Military

DATE= 08/15/2002

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01174

TITLE=INDONESIA AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0037

CONTENT=

THEME=UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: Can Indonesia fight terror and safeguard human rights? Next, On The Line.

[Music]

Host: The United States is strengthening its ties with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Over the next two years, the U-S will give more than fifty million dollars to help Indonesia's security forces fight the war on terrorism. Three years ago, the United States restricted all military aid to Indonesia, after that nation's armed forces were implicated in human rights abuses in East Timor. But U-S Secretary of State Colin Powell said Now that "Indonesia has made a dramatic return to the process of democratization," the time is right for closer ties with the U-S. "If we are really going to prevail over [terrorism]," said Mr. Powell, "we have to do it in a way that respects human dignity and the rights of men and women."

Joining me to talk about Indonesia, and the war on terrorism, are Robert Barry, former Ambassador to Indonesia; Dana Dillon, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation; and Paul Marshall, senior fellow at Freedom House. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

Host: Robert Barry, what is this move towards democratization that Colin Powell is talking about?

Barry: Well, there have been a number of steps that have been taken since the fall of President Suharto. Most recently, for example, they have just instituted a system of direct voting for the presidency. This was just approved at a meeting of the parliament a few days ago.

Host: How had it been done before?

Barry: In the past, the president was elected by, basically, an unelected group of officials, the so-called 'council of peoples' that had about a five hundred members. They elected a president. Now the president will be on the ballot, and will be voted for directly. There are a number of other steps that have been taken. The parliament has essentially become much more important than it ever was in the past. The other day, they voted also against the institution of shari'a law in the country. So they maintained the system of secular law and order.

Host: Dana Dillon, one of the other elements was that there had been seats in parliament reserved for the military, and that is no longer the case. How important is that?

Dillon: It's a step in the right direction. Actually, the seats that the military had, had become less and less important, and more and more controversial, for the military. So they had become almost a burden. So at this point, as far as the military is concerned, I don't think it's a big loss. But it is a step in the right direction for democratization and the military, and for civilian control of the military.

Host: Paul Marshall, what had happened in East Timor three years ago that had caused the U-S to step back from its ties with the Indonesian military?

Marshall: East Timor was incorporated by Indonesia in the late nineteen-seventies, and the population there [in East Timor] did not want to become part of Indonesia. So there was always resistance to that. After the move towards democratization in Indonesia there was a push for a referendum in East Timor as to whether it would stay part of Indonesia, or leave. In that period, the Indonesian armed forces -- which had always been brutal in East Timor -- and militias carried out a campaign of intimidation and murder against people who wanted to push for a separation of East Timor. So, it was in response to this that the U-S cut off its ties with the Indonesian military.

Host: Robert Barry, have things changed significantly with the military in Indonesia since those abuses in East Timor?

Barry: The question of accountability is still a very important one, not only with the military, but in society as a whole. The justice system is simply noted for not holding people accountable for what they have done. That was certainly the case insofar as the military involvement in East Timor was concerned. But I would say the problem is considerably broader than that. Generally speaking, almost nobody is ever held accountable for anything. It used to be a society of complete impunity. The only exception to that, I am happy to say, is that Suharto's son 'Tommy' has been sentenced to fifteen years for his involvement in a murder case and seems to be destined to carry out the sentence.

Host: Now, does that reflect fundamental changes in Indonesia, or is that part of political activity?

Barry: It's going to be a long row ahead to reform the judiciary. They're underpaid. The story in Indonesia is, "well, you Americans pay your lawyers. We pay our judges. It's much cheaper." And there's a real effort to make this happen. I think its understood in Indonesia that establishing the rule of law is crucial. It's crucial for the military and it's crucial for the civilian side of the government as well.

Host: Paul Marshall, in establishing the rule of law, as Mr. Barry mentioned before, one of the recent actions by the parliament was to reject a call for moving to shari'a law in Indonesia. How important is that in establishing the rule of law in Indonesia?

