Bill Guerin, Jakarta – Only two days after a raid that led to the death of one of Indonesia's most wanted terrorist suspects, police struck at a massive illegal drug factory near Jakarta.
Police raided the factory on Friday near Serang, a city about 75 kilometers west of Jakarta. The haul included 62.4 tons of precursor chemicals for producing crystal methamphetamine, locally known as shabu-shabu, and 6.2 tons for making ecstasy.
Thousands of ecstasy pills and hundreds of kilograms of shabu-shabu were ready for delivery. Police say 21 suspects were arrested, including one Dutch, one French and four Chinese nationals. The building had been licensed as a cable factory. Police described the operation as the third-largest ecstasy-making factory in the world.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who visited the factory, said the operation had the potential to produce up to $600 million a year in illegal drugs. The president has declared war on drugs as illicit drug abuse, production and trafficking are among Indonesia's most serious problems and national concerns.
Drugs are readily available in all major urban areas of Islam's most-populous nation, including schools, bars, cafes, discotheques, nightclubs and even in remote villages.
The raid was the second coup for Indonesian authorities in a week, coming in wake of the November 9 killing of Azahari bin Husin, a Malaysian explosives expert linked to the al-Qaeda-linked terror group Jemaah Islamiyah. He had been accused of helping coordinate four deadly attacks in Indonesia since 2002.
Profits versus expertise
Indonesia is no longer just an end-user of drugs but also a producer, especially of ecstasy, which can readily be made at home. Poor law enforcement, corruption and high demand make the country a tempting location for producers. The locally made ecstasy and amphetamines cater to a growing population of upper-class users.
Ecstasy and amphetamine use has spread throughout Southeast Asia in recent years. In some countries both substances have replaced heroin as the most popular hard drug.
Churning out ecstasy pills by the thousands takes little expertise – a knowledge of chemistry equating to that of a third year university undergraduate with one vital piece of equipment – a pill press – and precursor chemicals (ingredients such as ephedrine and pseudoephedrine that are commonly found in cold and decongestant medicine, but are also used to produce methamphetamine).
Indonesia has banned 23 precursor chemicals that are the main ingredients for ecstasy production, but eight others are permissible imports.
The factory, meanwhile, had been under surveillance since May after a tip-off from Chinese authorities that a machine used to make ecstasy had been delivered from China to Indonesia.
Although estimates vary, the cost of producing one ecstasy tablet is about $00.50 to $1. The factory was able to produce some 100 kilogram of ecstasy per week, which could be used to make about 1 million pills.
Sources say ecstasy pills now fetch prices of between Rp 150,000 and Rp 200,000 ($20) each, up from only Rp 90,000 to Rp 100,000 in early January. At $20 per tablet, one kilogram of ecstasy would generate $140,000. Stocks have fallen significantly as police have confiscated a huge amount of drugs and arrested many traffickers in the past several months.
With an estimated 3.9% of the 220 million people nationwide, or about 8.6 million, either using illegal drugs or trafficking them, the country's national narcotics agency, BNN (Badan Narkotika Nasional), has its work cut out.
Both producers and dealers are targeting the younger generation, who make up about 40% of the population or roughly 88 million people – the third biggest market in Asia after China and India. The BNN chairman, General Togar Sianipar, said the country's illicit drug users now number about 4 million – about one in every 50 Indonesians. They include about 7,000 junior high school students, more than 10,000 senior high school students and some 800 elementary school students.
An International Labor Organization (ILO) study indicates that about 4% of illicit drug users in Indonesia are children under 17. And two out of 10 users are involved in illicit trafficking.
Traffickers move around schools selling illicit drugs to students, sometimes forcing them to buy or even giving them out free. Once the youths are hooked, they then go to these traffickers for their supply. If they do not have money, they often steal it from their family or others.
Major cause of HIV
Though the public face is one of strict morality, Indonesia has a massive commercial sex industry. Health authorities say about 10 million men visit prostitutes each year. Fewer than 10% use a condom.
Oddly enough, the HIV-infection rate has been historically low. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Global Report 2004 estimated the number of HIV cases (adults and children) at 110,000 and the number of deaths due to AIDS at 2,400, but the World Health Organization has recently ranked Indonesia an even higher priority than China and Thailand, where AIDS epidemics have ravaged millions.
Infections are soaring among Indonesian intravenous drug users through the use of unsterile injections. One report claims there are up to 1 million drug injectors. The report, from Australia's Burnet Institute, found that drug use is now one of the major causes of the HIV epidemic in the Asia region.
The number infected in China is estimated to be 3.5 million. A high proportion of drug injectors are infected with HIV in China (70%), Indonesia (19%), Iran (75%), Myanmar (63%), Kathmandu, Nepal (50%), Thailand (50%) and Vietnam (63%).
Law and enforcement
In 1997, the 21-year-old law on narcotics offenses was replaced by new two-tier anti-narcotics laws. Ecstasy and shabu-shabu were reclassified as dangerous drugs, giving the enforcing agencies more power to deal with the abusers and pushers.
The law on psychotropic substances (amphetamines, such as shabu-shabu, ecstasy and speed), provides for a maximum sentence of 20 years and/or a fine of Rp 5 billion for the importation, manufacture and distribution of such drugs. Possession and use carry sentences ranging from five to 15 years.
"Class 1" illegal drugs, which include heroin, marijuana, opium and cocaine, are covered by another narcotics law, which provides for a maximum sentence of death for the manufacture and distribution of these substances.
