Labour issues

Jakarta minimum wage to increase by 7 per cent

Jakarta Post - October 23, 2002

Damar Harsanto, Jakarta -- A tripartite wage committee consisting of the city administration, employers and worker unions agreed on Monday to increase Jakarta's provincial minimum wage (UMP) by almost seven percent beginning in January, a senior businessman said on Tuesday.

"We eventually reached an agreement to hike the Jakarta provincial minimum wage by almost 7 percent from about Rp 591,000 [a month] to about Rp 631,000 next year," said Sofjan Wanandi, who is a member of the committee.

Sofjan, also the chairman of the National Economic Recovery Committee (KPEN), told The Jakarta Post the agreement was "a compromise between employers and workers during the apparent economic hardships".

Previously standardized regional minimum wages, or UMR (Upah Minimum Regional), were determined solely by the Ministry of Manpower.

But with the implementation of regional autonomy last year, the central government lost its power to determine regional minimum wages, which are now set by provincial tripartite wage committees and then approved by the respective governors.

The debate over an increase in the Jakarta minimum wage became heated after employers grouped in the Association of Indonesian Employers (Apindo) refused to agree to any wage increase for 2003, citing a sluggish business climate worsened by capital flight due to heightened security concerns.

The October 12 bombings in Bali that claimed 190 lives dealt another blow to the already-battered economy, with less new foreign investment and further capital flight expected.

"However, the agreement, I hope, will be a good start to solve problems that have caused both employers and workers to get caught up in exhausting conflicts," said Sofjan.

The Jakarta minimum wage is often used as a reference for nearby mayoralties, including Bogor, Tangerang, Depok and Bekasi. Sofjan, however, warned that not all workers could expect to receive the new monthly minimum wage, because some financially troubled companies simply would be unable to afford to implement the increase.

The 7 percent increase fell well short of the 25 percent rise the worker unions were demanding.

Commenting on the new minimum wage, Tutur Suwito, chairman of the non-governmental organization Jakarta Labor Institute (IPJ), said the increase did not keep pace with the rise in prices of basic commodities.

"We must keep in mind that the inflation rate, which at times is used as a basis for the new minimum wage, often misleads as it does not reflect the real price of basic commodities in the market," said Tutur.

Jakarta's inflation rate hovered at 11.52 percent last year, a small increase from 10.29 percent the previous year. This year, economists predict inflation will still remain in double digits given the poor economic conditions.

Though not completely satisfied with the outcome, Tutur said the 7 percent wage increase had been agreed upon by the tripartite committee and should therefore by honored by all parties.

"There have been occurrences when a new minimum wage agreed upon by the tripartite committee and passed by the administration has been ignored by both employers and employees," Tutur said.

Last year, the tripartite wage committee agreed to a 38 percent increase for 2002, but employers refused to honor the decision. The employers ended up filing a lawsuit against the city administration over the increase with the Jakarta Administrative Court.

Meanwhile, the city administration spokesman, Muhayat, said Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso had yet to approve the new minimum wage. "The governor has yet to sign the document so the new minimum has not yet been approved by the city administration," Muhayat said.

The provincial minimum wage applies only to new employees and workers with no previous experience. Other workers are paid above the minimum wage.

Aceh/West Papua

West Papua - Secrets and lies

SBS Dateline - October 23, 2002

[Made Pastika, the Indonesian police investigator mentioned by Robert Gelbard in our recent interview, is considered one of the best in the country. Until last week, he was focused on another terror attack. Two months ago, three teachers, two of them American, were gunned down in West Papua, Indonesia's easternmost province. The military immediately blamed the attack on the OPM, Papua's independence movement. But since then a murky trail of witnesses and inconsistencies has cast doubt on the military's story. Dateline's Ginny Stein was given rare access to the police investigation for this report.]