Marshall: I think that's very important. It needs to be said that Indonesia has consistently rejected shari'a law. And it's only a minority that has ever called for it. But minorities can perform a lot of destruction. In the province of Aceh, in the north end of Sumatra, they have implemented a form of shari'a law. Some of the extremist Islamic groups in the eastern provinces, when they control an area, are doing that. It's spreading sporadically at a town and county level in Indonesia. So there's a sort of creeping, local 'sharia-ization' going on. The fact that, quite resoundingly, the parliament rejected this -- it didn't even come to a vote, because it was clear that it wasn't going to get anywhere -- is at least a beginning. It is a symbolic step of saying 'we wish to maintain a secular legal system that respects the traditions and the rights of all Indonesians. I think it's a very important step.

Host: Dana Dillon, did you want to jump in on that?

Dillon: No, no, I'll leave it. That's good.

Host: Well, let me ask you a little bit about the U-S military relations. U-S Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has recently said that "experience really does show that those officers who've had real contact with the U-S are much more open in their outlook, much more accepting of civilian control, much more supportive of democracy." [Wolfowitz is] making the argument there that U-S military ties with Indonesian military is likely to help reform it, to move that process of democratization along. Do you think Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz is correct about that?

Dillon: I have to say that the problem with that statement -- I've heard that quite frequently -- is that it's based on anecdotal evidence. There's never really been a study, a comprehensive study, made by anybody, that shows that the Indonesian military has been professionalized as a result of contact with the United States military. When they go to military school they learn a specific military skill, and that's just pretty much all they get out of it. They come from a very corrupt system, as pointed out by the [former] Ambassador [to Indonesia, Robert Barry], not just the judiciary but the military. The whole government, the way its funded, just encourages corruption. And when they leave that system, go to the United States for a few months, and then they go back, they're going back into the exact same system they came out of. So maybe the American [trained]] officers are better at speaking with Americans when they are talking to the American politicians, but are they actually less corrupt? I don't think so.

Host: Mr. Barry, what kind of control does the civilian government have over the military? What's the relationship like right now in Indonesia?

Barry: Well, of course there is nominal civilian control over the military, because the minister of defense and the coordinating minister for security affairs are civilians. But the army's always been a society unto itself. I think [Deputy Secretary of Defense] Paul Wolfowitz is right about what he said. Of course, he is a former ambassador to Indonesia himself, and so my experience was much the same as his. The people who had been exposed - and they are a very small minority, of course, in the Indonesian military -- are, in fact, for the most part, more open, more understanding, and more likely, in a given circumstance, to understand the level of external reaction to human rights violations, than those who haven't. We went through this whole thing, when I first went to Indonesia, in nineteen ninety-two. We had just cut off military assistance and training then. And during the remainder of the Bush administration, and later on, in the Clinton administration, we strived to get the program restarted. That happened with expanded military training, which concentrated on human rights. I think the worst of all possible worlds is to keep turning it off, and turning it on. Because then, you don't make any of the gains that you think you're going to make, because you don't have a long-term presence in the country.

Host: Paul Marshall?

Marshall: If I could just add on that. The key question is not so much whether the U-S should be engaged with the Indonesian military. The question is how. The two extremes we should avoid, if we just say "well, we're not going to deal with it," nothing much will change. If we are simply to ship weapons out there, so you have a better armed Indonesian military, all the problems will remain, and probably worse. But to have a program which is beginning -- partly now focusing on training civilians - but, in terms of training which involves human rights work and discipline. If we could have an engagement with the Indonesian military of that kind, I think that's helpful in the war on terrorism, and in terms of human rights. Usually, armies which violate human rights usually also are not very good armies. They lack discipline of both kinds. They're good at killing villagers. They're not good at fighting other people who can fight back. So, insofar as the United States can help discipline and professionalization in the Indonesian armed forces, it will help on both counts.

Host: Dana Dillon?

