Aboeprijadi Santoso

Aboeprijadi Santoso
Radio Nederlands
Amsterdam

On Dec. 1 and 4, the pro-independent movements in Papua (Irian
Jaya) and Aceh will celebrate their "independence day" possibly
with some dismay, as Jakarta will send 50 battalions of army and
police to the regions.

A prospect of a just solution for the two regions seems
farther away as intensified military operation is preferred over
a dialog. A peaceful dialog for Aceh has been abandoned since the
military campaign, Kolakops, commenced with the presidential
decree last April. Talks with the pro-independence Papuan
Presidium Council were halted even earlier as several of its
leaders, including the late Theys H. Elluay, were arrested last
year.

Two years ago, as the greater part of the Acehnese society
demanded a referendum, the Free Aceh Movement GAM on Dec. 4 went
public to celebrate its "independence" day amidst the post-
Soeharto pro-reform euphoria. Many locals, traumatized by the
repression in the 1990s, warned -- correctly as it turns out --
that things could drastically change.

Only the local militaries felt the post-Soeharto reform
frustrating. As the GAM capitalized on the demand to curb human
rights violations, one district commander blamed the
"indecisiveness of the new civilian leaders in Jakarta" and the
rights activists.

"We need a comprehensive operation (to defeat the rebels)
instead of half-hearted measures," said Col. Syarifuddin Tippe.
In a sense, he may be right as then president Abdurrahman Wahid's
policy of dialog and humanitarian pauses failed to produce a
tangible result, except the continuing war.

A year later, as the military top brass restored its standing,
the president, under strong pressure, issued the April decree.
The Army started a military campaign, putting Syarifudin's ideas
into practice, but laid the political responsibility at the
civilian leaders in Jakarta.

Yet this has resulted in worse outcomes. First, the GAM has
been put in defense both militarily (at least in Pidie regency)
and politically as GAM retreated from the public arena, lost its
grip in government agencies and its negotiators were arrested,
killed or went in hiding.

However, as the Army and GAM resorted to fierce battles, some
military elements secured the local resources, aggravating the
crisis around the Exxon oil and gas plant and elsewhere. Hence
Jakarta soldiers were accused -- so the local saying goes -- of
"arriving with M-16 (rifles), but returning home with 16 M-
(millions of rupiah)".

Second, with GAM's retreat from some areas, the trend of
refugees fleeing out of Aceh has significantly increased to some
40,000 people. The GAM, too, was guilty of human rights
violations, including the intimidation of the local press. But
reports clearly indicate that the new trend was the result of the
actions of the newly formed pro-Army militias in South and
Southeast Aceh -- the so-called Galaksi region.

Third, the casualties have dramatically increased and expanded
to the civilian sector, taking its toll among legislators,
intellectuals and human rights activists. At least 1,400 people
have been killed since April. The Army may have won the battles,
but the war could be at the expense of the remaining trust of the
Acehnese to the republic.

With the euphoria gone, in Irian Jaya, too, the military has
returned to the old security approach. The Papuan pro-independent
movement may lack a tough army like GAM, but it has built a
stronger legitimacy at home than GAM did in Aceh. Despite Irian
Jaya's complex topography and geopolitical ethnic map, the Papuan
Presidium has succeeded in socializing its cause -- "down to the
village level," a Jakarta document admits.

Indeed its unifying pan-Irian Jaya Congress in May 2000, the
first of its kind in history, which supported a peaceful strategy
toward independence, has been crucial for its course.

It was this congress that changed Jakarta's policy towards
Papua. As then president Abdurrahman's reconciliation gesture was
attacked, he had to retract his promises to attend the congress
and to allow the Morning Star flag to represent Papua.

"You should understand, Pak Theys, I was put under pressure
from all sides," the late Theys Eluay, recalling Abdurrahman's
words, told this writer last year.