Reporter: Ginny Stein

The modern world is centuries away in much of West Papua. Warriors of the independence movement, the OPM, still fight the Indonesian military with bows and arrows in a largely unnoticed insurgency. Out of sight and out of mind, it takes more than your average murder to place the spotlight on this forgotten corner of the globe.

General Made Pastika, police commander, West Papua: We found 134 shoot marks on the vehicles, mostly in the body of the minibus, two minibus, some are in the trucks and some in the trailer. We saw that this shooting was very brutal.

The slaying of three teachers, two of them American, in West Papua, near the giant Freeport copper and gold mine has highlighted the very thin hold Indonesia has on law and order.

Man at crime scene: The driver was killed, went into the bank and this vehicle was behind and it also stopped.

Gunned down in a hail of bullets by a group of as-yet- unidentified gunmen, the convoy stood no chance on the mist- covered mountain road. Police returned to the scene the day after the shooting to re-enact it for clues to find that they, themselves, had become fresh targets.

Policeman (Translation): I rushed up here. I was shot at.

Investigator: How many times?

Policeman: I heard one shot.

Papua's Police Chief, Made Pastika, believes that this shooting sent a clear and disturbing message.

Reporter: Who do you think shot at you?

General Made Pastika: Yeah, that's still that group who doesn't want to be investigated by the police.

It was a warning to police to back off?

General Made Pastika: Yeah, something like that, yes.

Weeks after the attack on the teachers the authorities appear no closer to determining who did it. But, in the minds of many Papuans, there can only be one suspect -- Indonesia's military. The military has long been accused of some of the worst crimes here, including the murder one year ago of Papua's would-be first president, Theys Eluay. Three officers from the nation's elite special forces unit, Kopassus, and nine subordinates are awaiting court martial for his murder. Dateline has discovered that included in the Kopassus 12 is one officer who spent time in Australia on a young officer exchange program. But, given the perilous state of justice in Indonesia, it is unlikely Theys Eluay's murderers will ever be brought to trial.

Sidney Jones, International Crisis Group: If we look at the Theys Eluay killing in November 2001, that's a case where they actually have the gunmen and we have no idea who gave the order or why.

Reporter: Why is it that it's possible to get away with murder in Papua?

Sidney Jones: I think there's so many different parties in Papua, and also elsewhere in Indonesia, that have interests in fuelling ongoing conflict, that people who are in power have a great capacity to cover things up.

The people with real power in Papua are the military, shown in all their glory commemorating Armed Forces Day. Australia cut military aid to Indonesia following the devastation of East Timor. But, in the wake of the Bali bomb, it is Kopassus that Australia is considering assisting once more. Indonesia's number one military man in Papua is Major General Mahidin Simbolon. He's a special forces hardliner. He earned his stripes during a number of tours of duty in East Timor, where he was in charge of providing logistical support to the murderous militia. Not surprisingly, he is standing by his men over the teachers' murders.

Major General Mahidin Simbolon (Translation): We don't know it was Kopassus. How do you know it was?

Reporter: Then who did it?

Major General Mahidin Simbolon: That's what we're investigating. The police are trying to find out.

Reporter: Was it Kopassus?

No ... Not Kopassus.

Dateline's presence clearly made the general uneasy. When it came time for him to depart the military parade, he gave one last order concerning footage filmed this day.

Major General Mahidin Simbolon: She must go to military HQ. She wants to send the tapes. Hello ... you want to send cassettes to Australia?

Reporter: Yes, I do.

Getting videotape out of Papua and, indeed, Indonesia, looked like becoming a challenge. Armed Forces Day is the military's big day but, in the West Papuan provincial capital, this was a party to which very few but the military came. Such is the armed forces' popularity here.

Indonesian soldier (Translation): We are the knights of Indonesia who serve the one God and defend honesty, truth, and justice.

But claims of truth and justice sit at odds with most Papuans' experience of military rule. This province may not be at war, but there is virtually no Papuan alive who cannot name at least one relative who has been beaten, tortured, raped or killed by the armed forces. The widespread view here is that the military were in some way responsible for the attack. Thom Beanal is the acting chairman of the Papuan Presidium Council.

