Alan Sipress, Jakarta – Five years after Gen. Suharto was ousted and a newly democratic Indonesia pledged to reform the military, the ambitious effort has largely stalled and the generals are resurgent, according to Indonesian and Western analysts.
The armed forces' newfound confidence was on display this spring, when the chief of the Indonesian army summoned his senior generals to an unprecedented meeting in the troubled province of Aceh. Commanders of the army's special forces, strategic command and Indonesia's 12 military regions were among more than four dozen generals flown in by Hercules transport planes to a gas company's compound, separated by walls and barbed wire from the rebellious villages beyond.
The generals donned the jungle camouflage uniforms of the war zone. Nearly 2,000 soldiers and police were deployed to guard the session. The army was conducting its annual review outside the main island of Java for the first time in 38 years. It was a sensitive moment. A cease-fire that the government had concluded – over the military's objections – three months earlier with rebels fighting for Aceh's independence was faltering.
By gathering in combat uniforms in the oil- and gas-rich province, at the northern tip of Indonesia's western island of Sumatra, the generals were sending what many Indonesians saw as a stark message of dissent. "It was a deliberate move by the army commander to show the wishy-washy politicians in Jakarta that the army is the one that would protect the territorial integrity of Indonesia," said Juwono Sudarsono, a former defense minister. "It was open defiance."
In May, two months after that meeting, the government finally endorsed a military solution for Aceh, and the Indonesian armed forces launched their largest offensive since the invasion of East Timor in 1975. The military had regained the upper hand in setting the course in the rebellious province and reasserted its lead role in protecting the country's internal security, according to Indonesian and Western defense analysts and diplomats. This occurred despite the government's previous efforts to transfer that responsibility to the police.
The reversal underscores the military's broadening influence over Indonesia's most sensitive policies, the diplomats and analysts say. In their view, there is much less talk now about reform – removing the military from politics and placing it under civilian control, making it accountable for human rights violations and turning its attention to national defense rather than domestic policing. This reflects the officer corps' determination to preserve its role as guardian of the nation as well as to maintain the riches it reaps through a network of patronage and private enterprises, according to the diplomats and analysts.
But these revived fortunes are also the result of a civilian leadership that these observers say has proved more interested in currying the favor of the military than disciplining its excesses. "The civilians don't have the guts and the confidence to control the army. They're not strong enough," said Salim Said, senior partner at the Indoconsult business consulting firm in Jakarta, who follows military affairs.
Instead, civilian politicians are competing with one another to woo military support ahead of landmark elections next year, which will be the first direct vote for president in the country's history and an important step in the transition to democracy. "No political party wants to risk confrontation with the military by pushing for military reform," said Rizal Sukma, director of studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. He added that President Megawati Sukarnoputri "believes the continuation of her power depends on support from the military."
Megawati said in a speech in Tokyo this week that she had turned to the military in Aceh because Indonesia was facing a challenge to its territorial integrity and that "the constitution makes clear that Indonesia is a unitary state, and it is unacceptable that any people should aim for an arrangement contrary to that."
Turning the tide
Just last year, the military had agreed reluctantly to relinquish its traditional quota of seats in parliament. Eleven of its officers had been ordered by Indonesian judges to stand trial for alleged atrocities in East Timor after the former Indonesian province voted in 1999 for independence. It was losing the debate over Aceh policy while the rival police were winning international plaudits for capturing the suspected terrorists behind the bombing of two Bali nightclubs in October.
But in recent months, the armed forces, known in Indonesian as Tentara Nasional Indonesia or TNI, have turned the tide. They have reestablished themselves in internal security and rejected a historic proposal by reformers within the military to roll back the army's ubiquitous presence in towns and villages.
The armed forces have also pushed for an expanded role in intelligence-gathering, according to analysts and officials familiar with military planning. "The trend is certainly going in a different direction to what it initially followed when we began the military reform four to five years ago," Sukma said. "The military has been able to regain a lot more influence than they had a year ago both in defense policy and in the political process."
Military leaders deny that reform of the armed forces has stopped. "Internal change within the TNI will continue in line with government policy," said Lt. Gen. Djaja Suparman, commander of the military's command and general staff college. "Should there be an opinion that internal reform of the TNI is being done half-heartedly or even has not started due to reluctance on TNI's part, that would be mistaken."
With Indonesia facing a wave of terrorist attacks, separatist rebellions in two provinces, Aceh and Papua, and Muslim-Christian violence elsewhere in the archipelago, Indonesians are increasingly nostalgic for the generals' firm hand. "The trust of the people in the armed forces is now growing," said retired Gen.
Agum Gumelar, Indonesia's transportation and communications minister and former commander of the army's special forces. "It's because they feel, I'm sorry to say, the existing government [has] disappointed [them].
