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Army pullout shows Indonesia fault lines

Source
New York Times - September 20, 1999

Seth Mydans, Jakarta – When international peacekeepers land in East Timor in the days ahead, they will witness the departure of a defeated Indonesian army at the lowest ebb in its history – humbled, hesitant, embittered and convulsively violent.

After failing, or refusing, to bring order to the disputed territory despite intense international pressure, the Indonesians have apparently been spurred by the imminent arrival of foreign troops to clamp down at last, bringing some order to the capital, Dili. They even swept streets clean of some of the debris left by looters.

For most of this year, and most intensely in the past two weeks, these units have encouraged and worked with the brutal local militias responsible for laying waste to the capital and killing hundreds – possibly thousands – of people.

These are the actions of an army that has run out of control, carrying out threats that few people had taken seriously – to ravage the land it invaded 24 years ago, to relinquish it, after a vote for independence, only as a smoking and bloody ruin.

The inability of military commanders in Jakarta to rein in their troops, together with what amounts to a call for help from abroad, have dealt them a double humiliation.

The euphemism offered by the military chief, Gen. Wiranto, for this debacle is "psychological factors." It is a phrase that reveals as much as it hides about the armed forces today.

What the general meant when he used the phrase during a brief visit to East Timor with senior UN envoys was that his men on the ground were so emotionally committed to keeping East Timor as part of Indonesia that they were beyond the reach of his orders.

But "psychological factors" run much more deeply through the armed forces as they go from being an unquestioned power in the Indonesia of former President Suharto to an uncomfortable search for their place in a newly open and democratic environment. In post-Suharto Indonesia, military men find themselves subjected to public criticism and even the possibility of investigations and trials – inconceivable before unrest forced Suharto from office last year.

This once-swaggering army, Suharto's arm of repression, is now divided and self-doubting. The moderates at the top who seek to professionalize and modernize the army face resistance from some hard-line subordinates who fear losing their power and privileges and insist that a harsh military hand is still needed to hold together the vast, scattered island nation of Indonesia.

The experience in East Timor this year – from President B.J. Habibie's surprising announcement in January that he would let East Timor become independent if its inhabitants voted that way to the last two weeks of violence – has exacerbated divisions in the military and exposed new risks to Indonesia's uncertain transition toward democracy.

Discontent among some officers has apparently reached the point of insubordination. Wiranto's hesitancy about clamping down illustrates the tenuousness of his command, several analysts said. Now his invitation to foreign troops to enter sovereign soil can only fuel resentment.

"We are waiting to see what develops," said James Fox, an expert on Indonesia at the Australian National University. "How far have we pushed this and how far has Mary Robinson spooked them?"

Mary Robinson, the UN high commissioner for human rights, visited Jakarta last week and drew an agreement from Habibie for an investigation of military abuses in East Timor that she said may lead to war-crimes trials.

"This is really scary for them," Fox said. "Mary Robinson has raised a specter that for the first time ever – ever – the Indonesian military might be accountable for its deeds."

Paradoxically, the military today is both more and less divided than it was under Suharto, who led the country for 32 years. Suharto, a former general himself, made it his business to foster rivalries at the top in order to keep the military from posing any unified challenge to him.

In this way, he was its real leader, and his departure – and replacement as president by his politically weak vice president, Habibie – left the armed forces "without a brain," as one diplomat put it.

"With a strong leader, Indonesia's institutions looked stronger than they were," the diplomat said. "Now we are seeing how weak the institutions really are. Even the military is without coherence and order."

Wiranto has acted to consolidate the top of the officer corps and has removed his main rival, Gen. Prabowo Subianto, Suharto's son-in-law. But opponents are still numerous.

As East Timor demonstrates, Wiranto has been unable to replicate the fear and unquestioning obedience commanded by Suharto, allowing local commanders more autonomous control.

Indonesia invaded East Timor, a territory approximately the size of Connecticut, with 800,000 inhabitants, in 1975. One year earlier, Portugal withdrew as East Timor's colonial power.

Indonesia's military has effectively ruled East Timor ever since the invasion, fighting a counterinsurgency that has cost the lives of some 200,000 people.

When Habibie made his sudden offer of independence in January, the military began mobilizing irregular militias to try to skew the vote through terror. When that failed, the militias, with the open backing of local military units, set out on an apparent campaign to leave behind a blasted and barren land, killing, burning and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee.

The army blames two battalions that include many native East Timorese troops for the problems and has transferred them from the territory. But there are reports, given credence by local residents, that about 6,000 East Timorese troops have joined the militias.

The conflict in East Timor only complicates the military's difficult attempt to retreat from its aggressive political role, known as "dual function," in which it formed virtually a parallel government throughout all levels of administration.

The military has decreed that if officers wish to hold administrative positions they must resign their commissions. And it has agreed to a 50 percent reduction, to 38 seats, in its parliamentary bloc.

But at the same time, it is pushing through a new national security law that gives it more latitude than ever before to declare a state of emergency and military rule.

And in several areas of unrest – notably East Timor, Aceh and Ambon – it has behaved over the last year with all the brutality and sense of impunity of the Suharto past. This rule of terror that has characterized the military's style may have some short-term effect but is already obsolete, a senior ambassador said. The success of the outside world in forcing Indonesia to accept a peacekeeping force in East Timor is a case in point.

"The army has been using tactics lately that are 15 or 20 years out of date," the ambassador said. "It will have to learn that these tactics are unsuitable for an era of globalization when you've got a free press and the world is watching."

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