Australia-RI security: 'Learn the words'

Australia-RI security: 'Learn the words'

Rob Goodfellow, New South Wales, Australia

With elections pending in Australia and Indonesia, the bombing
of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta last week has placed
security at the top of respective national campaigns.
Unfortunately, an important opportunity may be lost as
politicians in both countries attempt to outbid each other over
who is tougher on the issue of security.

For example the leaders' debate between Liberal Prime Minister
John Howard and Labor Opposition leader Mark Latham, aired on
Australian national television on Sunday night, was dominated by
military and security responses to "the war on terror".

It must not be forgotten that any effective regional strategy
against terrorism must be comprehensive and include identifying
and removing individual terror cells, ideologically isolating
extremists from mainstream Indonesian Islam, and fostering closer
political, social, cultural, religious and educational
cooperation.

In addition to bolstering mutual police and intelligence
resources, it is vitally important that both Australia and
Indonesia strengthen the capacity to analyse the cultural,
societal and political contexts in which terrorists operate.

With Australia spending over $A500 million to fight regional
terrorism, there is a strong case for the Australian Government
to make an urgent strategic investment in Asian Studies along the
same lines as has been done so fruitfully with the Australian
Institute of Sport or AIS. The AIS produces elite athletes.

This is one key reason why Australia, despite its small
population of some 20 million, was able to dominate the recent
Olympic Games in Athens. What Australia needs are elite scholars,
men and woman trained to engage Indonesia at many levels -- not
just counter-terrorism. This especially includes the study of
Indonesian history, society and language.

Some of this work is being done within state bureaus such as
the Office of National Assessment (ONA), the Australian Security
Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Secret
Intelligence Service (ASIS), Indonesia's Badan Intelligen
National (BIN) and respective national Departments of Foreign
Affairs and Trade; however this level of knowledge-building must
also occur in independent think tanks and, more importantly, in
public universities. Indeed, without building up the capacity of
the latter, there will be too few experts trained and available
to staff government agencies.

Australia was caught off-guard by Jemaah Islamiyah, in part,
because there is too little scholarly expertise in Australia
about Islam in Southeast Asia and in Asia as a whole (an
extraordinary omission given that 60 percent of all Muslims are
Asians).

According to scholars such as Greg Barton, the author of the
newly released book, Indonesia's struggle: Jemaah Islamiyah and
the Soul of Islam, "hundreds of millions of dollars of 'eye in
the sky' hardware for covert surveillance and signals
interceptions is all but useless without human expertise such as
knowledge of Asian languages and cultures".

The extra investment in the Australian Federal Police's (AFP)
counter-terrorism capacity, in particular in the AFP's
cooperation with the Indonesian Police, is important and timely.
So too is the extra investment in ONA, ASIO, ASIS, and other
agencies. However, Australia will be missing an extraordinary
opportunity if it does not strategically invest in building
Australia's academic capacity to understand and interpret Asia.

It is not acceptable that only five percent of Australian
university students study any aspect of Asia and only three
percent an Asian language.

Two years ago, during Paul Keating's private visit to Jakarta,
a journalist asked the former Australian Prime Minister to
explain why it was that some Australian politicians had so much
difficulty managing the relationship with Indonesia. Keating's
intriguing response was that the Australian Government "could
whistle the tune but didn't know the words to the song". In other
words, Australia well-understood the strategic importance of our
neighbour -- we could appreciate similarity -- but were never
able to successfully manage the subtleties of difference and
disagreement.

Sudjadnan Parnohadiningrat, former Indonesian Ambassador to
Australia, once said at a function in Sydney, "it is important
that as neighbours in a troubled world we must look for every
opportunity to build processes that will survive changes in
government. These processes must involve a mature and measured
'behind the scenes' approach involving real people working
together".

At the same gathering, Sutjipto, General Secretary of the
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) surprisingly
remarked to me that "for Australia 'the wind blows from the
east'. Your destiny is in Asia. Indonesia is the key to your
success and security in the region. The best system for
maintaining order is one built on good relationships with one's
neighbouring country. If relationships are good then, of course,
the system of maintaining order will be sound".

This relationship is complex, but possible to successfully
manage, especially if Australia devotes even a small fraction of
current anti-terror resources to developing a deeper
understanding of Indonesian culture and society -- in particular
Islam. Post-Bali and Jakarta bombings, this developing
understanding would benefit enormously from a strategic
investment in Asian studies, such as the creation of an
Australian Asian Studies Institute along the lines of the AIS.
The question is, can either John Howard or Mark Latham move
beyond reactive military and security rhetoric, and support a
well-funded national commitment to Asian studies?

The writer is a Visiting Fellow at the University of
Wollongong.