15 - 21 November 2001
Issue No.560
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 15 - 21 November 2001 Issue No.560 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
The US, Indonesia and terror
Threatened by the "terrorist organisation" label, the Aceh independence movement is bracing for increased repression, writes Damien Kingsbury in Aceh
In a bid to build a wide coalition for its war against terrorism, the United States has demonstrated that it is keen to have Indonesia, the world's most populous Islamic nation, on its side. Indonesia, an ally of the United States from the late 1960s until September 1999, was already being courted by the US for its coalition against China, but the new anti- terrorism agenda has made Indonesian support all the more urgent.
The main trade-off for Indonesia climbing on board with the US is renewed military assistance to the Indonesian armed forces, the TNI. Indonesia has been able to produce its own small arms and buy some military equipment elsewhere, but the TNI sorely needs mechanical parts, especially for its aircraft, and new, more advanced equipment. The pro-TNI government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri has indicated that it is keen to assist in the war against terrorism, but two problems arise. The first is that there is scant enthusiasm within the Indonesian establishment for limiting the activities of fanatics operating under the banner, if not the values, of Islam.
That there has been official tolerance of Islamist extremists searching hotel registers for US citizens is astounding. Equally, there has been too little, too late, in terms of official efforts to curtail the activities of the militant Islamist group Laskar Jihad in the Maluku islands. And this does not even begin to document the creation and maintenance of several private and official militia groups that resemble nothing so much as the Fascist gangs of the European 1930s.
In most countries, such organisations would at least be the focus of very careful official scrutiny, or be banned under any one of a range of laws against operating private armies. But Indonesia's legal code remains notoriously weak, as does any sense of commitment to an idea of consistent and impartial justice.
This then raises questions about training and financial support for such dubious groups, and the smuggling of weapons to them from abroad. Even an outsider with a passing interest in the subject can see the linkages, and identify some of the key players. Old soldiers do not retire, they just go into a related line of business.
One wonders, then, why Indonesia's own police, or its much vaunted "intelligence" services, cannot make the same logical connections and act on them. If the Indonesian government cannot act in such obvious areas, what can it do for its bit in the US-led war against terrorism? More than anything else, the government would step up its already high level of operations against the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement, or GAM) in Aceh. To justify a harsher clampdown, the Indonesian leadership would claim, as it has done in the past, that GAM is an extremist Islamic organisation, characterising the group as a terrorist organisation by way of alleged involvement in bombings in Jakarta.
Yet such claims are plainly ridiculous. Official claims that GAM was linked to any of the bombings in Jakarta have not been based on demonstrable evidence. Further claims of GAM's supposed association with Tommy Suharto, the fugitive son of former dictator Suharto, are simply laughable. As one GAM official recently told Al-Ahram Weekly: "We do not work with any Javanese." He said that the idea of working with the young Suharto, in particular, was contemptuous.
Of course, GAM has conducted attacks against government installations and personnel in Aceh, as well as against those believed to oppose the movement. This is not surprising given that GAM is waging a war of secession. Whatever may be thought of Aceh's long struggle for independence, it is not an Islamic war. As a couple of GAM officials separately pointed out, Christian Chinese and Bataks still live comfortably within Aceh's predominantly formal Islamic society without harassment, without having their homes, businesses or places of worship burned. By comparison, in recent times, Christian churches and homes have been targeted and burned in Java. Ethnic Chinese women, usually Christian, have been systematically raped.
In separate interviews, both GAM officials told the Weekly that what GAM wants is not an Islamic state, but an independent state, based on justice and democracy. It would be Islamic, but not exclusively so. The new state envisioned would be a sultanate along the lines of Thailand's constitutional monarchy, rather than, say, Brunei's absolutist monarchy.
This stated goal begs the meaning of terrorism. About 6,000 automatic weapons were recently shipped by the TNI to central Aceh, to further arm transmigrants there already receiving training from the TNI's notorious Kopassus (special forces). Kopassus trained and led the brutal militias that devastated the province of East Timor after its vote for independence. The Indonesian government would no doubt argue that training and weapons in Aceh are for self- defence, but to the Acehnese, these ethnically Javanese militias are just a variation on the thugs that were trained and armed by the TNI in East Timor.
Even the Indonesian government's attempts to "civilianise" the Aceh conflict fail under scrutiny. There are supposedly fewer TNI troops in Aceh now, although there are still more than 10,000. It is now public knowledge, however, that when such claims were made in East Timor, they were fabrications. The TNI continues to have a heavy presence all along the highway from Banda Aceh to near the Aceh-North Sumatra border. The burned homes, schools and shops mark the way. There are many differences, but the comparisons with East Timor, prior to the referendum in August 1999, are inevitable.
The national police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) also has a high presence. Yet Brimob is hardly "civilianising" the conflict. In any other country, Brimob would be called the Civil Guard, or the domestic army. I even saw a Brimob post north of the Lhokseumawe, the troubled and violent town near the valuable Arun natural gas field, designated as "Hunters." As one TNI lieutenant- general told the Weekly in Jakarta, Brimob had "problems with discipline."
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the people "hunted" and killed by Brimob, and the TNI, are not GAM militants, but civilians. Officially, more than 1,200 people have been killed this year. Unofficially, including those who have "disappeared," the figure is much higher, perhaps double. This does not take into account the persistent use of rape, torture and beatings to compel compliance.
Aceh is less a discontented part of Indonesia and more, like East Timor was, a territory under brutal military occupation. That effectively all Brimob and TNI in Aceh are from elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago confirms this impression of occupation.
The long-held and fiercely defended sense of a separate Acehnese identity, which can be dated to 1873, has only been strengthened by the terror inflicted by the TNI and Brimob. And, it seems, apart from an offer of an internationally supervised referendum on broad autonomy or independence, there is no other offer that is acceptable in Aceh. This frustrates Indonesia's nationalists enormously, and calls forth more of the type of violence that, in turn, breeds a greater will for independence. But it seems that nationalists cannot conceive of Indonesia in any form other than the one drawn by the Dutch -- even though some of the former colony's constituents who did not wish to be part of that form do not want to be part of this one either.
In Indonesia, when the US offers military assistance to help fight terrorism, the weapons and training supplied are not likely to be used against those who might suitably qualify under the term "terrorism," but against a movement that is concerned with self- determination.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page