By Richard C. Paddock, Binjai – It was the kind of rescue the Indonesian army was trained to carry out. Hundreds of soldiers from the 100th Airborne Battalion, wearing war paint and armed with bazookas, grenade launchers, mortars, tanks and a mobile antiaircraft gun, attacked in the dead of night.
Their targets were two police stations. Their mission was to rescue a friend named Marwan who had been arrested for allegedly selling the drug Ecstasy. The battle was one-sided. The soldiers killed seven police officers and two civilians and wounded 37 officers. One station was destroyed and the other heavily damaged. A soldier died in the fighting.
The army freed Marwan and 60 other prisoners, including accused murderers, rapists and thieves. None has been recaptured. "How can the military attack a police station?" asked a 28-year-old police sergeant who was hit in the leg by shrapnel during the attack. "I don't understand. It was brutal. It was coldblooded."
The September 29 attack highlights the lawlessness that has plagued Indonesia since 1998, when the military dictatorship of President Suharto collapsed. Despite Indonesians' desire for democracy, disorder has reigned. With three presidents in four years, the country of 231 million people has suffered from chronic corruption, feeble leadership and ineffective law enforcement.
The military, still the most powerful institution, finances most of its activities through a business empire that operates inside and outside the law. Its enterprises include hotels, oil refineries and insurance. They also include drug dealing, gambling, prostitution and illegal logging, says former Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono. The police, independent of the military only in recent years, are widely perceived to be as corrupt as the army.
Across the sprawling archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, economic crime is rampant. Indonesia's borders are poorly protected and its seas suffer the highest rate of piracy in the world, according to a report in October by the International Chamber of Commerce. Illegal logging is so widespread that the country's once-vast rain forests will vanish in five to seven years, says Environment Minister Nabiel Makarim.
In the courts, justice is for sale. More than 90% of the country's judges and police officers are on the take and graft reaches to the highest levels of government, according to a federal anti-corruption commission that monitors officials' assets. In a recent worldwide survey by the advocacy group Transparency International, only five countries ranked as more corrupt than Indonesia.
The nation's lawlessness has created an ideal climate for terrorists. Western officials believe that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network is well established in Indonesia and has used the country as a base to launch terror attacks in the region, including the October 12 nightclub bombings in Bali that killed 191 people.
"With the deadly rivalry between the army and police and the level of corruption in both, you simply can't trust anybody in the security forces to be what they say they are or to do what they say they're doing," said Sidney Jones, head of the Indonesia office of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. "A government that is not serious about fighting corruption is not serious about fighting terror."
Indonesia's instability endangers Americans as never before in its five-decade history since independence. Seven Americans died in the Bali bombing. Two American teachers were killed August 31 when gunmen ambushed their car on a mountain road in the province of Papua, and police are investigating whether soldiers carried out the attack. The State Department has withdrawn all embassy family members and nonessential staff from the country.
Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population, with extremists very much a minority. As a moderate, democratic country, it could be a model for the Islamic world. But few expect the nation to pull out of its post-dictatorship chaos any time soon. Its fundamental problems, diplomats and analysts say, will be left for the next generation of leaders to solve.
"It is a society where there is total impunity and lack of accountability," said a senior US diplomat who asked not to be identified. "The way out is slow water torture of the democratic variety. But it really isn't going to pay off in most of our lifetimes."
The corruption and lack of law and order add to the hardship of everyday life. Vigilante justice is common. Government funds are siphoned into the pockets of officials, and spending on health care, education and other public services is woefully deficient. Major cities are shrouded in unrestrained pollution. Few drivers obey the rules of the road, and traffic often comes to a standstill. Public transportation is so crowded that some children ride home from school on the roofs of their school buses.
Though rich in resources, Indonesia is handicapped by the slow pace of its recovery from the economic crisis that struck Asia in 1997. The government estimates that about 38 million people are unemployed. Few foreign investors are willing to put their money here.
Also hampering the country's progress is a legal system in which fairness is a foreign concept and verdicts often go to the highest bidder. One striking example was a decision by a three-judge panel this year to declare the Indonesian unit of Canada's Manulife Financial Corp. bankrupt – though the insurance company was unquestionably solvent. Manulife said the ruling was an attempt by a disgruntled Indonesian ex-partner to ruin its business. The verdict touched off an international outcry and was later overturned by the Supreme Court. The lower court judges are under investigation for allegedly accepting bribes, but that probe is unusual.
Judges are rarely held accountable for their decisions. "In almost all cases, especially in Jakarta and other big cities, every verdict that the judge is going to make there will always be a transaction," said Petrus Selestinus of Indonesia's anti-corruption commission. "If you want to win, you have to pay."
