Yet another part of the world is shaken by another terrible atrocity. Yesterday's powerful bomb at the Australian embassy in Jakarta, which killed eight people and injured 130, comes ahead of Indonesia's presidential election on September 20th and the Australian general election on October 9th.
While it has not yet been claimed, it is being blamed on the same extreme Islamist group that organised the bomb attacks on Bali in 2002 and at a Jakarta hotel last year. The motivation is presumably to influence either or both elections in these two important democracies.
The Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, expressed his defiance by stating "this is not a nation that is going to be intimidated by an act of terrorism". Although Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation the great majority of those practising the religion there are moderate and the leading candidate for the presidency, the former security minister, Mr Susilo Bambang Yudhyono, is running on an entirely secular ticket. There is little stomach for such extreme movements. Most of them are associated with secessionist protest movements rather than the international network operating through al-Qaeda which is being blamed for yesterday's outrage.
The Bali bombing galvanised the government led by President Megawati Sukarnoputri, which has taken more active measures against those responsible. Many of them have been convicted and are now behind bars. Indonesia has made substantial progress towards greater democracy since political reforms were introduced in the late 1990s and its economy has recovered from the shock waves created then by the collapse of the Asian Tiger boom caused by currency speculation. It would be a great pity if such acts of terrorism were to divert the incoming government from the major challenges it faces in managing its huge tropical forest and ocean resources and in developing the health and educational facilities for the country's 235 million people living on some 4,000 islands.
Australia's election campaign is now in full swing. A major theme is Mr Howard's trustworthiness in continuing his close alliance with the Bush administration over Iraq and on other foreign policy issues. The Labour opposition says it will reverse that policy and withdraw troops from Iraq. This bomb may have been calculated to affect the outcome in a similar fashion to the Madrid bombs just before last March's elections in Spain. No democratic government or party can allow itself to be intimidated in this way; nor should Australian voters change their minds on these issues for this reason.
It has been a dreadful week for such atrocities, with the shock of what happened last week in Beslan still powerfully reverberating in Russia and around the world. Human intelligence, effective policing and close international security and political co-operation are the most effective ways to tackle the problem, along with a realisation that slow and steady progress is more likely than spectacular victories against such terrorist movements.