THE EARTH TIMES, April 30, 2002
TERRORISM
Indonesia: The shadow war on terror
» BY LAWRENCE PINTAK
Shortly after he was arrested for orchestrating the assassination of a supreme court
justice late last year, Hutomo (Tommy) Soeharto, son of the former Indonesian
strongman, filed suit against two aides of former President Abdurrahman Wahid.
Tommy wasn't claiming false arrest. He wasn't suing for defamation of character. He
just wanted his money back.
The 36-year-old heir to the multi-billion-dollar Soeharto fortune claimed he had given
the middlemen a $2 million bribe that was meant to buy a Wahid pardon for an earlier
conviction in connection with a real-estate swindle.
Since the pardon was rejected, Tommy argued, it was only fair that he get his bribe
back. Besides, after the assassination of one of their own, the other supreme court
justices had overturned the conviction anyway, even though Tommy was a fugitive at
the time.
Welcome to Indonesia in the post-Soeharto era, a nation deep in the throes of
political, economic and social transition punctuated by contradictions at every turn.
On one level, the saga of Tommy Soeharto is a vivid example of business-as-usual in
one of the world's more corrupt societies. On another level, though, it masks the fact
that Indonesian society has changed in very fundamental ways.
For the architects of America's war on terror, the ability to penetrate the appearances
and realities of the world's largest Muslim country will have a critical impact on the
battle in the years ahead. In many respects, it would have been much easier for
post-Sept. 11 US foreign policy if Soeharto had never been overthrown. The former
general used a strong hand to hold together his necklace nation of 17,000 islands and
300 language groups. Any hint of rebellion in the provinces met with a violent
response, as the agony of East Timor painfully demonstrated. Political opposition was
bought off or silenced. Islamic sentiment was funneled into tame social movements.
Clerics who raised the forbidden subject of Islamic rule were jailed or exiled.
Today, Indonesia is an ethnic quilt held together with fraying thread. Provinces at
either end of the vast archipelago are in revolt, officials in oil rich Aceh have
established religious police to enforce an Islamic dress code, Muslim-Christian
clashes have claimed some 10,000 lives, and the country has had four presidents in
as many years.
There have been rumors of Taliban and al Qaeda involvement in the anti Christian
jihad; several Indonesian clerics and their followers have been implicated in regional
terrorist plots; a shadowy group called the Islamic Defenders Front has threatened
foreigners who hold the key to reviving the devastated economy ; and at least one
suspected Indonesian militant has been directly tied to both the Sept. 11 hijackers
and the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
Against that backdrop, it would be easy for American architects of the war on terror to
convince themselves that Indonesia's interests coincide with those of the US. History
would seem to bolster their argument. President Megawati Sukarnoputri's own father,
the nationalist Sukarno, fought to contain radical Islam, a job completed by the man
who ousted him, Soeharto. Surely the woman leader of the world's largest Muslim
country would do everything possible to prevent al Qaeda from fostering a
fundamentalist resurgence that would oppose her very existence in office. Megawati
seemed to confirm that when she stood beside President George W. Bush in the
aftermath of Sept. 11 and signaled her country's support in the war on terrorism. But
behind that façade is another reality: To overtly confront the forces that could threaten
her is to strengthen the forces that do threaten her.
Within days of returning home, Megawati was adjusting her message to Washington
in the face of criticism from figures like her own vice president, Hamzah Haz of the
Muslim-oriented United Development Party, who said the bombing of the World Trade
Center would "cleanse the sins" of the US. "Prolonged military action is not only
counterproductive but also can weaken the global coalition's joint effort to combat
terrorism," Megawati said in a speech before parliament.
Westerners looking at Indonesia today are likely to see a young democracy, a free
press, billboards for Citibank, and to assume shared values. But the fact is that a few
Western trappings have been hung on what remains a very Indonesian mannequin.
Indonesia has always been a culture in which most things are best left unsaid.
Confrontation is anathema. The word "no" is rarely used. "Bapak," the father figure in
business, the family or the nation, is always right.
Jakarta hotels in the late 1980s and early 1990s were jammed with Western
businesspeople whose would-be Indonesian partners nodded sagely at their proposals
and promised to get back to them. Few ever did.
But globetrotting salesmen aren't the only foreign visitors to Indonesia who have been
tripped up by a culture in which appearances are far more important than reality.
"Things were going fine until he saw that picture," a source in the Indonesian
presidential palace told me in early 1998. "Then his attitude changed completely."
"That picture" was a photo showing IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus
standing billion bailout package. In the stylized culture of Java, in which respect for
the ruler is paramount and body language speaks as loudly as words, crossing one's
arms is, at best, a sign of arrogance and, at worst, a conscious insult. Even to a
Western eye, the picture begged for the caption: "Soeharto signs articles of
surrender."
"If only Camdessus had knownS" IMF officials said when the media firestorm broke.
Indeed. But the damage was already done.
The moment Soeharto saw the photo, according to the source, the deal was dead.
Within days the Indonesia president was backpedaling. Within weeks the flag of
nationalism had been waved. The photo gave him an excuse every Indonesian
understood. "We are talking about dignity," said a senior government official of the
incident. "We are talking sovereignty. We want help, but at what cost?"
