Kopassus and biological warfare

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