atimes.com, June 15, 2002
Indonesia's generals go to war on a shoestring
By Bill Guerin
JAKARTA - The Indonesian army is once again at the forefront. Last week saw the
rise of an army general to head the military, which has been under a navy officer for
three years, a clear illustration of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's increasingly
close links to the generals.
The army by far outnumbers the other services and now regains the key role it had
during the rule of former dictator Suharto.
General Endriartono Sutarto, finally installed last week as the new military
commander-in-chief (Panglima TNI), will command 337,485 troops, including 52,118
sailors and 24,194 airmen, as well as the soldiers from his own force. The new C-in-C
will have an annual budget of just over US$1 billion, less than a quarter of that of tiny
neighbor Singapore. Singapore has a total of 60,500 military personnel and an annual
defense bud! get of $4.4 billion.
The government upped the defense budget by 18 percent for 2002 to Rp9.4 trillion
from Rp7.4 trillion ($822million) last year. Even Thailand's total of 301,000 military
personnel received about $2 billion a year for their needs.
By comparison, Indonesia's internal-security budget, including police, in 2002 is only
Rp5 trillion. The defense sector receives the most money after social welfare, and
some legislators have complained that Indonesia does not need a powerful military
because there is sustained peace in Southeast Asia. They also wanted to double the
budget for internal security to encourage total reform in the police organization in the
hope of making them more professional.
Professionalism of the military was a non-issue during most of Suharto's reign as the
assumption was that, as Indonesia would never go into combat against an external
threat, why spend money on making the military professional? The legendary General
L B Moerdani, then C-in-C, set the strategy in stating in 1980 that there would be no
war within the next 100 years. However, two decades later, the new realities after
September 11 demand a rethink of this tried and tested paradigm.
Sutarto, when being questioned by a parliamentary commission during a "fit and
proper test" for the man who would be military supremo, said that the TNI's power was
waning because of its limited budget.
"It cannot be denied that TNI's professionalism is related to its budget and the welfare
of its members," he told the legislators, adding that his views on soldiers' low morale
and the TNI's limited budget were not meant to justify poor professionalism of the
military, rather that the military's limited and outdated weapons had affected its
professionalism.
Sutarto said the TNI's commitment to encouraging democracy was not necessarily by
encouraging civilian forces to empower themselves, but rather by creating conditions
that wou! ld enable the military to maximize its professionalism and discipline.
This is a point made by Juwono Sudarsono, the country's first-ever civilian minister of
defense, who, though agreeing that there was a "grudging recognition" now that
civilian politicians had "blown it" over the past four years, believes that the main issue
is something entirely different.
Juwono, speaking at a recent seminar, said the issue was not the formalities of
civilian supremacy, the budget transparency of the military, or the need to open up the
businesses, the foundations and the cooperatives run by individual officers in its
service and the police force. He said the real issue was creating a new generation of
soldiers and police who would be up to their duties provided that they were given
adequate training and preparation.
Recently, retired army deputy chief of staff Lieutenant General Kiki Syahnakri
commented in the same vein when saying that the military was very aware ! that in
the past they had been involved too deeply in politics and as a result "politics
penetrated the army, making it a multicolored institution, just like a rainbow".
Eventually, he said, "politics gnawed at our military skills, causing them to deteriorate
from bad to worse."
Kiki remembered the good old days when "not only were we the best in Southeast
Asia, we also commanded the respect of such armies as the British Gurkhas during
the confrontation with Malaysia [where Indonesian troops fought the Gurkhas in the
jungles of Borneo] and the Dutch in Irian Jaya".
One reason the US is upping its efforts to re-engage with the Indonesian military
(despite the prohibitions in place with the Leahy amendment), Kiki says, is that they
know that Indonesia's past three presidents relied on the role of the military,
especially the army, to take charge of the micro-management of the country and the
bureaucracy, as well as the police and defense forces.
In a move! said to be part of efforts to "rejuvenate" the Indonesian military, former
Strategic Reserve (Kostrad) commander Ryamizad Ryacudu, the son-in-law of former
vice president and Suharto's adjutant, Try Sutrisno, was promoted to army chief of
staff only a few days before Sutarto took command.
