HTML pages
designed &
maintained by
Alifuru67
Copyright ©
1999/2001 -
1364283024
& 1367286044
|
|
|||||
|
|
||||
Australian Financial Review
September 19, 2001
JAKARTA OBSERVED
For Megawati, it's the Muslim question
Tim Dodd
Indonesia's President Megawati Soekarnoputri is known to love the duchessing and flummery which comes with her job as a national leader and, until a week ago, would have expected her first meeting with President George Bush at the White House today to be full of such trappings.
Now things look a bit different. The US wanted Megawati's visit to go ahead in spite of last week's terrorist attack, but not so that they could impress her with their impeccable ceremonial welcome.
Suddenly, co-operation on security from Indonesia - which has the world's largest Muslim population - is an urgent matter for the US. And Megawati was the ideal Muslim political leader to host in Washington this week.
She is pro-Western, she stands at the secular end of Indonesia's political spectrum and her key advisers are US-aligned.
Clearly, Bush needs her support, and co-operation from Indonesian authorities might provide an avenue for gathering intelligence about Muslim terrorist networks.
Megawati, in return, is likely to want something - a restoration of military ties between the US and Indonesia, which were cut off after the Indonesian armed forces directed the campaign of destruction in East Timor two years ago.
Until now congressional opposition has made an end to this ban exceedingly unlikely. But, as we all know, the world changed last week and the US Congress is, for the moment, in a mood to give the President anything he asks for.
But the talks in Washington today will go far beyond any simple quid pro quo.
When it comes to Muslim extremism and Indonesia, there is one complicating factor that overshadows everything. Indonesia, with the willing connivance of elements of its military, is already a haven for Islamic extremism.
Some members of extremist groups claim to be veterans of the Afghan war against the then Soviet Union.
The best-known group is the Laskar Jihad, or Holy War Taskforce, which, amid great publicity, trained hundreds of warriors in Java last year and sent them to Ambon to fight Christians.
Indonesia's military and police, in spite of ample warning, let them go. At the time the religious and ethnic violence in Ambon and the surrounding Maluku islands was undermining the Wahid Government, which may be the real reason these extremist fighters were permitted to inflame the situation.
Indonesia's Muslim extremists have openly acknowledged links between these groups, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.
Laskar Jihad's leader, Jafar Umur Thalib, was reported two weeks ago in the Tempo news magazine to have said that one group based in neighbouring Malaysia, the Mujahidin, was also active in Ambon and had joined Osama bin Laden's network.
Another piece of worrying evidence is a common thread among the recent bombings in Indonesia which suggests a pattern of radical Muslim involvement.
Last August in Jakarta the Philippines ambassador's residence was shredded by a bomb that nearly killed the ambassador. The perpetrator remains unknown, but the most obvious suspects would be Muslim extremists supporting the Islamic independence movement in the southern Philippines.
Then at Christmas there was a co-ordinated campaign of church bombings across Indonesia which killed more than a dozen people. In July, there were attacks on two churches attended by the families of Christian military personnel.
To top this, last month the US claimed to have a credible intelligence warning of a terrorist attack against US interests in Indonesia, which sparked a security scare about infiltration of Muslim terrorist groups.
Following last week's tragedy new information has emerged suggesting that Indonesia and its neighbours are very vulnerable to infiltration by bin Laden's organisation or similar groups.
The New York Times quoted US Government officials as the source of a report that the CIA found evidence in August that Khalid al-Midhar, as one of the hijackers on the plane that hit the Pentagon, had met suspected associates of bin Laden in Malaysia in January of last year, and that some at the meeting may have been in the plot to attack the US Navy warship USS Cole in Yemen last October.
Now the US wants Indonesia, which has notoriously inefficient security and border policing, to make a massive effort to roll up all groups linked to bin Laden and his ilk.
The Bush Administration is likely to tell Megawati that her government is threatened by their presence. Yesterday the Singapore newspaper The Straits Times reported a Bush official as saying: "Indonesia is already being eroded from within by these militant groups. They talk about [territorial] integrity, but they've already lost Maluku [where the extremist Muslim fighters are operating]."
"The proof of how serious President Megawati is about combating terrorism will lie in what her government does to clear those mujahideen fighters in Ambon."
Having allowed, and even encouraged, them to go there last year, it will not be so easy to clear them out, particularly as the Islamic Jihad and other groups have strong connections with key moderate Muslim figures in Megawati's Government.
But hardline nationalist elements in the military are likely to welcome a chance to remove the long-term political threat posed by Muslim fundamentalism in Indonesia.
In the next few weeks, Megawati, and her advisers, have some interesting political choices to make.
Received via email from: Ambon@yahoogroups.com
Copyright © 1999-2001 - Ambon Berdarah On-Line * http://www.go.to/ambon
HTML pages designed and maintained by Alifuru67 * http://www.oocities.org/baguala67
Send your comments to alifuru67@egroups.com