U.S. war on terrorism may prove tragic for Aceh
U.S. war on terrorism may prove tragic for Aceh
Damien Kingsbury, Author of The Politics of Indonesia, Deakin
University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia
In a bid to build its coalition for a war against terrorism,
the United States has demonstrated that it is keen to have on
side the world's biggest Islamic nation, Indonesia. Support from
Indonesia, an ally of the U.S. from the late 1960s until
September 1999, was being sought by the U.S. in any case for its
coalition against China. But the new "terrorism" agenda has made
that support more urgent.
The main trade-off for Indonesia's support for the U.S. is
renewed military assistance to the Indonesian armed forces, the
TNI. Indonesia has been able to produce its own small arms and
buy some equipment elsewhere, but the TNI sorely needs mechanical
parts, especially for its aircraft, and new higher technology
equipment.
The pro-TNI government of President Megawati Soekarnoputri is
keen to assist in this war against terrorism. Yet two problems
arise. The first is that there is little enthusiasm within the
Indonesian government for limiting the activities of fanatics
operating under the banner, if not the values, of Islam.
That there is official tolerance for Islamic fanatics
searching hotel registers for U.S. citizens has been astounding.
And there was too little, too late in terms of official efforts
to curtail the activities of the Laskar Jihad in Maluku. And this
does not even begin to document the creation and maintenance of
several private and official militia groups who resemble nothing
so much as the fascist gangs of the European 1930s.
In most countries, such organizations would at least be the
focus of very careful official scrutiny, or banned under any one
of a range of laws against operating private armies. But
Indonesia's legal code remains notoriously weak, as does any
sense of commitment to an idea of consistent and impartial
justice.
This then raises questions about training and financial
support for such groups, and the smuggling of weapons to them
from abroad. Even an outsider with a passing interest in the
subject can see the linkages, and who are some of the key
players.
Old soldiers don't retire, they just go into a related line of
business. One wonders, then, why Indonesia's own police, or its
much vaunted "intelligence" services, cannot do the same, and act
on it.
So, if the Indonesian government can't act in these obvious
areas, what can it do for its bit on the U.S.-led war against
terrorism? More than anything else, the government would step up
its already high level of operations against the Free Aceh
Movement, or GAM) in Aceh. In justifying this, it would claim, as
it has done in the past, that GAM is an extremist Islamic
organization, and that it qualifies as a terrorist organization
through alleged involvement in bombings in Jakarta.
Yet such claims are plainly ridiculous. Official claims that
GAM was linked to any of the bombings in Jakarta have not been
based on demonstrable evidence and, in the case of supposed
association with fugitive Tommy Soeharto, are laughable. As one
GAM official recently told me: "We don't work with any Javanese."
He said that the idea of working with the young Soeharto was in
particular contemptuous.
Of course, GAM has conducted attacks against government
installations and personal in Aceh, and others it has believed
opposing them. That is, not surprisingly, because GAM is fighting
a war of secession.
Yet it is not an Islamic war. As a couple of GAM officials
separately pointed out, Christian Chinese and Bataks still live
comfortably within Aceh's predominantly formal Islamic society
without harassment, without having their homes or churches or
shops burned. By comparison, in recent times Christian churches
and homes had been burned in Java, and (usually Christian) ethnic
Chinese women systematically raped.
Both GAM officials said, in two separate interviews, that what
GAM wanted was not an Islamic state, but an independent state
based on justice and democracy. It would be Islamic, but not
exclusively so. The new state would also be a sultanate, but more
like Thailand's constitutional monarchy than, for example,
Brunei's absolutist monarchy. This then begs the meaning of
"terrorism".
About 6,000 automatic weapons were recently shipped by the TNI
to central Aceh, to further arm transmigrants there already
receiving training from the TNI's notorious special forces
(Kopassus). Kopassus trained and led the brutal militias of East
Timor. The Indonesian government would no doubt argue the
training and weapons are for self-defense. But to the Acehnese,
these ethnically Javanese militias are just a variation on the
thugs that were trained and armed by the TNI in East Timor.
Even the Indonesian government's attempts to "civilianize" the
Aceh conflict fail under scrutiny. There are supposedly fewer TNI
troops in Aceh now, although still more than 10,000. But it is
now public knowledge that when such claims were made in East
Timor they were fabrications.
The TNI continues to have a heavy presence all along the
highway from Banda Aceh to near the Aceh-North Sumatra border, as
do the burned homes, schools and shops. There are many
differences, but the comparisons with East Timor, prior to the
referendum in August 1999, are inevitable.
The national police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) also has a high
presence. Yet Brimob is hardly "civilianizing" the conflict. In
any other country, Brimob would be called the Civil Guard, or the
domestic army. I even saw a Brimob post north of the Lhokseumawe,
the troubled and violent town near the valuable Arun natural gas
field, designated as "Hunters". As one military lieutenant-
general told me in Jakarta, Brimob had "problems with
discipline".
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the people "hunted" and
killed by Brimob, and the TNI, are not GAM but civilians.
Officially more than 1,200 people have been killed this year.
Unofficially, including those who have "disappeared", the figure
is much higher, perhaps double. And this does not take into
account the persistent use of rape, torture and beatings to
attempt to compel compliance.
Aceh is less a discontented part of Indonesia and more, like
East Timor was, a territory under brutal military occupation.
That effectively all Brimob and TNI in Aceh are from elsewhere in
the archipelago confirms this impression of occupation.
The long-held and fiercely defended sense of a separate
Acehnese identity, which can be dated to 1873, has only been
strengthened by the "terror" inflicted by the TNI and Brimob.
And, it seems, apart from the offer of an internationally
supervized referendum on broad autonomy or independence, there is
no other offer that is acceptable in Aceh. This frustrates
Indonesia's "nationalists" enormously, and calls forth more of
the type of violence that in turn breeds a greater will for
independence.
But it seems that "nationalists" know of no other way, or can
conceive of Indonesia in anything other than its colonial Dutch-
created form, even though some of its constituents who did not
wish to be a part of that colonial form do not wish to be a part
of this one either.
Hence, when the U.S. offers military assistance to help fight
terrorism, in Indonesia it is likely not to be used against those
who might suitably qualify under the term, but against a movement
that is concerned with self-determination.
When the U.S. Congress banned military aid to Indonesia in
1999 it was because Indonesia needed to learn to resolve its
differences through means other than violence. Very clearly,
Indonesia is yet to learn how to do that.