This is the second top command post in the military and Ryacudu pledged to pay
attention to soldiers' welfare and said it was the government that was responsible for
paying fair wages to soldiers through allocating a sufficient budget to the TNI.
"Professionalism in the military can be built if the soldiers' welfare is improved," he
said. "Of course, the army has several foundations which earn profits for us. We must
channel these to the soldiers," Ryacudu said. The best estimates are that the military
obtains only a third of its actual budget from the state, and has to finance the rest
independently.
The military has for years been starved of funds for operations, ne! w weaponry, and
money for paying wages and salaries. During the Suharto era, the state met more of
the needs of the military, in line with the strong grip Suharto had on an armed force
that he had steadily deprived of its power. Suharto allowed the military to enrich itself
provided it did not question his authority.
Officially, the military's business empires were meant to raise funds for the welfare of
the soldiers, whose incomes were, and still are, pitifully low. The reality was much
different, with the benefits going largely to high-ranking officers.
Suharto maintained the so-named "Unitary state of Indonesia" with a relentless and
brutal military approach. The hour of maximum danger may have passed for the worst
separatism fighting after Suharto's downfall, but Megawati is solidly behind a renewed
military approach and has, in fact, given the green light for additional military
commands (Kodam).
The new TNI chief is a hardliner on Aceh, pushing fo! r the establishment of a new
Kodam for Aceh against the wishes of the Acehnese community, and also on Maluku,
arguing that the solution is to declare martial law.
During the Suharto era the army's "territorial system" of military posts in towns and
villages acted as an instrument of political control and a source of widespread
business and criminal activity. Last year's regional-autonomy implementation and
more decentralization threaten to affect this military business empire drastically.
Short of any serious move by the government to fund the military properly, the
generals will resist any such change to the utmost.
A case in point is the planned BP operation in Tangguh, in Bintuni Bay in the "bird's
head" region of Papua. This is a megaproject that may involve almost 23 trillion cubic
feet of natural-gas reserves. BP is investing $2 billion to construct a
liquefied-natural-gas (LNG) plant and wants to do without a large military presence on
site, but a protes! t at the site this year, ostensibly over land rights, was thought to
have been set up by state security forces to justify a heavy military presence. The
military has, in fact, told BP officials that troops are required by the Indonesian
constitution to protect all national assets, including the Tangguh (Invincible) project.
The world's largest gold mine, operated by Freeport in Papua, and ExxonMobil, which
produces LNG in Aceh, have for long experienced image problems because of
brutality by the Indonesian troops they had hired to protect their operations.
Indonesia, more than at any time in its post-independence history, perhaps, needs a
professional, well-trained and equipped, properly paid security force that can be sent
to an area very quickly when there is a danger of ethnic conflict.
In Central Kalimantan during Abdurrahman Wahid's presidency, security forces could
not prevent a serious massacre of migrant Madurese at the hands of the local Dayak !
population. Soldiers and police even started shooting at each other. A military source
commented that the killings arose from an extremely primitive understanding of
regional autonomy, but it was also said that they reflected a rise in sentiment for an
independent state of Borneo.
A professional peacekeeping force could also have done much to quell the opposing
Muslim and Christian fighters who set off the Ambon wars in January 1999.
A truly professional Indonesian military and police force is out of reach as long as the
commanders have to spend three-quarters of their efforts on running businesses to
generate funds to plug the enormous budget gap and to improve conditions for the
troops under them.
Sudarsono argues that given the failure of civilian leadership at all levels of
government, and the new priorities for the armed forces, it may take as long as 10-15
years before the role of the military, both symbolically as well as effectively, is
reduced.!
The military may also have a much wider political backing for its mission to protect
the nation by whatever means it deems necessary. People's Consultative Assembly
(MPR) Speaker Amien Rais said last week that in overcoming clashes between
conflicting groups, security authorities had to choose between two alternatives:
adopting a democratic approach or a militaristic one. The democratic option has led to
bomb explosions, whereas the militaristic approach will stop the bloodshed, he said.
"So I would choose the second alternative, even if it somewhat tarnishes the image of
democracy."
The urgency of the task at hand for Indonesia's two top generals and the new military
regime was underscored by last weekend's bomb explosions in a nightclub and a
hotel in Jakarta.
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