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Mistaken aims toward
Indonesia
By Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON - The United States is committing a
major political blunder in Indonesia by focusing solely
on terrorism, according to regional experts on Islam,
who suggest that the US should concentrate instead on
helping Indonesia build its democratic institutions and
revitalize its economy and educational system.
"The USA can help the situation by avoiding the
impression that terrorism is the only defining factor"
in bilateral relations, said Rizal Sukma, director of
studies at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Jakarta and an executive board member of
Muhammadiyah, the second-largest Islamic organization in
Indonesia. "The public face should be much broader."
At the same time, Sukma said the US should not
provide financial assistance to what it considers
moderate alternatives to Islamic fundamentalists because
doing so would undermine those groups in the eyes of
most Indonesians.
"Once accused of following the
American agenda, they become irrelevant," Sukma told a
Washington seminar on Indonesia in January, which was
sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
For
the administration of US President George W Bush, the
agenda includes enlisting Indonesia as a close partner
in the "war against terrorism" as well as expanding
military, police and intelligence ties to improve the
ability of the government of Indonesian President
Megawati Sukarnoputri to counter the rise of Jemaah
Islamiya and other terrorist networks.
As a
result, US security experts began training a special
squad of Indonesian police in counter-terrorism in
November, under a US$8 million program funded by the
United States Congress. The US military has also
supplied Indonesia with high-tech communications,
night-vision gear and other terrorism-prevention
equipment.
That program has been complicated,
however, by the Indonesian government's refusal to
prosecute military officers charged by a United Nations
tribunal with committing atrocities in East Timor and
continued reports of human-rights abuses by the
Indonesian military in the restive provinces of Papua
and Aceh.
Last month the US State Department
placed six current and former Indonesian officers on a
watch list of indicted war criminals who cannot enter
the United States. Among them is General Wiranto, the
former head of the army who may run for president in
this year's elections.
Matters were further
complicated in January when Congress passed an amendment
that bans the Bush administration from providing
military training funds to Indonesia until the State
Department determines that Indonesia is cooperating with
the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe of an ambush
of eight teachers in Papua in 2002 that left two US
nationals dead and several seriously wounded.
That bill passed with strong support from
several key Republicans. But many lawmakers are wary of
providing military training to Indonesia simply out of
fear that the army itself has been influenced by Islamic
radicalism.
"There's enough evidence of this
complicity, that to give them any sort of military
training, even if it's in the name of the 'war on
terror', is sort of an odd concept," said an aide to a
senior House Republican who voted for the recent
restrictions on military aid.
Sukma is concerned
that US military assistance could only exacerbate
Indonesia's problems. "I don't think the military is the
agent" to oppose terrorism, he said. "You don't need
tanks, you don't need F-16s. The key is intelligence."
With parliamentary elections coming up in April
and the first presidential primaries in July, military
to military aid "could create new problems in this new
context", Sukma said. Already, he noted, the Indonesia
military has "expressed unhappiness" about US support
for the police.
Osman Bakar, a professor at the
Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown
University and a citizen of Malaysia, said US
intervention in domestic struggles against terrorists
could also backfire.
Taking note of the recent
deployment of US military troops to the Philippines and
US intelligence assistance to Indonesia, he said there
is a perception in the region "that local governments
are exploiting [the terrorist attacks of] September 11
[2001] and the war against terrorism to stifle"
democratic movements.
Bakar said US policymakers
would be wise to follow Sukma's advice because Indonesia
has made important advances in democracy even after
experiencing major terrorist attacks in Bali and Jakarta
over the past two years. "In terms of winning hearts and
minds, Indonesia is doing better than its neighbors," he
said.
In Singapore and Malaysia, two other
countries where Islamic groups linked to al-Qaeda have
been active, the governments have detained hundreds of
suspected terrorists under security laws introduced by
the British in 1948 to counter the rise of communist
groups, Bakar said.
However, Indonesia has
avoided such draconian practices. Instead, when it
captured the ringleaders of the Bali bombing, it placed
them on trial.
Over the long term, such actions
strengthen the belief in the public mind that "the rule
of law will succeed", Bakar said. Indonesia "can win the
war because of the inner dynamics now being seen".
Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Center
for International and Strategic Studies in Washington
and a former official with president Bill Clinton's
National Security Council, said the United States has a
strong interest in "beating back the jihadists" but
warned against seeing the conflict in Indonesia in
black-and-white terms.
"Too many regimes have
used the 'war on terror' to put excessive pressure on
groups they view as threatening," he said. "We shouldn't
make the same mistake we did during the last ideological
struggle," the Cold War. "If so, it will be the blowback
phenomenon again."
(Inter Press
Service)
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