US 'national security' favors
Indonesian thugs By Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali - The Bush administration's decision
to drop its arms embargo against Indonesia
and resume full military ties fits a pattern
of policy failures in East Asia. These failures
underscore profound ignorance not only of the
region but of where the US's true interests lie.
You'd think it impossible for US
policymakers to be so foolish and cavalier about a
key region, until you look at the mother of all
Bush failures, Iraq, and see that similar
ignorance and arrogance created that debacle.
Or maybe apparent mistakes in East Asia -
a nuclear North Korea, ascendant China,
remilitarizing Japan - aren't mistakes at
all,
but subtle and complex calculations that come
easily for people like Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney,
even if they're difficult for us to grasp.
The US made its decision to normalize ties
with Indonesia's armed forces last week, citing
its own "national security interests". The
statement specifically cited Indonesia's
self-evident strategic role in Southeast Asia as
the region's most populous country astride major
shipping lanes, and floated a fantasy that it is
"a voice of moderation in the Islamic world".
Moderation is waning in Indonesia (seeIndonesia's Islamists flex their
muscles, October 27) and, even within
Southeast Asia, Malaysia and tiny Brunei have
greater claims to Islamic leadership, except of
course in terms of Islamist-inspired terrorism.
You'd think that US national security
interest would revolve around strengthening
Indonesia's nascent democracy, which could in fact
make it a political example for the Islamic world,
and helping it fight terrorism internally, since
Indonesia has been a terrorist target more often
this century than any country that hasn't hosted a
US-led invasion. Those could be compelling
interests, possibly worth overlooking a few
hundred deaths that can't be stopped now. But
restoring military aid won't advance those goals;
instead, it's more likely to set them back.
'We deserve it' After meeting
with US President George W Bush at the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit a couple
of weeks back, Indonesia's President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono argued for resumption of
military ties saying, "We deserve it because we
have undergone a reform in our military, with an
emphasis on respecting human rights and
democracy."
Seven years after
the fall of president Suharto's New Order
regime, the reform scorecard is far more
complex. Tentara Nasional Indonesia (the armed forces,
TNI) has withdrawn from its formal role in politics by giving up its
reserved seats in the legislature. TNI also
renounced its dwi fungsi (dual function) of
preserving internal as well as external security.
It offered the flawed but heart-warming
declaration that its troops shouldn't vote, to show
absolute political neutrality. TNI also even has
gone along (so far) with the peace deal in
tsunami-ravaged Aceh.
But the armed forces are
still the country's most powerful institution -
Suharto's political ruling vehicle, the Golkar
party, ranks second - and remain largely beyond
civilian control. TNI still finances much of its
budget through business enterprises and is at the
root of much of the country's corruption, the
industry where Indonesia stands out globally.
Suharto-era heavies still dominate the military
ranks and politics, right up to former general
Yudhoyono.
The US suspended military sales
and exchanges with Indonesia in stages during the
1990s after mass killings in East Timor by
soldiers and military-sponsored militias. There
have been no meaningful convictions of military
figures for these or other atrocities linked to
TNI. The Bush administration may not mind
Indonesia's Abu Ghraib-style justice (Iraqi prison
where inmates were abused), where a few low-level
scapegoats take the blame. In fact, the US
military justice system may have learned from it.
Military personnel have carried on the New
Order tradition of political violence, from the
murder in 2001 of Papuan separatist leader Theys
Eluay to the in-flight poisoning of human rights
activist Munir Said Thalib in September 2004. The
Munir case is particularly instructive. (See Arresting decay in
Indonesia, Asia Times Online, July 7)
Like old times for New
Order Munir was a highly effective opponent
of the New Order and its tailings, especially the
military. A presidential investigative commission
linked his murder to the National Intelligence
Agency (BIN), then headed by General Abdullah
Makhmud Hendropriyono, a key Suharto henchman.
Investigators found BIN documents
proposing to rub out Munir by poisoning him on a
flight. Yet prosecutors only brought charges
against an off-duty pilot (with links to BIN) and
some flight attendants, refusing to take the case
beyond the plane's cabin to its masterminds.
