Revamping intelligence
Revamping intelligence
After a year of bewildering maneuvers and statements coming
from state officials, the government this week announced plans to
revamp the state intelligence services in order to obtain
accurate information and intelligence data. The news was
announced on Wednesday by Coordinating Minister for Political,
Social and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Susilo told reporters the present central intelligence agency,
the State Intelligence Coordinating Board (Bakin) would be given
the name of National Intelligence Agency (BIN). Separately,
Minister of Defense Mahfud M.D. said his office would also set up
an intelligence agency outside of both BIN and the Indonesian
Military Strategic Intelligence Agency (BAIS).
"With Bakin's reorganization, the government hopes to improve
the capacity of the state intelligence board because accurate
information and intelligence data are needed in making decisions
and policies," Susilo explained, adding that BIN would have
greater authority than Bakin, because the latter merely exercises
a coordinating function.
That the state's intelligence services are in need of
improvement, of that there is no doubt. In fact, what they need
is not merely an enhancement of their performance, but a full-
blown overhaul, most especially in the way they think and look at
problems deemed a threat to national security.
A well known assessment by state intelligence officials of the
New Order regime of former president Soeharto was that in future
decades, no threats to national security are expected to come
from without. Any threats to the state will come from inside the
country -- in other words, from segments of the Indonesian
population. Hence, the harsh treatment given to dissenting
citizens.
Hence, also the power and privileged status of intelligence
officers under the past regime. It was widely believed at that
time that favored candidates for important government posts were
adjutants of the President, officials of Bakin and officers of
the Army's Special Force (Kopassus) -- in that order.
That not much has changed during the last couple of years in
the way our state intelligence services look at the country's
problems is confirmed by the continuing unrest in Aceh, Maluku,
Irian Jaya and several other trouble spots in the archipelago. It
is clear that with their outmoded way of thinking they are
incapable of resolving those problems.
If further proof is needed, one only has to look at the absurd
actions and statements that have come from some of our highest
state officials -- remember for example the charge of Australian
spies operating in Atambua, or of the American threat of an
embargo, or the capture in Bandung of an alleged accomplice of
the bombing of the Jakarta Stock Exchange.
In all those instances one might almost think that the
government was made a victim of a conscious campaign of
disinformation. Clearly, this state of affairs cannot be allowed
to continue during the present era of reform. The culture of
intelligence activities has become so ingrained in Indonesian
society that it is now difficult to change. Every time violence
breaks out, Indonesians assume that some sinister mastermind must
be at work.
One last warning needs to be raised in this context: In
overhauling the intelligence services, it is of the utmost
importance that intelligence bodies such as the proposed BIN be
led by civilians. Indonesia neither needs nor wants to recreate
the kind of manipulative military intelligence bodies whose main
task appeared to be to engineer incidents to provide the
authorities with a pretext to clamp down on political dissent.