Bill Guerin, Jakarta – President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is facing demands to step up security in Indonesia's eastern island chain, the Malukus, or the "Spice Islands" to romantics, amid concerns that a nationwide terror operation may be in place.
Almost the whole of Indonesia's eastern region has been involved in ethnic and religious violence, and sporadic bombings and armed attacks still occur in Central Sulawesi, which lies to the west of the Malukus. Sectarian violence and separatist movements are nothing new to these areas, where, according to an International Crisis Group (ICG) report published last week, earlier conflicts in Ambon and Poso have proven to be superb recruiting mechanisms for jihadi organizations.
In one of the latest incidents on April 24 in the remote Mamasa district of West Sulawesi, a new province partitioned off from South Sulawesi last November, a deadly anti-Christian attack left six people dead and several houses torched. Police now believe the incident may be linked to the Ambon conflict and the bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003.
Three Javanese suspects captured last week in Poso were said to be involved in the Ambon violence and the Mamasa attack, though Central Sulawesi police chief Sholeh Hidayat said he could not yet confirm their suspected link to the Marriott bombing. Evidence collected at the scene of the arrest included several videotapes about Osama bin Laden, five manuals on how to carry out a jihad, several do-it-yourself manuals for homemade bombs, and a diary belonging to Imam Samudra, the mastermind of the Bali bombings. Samudra has been convicted and sentenced to death, but his accomplices – Malaysian nationals Azahari Husin and Noordin Moh Top, both of whom are still at large – are accused of plotting and taking part in the attack on the Marriott.
There are now fears that without a strong response from Jakarta, radical Islamic groups could once again expose ethnic and religious fault lines by exploiting an essentially local conflict in the Spice Islands and encouraging further radicalism across provincial Indonesia, where hundreds of thousands still live in extreme poverty.
A history of conflict
More than 6,000 people were killed, and tens of thousands were forced to flee the Malukus before the signing of an agreement in 2002 that resulted in a temporary peace between warring Muslim and Christian parties on the Malukus' main island of Ambon. Some 87% of Indonesians are said to be Muslim, but in the Malukus, about 1,700 kilometers from the capital, Jakarta, the split between Muslims and Christians is more or less even.
Both Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf Kalla, when chief security minister and coordinating minister for people's welfare, respectively, under former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, were instrumental in bringing about the agreement, known as the 10-point bilateral Malino Accord, which was signed in February 2002 between 35 Muslim and 35 Christian delegates. Despite the accord, fighting between Christian and Muslim groups has continued.
To the west of the Malukus lies Sulawesi, the world's 11th largest island. Sandwiched between the mainly Christian North Sulawesi and the predominantly Muslim South Sulawesi is the remote and backward province of Central Sulawesi, where some 2,000 Muslims and Christians were killed in fighting in the town of Poso and in the capital, Palu, in 2000. Occasional bombings and attacks still occur in the province.
As Indonesia attempts to tackle it's internal terror problems, supporters of mending the 13-year rift between the US and the Indonesian military argue that Indonesia needs support to become a principal ally in the global "war on terror", whose targets include al-Qaeda-linked regional terrorism networks, such as the Jemaah Islamiyah, or JI. Indonesian police have not been able to penetrate the group. Despite recently convicting militant Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir on charges of conspiracy in the October 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people, the Jakarta court threw out the case against him of leading JI due to lack of evidence (see Indonesia's trial by terror, March 12).
The US declared JI a foreign terrorist group immediately after the Bali blasts, naming Ba'asyir as its spiritual leader. But JI has not been banned in Indonesia, despite Yudhoyono's stated commitment to declare it an illegal organization should there be evidence to warrant this action.
Breeding grounds for radicals
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Kelty has pointed out the "almost endless supply" of people in Indonesia willing to become terrorists. The same point was made by the ICG in its lengthy report published last week, "Decentralization and Conflict in Indonesia: The Mamasa Case".
A strong response from Jakarta is being urged. But tougher action to improve security and law enforcement can only come at a price. During his term as security minister Yudhoyono warned that Indonesians should be prepared to accept drastic new limits on their civil rights. "The government will impose restrictions as we are determined to prevent the deaths of more victims," he said in August 2003. "Their lives are worth more than the price of human rights."
In her state of the nation address in the same month, president Megawati Sukarnoputri vowed to "dismantle the terrorist network to its roots". Four days later a car bomb ripped through the Marriott Hotel, killing 12 people, including the bomber.