You can read this failure to get to the
heart of the plot in various ways. At one extreme,
you could conclude that Yudhoyono is protecting
BIN, truer to his military uniform than democracy
or rule of law. The more likely answer is that
even a democratically elected president who's a
former general doesn't have the power to stand up
to this ruthless military cabal that targeted
Munir - not just to eliminate an enemy but to send
a message that it still operates with total
impunity.
If the US wants Indonesia to
become a strong democracy, the last thing it
should do is strengthen the hand of these dark
forces by turning on the arms spigot.
On
the terrorism front, the Indonesian police,
separated from TNI in one of the few meaningful
reforms since Suharto's fall, are the key. With
aid from the US (police were already exempt from
the embargo), Australia, Japan and others, the
police have compiled an impressive arrest record
against terrorism suspects. US-trained Detachment
88 carried out the November 9 raid that killed
master bomber Azahari bin Husin. Resuming military
ties won't help the police and could even hurt by
distracting US attention and/or Indonesian funds
from the police to TNI.
TNI has been
trying to horn in on anti-terrorism activities,
hoping to restore its neighborhood and village spy
networks that enforced political orthodoxy under
the New Order. Additional US funding may make it
easier for TNI to reestablish its internal
security role in anti-terrorism clothes. That's
not to say that TNI hasn't played a big role in
terrorism to date.
Pandora's box Indonesia's revival of violent Islamic
extremism traces directly to New Order loyalists,
working through and within TNI, to undermine the
reformist regime of Abdurrahman Wahid by stoking
sectarian clashes in Central Sulawesi and the
Malukus and perpetrating a string of religious and
secular bombings. (See Terrorism links in Indonesia point
to military, Asia Times Online, October
8, 2004)
Some experts dismiss this link
between the military and killing in the name of
Islam, drawing bright-line distinctions between
violent Muslim militias in Ambon or Poso and
Jemaah Islamiyah, the al-Qaeda-linked group blamed
for attacks on Western targets.
This
parsing may have some legitimacy for drawing the
family tree of violence or seeking research-grant
funding, but it misses two broader points. TNI's
funding and encouragement gave legitimacy and
clout to radical Islam that had been fully
discredited and driven out under Suharto. That
opening made jihad fashionable in Indonesia.
Fringe theorists try to connect the Bali attacks
to TNI, but it's more likely a case of the monster
it created rampaging out of control.
More
importantly, TNI clearly and virtually worked
openly to destabilize a legitimate president it
feared might undermine its power. In the wake of
these efforts, Wahid was impeached in 2001, and no
subsequent president has challenged TNI's
prerogatives or alumni. TNI has not reformed
appreciably, and it's not hard to imagine what
will happen if another reformer wins the
presidency or another courageous soul carries on
Munir's advocacy effectively. Does America really
want Indonesia to be a nominal democracy with
military thugs standing guard?
Wolf
prints? Actually, "nominal democracy with
military thugs standing guard" against excessively
corrupt and/or sectarian politicians has been the
history of America's longstanding Muslim allies,
Turkey and Pakistan. US policymakers may well see
that model as viable for Indonesia.
Paul
Wolfowitz, former Bush administration deputy
secretary of defense, was US ambassador to Jakarta
during the 1980s. When Wolfowitz wasn't at his
wheel spinning questionable intelligence on Iraq
into whole cloth about weapons of mass destruction
or cheering native-welcoming US liberators and
reconstruction paying for itself, he may well have
argued that only TNI has the strength to hold
together a diverse archipelago of 17,000 islands
across 5,000 kilometers.
In any case,
Wolfowitz couldn't help wax nostalgic about
simpler New Order times of economic growth and
political stability, without terrorist attacks,
Islamist sentiments and other threats to foreign
investors. Wolfowitz's protege, Rice, granted the
waiver to resume military ties last week over
Congress's objections.
It's easy to
understand that the Bush administration, measuring
by the standard of US national security, doesn't
see much benefit in freedom or democracy for
Indonesia and thinks of TNI as its only reliable
partner. So what if putting the US squarely back
in TNI's corner makes it easier for anti-American
forces to flourish? It's not as if the Bush
administration is trying to win any popularity
contests in Indonesia.
Gary
LaMoshi has worked as a broadcast producer and
print writer and editor in the US and Asia.
Longtime editor of investor rights advocate
eRaider.com, he's also a contributor to Slate and
Salon.com.
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