In government, top officials brazenly hang on to power even when their questionable dealings are well known. Parliament Speaker Akbar Tanjung, who was convicted September 4 of stealing $4.5 million intended for the poor and using it in a political campaign, remains in his post pending appeal.
Atty. Gen. Mohammed Abdul Rahman, the top law enforcement officer, failed to report his ownership of a house valued at about $300,000 and bank deposits of about $80,000, as required by an anti-corruption law, Selestinus said. The attorney general refuses to step down.
Businessman Mahfudz Djaelani – who ran unsuccessfully for the post of Jakarta governor in September against incumbent Gov. Sutiyoso, who like many Indonesians goes by one name – has complained loudly that he was out-bribed. The city's 84-member parliament elects the governor, and Djaelani thought he had the race sewn up because of his generous donations to a majority of members. But a few days before the election, he learned that the going rate for each vote had jumped to $50,000 – far more than he had expected to pay. After he lost, Djaelani publicly demanded the return of thousands of dollars he had doled out. "I am a businessman," Djaelani explained in an interview. "If I make a down payment and I don't get elected, I want the money back."
Under Indonesia's justice system, some people even appear to get away with murder. No one from the military, for instance, has been convicted for the well-publicized slaughter of 1,000 civilians carried out by army-backed militias in East Timor in 1999.
Accused people smuggler Abu Quassey, who police say had organized a refugee boat that sank off Indonesia last year, killing 373 asylum-seekers headed for Australia, was never charged in the deaths. Instead, the Egyptian was sentenced to six months in jail for violating his visa.
Police investigators concluded that at least nine special forces soldiers took part in the kidnapping and killing of Papuan separatist leader Theys Eluay last year, but no one has been tried for the slaying.
The army's conduct has called into question the Bush administration's policy of restoring ties with the Indonesian military. But Washington sees its choice as either helping the armed forces become more democracy-minded, or someday facing a conservative Islamic government here.
Under Suharto, the main responsibility of the armed forces was to maintain order within the country. The military, which included the police, was often brutal but succeeded in suppressing many of the ethnic, religious and separatist conflicts that afflict the country. A year after Suharto fell, the police force and military were separated in the hope that a more democratic system would be created. Instead, the new arrangement created two rival armed camps.
Since January 2001, soldiers and police have engaged in at least 12 shootouts in which participants or bystanders were killed or wounded. Even by these standards, the Binjai battle was extreme. Police officials say the loss of seven officers was the highest death toll the department has suffered in a single engagement.
Binjai is a bustling city of 220,000 just west of Medan, the largest city on the island of Sumatra. Marwan, 32, was arrested September 28 and taken to the Langkat police station on the outskirts of Binjai. According to police, three soldiers arrived a few hours later and asked the detective handling the case to release him. Marwan, they said, was their friend. The detective refused, saying Marwan was still under investigation. Without warning, one of the soldiers pulled out a knife and cut the detective's ear, nearly slicing it off. As the soldiers ran, police fired, wounding at least one of them.
Police and army officers met that evening and negotiated a truce. But the next night, the army began preparing for war. Officials are uncertain how many of the 100th Airborne Battalion's 600 soldiers were involved, but witnesses say the attackers numbered in the hundreds. The assault was so well organized that it seems unlikely it was carried out without the participation of officers.
According to the police account, soldiers went to the power station about 11 p.m. and cut the city's electricity. Moments later, troops attacked the station where Marwan was being held. The soldiers fired grenades and mortars, destroying one small building and setting the main building on fire. Most of the police fled.
The soldiers went to the jail and used a hammer to break the locks on the cell doors, freeing the prisoners. "They wanted to free Marwan, but they freed all of them," said a police officer. The soldiers also took Marwan's police file and about 1.5 tons of marijuana stored at the station. From there, the soldiers moved across town and advanced on the Binjai headquarters of the police Mobile Brigade unit, a tough, battle-hardened police corps. They fired on the buildings and set them ablaze. When police reinforcements arrived by truck, the soldiers fired an anti-aircraft gun at the vehicle, killing the driver, according to a police sergeant in the truck.
Five days after the battle, Army Chief of Staff Ryamizard Ryacudu discharged 20 soldiers. In a ceremony broadcast on national television, he stripped them of their uniform shirts and hats. The 20 are on trial in a military court in connection with the attack but face only token sentences ranging from 10 months to 3 1/2 years. No other soldiers have been charged.
Despite a police investigation, North Sumatra police spokesman Amrin Karim said it was still unclear why the military went to such lengths to win Marwan's release. "We feel deeply sad," Karim said, "because we still have a long way to go to uphold the law."