Four years later, that sentiment was echoed again as Indonesian officials reacted to
criticism from Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, who charged that Jakarta was dragging its
feet in the war on terror. Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda called the comments
"provocative" Lee also called Abu Bakar Ba'asyir Muslim cleric who had spent four
years in jail under Soeharto terrorist ringleader. Ba'asyir filed a slander suit in a
Jakarta court, and some politicians said Lee had done their country a service by
sparking a new wave of Indonesian nationalism.
Indonesian security officials, meanwhile, maintained that Lee's criticism was
unfounded. "We can't publish it yet, [but] Indonesia has been effectively working to
combat terrorism," insisted Chief Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. But
such assurances were undermined by the country's lack of credibility, the natural
legacy of a business and political culture in which decisions are routinely made
behind closed doors.
That culture of secrecy word no idea when I was here [last year] that there was $65
billion, or whatever the number is, of unhedged dollar borrowings, and I don't think the
Indonesians knew," World Bank President James Wolfensohn admitted in early 1998.
The traditional Javanese shadow puppet play, in which the characters act out the
story behind an opaque screen, is an overused but apt analogy for the veil of secrecy
behind which business and government have long operated in Indonesia. Decisions
are handed down without discussion or debate. Inside deals are common currency.
For many years, that shadow play complicates America's conduct of the terror war in
Southeast Asia extremely convenient for the US government and, in particular,
American business. Long before the dot-coms, long before Enron, it was on the
bourses of Jakarta and a dozen other emerging markets that Wall Street perfected its
ability to look the other way.
Underwriters like Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley could make millions orchestrating
public offerings for feudal conglomerates, without causing the loss of face involved in
demanding real financial transparency. Western brokers could promise clients
staggering returns on the Jakarta Stock Exchange without embarrassing Indonesian
counterparts by mentioning rampant insider trading.
As long as no one asked too many questions, as long as everyone agreed
appearance was reality, there were plenty of windfall profits to go around. But when
the Asian bubble burst, and members of the newly created middle class suddenly
found themselves without jobs, they began shouting that the emperor had no clothes;
the Ponzi scheme came crashing down.
The child of that revolution is a nascent democracy grafted onto a culture of secrecy,
illusion and contradiction.
When FBI Director Robert Mueller arrived in Indonesia in late March to discuss the
war on terrorism, he must have felt as if he had stepped through Alice's looking glass.
The FBI director spent two days quietly meeting with the country's security minister,
national police chief and the head of the national intelligence agency (in the safety of
the Hindu-dominated island of Bali, far from potential Muslim demonstrators) as part of
a regional tour to coordinate strategy in the war on terror.
As the meetings ended, the two sides issued all the usual public expressions of
cooperation, but the Indonesians added one caveat: "We have explained that
Indonesia is committed to fighting international terrorism," said Security Minister
Susilo, "but with different methods."
The irony of Indonesia's emergence as an important front in the terror war is that today
it stands as a model for the rise of a moderate brand of political Islam that gives voice
to Muslim aspirations as part of, rather than in opposition to, the political process.
The foot soldiers of the anti-Soeharto revolt may have come from the universities. The
coup de grâce may have been inflicted by the army's top general, but the field
marshals of the revolution were men like Amien Rais and Abdurrahman Wahid, who
flexed the newfound political muscles of the mass Muslim movements they headed.
Soeharto's former vice president and successor, B.J. Habibie, further strengthened the
political power of Muslim groups by cultivating them in a failed attempt to win
legitimacy.
It was his position as head of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), or Religious Scholars
organization propelled Wahid to the presidency.
Just as Nasser's Egypt did for young Arab intellectuals in the 1950s, Indonesia offers
a model that gives vent to Muslim political aspirations that might otherwise surface as
Islamic militancy. But where Nasser's one-man rule meant that mass participation
was severely circumscribed, Indonesia's political free-for-all parties One example of
how the structures of Islam are being used as a political base can be found in the
emergence of Partai Keadilan, or Justice Party, popularly known by its Indonesian
initials PK. Formed in July 1998, the PK seeks to add an Islamic spiritual dimension
to political activism, but officially states that it is up to the individual to interpret the
religious teachings of Islam. Party cadres are recruited primarily through local
mosques, where students as young as 12 are organized into Koran reading and
discussion groups and then, after a year of participation, encouraged to form groups of
their own. Through this tiered system, the party is building a long-term strategy by
tapping youth often ignored by other political groups in a culture where age is revered.
The stated goal is "to use power to serve others," not to implement Islamic law.
"We want the party to become a pioneer in upholding Islamic values and we want to
do that within the framework of democracy, national unity and integrity," party
chairman Hidayat Nur Wahid recently told an interviewer. "Even if you are Muslim, if
you are unjust and oppress non-Muslims, you should be punished. This is how we
view shariah (Islamic law)."
But it was just such a network of mosques and Islamic schools in Saudi Arabia,
Yemen and Pakistan that funneled recruits to al Qaeda. Indonesia's homegrown
terrorists seem to share similar roots.
