BY ALISON DELLIT
"It was under the military rule of Suharto that Indonesia experienced the only decades of stability that it has so far enjoyed. They were decades of corruption and suppression, but also of increasing prosperity and stability. There is the depressing possibility that this is as good as it will get for a country like Indonesia, that the Suharto period or at least the first 20 years of it may seem in retrospect to be the country's golden era."
These comments were made in an article titled "We must dance with the devil" written for the October 29 Australian by former Fraser government adviser Owen Harries, now a senior fellow at the Sydney-based Centre for Independent Studies. Harries' main point was that Australia should reinvigorate ties with the Indonesian armed forces (TNI), including its notorious Kopassus special forces.
Harries did not mention that the Suharto "golden age" was brought into being in 1965-66 through the slaughter of around a million members and supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party.
General Suharto held power until 1998 through brutal suppression of dissidents and independence movements in East Timor, West Papua and Aceh. Political censorship and fierce military attacks on protests were the norm.
Kopassus was a key part of Suharto's despotic regime. Many Kopassus officers were trained in Australia, and used the techniques they learned to torture and kill Indonesian critics of the Suharto regime. Since the mid-1990s, the Australian military has not had formal ties with Kopassus.
There is little to indicate that the TNI or Kopassus have changed their brutal ways. For example, according to an October 26 Washington Post article, Kopassus was found by both the FBI and West Papuan police chief Major-General I. Made Pastika to have been responsible for the killing of three workers, including two US citizens, at the Freeport mine in West Papua on August 31.
Then, a November 3 report in the Washington Post revealed that US intelligence information, collected separately to the FBI investigation, had shown that top TNI officers, including TNI commander Major-General Endriartono Sutarto, had discussed an attack on the mine, in order to discredit the Free Papua Movement (OPM).
The Post article also revealed that this information was collected by Australian intelligence, and passed on to the US government, by Canberra in mid-September. It was not made public. Nor has it deterred the Australian government from flagging the idea of a resumption of assistance to the TNI.
Addressing the ABC's Lateline on October 22, defence minister Robert Hill, in response to a question about joint operations between Australian SAS troops and Kopassus, said: "It's an issue that we have to again address, I believe. Kopassus has not had a good human rights record, but it is Indonesia's most effective response to terrorism".
Far from being an anti-terrorist force, the TNI is a sponsor of terrorist groups. According to a report released last December by the Belgian-based International Crisis Group, Jemaah Islamiyah was created by the head of Indonesia's military intelligence in the 1970s.
On October 23, a spokesperson for Indonesia's foreign affairs department, Marty Natalegawa, said Jakarta "would not accept the presence of foreign military on our soil".
Ignoring this statement, on November 7 Hill renewed calls for links to be made with Kopassus. He also said: "TNI is an important institution within Indonesia, it is an institution with which we can work constructively in our mutual interests."
On November 5, foreign minister Alexander Downer added his voice to Hill's in supporting stronger Australian links with the whole Indonesian military machine, including Kopassus.
A feature article published in the October 26 Sydney Morning Herald laid out the arguments for supporting the TNI.
"September 11 and Bali have forced us to commit even more to homeland defence and to global hotspots like Iraq. The prospect of dealing with an out-of-control Indonesia on top of all these problems is almost too frightening to contemplate...
"The immediate security priority [to control Islamic fanatics] may collide heavily with the need to nourish and protect Indonesia's fragile democratic reform in the interests of long-term stability. This is where 'gritting-the-teeth' comes in. Realpolitik is suddenly the main game."
According to the article, Australia has to avoid two "poles" in Indonesian politics, which exist at opposite sides of the spectrum: "Nationalist fervour and Islamic outrage on one side and a lapse back into authoritarianism on the other."
The article quoted Melbourne academic Damien Kingsbury arguing that resuming military ties with the TNI would not help "in the fight against terrorism". The TNI, Kingsbury added, "is an out-of-control organisation" and "supporting TNI in its current form" would undermine the process of democratisation of Indonesian society. Such qualifications, however, did not detract much from the article's general thrust.
All these arguments boil down to stating a couple of basic, and false, precepts all terrorism in the region comes from Muslim fanatics, and the only way to suppress Muslim fanatics is by supporting the region's repressive military establishments.
Others have been more cautious. Labor foreign affairs spokesperson Kevin Rudd told the ABC's Lateline program on November 5 that the ALP would oppose any ties between Kopassus and Australian SAS troops. Refusing to comment on broader links with the TNI, he reiterated only that the "most important collaboration" was with the Indonesian police forces.
Labor's position reflects unease among sections of Australia's ruling elite who believe that strengthening the military will be detrimental to Australian business in the region. It is also a recognition that most Australians are deeply opposed to strengthening the Indonesian military, at the expense of democracy and freedom in Indonesia, Aceh and West Papua.
Significant links already exist, however. Indonesian military personnel are trained in Australia, and Australian defence personnel are currently studying at Indonesian establishments.
According to Kingsbury, the United States is likely to follow Australia's lead if the Coalition pushes ahead with reinstating military ties. The ALP has indicated that it believes the US has a "more cautious" approach to Indonesian military ties.
Yet in a CNN interview on November 5, US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz said that the US needed "to do everything we can to bolster [Indonesian] democracy through economic assistance, through political support, and frankly, also through this admittedly controversial idea of rebuilding ties with the Indonesian military".
He continued: "We don't do that because we're under illusions that the Indonesian military is just a perfect institution with no problems. It has enormous problems. I would submit those problems have gotten a lot worse over the last 10 years, and I'm not sure I'm saying cause and effect, but over the last 10 years we have had a policy of isolating the Indonesian military. I wouldn't say it's been a stunning success in terms of promoting a better behaviour by the military, more disciplined behaviour by the military.
"Ironically, for many years Americans complained that the government of Indonesia was too authoritarian. We wanted to see democracy in Indonesia, which I devoutly wanted myself. Now we have democracy and some people are saying, 'Well, why are they so concerned about civil liberties? Why don't they just lock them all up and put them in jail?'"
Australian newspapers have also hosted a debate since the Bali bombings, about the best way to "influence" Indonesia. Many, led by the Australian's "editor at large" Paul Kelly, have argued that support for moderate Muslims, the "good guys", should be pursued even at the cost of ignoring human rights violations, but also at the cost of prominently supporting a war on Iraq.
Others, particularly Age editor-in-chief Gregory Hywood have argued that Australia's alliance with the US is worth more than maintaining good relations with Jakarta. In a November 8 Age article, Hywood wrote: "The US spends 4% of its GDP on defence while Australia barely spends 2%. That's a significant sacrifice by the US on our behalf... It has essentially funded open, tolerant and generous society, which we pride ourselves on being... You don't get half a century of powerful defence coverage if, when things get a bit complex, you plead for special dispensation."
This debate is not all it is cracked up to be. Both Kelly and Hywood agree that an invasion of Iraq is justified. The only difference is that Kelly would like to see such an invasion sanctioned by the UN and a "quiet" Australian involvement. Most importantly, both support a massive increase of war spending and a crackdown on civil liberties in Australia, the US and Indonesia. This might make the world a safer place for their newspapers' owners. It is unlikely, however, to make it safer for the rest of us.
From Green Left Weekly, November 13, 2002.
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