1965 putsch remains a mystery<\/p>\n
Harry Bhaskara, The Jakarta Post, Berkeley, California<\/p>\n
Southeast Asia: A Testament; By George McT. Kahin;
\nPublisher Routledge Curzon (2003), 373pp<\/p>\n
Scholars often have to face awkward situations for their
\nindependent views. George Kahin is no exception. For 15 years the
\nnoted American scholar was barred from Indonesia by the New Order
\nmilitary government. Back home, he was banned from leaving
\nAmerica for five years on charges that he was a communist. The
\nreal reasons were that he was critical of pro-Dutch, U.S.
\nofficials posted in a new independent Indonesia and, regarding
\nthe ban on visiting Jakarta, because of his reservations over the
\nmilitary government's line that the communists were to blame in
\nthe 1965 coup d'etat.<\/p>\n
In the early 1950s the Indonesian Communist Party and U.S.
\ngovernment went as far as to share a common charge against Kahin,
\nsaying that he represented himself as an American agent in
\nIndonesia. Kahin showed how folly and personal grudges
\ncontributed to this confusion and, in the process, unveiled the
\nintricacies of Cold War politics. Fortunately, Kahin's friends,
\nwho shared his vision and principles, stood firmly beside him
\nthroughout all his difficult years.<\/p>\n
All this is laid bare in this fascinating book. A testament in
\nthe true sense of the word, it contains a lot of interesting
\nhistorical tidbits that would help readers better understand the
\ncontext of any given event. The book has been published
\nposthumously by his wife, Audrey, two years after his demise.<\/p>\n
The book not only captures the historical pinnacles of
\nIndonesia but also those of Vietnam and Cambodia, two countries
\nin which Kahin got more and more interested in the latter part of
\nhis life. Kahin had been critical of U.S. policies in those
\ncountries.<\/p>\n
Virtually all the notable events that occurred in the
\nfledgling Indonesia are touched upon, including the Madiun
\ncommunist rebellion, the Dutch military actions, the Republican
\ntroop attacks on Yogyakarta and the Renville and the Roem Royen
\nagreements. Kahin puts a human face on virtually the who's who in
\nIndonesia's history, a rare treat indeed, talking about
\ncrocodiles while hunting with Sukarno during the latter's exile
\nin Bangka island, and a glimpse of the late communist leader,
\nAmir Sjarifuddin, reading a bible on a ship's deck.<\/p>\n
Readers will find history an intimate subject as it unveils
\nitself in a way a diary does. The Madiun rebellion could not have
\noccurred if the U.S. had not reneged on the Renville agreement,
\nhe said. A UN official believed that the rationalization of the
\nmilitary under General Sudirman was another reason why the
\nrebellion took place. Civilian workers had been worried that they
\nwould lose their jobs once the military took over their jobs.<\/p>\n
Kahin was not only a scholar par excellence for his
\ndetermination always to recognize the power of knowledge, as the
\ndifficult political conditions of the time also drove him to
\nbecome a journalist and diplomat. The book speaks for itself --
\nhe answered those calls with flying colors.<\/p>\n
The reason for writing the book, Kahin said, was because he
\nfelt that significant events were often missing in today's
\nhistory books. Many were also incompatible with what he found in
\nAmerican and British archives, as well as with his direct
\nexperience in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n
\"All too much of significance, it seems to me, has been
\nconsciously or unconsciously swept under the carpet, or tailored
\nto fit in with perdurable and broadly accepted myths as to the
\npast roles of the American government,\" he says.<\/p>\n
On the CIA, he says, he had tried for more than 20 years
\nwithout success to find out whether the agency had been involved
\nin a number of assassination attempts on several foreign heads of
\nstate, including Indonesia's first president, Sukarno. This was
\nafter U.S. Senator Frank Church dropped his committee's
\ninvestigation into the allegations in 1975 under pressure from
\nHenry Kissinger and CIA director William Colby.<\/p>\n