In this situation, the people are looking to the armed forces again. They feel that Suharto's era is better than now." Under Suharto, military personnel filled the upper ranks of the civil service under a concept known as dwifungsi, or dual function, which guaranteed the armed forces a guiding role in politics as well as national defense.
Though the military no longer holds those posts, Gumelar said, it still has the duty to prevent the civilian government from jeopardizing the national interest, in particular national unity.
"If there is an element of the nation that tries to go in the wrong direction, the armed forces must remind the government we have to make a correction," said Gumelar, one of six active or retired generals who hold cabinet-level posts in Megawati's government.
In a speech this spring, the army chief of staff, Gen. Ryamizard Ryacudu, said the military would uphold Indonesia's laws but would not take a back seat to the elected government. "The meaning of civil supremacy is not that soldiers are under civilians, but that the whole nation including the soldiers have to obey the prevailing civil laws," he said.
Senior officers say they have reformed since the Suharto era, building a professional force seeking to avoid the human rights abuses that long tarnished the military's international reputation. But rights advocates and foreign governments continue to raise concerns about military conduct, including reports that soldiers in Aceh have killed innocent civilians.
US officials are also investigating whether members of the military were responsible for the killing of two American teachers and an Indonesian colleague near the Freeport gold and copper mine in the province of Papua last August. US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew P. Daley said recently that the "preponderance of evidence" points to members of the military. The Indonesian military has denied involvement.
Resistance to reform
As the spirit of reform swept Indonesia following Suharto's ouster, one of the most dramatic proposals was to overhaul the military's longtime territorial command system, under which officers were stationed across the country at all levels of government, in essence forming a power structure parallel to the civilian bureaucracy.
Lt. Gen. Agus Widjojo, chief of territorial affairs through 2001, ran a series of workshops to plan for eliminating the military's presence at local levels. This would have curtailed severely the army's power in local politics and limited its involvement in side business enterprises. But the initiative encountered fierce resistance within the army ranks, Widjojo recalled. "It was just unthinkable for them to change," he said.
The military establishment was equally bold late last year when Megawati's defense ministry asked for its input on a new law regulating the military. In response, the military provided an entire draft bill, including an article that would allow the military to carry out emergency operations without the approval of the president, according to Sukma, who served on the panel drafting the legislation. The legislation is now awaiting action by the parliament, where it seems likely to pass.
But it is over Aceh policy that the military has won its most decisive battle. Last year, Indonesia's chief security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, almost single-handedly persuaded Megawati and her cabinet to reach a negotiated settlement with the separatists. Though a former general himself, Yudhoyono faced opposition from senior military officers and the other retired generals in Megawati's inner circle. He was widely cheered, however, by foreign governments, in particular the United States.
The December agreement called for a cease-fire and partial demilitarization, with the rebels required to turn over their weapons at cantonment areas under international supervision and Indonesian forces obligated to pull back from some front-line positions. The two sides were also required to begin negotiations over the future status of the province, home to 4.1 million people. In the following months, military officials accused the rebels of using the cease-fire to rearm and reorganize. The military refused to pull back troops as the agreement demanded.
With tension mounting, the rebels delayed resuming peace talks, and Yudhoyono found himself increasingly isolated.
Halting the peace process
Rather than redouble efforts toward a peaceful settlement, Megawati declared martial law in Aceh on May 18 and promised to crush the rebels within six months. Her senior officials said they ended the peace process because the separatists had refused to renounce their goal of independence and lay down their weapons.
About 300 people have been killed in the first month of the offensive, pitting about 40,000 Indonesian troops against about 4,000 to 5,000 separatists. The military says most of the casualties are rebels, but rebels, human rights activists and some Western diplomats assert that the victims include scores of civilians and government troops.
The military's resurgence has met little opposition from Megawati, who Indonesian political analysts say feels comfortable with the generals and shares their view that Indonesia's unity must be assured by force. That position also has popular support, according to recent public opinion polls. The president maintains good relations with Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, the military's commander, and army chief Ryacudu.
Away from the capital, in the villages of this far-flung archipelago, the military's power is even greater. Military officers control patronage networks that can deliver electoral support. The officers can stir up trouble to undermine civilian politicians or, at a minimum, refuse to calm protests that prove embarrassing to the government.
Civilian politicians recognize that after only five years of democracy, their parties cannot match the military's resources, according to Sudarsono, the former defense minister. "They know at the end of the day, the real power remains with the military.
It has the organizational structure, especially in the boondocks.
"That has to be left unsaid, but that's in the back of their minds," he said. Special correspondent Natasha Tampubolon contributed to this report.