In November last year, the Jayapura weekly Tifa Papua
published a memorandum signed by Ermaya Suradinata, then home
affairs director general of national unity. The document, which
resulted from the meeting his ministry held with the military and
intelligence community (Bakin, Bais, Kostrad and Kopassus) on
June 8, 2000, suggested that Jakarta should anticipate the
actions of the "conspirational groups" in Irian Jaya.

Abdurrahman's honeymoon with Papua, thus, ended as thousands
of Kostrad (elite force) and mobile brigade soldiers were dropped
in Jayapura to intimidate the celebration of Dec. 1, 2000
anniversary of Papua's "Declaration of Independence". This
approach was seen as contradictory to Jakarta's reformist claim.

Whether or not the Kopassus units were involved in the
assassination of Theys Eluay, the Papuan perception that they
were the killers, is politically crucial. In addition, the recent
revelations of two retired United Nations top officials -- one
was the former Undersecretary Gen. Chakravarthy Narasimhan --
that the 1969 plebiscite in West Irian was "a sham," could
strengthen the Papuan perception of the "illegitimacy" of
Jakarta's rule.

No one would wish to see Aceh and Papua becoming Indonesia's
war-torn Northern Srilanka or Northern Ireland. Yet unless
Jakarta brings its generals, who were responsible for atrocities
in Aceh and Irian Jaya to justice, and firmly controls its
soldiers, few would hope for a new dialog and reconciliation. The
language of violence may succeed only at the expense of the
relationship of the two peoples to the republic. Human values,
unfortunately, are not always compatible with the nation's
desire.