Enforcement officials lack training and experience in contemporary enforcement and investigative methods, but this is changing. There is a plan to model BNN on the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and it will have a specific responsibility for intelligence networking and the investigation of international drug syndicates that impact Indonesia's counter-narcotics efforts. Cooperation with US counter-narcotics officials has steadily improved.
Last year, the US sponsored hundreds of Indonesian police officers for training at the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in Bangkok, and for State Department-funded training in Indonesia. In 2004, the DEA provided training in drug intelligence analysis and precursor control. Jakarta continues to work closely with the DEA regional office in Singapore in narcotics investigations.
A deterrent for whom?
Despite the tough sanctions for narcotics offences numerous foreigners have been arrested in recent years, mainly for trafficking or possession. Nine Australians are on trial on Bali on charges of trying to smuggle heroin from the resort island to Australia. They face the maximum penalty of death, which, in Indonesia is at the hands of a firing squad.
Indian national Ayodhya Prasad Chaubey, 67, was sentenced to death in 1995 for trying to smuggle 12 kilograms of heroin into the country. He was executed August 4 last year after he spent nine years on death row. Two Thais were shot by firing squad two months later. As many as seven other drug criminals have had their last appeals for mercy rejected and await execution.
Of the 54 men and women languishing on death row, 31 have been convicted of smuggling or possessing drugs. Nineteen are convicted murderers and only four were sentenced on terrorism charges. Twenty-two are foreigners, most from Africa, and nine are Indonesian. But despite the frequent and very public drug raids and harsh sentences aimed at making examples, the ringleaders are rarely, if ever, caught.
Sophisticated trafficking groups are attracted to Indonesia by poor border security and law enforcement. There are 124 official entry points throughout the archipelago, but security is weak. The drug syndicates not only use the country as a transit point or a destination country for heroin and cocaine, but also set up clandestine factories to produce ecstasy for export.
Many of the foreign drug traffickers establish themselves in Indonesia by learning the local language and marrying Indonesian women.
Smuggling of heroin is usually from the "Golden Triangle" countries (Thailand, Myanmar and Laos) and done mostly by African couriers, as well as by Asians and Europeans.
Henry Yosodiningrat, chairman of a prominent drug prevention non-governmental organization, the National Anti-Narcotics Movement (GRANAT), warns that the government must leave no room for these drug syndicates to take root in Indonesia.
"The government needs to make a moral commitment to deal with the problem," he said. "But one obstacle to obtaining that commitment is that the syndicates have a lot of money to buy officials and this is one of the most corrupt countries."
Experts say a two-pronged strategy is needed to reduce drug abuse in society; a crackdown on the production and distribution of drugs and a campaign to educate the public about the dangers of narcotics.
Though the courts now dish out severe punishment to dealers and traffickers, targeting users is still mainly left to the community at large. Large banners flutter in the smallest of alleys across the capital of Jakarta and elsewhere, warning of the dangers of narcotics. TV advertisements drive the message home. The leading anti-narcotics proponent is YCAB (Yayasan Cinta Anak Bangsa), a non-government, anti-drug abuse foundation that vigorously campaigns in major newspapers and magazines and on billboards, posters and banners as well as distributes brochures.
A common battlefront?
Yudhoyono, with national police chief General Sutanto at his side at the site of the raided drug factory, urged all elements of the nation to continue fighting against three major crimes – drug trafficking, terrorism and corruption.
Sutanto, the former head of BNN, has already launched a massive crackdown targeting drug users and suppliers. The problem cuts through social classes. According to sociologists, slum-dwellers are getting hooked on addictive substances as much as people from the higher social strata. Ecstasy and shabu-shabu are popular among middle- and upper-class users but for most young people, the drug of choice now is low-grade heroin, known as putaw, which is cheap, plentiful, and potentially deadly.
The perception of a bleak future pulls young people into drug abuse. Poverty drives many of them, usually unemployed or underemployed, into the drug trade, a source of easy money.
The effects of drug abuse reach out far beyond the victims and cause incalculable harm to society in health, social and economic terms. The emergence of injecting drug use has triggered the spread of HIV and other blood-borne viruses such as hepatitis B and hepatitis C among injecting drug users, who then can pass it on to their sexual partners, children and then to the general population.
Thousands of lives are wasted or lost because of illicit drugs. A recent survey by BNN indicates that 15,000 Indonesians die every year from taking outlawed narcotics. Most of the Jakarta addicts – an estimated 85% – are between the ages of 15 and 35.
Given the serious destructive consequences of drugs to the country's young generation as well as the inherent curtailment of sustainable development, it could be argued that for Indonesia, battling the drug scourge is as much, if not more, a priority than the "war on terrorism".
The latter certainly grabs the headlines and the lion's share of attention. Yet, despite the deaths of scores of Indonesians in the past four years and the destructive physical damage caused by bombs, terrorism does not strike at the moral foundation of society and corrupt its leadership and institutions as does the drug trade or any other form of organized crime.
"The state must not give up its fight against criminals, especially drug syndicates," Yudhoyono said at a June 26 ceremony marking the International Day Against Drug Abuse. "Otherwise, they will rule the state, which will lead to a failed state."
Just as in fighting terror, the battle against drugs needs a protracted campaign that strikes at criminal networks in Indonesia and abroad, targets money- laundering, and relies heavily on intelligence-gathering. Meanwhile, the river of drugs keeps flowing.
[Bill Guerin, a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has worked in Indonesia for 20 years as a journalist. He has been published by the BBC on East Timor and specializes in business/economic and political analysis in Indonesia.]