Nearly 1,500 Indonesians either tried to go or went to the Middle East to fight for the terror group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko, in disclosing this on Tuesday, said 590 of them were still in Syria or Iraq and that 103 had been killed. A spate of deadly, ISIS-inspired bombings that rocked Indonesia’s second-largest city in 24 hours earlier this month were carried out by three families — including their young children — who targeted churches and the police, authorities said. For all the horror of these recent family bombings, however, they may not indicate that extremism is growing in Indonesia: Violence can be as much a sign of weakness as of strength, an effort to keep motivation high precisely because recruitment is declining, writes Sidney Jones for The New York Times.