2. Taliban -- SLAUGHTER OF TALIBAN PRISONERS CAN'T BE IGNORED
2 x 32 48pt Bodoni

Slaughter of Talibans untolerable
despite their horrifiying deeds

By Jonathan Freedland in London =

THE CARAVAN of war wants to move on, but Afghanistan is not quite
ready to let go. The planners and politicians in Washington are
itching to look beyond Kabul, towards Baghdad or elsewhere, but
Afghanistan has not finished with them just yet. The country is
still losing and shedding blood, still making winners and losers
of the foreign powers who want to influence it and still raising
some dark and troubling questions - including some that reach
uncomfortably close to home.
Start with the obvious: the fighting is not over. For all the
temptation to "pocket" the Afghan triumph and move on to Phase
Two against Iraq, this victory is not complete. The Taliban
remain in control of their heartland in Kandahar. A thousand U.S.
marines have just arrived nearby, charged with finishing the
Taliban off - and meeting America's prime objective, the
elimination of Osama bin Laden.
So the south is where this epic revenge story will reach its
climax, as the Americans finally confront the foe they blame for
the great calamity of September 11. The last spasms of Taliban
defiance in the north have been snuffed out; officially, it's all
quiet on the northern front. But while Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif
have fallen, we cannot forget their names just yet.
For those places have witnessed scenes so brutal, they should not
be notched up as mere successes and filed away. In Mazar just
over a fortnight ago 520 Taliban fighters, most of them
Pakistanis, were either shot or crushed to death by Northern
Alliance tanks - not on a battlefield, but in a school. The
Taliban had been holed up in there as they mounted their last,
defiant stand. A week later the Red Cross were still pulling
bodies from the wreckage.
The Northern Alliance insist this was no massacre; they offered
the Taliban the chance to surrender and the Taliban refused. Of
course, no one feels much sympathy for Afghanistan's former
rulers, least of all for the foreign volunteers who tend to be
the movement's most zealous fighters. So no one wanted to look
too closely at how those 520 men met their deaths.
Nor did we allow ourselves to be too troubled by those TV
pictures of victorious Northern Alliance troops beating Taliban
prisoners with rifle butts before shooting them at point-blank
range. The liberators' happiness to perform this ritual in front
of witnesses and cameras might have given us pause, but mainly we
contented ourselves with a string of cliches: we always knew the
Taliban's opponents were not choir boys; Afghanistan is a tough
neighbourhood; war makes for unholy alliances; my enemy's enemy
is my friend.
But the latest events in Mazar cannot be soothed away nearly so
easily. The fall yesterday (Tuesday) of Qala-i-Jhangi, a 19th-
century fortress on the edge of town, will require more
explanation than that. For now the details of what happened there
are wreathed in that greatest of cliches - the fog of war - and
the British and American militaries may well want to keep it that
way.
The official version is that perhaps 800, mainly foreign, Taliban
fighters were brought there from Kunduz, to be held as prisoners
of war. Some of them resisted and launched a prison revolt,
eventually seizing weapons from the fort's armoury. The Northern
Alliance moved to quell the uprising with British and American
help, and in the process every last one of those Taliban fighters
was killed. Depending on how many prisoners were there in the
first place, the death toll could be anything from 400 to 800.
Once again, many will baulk at calling this a massacre because
the Taliban seemed to bring their fate upon themselves by
rebelling, thereby forfeiting their right to Geneva convention
protection as prisoners of war. But there are some awkward
questions. Was this a revolt of all the captives or just some,
and if it was the latter then why was it necessary to kill all of
them? Did the dozen or so British and American special forces
reportedly directing the entire operation, including the bombing
of the fort from the sky, want merely to quash the revolt, or
were they seizing the opportunity to do away with the hated
foreign Taliban, whom few want to keep alive as inconvenient
prisoners? What do we make of Time magazine's Alex Perry, on the
spot throughout the battle, who said, "The mission by the
Americans and Northern Alliance is to kill every single one of
them now?" How does that square with international law on PoWs?
At the very least, the events in Mazar both now and a fortnight
ago are a reminder of the perils of letting Afghanistan simply
slide, ping-pong style, from the brutish hands of the Taliban to
the Northern Alliance. The need for a broader-based government in
Kabul is urgent and the talks now underway in Bonn are an
essential start. But they won't be enough. The bloodbath of Qala-
i-Jhangi suggests the Afghans are not about to construct some
new, inclusive rainbow nation: the United Nations will have to be
on hand, effectively governing the country for a while to come.
If war in Afghanistan is still hot, so is great power politics.
The Washington hawks may be more interested in Iraq, but those
closer to Afghanistan are eyeing up the current spoils. Little
noticed throughout has been the role of perhaps the war's biggest
winner so far: Russia.
The arrival in Kabul on Monday of 12 Russian military cargo
planes confirmed Moscow's triumph: they have got in while Britain
remains frozen out. The Northern Alliance have welcomed their old
Russian sponsor, even as they show the cold shoulder to the 100
British soldiers shivering at Bagram airbase. Now Moscow has what
it wants and what it lost more than a decade ago: a compliant
friend in Kabul.
Better still, Moscow has won that prize without angering its
erstwhile rival in Washington. The US now speaks of Russia as a
close ally, with not only shared interests but shared values. In
return for siding with George Bush's war on terrorism, Vladimir
Putin has won a clutch of rewards. He has a free hand to crush
his own Muslim militants in Chechnya; an ever closer
relationship, including intelligence sharing, with Nato; a US
promise on nuclear arms reduction, and even the prospect of a
lucrative deal to sell Russian oil to an America anxious to wean
itself off the politically- unstable, Gulf variety. As if to
crown Putin's achievement, the Northern Alliance were kind enough
to time their seizure of Kabul to coincide with the president's
visit to Washington. Everything has gone Putin's way.
Britain cannot say the same. Tony Blair's bid for influence, in
the form of a 6,000-strong troop presence, was rebuffed by both
the US and the Northern Alliance. Blair's aid-and-rebuilding
agenda elicits only tepid American backing, suggesting that his
instant and full-throated support for Bush has not quite won the
clout he hoped for.
Pakistan is a loser, too, forced to watch as its Taliban friend
dies a slow death. Iran, an ally of the Northern Alliance, is a
winner. That's how it goes in Afghanistan, same as it always has
- the chessboard where, even now, the great powers play their
great games. COPYRIGHT: GUARDIAN NEWS SERVICE copyright 1901 The
Guardian, London
- END OF SECOND GUARDIAN CAST -

GetDPA 1.10 -- NOV 28, 2001 05:14:06