Though few doubt Yudhoyono's commitment, it will take more than just political will to overcome the security and intelligence challenges implicit in the tough fight to combat domestic terrorism. The military, or TNI, needs to be brought in. Since the separation of the National Police from the TNI in 1999, engineered by then president Abdurrahman Wahid, internal security is supposedly the exclusive province of the police.
Though doing its best to build an independent, intelligence capability backed by the Australian Federal Police, it is no secret that the TNI keeps important information about internal security threats close to its chest. The country's shadowy intelligence apparatus is known for its reluctance to share information.
Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Djoko Santoso said he would improve the 22 new territorial commands that have been set up across the country. The presence of these military commands in provinces, military districts in regencies and security networks in rural areas, has long been under fire, but a campaign of attrition against an enemy who is here, there and everywhere all at the same time will be facilitated by the network, with its command structures all the way down to the local level.
The importance of resumed US military ties
Washington also believes that Indonesia remains a natural key recruiting ground and safe haven for terrorists and their sympathizers. Yudhoyono, a former general, is scheduled to fly to Washington and meet with US President George W Bush later this month. Yet a hoped for revival of full military ties between both countries may be farther away than has been generally assumed.
The US announced in February it would resume the International Military Education and Training program (IMET) with Indonesia, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was in the "final stages" of consultations with the US Congress to allocate US$600,000 to $800,000 in IMET money to the country. Her proposal, as part of the 2006 budget, is awaiting congressional approval (see US back in step with Indonesia, March 3). The IMET program was suspended in 1991 due to concerns over the Indonesian military's human-rights record and then completely halted in 1999. The IMET's program, of which Yudhoyono himself is a graduate, includes counter-terrorism training.
The United States-Indonesia Society (USINDO), a Washington-based non-governmental organization whose members include major US corporations with businesses in Indonesia, such as Exxon-Mobil and Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, has also called for the lifting of restrictions on military ties.
But before agreeing to restore military ties, some elements in the US administration and several senators want Jakarta to pursue justice by fully investigating the August 2002 murders of two Americans near Timika at the Freeport gold mine in Papua province. US investigators have accused the TNI of blocking a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) probe into the deaths, but an initial FBI investigation led to the indictment by a US grand jury of an Indonesian civilian, Anthonius Wamang. He was described as a pro-independence guerrilla, but separatist activists maintain he was a military informer.
Meanwhile, Admiral William J Fallon, commander of the US Pacific Command, said on Friday he believed the resumption was going to be "much sooner than later", citing Indonesia's progress in upholding human rights. "We both know there's a legacy from the past of issues that were causing friction and were obstacles to progress. I believe we're on the road to fixing many of these things."
A day later US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, used the same terminology. "We would like to extend the efforts but we need to do so in the context of what we do with some of these legacies," Zoellick said after meeting with Yudhoyono last Saturday. (Indonesian marines and US Navy Seals took part in a joint anti-terrorism exercise on Tuesday in the latest sign of increased cooperation between the two militaries.)
Yet to many Indonesians, not just the extremists, the US has little justification to condemn human-rights violations elsewhere after the bombing of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq and subsequent events there.
A democratic ally
Proponents of the full resumption of military ties sooner rather than later, among them Bush himself, argue that training and education under IMET could boost Indonesia's capacity to fight terrorism and other transnational threats and help expose Indonesian officers to US views, including human rights.
Indonesia is the world's fourth-largest populated country, with more than 238.5 million people, only slightly behind the US with 265 million. Its presidential election last year was the biggest direct, one-day presidential election in history. The July run-off between presidential candidates Yudhoyono and Megawati generated 145 million votes, whereas American voters cast only 115.4 million votes in the George Bush/John Kerry election in November 2004.
This seems proof enough that Indonesia is now firmly in the ranks of large democratic nations and has shown that Islam and democracy are compatible. The enormous good will in Indonesia toward the US, generated by its support after the tsunami and its continued long-term economic assistance, is a golden opportunity for the superpower to continue the momentum and build a partnership with Southeast Asia's biggest nation.
By all accounts both presidents are ready, willing and able to reach out to this new dimension, but they need to be much more pragmatic about human-rights violations by both sides in the recent past.
[Bill Guerin, a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has worked in Indonesia for 19 years in journalism and editorial positions. He has been published by the BBC on East Timor and specializes in business/economic and political analysis in Indonesia.]