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JAKARTA, Indonesia — News of controversial Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir’s upcoming public trial is throwing new light on the horrific Bali nightclub bombings that killed 193 people in this southeast Asian nation last October. 

At the time, several suspects said Bashir knew about the bombings. Indonesian authorities have not charged him with the Bali crime, but with treason for allegedly attempting to overthrow the government and set up an Islamic state. 

Whether Bashir is convicted or eventually linked solidly to Bali, those bombings are seen here as far more than a criminal case. They have helped reshape politics in Indonesia, which hosts the world’s largest Muslim population. 

President Megawati Sukarnoputri, like her counterparts in the region, was adamantly opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. “We are saddened to watch their show of strength, which is not only destructive but also retrogressive and wrong,” she said in an April speech. Yet her government is quietly cooperating with international efforts to combat the threat posed by radical Islamic militias, something that wasn’t the case before October. 

“There was a reluctance to take on the issue of homegrown terrorism before the Bali bombings, partly because no one in the government wanted to be seen as a puppet of the United States, and no one wanted to provoke a Muslim backlash,” said Sidney Jones, Indonesia Project director for the International Crisis Group. 

That changed after the Bali bombings, which Jones called “a wake-up call for the government.” 

For many, the government’s emergence from denial is best symbolized in the efficient police work that appears to have cracked the case. The main police investigator assigned to the investigation, I Made Pastika, accepted help from Australian and other foreign investigators and quickly followed the trail of evidence that led from the crime scene. More than two dozen Islamic militia members have been arrested. 

Jones said Indonesians have been “astonished” by the quick and effective police work. Police are often regarded here as loathsome and corrupt. 

Police forces were separated from the Indonesian military in 1999, yet the divorce has been plagued by turf battles between the two groups over control of drugs, prostitution, gambling and natural resources. The Bali bombings have given the civilian police an opportunity to distance themselves from the larger and more corrupt military. 

“The only way you’re going to reform this place and keep democracy on track is to keep internal security in civilian hands,” Jones said, claiming the post-bombing investigation has let the police know “that they can get praise and direct economic rewards for doing a professional job.” 

Government officials point out that one of the country’s most violent Islamic militias, the Laskar Jihad, disbanded in the weeks following the Bali bombings. Yet diplomatic sources here claim the group’s dissolution resulted less from government pressure than from the loss of Saudi financing, as well as from internal dissent over bad organization and the impure lifestyle of some leaders. 

Even the most radical Muslim leaders here made it clear after the Bali bombings that they didn’t approve of such tactics. About the only group to publicly side with those arrested for the bombings is the Islamic Defenders Front, which readily provides incendiary sound bites for foreign reporters but, many observers say, is nothing but a bunch of thugs-for-hire recruited by the Jakarta police. 

The testimony provided to date by the two main suspects in the Bali bombings is at times contradictory, and investigators remain unclear what links they may have to terrorist networks. “While the police have caught the hands that did the bombing, they have not yet caught the body and brain that are behind the hands,” said Natan Setiabudi, general secretary of the Indonesian Communion of Churches, the country’s main ecumenical organization. 

Whether U.S. actions in Iraq will produce an anti-American and anti-democratic backlash remains to be seen. 

Indonesians were opposed to the U.S.-led invasion, but with few exceptions the almost daily protests in the streets of Jakarta did not produce huge crowds. Yet many here worry that the young men who fought for groups like Laskar Jihad will come back to the cause with renewed enthusiasm in the wake of the military defeat of another Muslim nation.