Kopassus and biological warfare

In the middle of 1997 members of the Army's Special Force, the red berets, known locally as Kopassus, received Pentagon training in a course entitled Nuclear Chemical Biological. It is no idle question to ask to just what use this training, part of a wider program of illegal U.S. military assistance given in defiance of Congress, may have been put.

Kopassus, which has been implicated in a whole swathe of state terror actions, from disappearances of activists to Aceh and East Timor atrocities, is not just any unit of the Indonesian Military (TNI). It is the elite action squad, and in 1997 was under the leadership of the highly ambitious son-in-law of Soeharto, Prabowo Subianto, who has subsequently been drummed out of the service.

Why exactly Kopassus was interested in chemical-biological warfare (CBW) capability is a matter that can hardly be allowed to go away. Indeed, what its interests in the nuclear field were, when Indonesia has neither nuclear arms nor nuclear power to defend, are also worthy of our attention.

When states acquire CBW capability, in whatever degree, they broadly have in mind two uses for it: one offensive, the other defensive. If we leave aside for a moment the fact that chemical and biological (CB) agents used against an enemy may rebound on the attacker -- gases and spores, for example, returning on the wind -- we may reasonably ask just who Kopassus and the regime had in mind as potential targets.

In 1997 Indonesia had no external enemies, but it did have "internal" ones. Among the latter of course were the people of East Timor and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). Were they targets, potential or real, for CBW carried out by Kopassus under Prabowo Subianto?

A country sends its soldiers on a course designed to inform them about CBW. Then what?

In several known cases it develops them. Did Indonesia's military or a section thereof do so? It may be objected that even if Kopassus had the intent it would not have been able to disguise this completely from outside surveillance, but the difference between Indonesia and Iraq is that this country is not perceived by the international community as a belligerent. Whilst it may have received international opprobrium over East Timor, it has not gone to war against Western strategic interests. Its military arsenal is not under the minutest scrutiny.

If Kopassus were developing CB agents what would it concentrate on to avoid such scrutiny? Probably the biological element. Terence Taylor, a biological weapons expert from the London International Institute for Strategic Studies, says, "It is easier to hide a biological warfare program in civilian research and production facilities than either a nuclear or chemical one."

What then if Kopassus had decided to trim sails and focus on biological warfare agents? Prabowo's web of contacts includes his brother Hashim Djojohadikusomo, a man with an industrial plant under his control. Such a plant could theoretically be used to conceal such production. Equally, Kopassus camps, which exist outside all public purview, might disguise small-scale facilities.

Lastly, if there is or has been a secret CBW program run by Kopassus, we should point out that under the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention all "research, development, production, stockpiling or acquisition of biological and toxic weapons" is forbidden. Likewise "delivery systems designed for such weapons". The new Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in April 1997 around about the time Kopassus men were receiving the training mentioned above, forbids the production, acquisition and stockpiling of the chemical equivalents.

The Indonesian people surely have a right to know, even at this late hour, just why Kopassus was interested in Nuclear Chemical Biological and to what use this knowledge has been put. So, too, do the East Timorese.

DAVID JARDINE

Jakarta