Benjamin Terrall – Although Indonesia's government has committed to reforming the Indonesian military (TNI) territorial command structure, which allows the armed forces to maintain units down to the village level throughout the country, this apparatus has actually been reinforced in the name of "counterterrorism."

In late May, Indonesian Marines killed four farmers in a land dispute. Bambang Widodo Umar, a lecturer at the University of Indonesia, argued in the Jakarta Post that the shootings show "TNI structural reform is not working. Conflicts between the military and civilians are happening everywhere. The TNI should not be involved in everything. Let law enforcement institutions, such as the police and the courts, be responsible for law enforcement."

But an Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) statement "on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture," which took place on June 26, indicates that Indonesian police also lean toward excessive force with a zeal that recalls US military practices at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. In discussing cases in which Indonesian police beat suspects to death, the Hong Kong-based AHRC wrote, "It is hard for victims of torture to find ways of obtaining redress, including compensation, reinstatement and punishment of the perpetrators. The conclusion one may inevitably draw, is that Indonesia is a state which allows its agents to torture persons and denies the victim the right to seek redress for such a crime."

A 2004 law mandated the government's taking over TNI businesses, but that process is moving slowly at best. In February, Human Rights Watch said Jakarta's foot-dragging on the issue "undermines civilian control over the TNI and fuels human rights abuses."

The Jakarta Post reports, "Almost 70 percent of TNI's annual budget is derived from its diversified business activities. This year's defense budget is set at 32 trillion rupees (US$3.63 billion) or 4.5 percent of the state budget."

But though the government initially identified 1,500 businesses that could be classified as military properties, a subsequent estimate only identified six military businesses as profitable enough to qualify for takeover.

Thanks to the East Timor and Indonesia Human Rights Network (ETAN), and its allies in the US Congress, several provisions in the United States' new Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill (H.R. 2764) require reporting on progress in human rights, accountability and military reform in Indonesia, and justice for East Timor, prior to release of some military assistance funds to Jakarta. Though not as tough as past legislation, ETAN helped the bill advance. The new language, at least, puts on the public record a dissent from the Bush Administration's policy of blanket support for the TNI.

"Military reform in Indonesia remains stalled and human rights accountability lacking," said John M. Miller, national coordinator of ETAN. "The Bush administration's policy of nearly unrestricted military assistance to Indonesia has clearly failed.

"The House appropriations bill highlights many of the most needed reforms. In contrast, the Bush administration appears to have no real strategy to promote basic reform of the Indonesian military," Miller added. "Jakarta's failure to pursue effective reform underscores the need for the US to use the only real leverage it has to press for change – strong and binding restrictions on military assistance."

Miller pointed out, "Historically, the Indonesian military's worst abuses took place when the US was most engaged. Only after Congress began restricting military assistance was the ground laid for Suharto's fall and East Timor's independence."

A new report from the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), based on more than a year of research, concluded that Indonesia is one of the largest recipients of post-9/11 military training and assistance programs.

The report also makes clear why TNI spokesman Sagom Tamboen recently commented to The Australian about possible limits on US military aid in the appropriations bill: "If in fact the restrictions are put in place, we believe that the government will have other options ... anyway, we're accustomed to limitations."

The ICIJ found that, through fiscal year 2005, Indonesia was the largest recipient of Regional Defense Counterterrorism Fellowship Program (CTFP) training. As the ICIJ wrote, "Operating since 2002 with budgets of $20 million to $25 million per year, the CTFP appears in many ways nearly identical to the US government's long-standing IMET program, which also trains foreign military officers. In fact, many of the courses offered under CTFP are virtually the same as those offered under IMET."

(Congress has become highly critical of ongoing Pentagon efforts to receive a blank check to fund foreign militaries, including Indonesia's, without any of the conditions which pertain to military aid programs overseen by the State Department.)

The ICIJ notes, "from 2002 to 2004, the same Indonesian forces that were prohibited from receiving anything beyond the most vanilla of IMET courses on human rights were simultaneously receiving tutelage on 'Intelligence in Combating Terrorism' and 'Student Military Police Prep' under CTFP, according to Defense Department documents obtained by ICIJ under a Freedom of Information Act request. In fact, in 2002 and 2003 Indonesia pulled in close to $4 million in CTFP funding, making the troubled Southeast Asian nation the No. 1 recipient of such funds."

The ICIJ also found that a US military program for Jakarta dedicated to "securing strategic sea lanes" cost more than $18 million.

In its 2007 country report on Indonesia, Amnesty International wrote, "The majority of human rights violations by the security forces were not investigated, and impunity for past violations persisted. The Attorney General's Office (AGO) failed to act on two cases in which the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) had submitted evidence in 2004 that crimes against humanity had been committed by the security forces."

Ed McWilliams, Political Counselor at the US Embassy in Jakarta from 1996 to 1999, and now an independent human rights advocate, told me, "In a real sense the post-Suharto democratic transition never transpired in West Papua, where the military and police continue to employ terror, torture and extrajudicial killing to enforce Jakarta's rule. While TNI impunity for abuses and corruption remain a problem throughout the archipelago, it is particularly acute in West Papua. While the Suharto dictatorship is gone, its hallmarks of repression and abuse live on in West Papua."

Col. Burhanuddin Siagian last month responded to West Papuan calls for self-determination by threatening to "destroy" anyone who "betrays" Indonesia. Two indictments issued in 2003 state that Siagian made speeches threatening to kill East Timorese independence supporters and was responsible for the deaths of seven men in April 1999.

McWilliams commented, "Of the many dark scenarios posed for West Papua's future perhaps the most dire is the threat of communal conflict as erupted a few years ago in the Maluku's and Poso.

As in those neighboring areas, the TNI in West Papua is fueling sectarian strife by recruiting largely Muslim migrants to form paramilitaries loyal to Jakarta's rule. It is also creating Papuan militias along the lines of those it created to devastating effect in East Timor. As in the past throughout the archipelago, the TNI aims to generate communal tensions in West Papua as a justification for maintaining its presence and for continuing to exploit the region's vast natural resources."

But dissidents throughout Indonesia continue to struggle against military hegemony. One example is the weekly protest in Jakarta by survivors and family members of victims of TNI atrocities (including the Tanjung Priok shootings of 1984, the Lampung killings of "militants" in 1989 and the May 1998 shooting of students) who are demanding an end to impunity for "security" forces.

Anti-militarist activism within Indonesia alone cannot turn the tide. Ed McWilliams argues, "The fate of real military reform and possibly the success of the democratic transition in Indonesia depends very much on the US Congress's willingness to insist on real reform, especially to push for genuine civilian control of the military and an end to TNI impunity.

Democrats, now in control of both houses, must understand that an unreformed TNI, one that supports and has helped create fundamentalist Islamic militias inside Indonesia, cannot be a credible partner in the so-called 'war on terror.' The US Congress should heed the voices of human rights defenders in Indonesia and refuse to bankroll TNI criminality, abuses and impunity."