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Indonesia's terror blame
game
By Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali - A new report on failing US
public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim worlds
highlights the need for the United States to its
reinvigorate programs and describes how US policy shapes
its image overseas (see It's the US policy, stupid, October
3). As an example, the report provides a startling
statistic: In Indonesia, favorable opinions of the US
plummeted from 61 percent in early 2002 to just 15
percent this year.
There's plenty of blame to
share between the governments of the US and Indonesia
for bringing about the shift in opinion (see Unhappy anniversary for US-Indonesia
ties, September 11). And at the United Nations
General Assembly last week, Indonesian President
Megawati Sukarnoputri demonstrated that it's not just
the United States that needs to change in order to bring
about reconciliation.
According to Megawati's
address, Indonesia and Islam are innocent victims of a
four-year rash of Muslim extremist violence that
stretches beyond the bomb blasts in Kuta last October
and at the Jakarta Marriott in August to jihad against
Christians in the Malukus and Sulawesi and a string of
church bombings across the archipelago on Christmas Eve
2000. The real culprits: Israel and the West.
What Megawati says matters because she leads the
nation with the world's largest Muslim population.
Effective US public diplomacy needs to respond to her
arguments. However, the speech went largely unnoticed as
Western media stood fixated on the pas de trois
among George W Bush, Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques
Chirac. The one time it would have been correct to
follow Donald Rumsfeld's advice and ignore Europe, no
one did.
Terrorists don't kill people
...
Megawati contends that the perpetrators of
murder don't cause terrorism; that in effect, it's
Western victims' fault:
In order to prevent, deter or eradicate
the problem of international terrorism, I should like
to propose that the countries whose citizens become
the main target of terrorist groups should review
their conventional anti-terrorism policies,
particularly in dealing with the Arab-Israeli
conflict. They should adopt a policy that ensures that
all involved parties are given just and equal
treatment. In other words, terrorists don't
kill people; policies that support Israel kill people.
The Bush administration's belated introduction of a
Middle East peace plan acknowledged that this argument
holds at least a kernel of truth, and the blue-ribbon
public-diplomacy report reiterates that point.
Megawati's speech professes that there is
nothing in Islam to excuse terrorist violence, but then
makes excuses for it. She asserts that Islam is not to
blame for terrorism, "since Islam, which teaches
equality, justice and the kinship shared by all
humankind, cannot possibly endorse the indiscriminate
killing of innocent individuals". So don't link Islam
with terrorism. However, it is "the prolonged unjust
attitude exhibited by big powers towards countries [in]
which inhabitants profess Islam" that breeds extremist
terrorism. In other words, terrorism is not a Muslim
thing, but it's the result of a new Western crusade
against Muslims. That's having your halvah and
eating it, too.
For a leader who takes heat for
her lack of gray matter, like another presidential
offspring now sitting in daddy's old chair with a
dubious mandate, Megawati crafts a pretty clever
argument. Of course, it's hardly original.
Echoes
Megawati's father, Indonesia's
founding president Sukarno, used Western imperialism as
the excuse for global strife in the 1950s and 1960s, and
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad beat the same
drum in last week's UN session.
Like other
leaders addressing the UN, Megawati played to a domestic
audience as well as the world stage. Megawati's echo
pandered to public opinion, competing with opponents in
next year's presidential election, such as Vice
President Hamzah Haz, who calls the United States "the
king of terrorists".
The Bali bombings last
October provoked soul-searching about how Indonesia
could breed such violent extremism. (One answer was
support from the military, which quickly pulled the plug
on the anti-Christian jihads in Sulawesi and the
Malukus.) That self-examination has evaporated into a
sense of Muslim victimization, on behalf of
Palestinians, Afghans and Iraqis thousands of kilometers
away, and even on behalf of terror suspects at home.
So terrorism becomes a Western problem that's
victimizing Indonesia. Tough anti-terror measures,
therefore, serve Western interests, not Indonesia's.
Ironically, such attitudes may lead to more Indonesian
Muslims becoming victims, if vigilance against terror
slips under political pressure.
This victim view
conveniently absolves Indonesians of any responsibility
for attacks their fellow citizens have carried out on
home soil that have taken Indonesian lives, along with
Western ones, and severely damaged the Indonesian
economy. (Similar denial persists regarding the May 1998
rampage against Jakarta's Chinese minority; that was the
fault of "agents provocateurs", not the thousands
of rampaging Indonesians.) That's a better election
strategy than suggesting to 100 million-plus Muslim
voters that they take responsibility for the fringes of
their community, even it if puts lives in greater
jeopardy.
Road (map) to
nowhere
Blaming it all on the Arab-Israeli
conflict takes Indonesia another giant step away from
responsibility. In contrast to some Western nations that
are cast as inciters of terrorism or terrorists,
Indonesia has not volunteered to play a productive role
in resolving the conflict.
There are more
fundamental problems with this particular blame game
that offer some avenues for effective public diplomacy.
Unfortunately, none of those roads are promising for US
vehicles.
First, it wasn't Israeli occupation of
Arab lands that put Osama bin Laden into the terror
business; it was US military presence on Saudi land.
Osama picked up the Palestinian torch as an
afterthought.
A larger issue is one of hope. The
Arab-Israeli family feud over a patch of desert has gone
on for millennia. Today, extremist elements dominate on
the Palestinian and Israeli sides. In the world
according to Megawati, protection from terrorism is a
hostage to their willingness to compromise.
The
world's margin of safety from senseless terror doesn't
depend on Ariel Sharon's or Yasser Arafat's goodwill any
more than it did on ousting Saddam Hussein. Megawati,
Bush and their friends need to stop indulging their
geopolitical fantasies and address the real causes of
terrorism, starting with terrorists who get political
cover for their murderous acts from national leaders in
the United States, Asia and the Middle East. That would
be a story worth telling, but one I can't see the US
offering at this time.
(Copyright 2003 Asia
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