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.