Carmel Budiardjo – Three events in the past couple of weeks point to a new strategy by the ABRI leadership in projecting a different image for the armed forces in post-Suharto Indonesia:
Although Suharto's removal from power has not brought about a major shift in the nature of the regime, it has given people everywhere the courage and the opportunity to give vent to their pent-up anger and frustrations about abuses perpetrated over the past 32 years. This has led to revelations about bestialities perpetrated by the armed forces in all parts of the country, particularly in the so-called Red Alert or "rawan" areas like West Papua, Aceh and East Timor. ABRI's image has truly been torn to shreds.The decision to withdraw a thousand troops from East Timor and replace them with army doctors, teachers and engineers; The decision to withdrawn "non-organic" troops from Aceh, leaving security there in the hands of the territorial troops and the ulamas, the local administration and informal leaders, and; The announcement that new troops drafted into Irian Jaya (West Papua) will not be armed but will be equipped with spades, hoes and other agricultural equipment.
In such circumstance, ABRI needs to speak to its domestic audience as well as to the international community at a time when the catastrophic economic legacy from Suharto has made the economy totally dependent on yet more money from abroad in the form of credit and investment. What we are now witnessing is a strategy from ABRI to give itself a facelift, to give itself a more civilised image. Western powers who have an enormous stake in preserving their economic interests in Indonesia – a huge market but even more important, an abundant source of natural resources – are only too ready to grasp at signs of change in ABRI's role to something more gentle, more civlised.
Civic Mission - Dwi-Fungsi in another garb
All the signs are that ABRI is now returning to its pre-1965 strategy of Civic Mission, which it undertook with the encouragement of Washington. Civic Mission was a policy of entering the countryside to perform functions such as road-building, digging wells, assisting local communities in agricultural production, in other words performing what would appear to be innocent, non-combative functions with which no one could disagree. The task in those days of course was to counteract the role of the communist party, the PKI, and its mass organisations, in particular the peasants union, the BTI, both of which had won enormous following in the Indonesian countryside, particular in parts of Java, Bali and North Sumatra.
Today, ABRI's strategy is to re-instate its Civic Mission, concentrating now on the country's "trouble-spots", East Timor, West Papua and Aceh where liberation or seccessionist movements have gained popularity because of the depravities perpetrated by what has been seen in all these regions – not only in East Timor – as an army of occupation.
One could argue against what ABRI now plans to do at the level of the exposing the futility of, say, sending doctors and teachers to East Timor, even, according to one report, sending medical personnel to provide "counselling" to traumatised East Timorese. It is widely known that Timorese, especially women, have a deeply ingrained mistrust of Indonesian doctors and hospitals with stories abounding of forced sterilisation, mysterious deaths of young children in hospitals and so on. As for "counselling", the very idea of army officers trained as psychologists counselling East Timorese is ludicrous. And why should Timorese look to the army to supply teachers, only to reinforce the indoctrination of Timorese with the state ideology or teach Indonesian history through the eyes of the power-holders while disrgarding East Timor's own history?
Or to claim that West Papuans need army agronomists to help them improve food production is laughable. In many parts of West Papua, in the Baliem Valley for instance, tribal people have developed a highly sophisticated system of garden cultivation which needs no help from army officers trained in whatever system of cultivation they might bring.
But the more fundamental point is that Civic Mission is not a legitimate task for the armed forces. As in the early 1960s, Civic Mission is a strategy aimed at intelligence gathering, a form of counter-insurgency that is now being foisted on people in these three regions while continuing to do everyhing possible to destroy the liberation struggles. What Wiranto now plans to do is to dress ABRI's dwi-fungsi up in new clothes.
We must bear in mind at all times that insofar as a state needs armed forces, it is solely for the purpose of defending the country against foreign aggression. There can be no second function – dwi-fungsi – for ABRI to perform.
If there is the need for agricultural extension to help villagers, or road-building, or the provision of medical personnel, this is the task of the civilian authorities, not the armed forces. Moreover, the terms of such assistance from the centre should be negotiated with local communities and not foisted on them by an undemocratic force like ABRI.
GPK now called GPL
What does Wiranto think he will achieve by abandoning the term GPK – Gerakan Pengacau Keamaan – as the designation in Aceh for the Free Aceh Movement and replacing it with GPL, "L" standing for "liar" or "wild"? It is not unlikely that this new term will now be introduced in West Papua and East Timor for the OPM and FALINTIL.
Whatever the term (and I personally find it difficult to understand what the difference is between the two terms), the intention is to brand the liberation struggles as terrorist. But, we should ask, who are the real terrorists? Having read the powerful indictments of members of the armed forces that have come to light in Aceh in the past few weeks, people will have no difficulty identifying the terrorists in Aceh. Here, as in West Papua and East Timor, it is state terrorism that has reigned supreme and it is ABRI that have behaved as terrorists – and with impunity. As one woman in Aceh yelled, when asked by a member of Parliament whether people were afraid of the GPK: "We are not afraid of them, we're afraid of ABRI!"
The aim clearly is to drive a wedge between the community at large and the liberation struggles. People will still have good reason to fear that any activity they undertake in support of legitimate demands against the state or state enforcement agencies will mean being labelled as GPL with all the risks that involves.
By announcing that ABRI would retain a label for the liberation struggle in Aceh, Wiranto revealed indisputably that whatever the cosmetic changes he has introduced, the prime target of ABRI's presence in the region is the Free Aceh Movement. Counter-insurgency is still the strategy.