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Indonesian military's links to
terror
By Tom Fawthrop
The
highly politicized Indonesian military, trained in
waging terror during more than 30 years of General
Suharto's dictatorship, are among the suspects in last
month's Bali bombing, according to a respected
Indonesian commentator.
Wimar Witoelar, former
spokesman for ex-president Abdurrahman Wahid, claimed
"the plot is probably hatched by hardline military
rogues. This is certainly an excuse for a military
takeover unless it is preempted."
While some
Western experts on terrorism have concluded that
Indonesian extremists linked to the al-Qaeda network are
the major suspects, many Indonesians are not so sure it
is that simple. A spate of explosions in the capital
Jakarta in 2000 included a huge car-bomb blast in the
underground parking lot of the Jakarta Stock Exchange.
Two members of Kopassus (army special forces) have been
convicted and jailed for that act of terrorism.
Kopassus, Indonesia's counter-insurgency elite,
has also been linked to last year's assassination of
Papuan leader Theys Eluay in a campaign to suppress the
indigenous people's rejection of rule by Jakarta. In the
same province of West Papua (formerly Iran Jaya),
Kopassus has been implicated in the murder of two
American teachers and one Indonesian employed by the US
mining company Freeport McMoRan, in an ambush in August
near its huge mine. Kopassus has been accused of staging
a "freedom-fighter ambush" that could be readily blamed
on local tribespeople, known to be strong critics of the
US corporation.
US officials have confirmed that
they have evidence that senior Indonesian military
officials discussed an operation against the US mining
company before the August 31 ambush, according to a
report last weekend in the Washington Post. These
murders and the recent spread of militia to West Papua
follow the assignment of General Mahidin Simbolon to
take charge of the restive province. Simbolon was one of
the key figures who orchestrated the violence in East
Timor in 1999.
It appears the Indonesian
military has learned nothing from the dirty war that led
to such a huge civilian death toll in East Timor.
Kopassus officers deployed in rebellious Aceh and West
Papua are carrying out the same terror tactics in a
desperate bid to prevent these two provinces from
breaking away from Jakarta.
Among the suspects
in the Bali bombing, two extremist Muslim organizations,
Jemaah Islamiyah and Laskar Jihad, both have shadowy
links with Indonesian generals.
Since Suharto
was toppled in 1998, key military generals with Islamist
sympathies have sought to mobilize Islamist militia for
their own purposes, according to Australian academic Dr
Greg Barton. At this time Abu Bakar Ba'asyir and other
Jemaah Islamiyah leaders returned to Java from
self-imposed exile in Malaysia. Barton, the author of
Abdurrahman Wahid, Muslim Democrat, Indonesian
President, points out: "Two years later, in early
2000, when President Wahid sacked General Wiranto over
the East Timor post-ballot massacres and began to push
hard for profound reforms within the military,
non-Islamist, nationalist generals joined forces with
generals known to be religious hardliners to use radical
Islamist militia to destabilize the Wahid
administration."
In troubled regions such as
Ambon, Central Sulawesi and West Papua, military-backed
militias led by Laskar Jihad have wreaked havoc, greatly
increased the level of violence and contributed to the
steady erosion of government's credibility. Recently
members of the Cokar, an Ambon militia, admitted they
had been trained and funded by Kopassus.
Given
his weak coalition government, and the military's
refusal to accept civilian authority, it was inevitable
that Wahid would be replaced as president by the more
pliant and conservative Megawati Sukarnoputri, with the
full blessing of the armed forces.
The Bali
bombing, with a death toll of about 187, has been widely
reported as the worst act of terrorism in Indonesian
history. Not so, say some of the Balinese residents over
the age of 35 whose relatives were among the estimated
70,000-100,000 slaughtered in anti-communist purges in
1965-66.
The tranquil serenity of the island
paradise was shattered long before the bomb that ripped
through the Sari Club in Bali last month. Then people
spoke of "rivers that flowed red with blood". But in the
case of the 1965 campaign of terror, the government
banned any kind of investigation or accounting for the
Balinese Killing Fields. Western governments turned a
blind eye to the slaughter because Suharto obligingly
opened the country up to US corporations and warships.
John Hughes in his book The End of
Sukarno re-creates the landscape in the vicinity of
the Bali Beach Hotel, Sanur, as it was in late 1965.
"Almost in view of the big new luxury hotel the
government had built to woo tourists to Bali stand the
charred and blackened ruins of one such village. For
their communist affiliations the menfolk were killed.
The women and children fared better; they were driven
screaming away. The village itself was put to the torch.
Night after night the sky flared red over Bali as
villages went up in flames and thousands of communists,
or people said to be communists, were hunted down and
killed." It should be noted that until Suharto's seizure
of power in 1965, Indonesia's PKI communist party was a
fully legal parliamentary party with no armed force.
Since the mass demonstrations that toppled the
Suharto regime in 1998, the democratic agenda that
included a cleaning-up and reform of the military has
been derailed by various factors. Many of Suharto's key
generals remain in leadership positions.
A police investigation into the
Bali bombing has so far produced few results,
although it was announced on Wednesday that four people
had been detained in connection with the crime. Little
hard evidence has been established.
However, the airline
manifest of Garuda has confirmed that at least two
military generals from Jakarta happened to visit Bali
just three days before the bombings and that they
returned to Jakarta just one day before the Sari Club
was blown up. Their movements were confirmed by armed
forces chief General Endriartono Sutarto, who claimed
that General Djaja Suparman was on vacation, while
General Ryamizard Riyacudu, chief of staff, was said to
have gone to Bali for "health reasons".
Jakarta
human-rights activist Bonar Naipospos told Asia Times
Online: "General Suparman is one of the generals who was
behind the extremist Jihad groups. He set up militias
composed of gangsters and religious fanatics to counter
student demonstrations in 1998. One of these militias,
Pram Swarkasa, became the embryo of Laskar Jihad."
Two days after the Bali bombing, Laskar Jihad
militia suddenly withdrew all its forces from Ambon, and
it was announced that the organization was disbanded.
Lambang Trijono, who studies Indonesian politics at
Gadja Mada University, commenting on the timing, said,
"Yes, that is suspicious, yes very suspicious. It makes
sense to make a connection like that, because before
they even dissolved ... you know ... yes, very
suspicious, actually."
A Muslim fighter from
Maluku's provincial capital Ambon, who used to fight
alongside Laskar Jihad, recently told CNN, "the group
was ordered to disband by rogue military generals to
hide the generals' involvement with the group." This has
been prompted by increased international scrutiny of
Indonesia in the wake of the Bali terror attacks.
"These generals backed Laskar Jihad and they
acted on their own, outside of the institution," the
fighter said. "They are afraid of being found out now
that there are so many foreign investigators in Bali."
The armed forces officially denies any military was
involved in Laskar Jihad.
Before the Bali
attack, the US government was seeking to move closer to
the Indonesian generals in the so-called war against
terrorism and restore full military ties. However, the
evidence that sections of the armed forces are
themselves a party to terrorism - especially in Aceh and
West Papua - has created a policy dilemma.
Many
serious crimes in Indonesia go unsolved. The Balinese
police chief who heads the investigation enjoys high
credibility after his successful inquiry into the murder
of Papuan leader Theys Eluay and his courage in bringing
charges against Kopassus commando officers.
But
this time Indonesian human-rights watchers fear the case
is too sensitive. Bonar Naipospos commented to Asia
Times Online: "I believe the military is involved in the
bombing, but I fear the Bali police chief is in a
difficult position and they will not follow leads to
high-ranking people."
(©2002 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information
on our sales and syndication policies.)
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