Anthony Spaeth – When Indonesian students occupied the country's parliament in May, their principal demand was the resignation of Suharto, president of the country for 32 years. Within days, he had stepped down. But Suharto was more than a replaceable president: he was the keystone in the entire governing structure of modern Indonesia – and without knowing or requesting it, those students touched off a virtual revolution.

The most astonishing change has come in the fortunes of the Indonesian armed forces, known by the vernacular acronym ABRI. For five decades, ABRI has been an all-powerful and virtually omnipresent institution in the barracks and in jungle battles, in parliament and on the business scene. Only weeks ago, few Indonesians would have had the courage to criticize the armed forces or question their role in society. Those days are well in the past. Last week two senior police officers were convicted of ordering the shootings of student demonstrators in May – four died – and 16 more security personnel will be tried for their roles in that slaughter. (In Indonesia, police are under the command of the military.) The military Honor Council, a seven-member disciplinary body, recommended that Lieutenant-General Prabowo Subianto, a Suharto son-in-law, be court-martialed for ordering the abduction and torture of political activists. Fourteen are still missing. And the military started pulling its troops out of Aceh following an apology by current armed forces commander General Wiranto for nearly a decade of brutality in that province. The move was so unprecedented that many detected the sound of a police state being dismantled. "In the eyes of the people, ABRI's reputation has been destroyed," says historian Hermawan Sulistiyo of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

It's hard to tell if Suharto's fall, and a sudden flowering of openness and political agitation, made the military's tumble inevitable, or whether its most recent misdeeds started the process. Public anger has been inflamed by ever-mounting evidence of the military's involvement in the chaos that preceded Suharto's ouster. The riots that rocked Jakarta in mid-May, in which some 1,000 people were killed and an estimated 168 women raped, are increasingly seen as having been sparked or engineered by a segment of the military. The apparent aim was to create enough chaos to force Suharto to step down and bequeath his office to another military man. Wiranto, who ultimately consolidated his control of the armed forces over rival Prabowo, went before television cameras two weeks ago and told the nation: "ABRI does not hesitate to ask for forgiveness for the fact that the incident [the May riots] could not be prevented."

Absolution isn't anticipated: if anything, the public is clamoring for investigations into decades of military abuse, from the execution without trial of thousands of suspected criminals in 1983 to a massacre of protesters in Lampung in 1989. "I think people will take it back to the 1970s, or even the 1960s," says Endy Bayuni, managing editor of the daily Jakarta Post.

The pace of revelation is already amazing. A military tribunal sentenced two members of the Police Mobile Brigade to four and ten months in prison respectively for firing into a crowd of protesters on May 12 at Trisakti University. That incident fuelled the antigovernment sentiment that ultimately brought students to occupy the parliament building. Whoever did the shooting has yet to be identified, though 16 anti-riot personnel are awaiting trial. More intriguing is the work of the military Honor Council, which is investigating the disappearance of student activists over the 12-month period before Suharto's ouster.

Human rights groups say 24 political activists were abducted, of whom only 10 have reappeared. The council has questioned top uniformed men and inspected locations where the abductees were believed to have been imprisoned. Sources tell Time that special forces officers are admitting to the abduction of four members of the Indonesian People's Party, a left-wing group that was banned under Suharto. Last week the council announced that Prabowo was "responsible" for the kidnappings – and that he had "misinterpreted his orders." The orders could have come from one of four people: Gen. Feisal Tanjung, armed forces commander for most of the 12-month period; Wiranto, then-army chief of staff; Wiranto's predecessor Gen. Hartono; and Prabowo's father-in-law, Suharto. Late last week, the head of the council proclaimed that the order had not come from either Suharto or Tanjung, but no one knew what that meant.

Such ambiguity, and a cascade of discredit could easily threaten the military's long-accepted "dual function" – to both defend the country and to share in its running. "When we started the Revolution in 1945," recalls retired General Kemal Idris, "we considered ourselves as part of the people. We were the people. But Suharto turned Indonesia into a military regime. He could order the military to do anything, and he abused that power."

Already, that dual function is being whittled away in the post-Suharto era. Under legislative amendments drafted by the Ministry of Home Affairs, the armed forces' unelected presence in the House of Representatives will be reduced from 75 seats – or 15% of the total – to 55 seats. Wiranto and his inner circle say they accept the need for such change. According to Hasnan Habib, a retired general and former ambassador to the United States, a total withdrawal – not just a tactical retreat – is now required: "ABRI has failed," he says. "It no longer has the right to demand a continuing role in politics."

But even if the military's political role is drastically changed on paper, its reach across the archipelago is wide and deep. Military units work closely with civilian authorities at the provincial, district, sub-district and village levels exerting powerful control. ABRI also patronizes a number of paramilitary organizations, and some commanders are believed to have fostered links with the shady Pemuda Pancasila, a group suspected of playing a role in the rapes, looting and arson in Jakarta in May. "These are the real instruments of the military's political control," says political scientist Cornelius Lay of Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University.

The change of leadership began that process almost overnight. "ABRI's identity was inseparable from that of Suharto," says political observer Marsilam Simanjuntak. "Now that Suharto has fallen, ABRI has fallen with him. People are no longer afraid of the apparatus." In Aceh, there's little gratitude toward the military for pulling out – and mounting calls for retribution and arrests of soldiers and officers. Starting in the early 1990s, the armed forces cracked down hard on a separatist movement in Aceh. The National Human Rights Commission is investigating reports that more than 39,000 Acehnese died in military operations and 1,000 remain in detention.

If that wasn't challenge enough, the military also finds itself in a financial crisis. Suharto facilitated ABRI's expansion into a range of businesses – everything from retail to aviation – and profits supplemented the armed forces' budget. (They also enriched many an officer.) Like nearly all businesses in Indonesia, the military's are on the edge of bankruptcy. Even if the generals reduce their role voluntarily, it will be hard for a diverse and widely scattered country, which has virtually no democratic experience, to replace the institution that kept it intact. "We have to build a new Indonesia," says the Rev. Mangun Wijaya, a Catholic priest and author. That prospect, and process, has Indonesia's marching men uneasy in their very large boots.

[On August 18 the Jakarta Post reported that according to Kopassus' commandant Major General Syahrir M.S., troops remain high-spirited and unaffected by the ongoing investigation of the forces' involvement in the abduction and torture of political activists. "The Kopassus troops' morale remains high... their loyalty to the country and the nation remains the best", he said - James Balowski.]