Indonesian Cabinet risks commiting war crimes

Indonesian Cabinet risks commiting war crimes

Endy M. Bayuni, Deputy chief editor, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

At first glance, the government appears to have laid out a
carefully and well thought-out plan for its combined operations
in Aceh, which it will likely launch this week.

At least, that is the impression that government officials are
giving as they make preparations for the campaign that combines
humanitarian assistance, law enforcement, restoration of
government services, and security operations.

The government hopes that through these simultaneous
operations Aceh will soon return to the path of peace and order,
and prosperity, minus the separatist rebels with whom it has been
fighting these past 26 years.

This four-in-one operation is the government's answer to
resolving the Aceh problem, now that it has virtually abandoned
all negotiations with the Aceh Free Movement (GAM).

It is probably safe to assume that the Cessation of
Hostilities Agreement (COHA), brokered by the Geneva-based Henry
Dunant Centre (HDC) and signed by the government and GAM in
Geneva in December, is as good as dead.

The security campaign will be the cornerstone of this combined
operation, which will be launched once the government's ultimatum
for GAM to return to the negotiating table ends today (Monday).

The government's position regarding the campaign was made
clear by chief political and security minister Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono's favorite phrase last week: "The show must go on."

With up to 50,000 troops and police officers planned for what
the government terms a "security operation", the other three
campaigns would be peripheral, although they are not necessarily
less important.

But let's not kid ourselves. This is a war.

This will be Indonesia's biggest military deployment since
independence 58 years ago. The Indonesian Military (TNI) has
spared nothing for the campaign, deploying all the best units in
its possession.

The Army is sending its Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad)
and the Special Forces (Kopassus); The Navy is deploying its
Marines on the ground, as well as more than 10 of its warships to
patrol the waters around Aceh; the Air Force is sending its crack
Special Forces (Paskhas), and stationed a handful of its
airworthy jet fighters in Medan in neighboring North Sumatra. The
police are deploying its own elite forces, the Mobile Brigade.

The government is going all out in this military campaign.

The confidence Jakarta displays in launching the combined
operations reminds us of George W. Bush and his war in Iraq to
topple Saddam Hussein in March.

Jakarta's confidence is buoyed by little public opposition.
The peaceniks who took to the streets in their thousands to
oppose Bush's war in Iraq have been muted. Their deafening
silence is taken, certainly by the government, as approval of the
war plan.

The majority of the mainstream media in Jakarta seemed to have
bought the government's argument that war was inevitable, and
they are now busy preparing their journalists to become embedded
with the TNI to cover the war from the front line.

Opposition came from a handful of Aceh public figures who have
been in Jakarta this past week to lobby the government to change
its mind. But Jakarta's mindset is already so geared up for war
that President Megawati Soekarnoputri even refused to meet the
Aceh delegates who were crying out for peace and for Jakarta to
spare Aceh from another humanitarian calamity.

Nothing, it seems, will stop the government from going ahead
with its war plan, and judging by officials' smug attitudes,
nothing can go wrong with the plan.

The TNI certainly has a huge numerical superiority at almost
10 to 1, if we believe the claim that it is deploying 50,000
fully trained and armed troops to fight the 5,000 largely
untrained armed rebels. And its weaponry, not great even by Asian
standards, is still far superior to GAM's.

The government can also claim to have the support of the
people (though, no one had bothered to ask the Acehnese about
this war), and the political legitimacy.

Could anything really go wrong with this war game plan?

Certainly.

This war is being launched by a government operating on a
shoestring budget. Any war is financially costly, and there is a
big question mark over how the government intends to finance this
campaign if it drags on.

Those drawing an analogy with the U.S. military campaign in
Iraq forget that the TNI is facing a guerrilla war, not a
conventional war. The TNI's record in counter-insurgency
operations has been appalling, and raises the question as to why
this one should be successful.

With its poor track record, history is definitely not on the
TNI's side.

Earlier military campaigns in East Timor, Papua and Aceh,
particularly the one conducted between 1988 and 1998, ended up
driving more people to the opposing camp. The military ended up
being part of the problem, not the solution. In all these
previous campaigns the TNI's reputation was marred by the
atrocities its members committed against civilians.

For the Acehnese, the scars and trauma of the 10-year military
operations that ended in 1998 are still haunting them. Beginning
this week they will have to endure another military campaign, the
scale and extent of which no one can predict. This is hardly a
recipe to win their hearts and minds.

Not even the military is prepared to state what would be
considered as an acceptable figure for collateral damage in this
campaign, or how long this campaign will go on. Minister of
Social Services Bachtiar Chamsyah says the government is
preparing to deal with up to 200,000 additional refugees.

TNI's assurances that this war would be monitored by the media
to ensure that its soldiers did not commit atrocities against the
people as in the past was not all that convincing.

The media taking part are tightly selected, and they would
only be joining the logistic support units, and not put on the
front line to see the combat firsthand. From the experience of
the embedded American journalists in Iraq, we know that reporters
lose their impartiality and become patriotic when they get too
close to (or practically in bed with) the troops.

But even if by chance reporters or other monitors discovered
atrocities and reported them, what then? Can we count on being
able to hold the TNI accountable?

Accountability is one area for which the TNI has a notorious
reputation. When it already has a huge pile of unresolved cases
of TNI's lack of accountability (again largely in East Timor,
Papua and Aceh), then we can expect that any new report of
atrocities committed in Aceh would also be ignored.

But it matters not.

If this war is launched under the cover of a presidential
decree, as it is expected, then it is President Megawati and her
lieutenants in her Cabinet who will be made accountable for
anything that might go wrong with this military campaign. They
are the ones who will have to face the charges of war crimes if
things go horribly wrong in Aceh.