A model by default from Lebanon

By Chibli Mallat

BEIRUT, Lebanon (JP): Every other day brings in news of another massacre in Indonesia, the latest being the killings in the province of Aceh. In Lebanon, this sounds all too familiar, as it does in the Balkans, Central Africa, or Ireland, at different rhythms and on a different scale.

What do Lebanon and Indonesia have in common? The answer is precisely this: fissiparous and violent trends in society, which make countries implode. This may be accompanied by foreign interventions involving neighboring or far-away powers which either fan the flames by siding with a given minority, or find their "peacekeeping" troops at war in the midst of chaos, another word for the all too current trend of Lebanonization.

There are significant differences between the situation in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990, and that of Indonesia after the demise of the Soeharto dictatorship. The most important, however, is historical.

Indonesia offers today the prodromes of what Lebanon was in the mid 1970s: immense economic and social disparity, uncontrolled political change, collapse of the rule of law, militias taking over from the state, and the judiciary undermined by inefficiency and the corruption of the executive branch.

This is why these significant differences offers opportunity for Lebanon to "export" the lesson drawn from its harsh experience. This lesson may forestall Indonesia's descent into mayhem, as advocated by Omar Halim in a thoughtful piece in this newspaper of May 30 2000 ("Avoid copying Lebanon's mistakes").

This descent seems inevitable in face of the looming horrors, the country's dislocation along ethnic and sectarian lines, and the flight of the educated elite and of international and local investment, followed by a decade or so later by a slow licking of the wounds and the painful piecing together of the puzzle.

The scales, naturally, are different. The Indonesian archipelago consists of over 7,000 islands, some with unparalleled density. Denys Lombard, the author of Le Carrefour Javanais (Paris 1990), underlines at the outset of his three- volume masterpiece the country's geographical importance.

The archipelago stretches over a surface equivalent to the whole of Europe, from Iceland to Turkey. In addition, Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation, with over 220 million inhabitants, including dozens of ethnicities, religions, and languages.

These characteristics mean that civil conflict is a constant danger, and requires a high degree of statesmanship to avoid, as could be observed in the repeated Dayak insurrection in Kalimantan against the Madurese last month, and simmering Acehnese separatism which resulted in the continuing killings.

So what can Lebanon offer as a model, if by default?

First, how does one support the moderate middle ground of Indonesia against the warring extremes who find themselves, by the sheer spiral of ethnic and sectarian violence, courted and "respected?"

Secondly, how does one draw the line between legitimate socio- economic and political grievances, for instance the indigenous Dayaks who slowly found themselves marginalized and bereft of their livelihood by "immigrants" from other islands, and who respond with ethnic cleansing?

Or the Acehnese, who offered a little known but unique Muslim tradition, underlined over 100 years ago by the great Dutch Orientalist Snouck-Hurgronje, against Javanese who are accused of taking away their oil and squeeze Acehnese natural resources while ignoring their representation and their region's unique Islamic legacy of jurisprudence?

Thirdly, how does one avoid the misuse of the army, which is tagged as "a factor of stability," at a time when any army should be kept away from assuming law and order because its role is to defend the frontiers of the nation, and not get involved in ethnic problems which its structure and mission are incapable of confronting?

There are naturally, no copycat answers. Nor did Lebanon find a definitive solution to any of these questions. It did, however, provide a useful beginning.

Lesson one would be the strengthening of the moderates. How does one support and vindicate the "Raymond Eddis" of Indonesia? To date, Lebanon has failed to acknowledge formally that the one national hero who was right throughout the civil war was Raymond Eddi, who died in exile in Paris last year.

The fact that the most honest politician of the land remained outside the country to his death will remain as the ultimate mark of the failure of Lebanese politics to date. Indonesia must cherish preserve and strengthen its honest, moderate, non-violent Raymond Eddis.

Who are they, nationally and locally, and how is it possible to make sure that the present rifts between the president, the vice-president and the speaker remain at a level which does not threaten the unity of the country?

Lesson two is to recognize the local and national problems, and respond with formulas of autonomy and/or federalism, economic and political, that involve the locals seriously and engage them in their own affairs.

The gaping wound of south Lebanon over the 20th century has still not been resolved, but the problem is at least recognized. It is the misery of the South which made it prone in the 1960s and 70s to become a festering wound for guerrilla wars, directed towards Israel first, and then inwards.

And despite the withdrawal of Israel from the Occupied South in May 2000, the region remains a worrying source for the stability of the whole of Lebanon. Only a determined action at state level, by reviving the region economically, and establishing the rule of Lebanese law all the way to the borders, will prevent the South from threatening the stability and welfare of the country as a whole. In the same way, Indonesia must prevent its regions from becoming Lebanese Souths.

Lesson three is that the strengthening of law and order cannot operate by way of the army, and that the rule of law should be assumed first by a competent and effective judiciary, which must be made to oversee the police and the use of legitimate force.

Nor is this problem, despite the precedents of the Ahdab coup of March 1976 and the Feb. 6, 1984 collapse, both instances in which the army split asunder because of its ethnic composition, recognized enough in Lebanon.

The army is not the solution in Indonesia, unless it comes to support judicial mechanisms which are grounded in the basics of the rule of law. This is arguably the most difficult dimension in view of the continuing unrest. Accordingly, whether in Lebanon or in Indonesia, some parameters are needed: the army needs to be more professional, this means that the control of the civil authorities must be paramount, especially the judiciary.

The army needs to be trained "judicially", and a crash program at an institute like the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies under the Department of Defense in the United States, or even human rights organizations, would give the right signal.

It might also be useful to consider limited international support for law and order, to prevent the need of a later massive intervention to prevent mass ethnic genocide. The United Nations, or friendly governments like America's, might be helpful in this regard.

It is unfortunate that the Indonesian minister of foreign affairs, who had been scheduled to be in Beirut last month, chose at the last moment to change his plans. In addition to a welcome support from a great Eastern nation to our struggling state, we could have started reflecting in common on how "Lebanonization" can be avoided for Indonesia, and whether that frightful commonality can be "sold" or marketed intellectually to the many countries going down the mayhem path, from Indonesia to Rwanda. For sooner or later, with the rise of the massacres, the international community will be called upon to do something in Indonesia.

It is up to the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, the U.S. deputy secretary of defense and former ambassador to Indonesia who wrote an opinion piece last year in the Wall Street Journal, to chart the course of the international response, rather than the powerless Lebanese.

But an "anti-Lebanonization package" is needed for Indonesia, which would save millions of lives.

Then of course, Lebanon must learn Indonesian lessons in reverse, especially since the shadows of Lebanon's own history still loom large over its future, from the rise of extremism, to justified grievances of minorities and communities, to the misuse of the army.

The writer, a professor who chairs European Law at Universite Saint Joseph, is a lawyer at the Indonesian Embassy in Beirut. His award-winning book, The Renewal of Islamic Law (Cambridge 1993) was recently translated into Indonesian. The above views are personal.