SPEAKING FREELY US tips Jakarta's terror
balance By Michael Roston
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
Perhaps
nowhere else in the world is there a more challenging
need to carefully balance the global "war on terrorism"
with promoting progress on human rights and the
development of nascent democratic institutions than in
Indonesia. In the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib prison
scandal in Iraq, treading carefully is necessary to
successfully restore credibility to America's ability to
challenge human rights violations.
Unfortunately, the George W Bush administration
appears not only to have given up on restoring its
legitimacy on human rights, but has shifted the balance
to encourage human rights violations by the Indonesian
military in the name of fighting terror. Such
capitulation is the only credible explanation for the
June 24 press release by the US Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) and the Justice Department on its
indictment of an Indonesian for the murder of two
American schoolteachers employed by the Freeport McMoRan
corporation in the distant province of West Papua. The
release sent a stark message that US policy will
exclusively promote counter-terrorism, even at the cost
of important human rights goals.
The deadly
August 2002 attack in restive West Papua resulted in
difficulties for US-Indonesia relations. The US Congress
subsequently approved legislation suspending some
military ties between the two states until the
perpetrators of the murders in West Papua were brought
to justice. US legislators were spurred into this action
based in part on the belief that elements of the
Indonesian armed forces (known by the Indonesian acronym
TNI) had been involved in the attacks. However, the
FBI's release concludes that a single individual,
Anthonius Wamang, identified as a commander of the
military arm of the Free Papua Movement (known by its
Indonesian acronym OPM), an organization promoting
Papuan independence from Indonesia, was responsible for
the killings and is to be solely indicted in the case.
The Robert F Kennedy Memorial Center for Human
Rights is already questioning the contours of the
indictment, finding reasons to doubt that Wamang was
individually responsible for the murders.
Representatives of the Papuan organization Elsham also
reported that Wamang has strong links to the Indonesian
military. It has been the long-standing policy of TNI to
build up local militias supportive of Jakarta's
policies, much as pro-Indonesia militias were
responsible for much of the violence in East Timor in
1999.
Unfortunately, the indictment is not
questionable for this reason alone. In addition to
ignoring the line of command responsible for the murder
of the Freeport employees, the language used by the US
government in explaining its pursuit of this case is
suggestive of a dangerous policy shift in the war
against international terrorism in Southeast Asia.
The Justice Department announcement stridently
claims that the West Papua indictment is an effort to
combat terrorism against American citizens.
Attorney-General John Ashcroft has boldly stated,
"Terrorists will find that they cannot hide from US
justice." However, by identifying the actions of a
purported leader of a section of the OPM as terrorism,
the Justice Department and the FBI have equated these
criminal actions with the kind of terrorism that most
threatens international security - that is, the
organized, multi-nationally coordinated strikes on the
United States, its allies and friends best exhibited by
the al-Qaeda network's efforts to advance its
destructive ideological goals.
The State
Department has never identified OPM or any other
separatist organization in Indonesia as reaching the
level of "foreign terrorist organization". The
department's Office of Counter-terrorism devotes
considerable resources toward determining which
political groups are heinous enough in intent and action
to receive this dubious title for a good reason: without
a clear understanding of what is and is not a foreign
terrorist organization, the US will identify too many
political groups as dangerous to its national security
and subsequently be unable to carefully marshal limited
counter-terrorism resources to defend the interests of
America and its allies. The deliberative process of
identifying groups as foreign terrorist organizations is
undertaken to ensure that the US is not left with a
hammer as its only tool, with the resulting view that
every problem is a nail.
The Indonesian
military, on the other hand, is happy to pound away at
the OPM, and any other organization in conflict with the
country's central government. When given the
opportunity, authorities in Jakarta have tried their
best to elevate rebels and political groups in other
restive regions like Aceh to the level of "terrorist",
hoping that tarring the government's opponents with this
brush would motivate foreign support for its brutal
responses to political disputes. Indonesia's
identification of a communist threat in East Timor was
similarly used to justify its horrific 1977 invasion of
the now independent nation, and TNI has shown a
willingness to use the language of the global "war on
terrorism" to motivate international approval of its
brutal means of securing Indonesian territorial
integrity. Unfortunately, the Justice Department
announcement signals a willingness by the US to overlook
excessive Indonesian military action.
After the
American indictment, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry
quickly announced its hope that the move would remove a
major obstacle to military cooperation between the two
countries. If American assistance is resumed, the West
Papua indictment will be a turning point in US
acquiescence to viewing terrorism through Indonesian
military lenses. While TNI's repression of political
opponents in several areas of the country accelerates,
it is unlikely that the political will or military
resources will be available for Indonesia to prosecute
the fight against international terrorism, and the
advancement on Indonesia of radical Islamists who share
the anti-Western goals of the al-Qaeda network will
culminate in more rounds of destructiveness as terrible
as that already seen in the Bali and Jakarta bombings.
Hopefully, policymakers in the US will realize
that a balanced consideration of human rights concerns
is essential to achieving victory in the struggle
against terrorism. When militaries like the one found in
Indonesia focus resources on brutalizing the political
opposition, little of their efforts will be directed
toward combating the terrorism that threatens not only
America, but the world.
Michael Roston
(mr2302@columbia.edu) is a New York-based researcher on
terror and violence. He has worked with the Singaporean
organization Think Center and spent the past three years
in Washington, DC as an analyst of WMD security issues.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have their
say. Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
