Singapore/Jakarta | When the Taliban triumphantly returned to Kabul last month, Indonesia’s counter-terrorism police were arresting extremists in 11 locations across the archipelago nation.

The security blitz was carried out by specialist police unit Detachment 88. Without the November 11, 2001, terror attacks and the atrocities that followed, including the 2002 Bali Bombings, Detachment 88 – funded, equipped and trained by the US and Australia – would most likely never have existed.