Terrorism links in Indonesia point to
military By Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali -
Last month's bombing of the Australian Embassy in
Jakarta and next week's anniversary of the 2002 bombings
in Bali are reminders of the serious terrorism threat in
the world's largest predominantly Muslim nation. The
victory of former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as
Indonesia's first directly elected president raises
hopes of tougher moves against terror, based on his
resume as a former security minister who oversaw
counter-terrorism efforts and his military background.
It also raises issues of military reform. Some
believe Yudhoyono has the ability to reform the
Indonesian armed forces, despite his military ties;
others say he did practically nothing in this regard
during his three years as security and defense minister.
Yudhoyono's election will likely accelerate US
efforts to renew its partnership with Indonesia's armed
forces and rescind its ban on military aid because of
human-rights abuses, convinced as it is that the
military is a key part of any terrorism solution. Yet
that belief requires ignoring evidence that the military
encouraged radical religious violence largely
responsible for creating Indonesia's terrorism problem.
The top authority on terrorism in Indonesia is
weary of providing answers. In response to an e-mail
query about links between Indonesia's military and
terrorism, Sidney Jones of the International Crisis
Group (ICG) wrote, "Sorry, but there are so many things
wrong in the way you outline your assumptions that it
would take too long to correct before going on to
comments." Those assumptions consign people looking for
direct links to a group Jones dismisses as "conspiracy
theorists", even though ICG's own research identifies
numerous Indonesian military links to terrorist
violence.
Certainly, there's no evidence that
military personnel planted the Bali bombs, but there's
no doubt it planted the seeds that produced those
bombers and their successors. Radical Islam may provide
the motivation for terrorism, but Indonesia's armed
forces repeatedly supplied the opportunity and means.
Dwi fungsi Violence against
civilians for political purposes has long been part of
Indonesia's military arsenal. Under the dwi
fungsi (dual function) doctrine of former president
Suharto's New Order, the army played a vital role in
politics in addition to national defense. At the top,
staff officers such as Yudhoyono played leading policy
roles. Down the line, territorial commands acted as
local political enforcers for the authoritarian regime,
coercing people into supporting Suharto's iron-fisted
leadership. Sometimes soldiers themselves terrorized
civilians, and sometimes they outsourced, generally to
secular thugs, as in East Timor.
But the
military also has used Islamic radicals for political
purposes. At the dawn of military rule in 1965, the
junta tapped Muslim organizations to help kill hundreds
of thousands of alleged communists. Suharto subsequently
suppressed Islam except in its mildest forms to prevent
religious figures from challenging his authority. Before
the 1977 elections, generals duped radical Muslims into
reviving the militia group Darul Islam. The regime then
arrested leaders of the revival to discredit the Islamic
political party. The crackdown and trials continued
through the 1982 election. Suharto resigned in disgrace
in 1998 after security forces shot unarmed
demonstrators, then failed to quell subsequent rioting
in Jakarta's Chinatown that left hundreds dead. (There's
been no credible investigation into allegations that
Suharto's military instigated those riots, one of many
conspiracy theories popular in Indonesia.) Elections in
June 1999 produced a reformist president, Abdurrahman
Wahid, who tried to curb the armed forces' political
influence.
Coincidentally, there was a surge of
violence around the archipelago from which the military
(TNI, for Tentara Nasional Indonesia) stood to benefit
both politically - as guardian of national stability -
and materially, by supplying arms to combatants and
collecting protection money from affected civilians and
businesses. Radical Islamic thugs even were recruited
into graft wars between police and the military, which
had been under the same command during the Suharto era.
Groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front denounced
vice then ransacked nightspots that failed to pay off
their uniformed sponsors. White-robed vigilantes
smashing liquor bottles garnered extensive media
coverage, but no punishment, helping to establish a
climate that made religious violence seem not just
acceptable but attractive and even heroic.
Friends of Laksar Jihad ICG and other
sources found military links galore in clashes between
Christians and Muslims in Central Sulawesi and the
Malukus that began in 1999 and killed thousands. Islamic
militia group Laksar Jihad received military training
and supplies as it recruited thousands of warriors for
the Muslim side, expanding and escalating local
skirmishes. Top military commanders ignored presidential
orders to stop jihadis and arms from reaching conflict
zones.
Jemaah Islamiya (JI), the allegedly
al-Qaeda-linked group blamed for the bombings in Bali,
the Jakarta Marriott in August 2003 and the Australian
Embassy last month, also used the Malukus as a proving
ground for its own fighters, much as al-Qaeda's key
members gained battlefield experience fighting the
Soviets in Afghanistan.
