.

Those attacks were reportedly a turning point for Suryadi—a man who saw the Sarinah attacks as a complete failure. He would redouble his efforts and train the next batch of militants how to use their guns so the body count would be higher. He just needed some more guns.

A few months later, Indonesian authorities picked Suryadi, 45, up during a raid in Bekasi, West Java. Two days ago, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on conspiracy charges. In a photo of Suryadi in the court room, he's smiling and holding up one finger—a salute popularized by ISIS that scholars say is a rejection of all other faiths and strains of Islam. When the panel of judges read off his sentence, Suryadi responded by shouting "Allah Akbar" over top of them.

The jail sentence marks the end of Suryadi's illustrious career as one of Indonesia's better-connected terrorists. He was a regular fixture in the southern Philippines, where he previously fought alongside the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and had even shown up in southern Thailand—the site of another homegrown Islamic insurgency.

“Suryadi’s communication skills were exceptional,” Al Chaedar, a terrorism expert who's spent years studying MILF and regional militant networks, told VICE. "His central role made him irreplaceable."

But is it enough to cripple Indonesia's new network of ISIS-linked terrorist cells?

Before his arrest, Suryadi and his small crew of militants were planning to relocate their terrorist training camp from the restive forests of Poso, Central Sulawesi, to Halmahera, out in eastern Indonesia. They had already recruited new would-be insurgents around Banten province, in Java, and previously purchased $50,000 USD worth of weapons—including M16 assault rifles—although most of these guns would never make it to Indonesia.

The Philippines in the source of most of Indonesia's illegal guns. That's because the country's south, a place rife with crime, clan disputes, and militant groups like MILF and the ISIS-linked Maute Clan, is full of them. Nationwide, there were some 3.9 million registered firearms in the Philippines, and an estimated 600,000 illegal ones in circulation, according data compiled by GunPolicy.org.

And in Mindanao, centuries of conflict has given rise to a cottage gun manufacturing industry. These weapons, many of them homemade replicas of assault rifles like the M16 and AK-47, can sell for well below market price. That makes them affordable for cash-strapped insurgents—as long as they can find a way to get them into Indonesia.

Suryadi had established a network of smuggling routes, bribing customs officials in both the Philippines and Indonesia so he could sneak the firearms into the country inside boxes of tuna fish that would arrive at Bitung Port, in North Sulawesi.

Other times he brought the guns to Tarakan, in East Kalimantan, or coastal villages in Sabah, on the Malaysian half of Borneo. And these were just some of the more than 300 "ratlines," used by smugglers in Indonesia, according to Johozua M. Yoltuwu, the Director General of Remote Areas Development.

But even with all those routes, Suryadi wasn't able to smuggle all of the weapons in at once. He brought in a couple of the handguns through the port in North Sulawesi, but was arrested before the rest could arrive.

Now, with Suryadi behind bars, will the flow of illegal firearms stop? Unlikely. There's still an unknown amount of weapons left over from conflicts in places like Aceh. And with the violence in Poso just recently over, there are bound to be some assault rifles left in the hands of militants who are still at large.

Meanwhile, the connections between Philippines and Indonesian militant groups remains strong. When the Maute Clan rebels seized control of Marawi, there were plenty of Indonesians fighting alongside of them.

And then there's Suryadi himself. He already served six years for bombing a fast food restaurant in Makassar, South Sulawesi. He was freed in 2009 and in no time he was right back to his old ways.

Indonesian prisons have a serious issue with radicalization, and judging by Suryadi's actions in court, the man shows no signs of turning his back on his efforts to fight a holy war in Southeast Asia. Al Chaedar told VICE that prison staff should isolate Suryadi somehow. Jailed terrorists have, in the past, orchestrated fresh attacks from behind bars. And with his connections and knowledge of smuggling routes, it wouldn't be hard to get someone else to fill his shoes.

“Suryadi is only one link of a frightening firearms smuggling chain,” Al Chaedar told VICE. “And he has never once regretted his actions.”