|
|
|
|
US debates new links to Indonesian military
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Aside from improving Washington's image in South and Southeast
Asia, the administration of US President George W Bush is hoping to achieve
something more concrete from its aid efforts in the aftermath of the December
26 tsunami that killed more than 175,000 people along the coasts of the Indian
Ocean.
In particular, it is reviving its hope of normalizing military ties with
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, whose strategically located
archipelago, critical sea lanes and historic distrust of China have long made
it an ideal partner for containing Beijing.
Since early this month, US sailors have been working with the Indonesian armed
forces (TNI), as well as national and international humanitarian groups, to
rush relief supplies to the hundreds of thousands of people whose homes and
livelihoods were destroyed in Aceh province. Another 100,000 are believed to
have been killed by the tsunami.
The site of a long-running secession movement, Jakarta closed off Aceh to
foreigners 18 months ago as part of a major counter-insurgency campaign. But
the disaster is now seen as having created the possibility for a military
rapprochement between the Indonesian and US militaries, whose ties were cut
after the TNI and militias organized by it rampaged through East Timor in 1999.
Despite reports of serious human-rights abuses by the army in Aceh, the Bush
administration would clearly like to renew those ties, beginning with training
programs designed to restore the once-close personal and professional relations
between the two militaries.
"Cutting off contact with Indonesian officers only makes the problem worse,"
said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who served as US ambassador to
Jakarta in the 1980s, during a visit to Indonesia early this month. He stressed
that the advent of Indonesia's first directly elected president, retired
general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who received extensive US military training
himself, makes this a particularly opportune moment.
The feeling is clearly mutual, particularly within the Indonesian military.
However, divisions also exist between reformists, who want to make the
institution more professional, and more traditional elements, who see the
military as a means to gain political power and amass wealth.
Wolfowitz and his allies at the Pentagon depict Yudhoyono and his civilian
defense minister, Juwono Sudarsono, as reformists whose influence on the TNI
could be enhanced by the full restoration of relations.
"I think if we're interested in military reform here, and certainly this
Indonesian government is and our government is," Wolfowitz told reporters in
Jakarta on Sunday, "I think we need to possibly reconsider a bit where we are
at this point in history going forward."
But critics in the United States find the administration's new drive to restore
ties both somewhat unseemly, in light of the tsunami disaster, and very
premature.
In addition to reports that some TNI units have not only been lackadaisical
about getting relief supplies to those who need them, but may also be selling
some of the emergency food aid that has been rushed to the region, they point
to renewed efforts over the past two weeks by senior officers to reassert
control over foreigners in the province as evidence that the military cannot be
reformed as presently constituted. Rights activists here have also charged that
the TNI has withheld food and other relief from civilians suspected of
supporting the secessionist insurgency, the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).
Indeed, the government announced last week that soldiers must accompany all
international aid workers outside the capital, Banda Aceh, and Meulaboh, the
hardest-hit coastal city, to protect them from the rebels. This despite the
fact that GAM has guaranteed the security of all aid workers, including US and
other foreign troops, working in areas where the insurgency was active.
"The TNI is reverting to its usual behavior, partially reinstating recently
loosened restrictions on aid workers and journalists," said John Miller,
spokesperson for the East Timor Action Network (ETAN), which has strongly
opposed the restoration of military assistance to Indonesia for more than a
decade.
He also charged that the military had facilitated the entry into Aceh of
"Indonesian jihadists" - whom Miller identified as the Islamic Defenders Front
(FPI) and Laskar Mujahadin - under the guise of providing emergency relief, a
charge that is certain to make an impression on a Congress that proved
surprisingly resistant to Bush's efforts to get restrictions on US military
cooperation with the TNI lifted during the his first term.
Last week's declaration that all foreign troops should leave Indonesia by March
26 was also seen as inspired by the more conservative and nationalistic forces
in the TNI. Although the civilian government distanced itself from the
deadline, the move was taken even by right-wingers in the US Congress as
motivated by a still-powerful and resentful army that does not deserve renewed
US military aid and cooperation.
The TNI's performance in Aceh to date, according to Dan Lev, an Indonesia
expert at the University of Washington in Seattle, has been less than
impressive and demonstrates that Yudhoyono, Sudarsono, TNI commander, General
Endriartono Sutarto, who is also seen as a professional, "have a lot of work to
do in reconstructing both the Indonesian state and the TNI".
"On the ground," Lev said, "the US servicemen are doing what needs to be done,"
but Wolfowitz' and other US officials' public statements about renewing the
relationship at this time have been largely counter-productive in terms of
Indonesian public opinion.
"It signals to Indonesians that this was a political response as much as a
humanitarian one, and shows them that the American government is simply
opportunistic," Lev said. "Given the suspicion about American purposes, the
Bush administration really ought to shut up for a while."
As for restoring links with the TNI, Lev said Congress is right to insist on
the government first enacting thorough-going reforms, including drastically
reducing the size of the army, shedding its economic interests, and ridding it
of its territorial commands. Washington should also work harder for a political
settlement in Aceh where "the military's efforts to resolve a political problem
with military force just makes things worse", according to Lev.
There has been some evidence in recent weeks that the government has explored
the possibility of resuming negotiations with GAM that were broken off in 2003,
but the TNI is believed to oppose those efforts.
Congress first voted to restrict Indonesia from receiving International
Military Education and Training (IMET), a State Department-administered
program, in 1991, after a massacre of civilian demonstrators in East Timor by
Indonesian troops. Ties were severed altogether in September 1999.
Despite lobbying by the administration, Congress extended a ban last November
both on IMET and on certain kinds of military sales to Indonesia until a number
of human-rights conditions were met. In the early stages of the humanitarian
operations, the administration permitted the Indonesians to buy spare parts for
C-130 transport planes provided they were used exclusively for humanitarian
purposes.
Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has
opened new avenues to provide aid to the Indonesian military, mainly through
"anti-terrorist" assistance, joint naval exercises, and some military training
programs not under the State Department's control.
But some critics in the US mainstream media are now urging caution in going any
further than that.
"President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former general himself, needs to make
sure his generals understand that they are accountable to him as the
democratically elected leader and that the human needs of Aceh's people must be
Indonesia's most compelling concern," the New York Times said in an editorial
on Monday. "Until that change is internalized, there can be no dropping of
America's limits on military ties with Indonesia."
(Inter Press Service) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette Southeast Asian Sex News
|
|
|