With its PK's seven seats in parliament, success to date underlines both the value of
such Islamic political organizations stated mission within them, draw on those
infrastructures to plot a more violent course. And given that the PK was founded as an
extension of the Arab grandfather of Muslim resistance organizations, the Muslim
Brotherhood, such a possibility cannot be ignored. For Jakarta in 2002 bears one
other similarity to Cairo in the 1950s: the threat from a cross-border movement
seeking to create a pan Islamic nation. Just as the Muslim Brotherhood sought to
overthrow regimes across the Middle East and replace them with a single Islamic
nation, so the militants of Jemaah Islamiyah seek to establish an Islamic state
incorporating Indonesia, Malaysia and portions of the Philippines.
The goal of preventing that is shared by officials in Washington and Jakarta. But that
does not mean they necessarily agree on tactics. A recent Gallup poll of sentiment in
the Islamic world revealed that only 27 percent of Indonesians viewed the United
States favorably, 89 percent said the US military action in Afghanistan was
unjustified, and 74 percent said they did not believe Arabs carried out the Sept. 11
attacks.
Given those numbers, any government would hesitate to side overtly with the United
States. That is doubly true of a president in a shaky coalition government that
depends on several Muslim parties for its survival, including a vice president who once
opposed the very idea of a woman in the country's highest office.
Further complicating the situation is a historic love-hate relationship between
Indonesia and the United States, viewed through a prism of nationalism, culture and
religion country's leaders for their own ends. Suspicion of the West particular A
tendency toward conspiracy theories runs deep in Indonesian society, illustrated by
the widespread belief that the devaluation of the rupiah in the early 1990s was the
result of a conspiracy between financier George Soros and the country's ethnic
Chinese. Many Indonesians believe the West wants to break up the country or
otherwise prevent it from becoming a regional power.
American criticism of Indonesia's human rights record is widely seen as hypocritical
in light of a US foreign policy that is perceived as exploitative and biased, particularly
when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, a subject that sparks anger at every
level of society.
While there exists a voracious appetite here for things Western Coke cultural
backlash that fueled Osama bin Laden's rise, reflected in a spate of attacks on bars
earlier this year and the increased popularity of Islamic attire, even among the upper
classes.
Moderate Muslim leaders almost as much to lose as Megawati from the rise of
fundamentalism. If such a scenario ever showed signs of manifesting as reality, it is
likely that all the power centers would close ranks against the threat. In the
meantime, though, Muslim politicians will seize every opportunity to exploit public
suspicions of the United States as a powerful weapon in their maneuvering toward the
2004 presidential elections.
"Everything that gives the impression that Indonesia is serving the American interest
in its drive to fight terrorism will be opposed by the [House of Representatives], the
press and the public," Lt. Gen. (ret.) Zen A. Maulani, a former intelligence chief,
recently told an interviewer. "This means that they will also oppose Megawati if she
allows this impression to gain credence."
As always in Indonesia, it is the "impression" issue. Most Indonesian Muslims are
willing to look the other way as extremist elements are neutralized, but they don't
want to be seen doing so. Indonesians are proud of their role as the world's largest
Muslim society. They are not prepared to puncture the illusion of Islamic solidarity. To
expose the reality of their quiet support for the neutralization of extremists is to cause
a loss of face across the breadth of Indonesian society. Such miscalculations by
American policy planners tactics by the terror warriors anti-terror effort and potentially
creating precisely the kind of instability upon which radical Islam breeds.
Which is why Indonesia's culture of appearances could yet prove a valuable tool in the
terror war. The key is whether American terror warriors can simultaneously
understand, deftly utilize and judiciously penetrate the shadow play.
Seated beside a smiling Megawati Sukarnoputri just eight days after Sept. 11,
President Bush indelicately stripped the Indonesian president of her veil of deniability
as surely as if he had yanked off the Islamic head cover she sometimes wears.
"Some nations will be comfortable supporting covert activities, some nations will only
be comfortable with providing information," Bush told reporters. "Others will be helpful
and will only be comfortable supporting financial matters. I understand that."
Whatever the US president intended, the appearance sent much the same message
as the crossed arms of the IMF's Camdessus as he loomed over Soeharto back in
1998. Bush might as well have said, "She's going to do our bidding but deny it."
Bush's wartime presidency thrives on bold headlines spotlighting dramatic action. In
Indonesia, all the news is not necessarily fit to print. Nor does much appear in neat
black and white. Some elements of the Indonesian security services cleric, for four
years under Soeharto go-slow directive, but they are no strangers to operating in the
shadows. Even as they were being criticized for their failure to arrest Ba'asyir move
that would have set off a political firestorm picked up another suspected terrorist and
deported him to Egypt, where that country's intelligence service and the Americans
were waiting with open arms.
It was a reminder that while the terror war may be played out with B-52s in
Afghanistan, special-forces troops in the Philippines and an overt political crackdown
in Yemen, to succeed in Indonesia it must abide by local rules. A shadow war gives a
weak government deniability, the security apparatus flexibility, and the moderate
Muslim majority the chance to pretend that appearance is reality.
Copyright © 2002 by The Earth Times. All rights reserved
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