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Christopher Orlet's "special report" article titled "Geneva Revisited" is full of inaccuracies. To mention just one of the serious gaffes contained in the piece, Orlet's enumeration of four "al-Qaeda-affiliated terror groups" in fact contains only one group that might be labeled as such, though not without significant qualifications.

* The Front Pembela Islam (Front for the Defence of Islam) is a purely domestic and nationalist political movement whose ranks contain many unemployed street toughs (sometimes manipulated by the hyper-secular police and military) that seeks to enforce Indonesian laws that authorities corruptly ignore and to fill in gaps where state force is ineffective;

* Darul Islam is an historical nationalist movement that predates al-Qa'idah by several generations -- and that had only domestic political aspirations;

* Laskar Jihad is a militia movement that operates in areas where primarily ethnic violence (often misrepresented as religious) rooted in transmigration policies of the Soeharto regime is not well controlled by Indonesia's security forces on either the "Christian" or "Muslim" side.

None of these groups can be labeled terrorist; neither FPI nor LJ are forbidden organizations in Indonesia. Only Jemaah Islamiah has demonstrable practical ties to al-Qa'idah, but these are about as meaningful as the ties between Jakarta-based Jaringan Islam Liberal (Liberal Islam Network) and its supporters in international governmental, NGO and philanthropic groups. The fact that JIL has received support in several forms from the Ford Foundation and USAID doesn't make it an affiliate or puppet of those organizations; the same is true of JI with its loose financial links to AQ.

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