It may be instructive to pause of a second and realize that Bali is not just targeted because it’s an attractive place to hit vacationing westerners and disrupt a steady inflow of tourist dollars.

Remember, this is a religious war and while al-Qaeda and its affiliates have never thought much of fellow Muslim victims as collateral damage, dead and maimed Balinese may actually be a deliberate part of the game plan. Bali, like many of Indonesia’s outlying islands, is not exactly in sync religiously and culturally with the Javanese heartland and has for centuries been predominantly Hindu. While Bali has never been a disruptive element in unifying the Indonesian nation state, radical jihadist groups know that impoverished Muslims on Java (where the bulk of Indonesia’s masses live) can easily be rallied to defend the Muslim cause in various other parts of the country.

The ethnic and wealthy Chinese are always the first to bear the brunt of mob violence, but it’s equally easy to organize mobs to ransack and terrorize some Christian outposts on Sulawesi or the Moluccas. Since Chinese and Christians are an easy target it is hard to imagine that a lot of tears will be shed over violence and destruction in that relatively wealthy bastion of Hinduism. It may also explain why the persecution of groups like Jemaah Islamiyah hasn’t always been as pro-active as it should have been as Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s challenge to balance safety and domestic interests may not be dissimilar to the one that Pervez Musharraf faces in Pakistan.

USEFUL UPDATES:
Tim Blair discusses the aftermath and its Australian victims;
Dutch news has an amateur video of one bombing (upper right hand corner);
The Counterterrorism Blog on the spread of radical Islam in Indonesia.