Dillon: I do want to jump in on that. That's a pretty consistent argument, that if you professionalize the military -- it's an argument that I used to make myself. Anybody that has any military service knows that if you are dealing with a professional military, and they are having human rights problems, it almost always has to do with the fact that there's a training problem. The problem is that the Indonesian military is not a professional military, because of the corruption that virtually dominates. It's more like a Mafia than it is a regular military, as we Americans think of a military. As a consequence, you can't tell, for example, that they shot somebody as a result of a training problem, or they shot somebody as a contract murder, like Theys [Hilo] Eluay, [president of the Papuan Presidium], who they just murdered last year. The way the Indonesian military is structured, that the problem is systemic to the Indonesian military has nothing to do with professionalization. And contact with the United States military, or training, will not make them more professional. We do need to maintain contact. We do need to maintain a relationship with them. But to put all our eggs in a basket, saying that we're going to able to influence them, that they're going to be better as a result of what we're doing, I think that's being very, very optimistic.

Host: Dana Dillon, you've written about how the Indonesian military is funded. How much of the budget of the Indonesian military actually comes from the government, and where does the rest of the budget come from?

Dillon: Only about twenty-five to thirty percent. The [exact] figures are impossible because nobody is allowed to audit the military budget. Each of the services has their own foundation, where they get their money from. These foundations operate all kinds of businesses -- legal and illegal businesses -- some of them involve poaching, smuggling, oil smuggling, all kinds of different things. Again, as I said, this encourages business activities among the soldiers. And the soldiers are grossly underpaid. I mean, an Indonesian general, I think, makes only about four hundred dollars a month, and an Indonesian enlisted man makes considerably less. They have to earn a living. They have to earn a living somehow, and almost always ends up being some sort of, you know, setting up a roadblock and stopping drivers coming through and shaking them down for money or something. There's always something going on with what they're doing. Again, training isn't going to pay the soldiers more money and isn't going to feed their families.

Host: Mr. Barry?

Barry: I'd just like to say that I don't really think we're putting all our eggs in this basket. I mean, this is part of an overall method of engaging with Indonesia, which still is a very strategic country in the world, still very friendly towards the United States. Because of its very large Muslim population, what happens there is very important in terms of the rest of the world. Talking to the military, training the military, is a very small part of this program. And none of that money is going to go to send arms to them. This is not an 'arms and equip' program. It's a training program.

Host: Does that mean that there won't be actual funds being sent to the Indonesian military, but rather that's money that will be spent by the U-S for training of Indonesian soldiers?

Barry: Yes, and it's not, of course, involved in any kind of equipment purchases or anything like that. It will all be closely controlled by the [U-S] Defense Department, and it will be put out as the opportunities arise to do things. So, no, its not going to re-make the Indonesian army overnight. You have to deal with some of these more serious root problems, such as the size and the pay, and where the money comes from as well. But its part of a general program of engagement, which I think is pretty important.

Host: Let's talk a little bit about the war on terrorism specifically. Paul Marshall, what has been Indonesia's role, to date, in the war on terrorism?

Marshall: Of the southeast Asian countries, which have been involved in this -- Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, to some degree, and Indonesia -- the American administration seems to have the most frustration with Indonesia. The complaint is that it has not acted quickly, it has not acted strongly, so that people believed, by the U-S, to have al-Qaida connections -- I use the word 'connections' because sometimes it can be quite vague what that is -- the Indonesians have said consistently, "well, we do not have evidence against them. We cannot act without that." Certainly, there is legitimacy to that. But the U-S response has been, "yes, but you don't seem to be doing very much to investigate these matters." So you have, within Indonesia itself, Islamic militias, which are not particularly tied to international terrorism, but engage in local terrorism. And they seem to act in Indonesia with impunity. On the island of Sulawesi on August the twelfth, two villages were destroyed, probably by Islamic militias. And the locals there said that the military disappeared two days before, and they came back about six hours afterwards. So here's another slight military problem: collusion with various bodies.

Host: But in Jakarta, the capital, the government there has been trying to put more troops into Sulawesi to try to stop that kind of violence.

[cross talk]

Marshall: Here there were three-thousand troops within the area around Poso [a town on the coastline of Sulawesi]. According to locals, across the board, they [the troops] were not around when these attacks took place. In terms of terrorism within Indonesia -- of extremist Islamic groups operating -- I would say that it's certainly true the Indonesian government has not acted expeditiously to control them, or to disarm them.

