John Mcbeth, Jakarta – When relief workers brought the first aid to the devastated Western coast of Aceh a few days after the December 26 earthquake, they were greeted by one surviving Indonesian soldier asking plaintively: "Where is America, where is America?" America, in the form of a carrier battle group, urgently-needed helicopters and giant cargo planes, arrived in force in early January – as everyone knew it would.
But will all this desperately-needed aid really change anything in the Indonesian-United States relationship? Probably not. Some memories are longer than others.
Five years after Indonesian troops and militiamen laid waste to newly-independent Timor Leste, a tenacious alliance of United Nations officials, US congressman and human rights groups refuse to let go, insisting that Jakarta accept accountability for the death and destruction that cost 1,500 lives. It is a condition that will continue to haunt Jakarta's relations with Washington for years to come, complicated as they are by the campaign against terrorism and by Washington's unilateral incursion into Iraq.
Pragmatists like Indonesia's Defence Minister Juwono Sudarsono complain that opponents in the US Congress 'shift the goal-posts' whenever progress seems to be made. Pessimists, mostly human rights activists, see little prospect of a change in focus between the old and new administrations of President George W. Bush.
And even as he senses a "unique opportunity to take an enlightened view", optimists like Mr Edward Masters, the former US ambassador to Jakarta, say they worry more, than at any other time, about where the relationship is headed.
It is now 12 years, dating back to the 1991 Dili churchyard massacre, since an Indonesian officer has taken part in the International Military Education and Training (Imet) programme. The result has been a generation of conservative, often xenophobic, officers whose world view is extremely limited. More troubling perhaps has been the way visa restrictions related to the war on terror have significantly diminished people-to-people contacts. Mr Masters, who spent a big chunk of his diplomatic career in Asia, describes it as "a very dangerous situation requiring careful attention".
Mr Juwono plans to go to Washington in March to try and convince Indonesia's critics that times are changing and that Timor Leste should not be permitted to condemn an entire military force. "When will they stop maligning the army," he asked in a recent interview with Tempo magazine, referring to what he called the "human rights industry". As he said: "The work of the NGOs is admirable, but there are times when they are stuck to the interests of foreign donors who have an agenda all of their own."
Indonesians can probably be forgiven for thinking that Congress is moving the goal-posts. For a while there, an improvement in military-to-military relations seemed to hinge on Indonesian generals cooperating in the investigation into the August 2002 murder of two American teachers in Papua. But when the FBI finally came up with a suspect and found no evidence of high-level military involvement, attention swiftly switched back to Timor Leste – and the fact that Indonesian courts had exonerated all Indonesian-born defendants charged with crimes against humanity in the 1999 rampage.
When new President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Timor Leste President Xanana Gusmao met in Bali in mid-December, they hoped their plan for a "truth and friendship commission" to examine the events of 1999 would prove to be a mechanism that would help bury the past. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at first seemed positive about the idea. Then a few days later, the UN said it was sticking with its parallel concept of forming a commission of experts that would decide on what individuals should get the blame for the 1,500 deaths.
The UN-funded Special Crimes Unit in Dili only recently completed handing over 95 case files containing indictments against 391 people, many of them Indonesian nationals living outside the reach of the law. Among those are former armed forces commander and presidential candidate Wiranto, and ex-military intelligence chief Major-General Zacky Anwar Makarim, neither of whom were among the 18 defendants charged with crimes against humanity before the ineffectual ad hoc human rights tribunals in Indonesia. Another is former regional commander Maj-Gen Adam Damiri, one of the generals to get off on appeal, who remains assistant chief of staff for operations and a central figure in current relief operations in Aceh.
Mr Juwono, fighting his own battle over the concept of civilian supremacy, treats the subject with brutal logic. "If we look at in terms of legal loopholes, we don't have an accountable justice system, so how can we achieve a full accounting?" he asked participants at a recent Centre for Strategic and International Studies (Cisis) seminar in Jakarta. "What we're trying to do now is have a bi-national reconciliation council so the UN Security Council won't have to investigate. That would be too painful." Congress and the NGOs, he said, must bring themselves to consider one thing: Is Indonesia worth forgiving.
Senior US officials have counted on somehow getting beyond the tragic events of 1999, pointing to the passage of time and the fact that with the notable exception of Mr Damiri, many of those involved have long since retired from the military or retreated from positions of power. But that does not cut much ice with relatives of the victims, who do not share Mr Gusmao's concern about reaching an accommodation with a large and potentially troublesome neighbour, and those activists who have made Indonesia's accountability their life's work.
Getting Indonesia on the radar screen at all in Washington is always difficult, but this has been a particularly frustrating time for US diplomats and the Bush administration itself. Interestingly, Mr Dino Djalal, a senior aide to President Yudhoyono, said it was Mr Bush, not Dr Yudhoyono, who raised the issue of restoring military-to-military ties when the two met for the first time at the Asian Pacific Economic (Apec) forum in Chile last November. Mr Djalal recounted the 'obvious personal chemistry' between the two leaders and said Dr Yudhoyono's role as a 'foreign policy president' would help define the relationship over the next five years.
Perhaps. But he and other observers see the importance of developing a better dialogue between Indonesia's House of Representatives and Congress – something missing from the relationship so far – and the need for the US to put more emphasis on diplomacy and other aspects of so-called 'soft power'.
Even there, US and Indonesian officials are concerned about the perceptions surrounding a US$157 million (S$257 million) programme to improve Indonesia's tattered education system, which is seen in some quarters of the Muslim community as a US effort to influence the curriculum of religious schools.
On a broader level, linking Indonesia to seemingly intractable problems like Palestine and now Iraq makes it almost impossible for Indonesia and the US to see eye-to-eye on any of today's issues. Indonesians hold no deep sympathies for the Arabs, but in the face of American unilateralism and what they see as Washington's uneven treatment of Israelis and Palestinians, the emotional ties to Muslim brotherhood are probably stronger than they have ever been.
Unfortunately for the West, it is an intersection for both extremists and moderate Muslims alike.
Indonesians, for their part, have never really grasped the devastating impact that the September 11, 2001, hits had, not only on Washington's strategic view, but more importantly on the psyche of the average American.
The underlying reason for Mr Bush's re-election victory was the insecurity felt by the millions of Middle Americans who do not have passports, who rarely venture beyond their home states – and who view the outside world with abiding suspicion. 'We are traumatised, we are insecure', notes Mr Masters. "Indonesia, for its part, is more assertive and trying to define Islam in Indonesia."
Differing attitudes and priorities, and America's seeming lack of interest in anything that is not related to the war on terrorism, are as much a challenge as Timor Leste in trying to put relations on an even keel. For Indonesians it breeds a willingness to embrace unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.
For Americans it perpetuates a lingering ignorance of anything beyond its immediate comprehension. As US academic Karl Jackson notes: "The US and Indonesia never seem to be in the right place at the right time for collaboration. If we miss this opportunity, history will condemn us."
[The writer is the former Jakarta correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review.]