BIN performance comes under fire

BIN performance comes under fire

Yogita Tahilramani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

State Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief Abdullah Mahmud
Hendropriyono has had to bite his tongue for some time now,
particularly after his revelation last December that a training
camp run by a Muslim group linked to al-Qaeda had been found in
the Central Sulawesi town of Poso sparked controversy.

Members of the House of Representatives (DPR) demanded that he
withdraw his statement, for fear that it could provoke the anger
of hardline Muslim groups.

Poso had been hit by a sectarian conflict between Christians
and Muslims that began in late 1999. The clashes, in which at
least 2,000 people were killed, ended last month.

Investigations carried out in Spain into the al-Qaeda network
included reports that the group had trained 3,000 multinational
troops in camps in Indonesia, including Poso.

The government had earlier said that tardy and poor-quality
information gathered by its intelligence services had often
indirectly led to violent incidents in the country, including the
bombing of the Philippines Embassy in 2000, a series of bomb
attacks on Christmas Eve that year and the bombing of the Atrium
Plaza by a Malaysian national last year.

The underlying question that remains is whether BIN's silence
and denials on issues concerning terrorism reflect its ignorance
of intelligence matters or are a deliberate attempt on BIN's part
to withhold information from the president and other security
institutions.

Existing regulations dictate that BIN answers directly to the
president. Johannes Kristiadi of the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) said that BIN could have its own
reasons for not revealing information on terrorism.

"The matter is too sensitive. BIN may have its doubts about
whether such information should be revealed or not. Sometimes
such (terrorist) information when revealed can aggravate Muslim
groups or militias here... and their backers or funders. Worse,
the information may turn out to be inaccurate," Kristiadi told
The Jakarta Post.

Hendropriyono has repeatedly said that the government is doing
its best on the war against terrorism, while the Indonesian
Military (TNI) Chief Adm. Widodo AS has said that the TNI would
be taking serious precautions against the possibility of
Indonesia becoming a hotbed of terrorists.

Indria Samego of the National Institute of Sciences (LIPI)
said that another problem faced by Indonesia's intelligence
service was that it still linked terrorism to domestic separatist
rebels, and was skilled only in matters of domestic surveillance.

"They are not fully equipped with the technology to conduct
surveillance at the international level," Indria told the Post on
Sunday. "Our intelligence forces are not trained to deal with
international terrorism threats. They still fuss over domestic
threats."

This weakness is unacceptable according to Kristiadi, who said
that the nation's intelligence gathering skills had gradually
strengthened since BIN had been incorporated at all bureaucratic
levels after the end of the New Order regime.

The skills and strength of the Indonesian intelligence service
had grown, he said, with the gathering of intelligence carried
out at all levels, and supervised by a number of bodies with
overlapping jurisdiction.

The bodies included BIN (formerly the State Intelligence
Coordinating Body (Bakin), the military unit in charge of
internal security, the military intelligence agency (Bais), the
National Police Intelligence, and the Deputy Attorney General for
intelligence.

"With all of that... can one really believe that our
intelligence forces will not know if, for instance, international
terrorists are training in camps in Indonesia?" Kristiadi said.

The appointment of Hendropriyono itself has drawn criticism
due to his alleged role in human rights violations in Lampung in
1989, when he was the military commander there. Some 200 people
in Talangsari reportedly died in the incident.

President Megawati Soekarnoputri has reportedly done much to
accommodate the military, which includes the recruitment of
Hendropriyono.

Unlike in the past, the BIN chief is a ministerial level post
in Megawati's administration and functions as the leading
institution for all intelligence bodies including Bais, Navy and
Air Force intelligence, and the National Police.

A 1967 Military Academy graduate, Hendropriyono spent 20 years
in the Army's Special Forces (Kopassus) before taking up
intelligence work, including with the Jakarta Military Command
and Bais.