Host: Robert Barry, how does Indonesia's efforts in the war on terrorism compare with Malaysia, its neighbor?

Barry: Well, Mahathir [Mohamad], the president of Malaysia, was just in Bali at a meeting with Megawati [Sukarnoputri], the president of Indonesia. He came away from that meeting saying that he was now convinced that Indonesia was taking a much more assertive role to deal with terrorism. Because, of course, some of the terrorists who have been associated with al-Qaida have been both in Malaysia and Indonesia. I don't really think that this is a serious problem of infiltration of al-Qaida into Indonesia. I think it's individuals who have been going back and forth. It's true that president Megawati has been reluctant to take a very assertive posture on this, because when she came back after first meeting with President [George W.] Bush, early in the Bush administration, she was attacked for the things she had said there, about her support for the battle on terrorism. It is, as I say, a culture of impunity, often, and so it is not surprising that some of these people are treated cautiously as well.

Host: Dana Dillon, is Akbar Bashir one of the people that Paul Marshall refers to when he [Marshall] talks about people the U-S would like to see arrested. Who is Akbar Bashir, and what role is he in?

Dillon: Bashir is the head of an organization called Jemaah Islamiyah - or is alleged to be the head of Jemaah Islamiyah -- and Jemaah Islamiyah is an international terrorist organization with indirect links, I guess, a causal association, with al-Qaida. They have called for a pan-Islamic country in southeast Asia, going from Malaysia all the way to the Philippines. They are involved in international terrorism, they are involved in planning an attack on American interests in Singapore. It's quite a bad organization, to say the least. I agree with what the ambassador [Mr. Barry] said, that there is a problem with impunity. And it goes both sides, it goes whether you're a good guy or a bad guy. You get away with whatever you want to get away with. In fact, it's hard to tell who the good guys and the bad guys are. But also, the government of Indonesia is not that determined, even on an international scale. I mean, Megawati [president of Indonesia] may have said some things when she was here. I don't know that they were all that great, quite frankly, because she mostly talked about the Acehenese [Indonesians living in the special territory of Aceh] when she was here talking about terrorists. But she was the first, after President [George W.] Bush made the speech about the "axis of evil", the first national leader to go to North Korea. And following that, North Korea sent their second-in-command, the honorary president, to Indonesia. He [the North Korean honorary president] also visited Syria and Libya, two other states on the [U-S] State Department list of terrorists. I mean, she has -- her friends -- are terrorists, or sponsors of terrorists. The same with the [Indonesian] vice-president. This vice-president had dinner with a bunch of the most notorious terrorists in Indonesia, and then declared them free of terrorism. Indonesia is a strategically important county, but it is has not demonstrated a very clear anti-terrorist program.

Host: Mr. Barry, do you think that if there were solid evidence presented to the Indonesians that Akbar Bashir was linked to al-Qaida, involved in terrorist activities, that they would be willing to arrest him?

Barry: You'd have to demonstrate first that whatever he [Akbar Bashir] did was in violation of Indonesian law. And, as I say, getting somebody brought before a court and tried and convicted is, at best, a difficult thing to do, particularly if these people have some political following. But if we're talking about how the population of Indonesia views these things, you have to remember that the two largest Muslim organizations in Indonesia -- which, between them, have some fifty million members -- are completely against terrorism. They are the people who strongly opposed the introduction of shari'a law. And they have been notably among the most moderate forces in the Islamic world. So the broad sentiment in Indonesia is secular. I think that in dealing with these problems we have to avoid painting all of Indonesia as being a hotbed of terrorism and people who are sympathetic to terrorists, which I really don't think is the case.

Host: Real quick, because we only have a couple of seconds left. Do you think the war on terrorism has pushed towards secularism, or pushed towards more Muslim extremism in Indonesia?

Mr. Barry: I think the whole process of political reform and decentralization in the country is pushing towards secularism, and this is coincident with, not a direct result of, the war against terrorism.

Host: I'm afraid that's got to be the last word for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Robert Barry, former Ambassador to Indonesia; Dana Dillon, of the Heritage Foundation; and Paul Marshall of Freedom House. For On The Line, I'm Eric Felten.