Do the right thing in Nigeria and Indonesia

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): On Feb. 29, in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, 18 men did a brave thing. At an emergency meeting between President Olusegun Obasanjo and the governors of the country's 36 states, the leaders of the Muslim-majority northern states promised to put all efforts to introduce Syariah (Islamic) law in their states on hold indefinitely.

"To restore normalcy and create confidence in the troubled polity," reported Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, "it was agreed that, as far as the Syariah issue is concerned, everyone will revert to the status quo ante."

The meeting came at the end of a week that saw hundreds of Nigerians killed in Muslim-Christian clashes over the issue, and raised the threat of a cataclysmic civil war in Africa's most populous country.

The clashes were not spontaneous. The Syariah agitation was sponsored by cynical men whose wealth and power are threatened by the country's new democracy, and who are therefore deliberately pushing the Syariah issue to destabilize Nigeria.

These ruthless men include many of the generals who have misruled and looted Nigeria for the past generation. They are almost all northern Muslims themselves, and in combination with their powerful civilian allies they can make things very hard for any politician who defies them.

It took much courage for the northern state governors to put the whole Syariah question on ice, knowing that they would feel the wrath of these men, and that extremists would accuse them of betraying Islam -- but they did it anyway.

On the same day, half a world away in East Timor, the leader of another giant but shaky new democracy was doing something equally brave. Abdurrahman Wahid, only four months in office as president of Indonesia's new democracy, ignored army displeasure and his own ill health to pay a visit to the island where the Indonesian army and its militia henchmen carried out appalling massacres only six months ago.

President Abdurrahman went to apologize to the East Timorese for the horrors that were inflicted on them after they voted four-to-one for independence in a United Nations-supervised referendum last August. It was the right thing to do -- but Abdurrahman would not have been able to go at all if he had not already faced down Gen. Wiranto.

Wiranto took over as commander of the Indonesian armed forces when the long-ruling dictator Soeharto was overthrown in 1998, and was widely seen to have the task of protecting the military's huge political clout and wide-ranging economic interests during the delicate transition to democracy. He was also widely seen to be the man ultimately responsible for organizing the abortive genocide (aborted only by international intervention) in East Timor last September.

When Abdurrahman took over soon afterwards as the first legitimately elected president, Gen. Wiranto demanded and got a key job in his cabinet as "coordinating minister for political and security affairs".

After a struggle, Abdurrahman managed to convince him that he must formally hand over his job as armed forces chief to someone else, but he remained a baleful presence in the government, a constant reminder that the generals who had prospered so mightily under Soeharto were determined to defend their interests.

Meanwhile, violent upheavals kept breaking out in various outlying parts of Indonesia. Needlessly aggressive army tactics re-ignited the war with fundamentalist Muslims seeking independence in Aceh. There were murderous Muslim-Christian clashes in South Maluku, and the army was strangely slow to intervene. Then came a reportedly anti-Christian pogrom in January in the tourist island of Lombok.

President Abdurrahman blamed most of it on a conspiracy to stop his government from implementing economic reforms that would hurt the vested interests he labeled "dark forces", but he didn't actually name the military. United States Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke was blunter, saying that "a huge struggle is continuing on all fronts between the forces of progress, the future-oriented democratic forces of President Wahid, and the Indonesian military."

Then in January came the 2,000-page report of the new government's Commission to Investigate Human Rights Violations in East Timor, which flatly accused Gen. Wiranto and some two hundred other generals, officials and militia leaders of responsibility for the slaughter in East Timor.

Abdurrahman demanded that Wiranto step down to face the charges, Wiranto refused, and there was a tense two-week stand- off while rumors flew of a coup.

But on Feb. 15, the leaders of the Indonesian armed forces rose above their sectional interests and put peace and democracy first. Armed forces commander Adm. Widodo A.S. announced that "I, together with the navy, army and air force chiefs of staff, believe that ... the President's decision is intended for the nation's interest .... We are all convinced that Wiranto with all his sincerity and big heart will accept the decision." So Wiranto quit, and Abdurrahman was free to go to East Timor.

Neither the Indonesian generals nor the Nigerian governors are blameless men: in both cases, some among them were heavily implicated in the corruption of the old regime. But faced with similar situations, in which the prime beneficiaries of the old regime were deliberately stirring up religious strife in vulnerable countries (Nigeria is 50-50 Muslim-Christian, Indonesia is 90-10) in order to destroy democracy, both groups made the right choice. All praise to (somewhat) honorable men.