ICG and other experts,
such as Simmons College Professor Zachary Abuza, insist
there were no links between the Laksar Jihad and JI
militias in the Malukus and Central Sulawesi, and
therefore conclude there was no link between JI and the
TNI. That argument misses the point. The military stoked
communal conflicts that created fertile ground for the
growth of radical Islam in general and JI in particular.
Abuza concedes: "TNI may have turned a blind eye to them
[JI], but these are sins of omission rather than
commission." Without the military's acquiescence, JI
would not have gained its foothold in Indonesia.
In addition to intensified sectarian strife,
Indonesia suffered repeated bombings during Wahid's
term. Many blasts preceded Suharto's scheduled court
appearances on corruption charges that were ultimately
dropped because of his alleged poor health. A September
2000 car bomb at the Jakarta Stock Exchange killed 15.
Arrests nabbed only minor figures, including two members
of the military's elite Kopassus commandos.
Scary Christmas On Christmas Eve 2000,
bombers targeted 38 churches and priests in 11 cities
across the archipelago, killing 19 people (including
some clumsy bombers) and wounding 120. ICG detailed JI
connections to the plot in a December 2002 report. ICG
also uncovered apparent links to armed forces in Medan,
North Sumatra, where local JI and TNI forces clashed
with separatist rebels from GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka,
or Free Aceh Movement) in neighboring Aceh. After
running though various possible explanations, ICG's
report concluded:
But it is hard to avoid the suspicion that
someone in the armed forces must have known that at
least the Medan part [of the Christmas Eve bombing
plot] was in the works ... ICG believes that if
operational structure of the Medan bombings can be
uncovered, the truth between the grenade attack on the
Malaysian Embassy of 27 August 2000 and the 13
September 2000 bombing of the Jakarta Stock Exchange -
both attributed to GAM - may come to
light.
GAM denied any role in those plots,
and there's been no conclusive investigation into those
cases. But ICG changed its tune. So did TNI.
After the Bali bombs killed 202, most of them
Western tourists, military leaders tried to stuff the
radical Islam genie back into the bottle. Within days,
Laksar Jihad announced it would withdraw its jihadis and
disband. Military transport ships conveniently arrived
to remove thousands of Islamic fighters from the
Malukus. Since the outsiders' withdrawal, religious
fighting still flares sporadically, but it's
short-lived, with casualties in the handfuls, not the
hundreds.
Before and during the US-led invasion
of Afghanistan in 2001, the US Embassy in Jakarta was
the site of large, violent protests. Radical Islamic
groups threatened to "sweep" Westerners out of the
country, and sound trucks rolled around expatriate
enclaves in Jakarta broadcasting these threats. Since
the Bali bombing, the US-led invasion of Iraq and
subsequent occupation there have been only a few quiet
protests and no public threats against Westerners. The
muted reaction doesn't reflect changes in public
opinion. A US government survey found that more than 60%
of Indonesians had a favorable view of the United States
in early 2002; a year later, protesters stayed home,
even though favorable responses had plummeted to 15%.
The change that really matters is that the
authorities no longer tolerate leaders of violent Muslim
fringe groups issuing threats and acting with impunity.
JI's alleged spiritual leader Abu Bakar Ba'asyir was
arrested just after the Bali bombing and has remained in
jail since.
The Bali tragedy wasn't all that
changed TNI's outlook. Wahid was impeached in July 2001.
Even though his successor Megawati Sukarnoputri was the
leading figure of reform, and her father, founding
president Sukarno, had been ousted and humiliated by
Suharto and the military, she proved a compliant and
cooperative figure for New Order holdovers. So the
military lost its motivation for destabilizing the
country.
The blast at Jakarta's Marriott Hotel
in August last year and the embassy bombing, two days
ahead of the third anniversary of the September 11,
2001, attacks and 11 days before the runoff to decide
July's presidential election, indicate that radical
Islamic forces in Indonesia have become strong enough to
withstand the loss of military tolerance and patronage.
There may be more coincidence than evidence
linking Indonesia's military to terrorists. But
sticklers for direct links should consider this:
approximately 300 deaths attributed to JI operations in
Indonesia are a tiny fraction of the civilian death toll
at the hands of TNI and its minions since 1999. Fighting
terrorism in Indonesia must begin with identifying the
real threat, instead of ignoring it or, worse, blindly
trying to renew aid to the military without insisting on
reforms.
Gary LaMoshi, a longtime
editor of investor rights advocate eRaider.com, has also
contributed to Slate and Salon.com. He has worked as a
broadcast producer and as a print writer and editor in
the United States and Asia. He moved to Hong Kong in
1995 and now splits his time between there and
Indonesia.
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