\"The committee's staff in 1997 so fully stonewalled my efforts
\nthat I was unable even to get copies of the record of testimony I
\nmyself had given before the committee more than two decades
\nearlier (in 1973),\" Kahin says.<\/p>\n
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence continues to this
\nday but its mandate to investigate these charges was not
\nrestored.<\/p>\n
That experience illustrates well his decades of effort to find
\nout the true story behind the 1965 coup d'etat in Indonesia,
\nblamed on the communists.<\/p>\n
The government, under Soeharto, which ruled Indonesia from
\n1966 to 1998, never wanted the outside world to know the real
\nstory behind the 1965 putsch. It repeatedly promised to deliver
\npertinent documents Kahin had been asking for to facilitate a
\nfurther study on the coup. The Army's judge advocate general,
\nGen. I.J. Kanter, was initially upbeat on helping him but the
\ndocuments were never delivered. In November 1976 Soeharto sent a
\nmilitary delegation to Cornell that delivered 200 pounds of
\ndocuments but none was what Kahin had been asking for.<\/p>\n
Kahin devotes a three-page chapter to the Cornell paper,
\ndrafted by Kahin's graduate students soon after the putsch, and
\nbased on Indonesian newspapers available at Cornell University.
\nThe paper, intended for limited internal use by scholars,
\npromoted the belief that the coup was the result of a dispute
\nwithin the Army. It somehow leaked out and received instant fame
\nwithin Indonesia. Kahin had sought the pertinent documents from
\nthe Soeharto government in order to rectify the paper that he
\nsaid had been \"misquoted, doctored and misrepresented\" by other
\nparties.<\/p>\n
These two episodes may give rise to the dreaded question: How
\ncome then the U.S. and the Indonesian governments differed from
\neach other? At the same time, they showed that Kahin's response
\nto events swirling around him was based on humanistic principles,
\nhence his refusal to be swayed by either communist or imperialist
\nideology.<\/p>\n
With regard to pre-independence days, Kahin found the Dutch
\ngovernment's plan to grant independence to Indonesia to be
\ngenuine. He held Governor General Van Mook in high regard, saying
\nthat the latter had a genuine affection for the country. But seen
\nfrom today's perspective, Van Mook's comments on his government's
\nplan to establish a federal united states of Indonesia are
\ndisturbing because they strike a chord regarding every regime
\nchange that subsequently occurred in the country. Van Mook
\nalluded to the obstacles to a federalist state in an Aug. 2,
\n1948, interview with Kahin when he said that there were too many
\npeople in the Republic with \"vested interests in the present
\npolitical setup.\" He added, \"Those people knew that under a
\nDutch-sponsored federation they would have lost their arms and
\nthus their power.\"<\/p>\n
On a lighter side, Kahin recounted his first encounter with
\nJavanese mysticism when he drove his two, Western-trained
\nIndonesian friends and their wives from Cirebon to Bandung. He
\nwas puzzled by the dramatic silence from his usually talkative
\nfriends on the two-hour trip, only to discover the reason why
\nwhen they were close to Bandung.<\/p>\n
They said that they had been advised against the trip by their
\nspiritual guru as they might be attacked by antigovernment Darul
\nIslam troops on the way. To ward off any possible danger, they
\nhad been asked to concentrate intensely on the way to Bandung,
\nthus rendering themselves mute companions for Kahin.<\/p>\n
Kahin, who died in January 2000, also mentions his family
\nbackground to help readers understand his views better. He was
\nraised, he said, in a free-thinking family. To many Indonesians
\nhe was more than a true friend for his outstanding contributions
\nto the fledgling country. Kahin is best remembered for his
\ncontributions in setting up the Modern Indonesia project in
\nCornell, to date one of the largest centers for Indonesian
\nstudies in the world.<\/p>\n
Harry Bhaskara (bhaskara@uclink.berkeley.edu) is a visiting
\nscholar at the University of California, Berkeley.<\/p>",
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