Thom Beneal, acting chairman, Papuan Presidium Council (Translation): Most community members suspect that soldiers killed the teachers.

There is a man claims to hold the key to who did it.

Witness (Translation): It was done by either Kopassus or the military. Some say they were Papuan, but they weren't. I have proof.

For the past 10 years, this man worked for Kopassus. He claims to have been with them, and within earshot, when the attack took place. One part of the group had travelled up the hill. He'd stayed behind. And he heard a warning issued on a walkie talkie as the teachers' convoy passed by.

Witness (Translation): They contacted the men on the hill to say the cars were coming. The men said, "We're on standby." That meant they were ready.

Not long after that command, he heard shooting.

Witness (Translation): I heard three shots. First, a single shot. The second and third times it was rapid gunfire...

Reporter: So would three bursts of weapon fire...

General Made Pastika: Yeah, it can be three or four or two.

Reporter: So it could have been all over in three bursts of gunfire?

General Made Pastika: Yes, I think so.

But, while some of the information he has provided appears to hold true, much of it does not add up. For this key witness appears to be Papua's everyman.

Reporter: But he was someone that the army paid, the military paid, that police paid?

General Made Pastika: According to him, that he was the informant for everybody. The CID chief in Timika said that, among 100 words that he said, we can believe only about 20 or 25.

The mystery over who killed the teachers was further deepened by the discovery of a body close to the crime scene. Known as "Mr X", police are still trying to identify him.

Reporter: How crucial is finding out who he is?

General Made Pastika: Yes, of course, this is very crucial. What I said always, I say always that he is the clue of this case. So we are now still doing the investigation to find out who is he and why he was there.

The military claimed to have killed this man one day after the teachers were shot. As he was a Papuan, the military claimed it was proof the OPM was responsible.

General Made Pastika: We saw the body on the right side of the road and everybody feel very happy, because we get one of the shooter -- what we think at the time. And it was a very great, it was a success of our troops who shot one of the OPM.

But there was one small detail everyone but Papua's police chief overlooked that day. Mr X was dead long before the military claimed to have shot him.

General Made Pastika: But one thing that I saw at that place, that the body was already stiff. It was already stiff.

The autopsy has since confirmed this.

Reporter: So is the soldier who showed you the body who claimed to have shot him one of your number one suspects? He's obviously lied.

General Made Pastika: We cannot make that conclusion so far, because I think it needs more, more interview with him.

Reporter: But, if the military plants a body -- that is your suspicion -- plants a body at the scene of the crime to say that this is what happened, doesn't it make the military look very guilty?

General Made Pastika: I think we cannot make that conclusion that fast, because maybe that body was shot the day before at that place.

Reporter: So the soldier got it wrong?

General Made Pastika: Yeah, maybe he just say that, maybe he want a reward from, from, from his superior. He just proudly said that "I shot that, that body." But, of course, this is one of the things that needs more examination.

Made Pastika, who has just been appointed to head the investigation into the Bali bombing, is faced with a sensitive task in attempting to identify the teachers' killers.

Sidney Jones, International Crisis Group: He's walking a very thin line and we've seen across Indonesia how the hostility between the army and the police can erupt in deadly gunfire. And I think there is a danger of that kind of eruption in Papua as well. This particular police chief is a very committed, hard- working individual who, I think, is indeed serious about trying to get to the bottom of this and find out who did it. I think it's probably impossible for him to do so.

Reporter: And to get to the bottom could put relationships between the military and police at extreme odds?

Sidney Jones: If this police chief comes up with information or witnesses leading directly to the military, I would say that we would see new levels of hostility not yet seen in the country.

For their part, the military maintains it was these men who were behind the killings, the guerrilla fighters of the Free Papua Movement known as the TPN/OPM.

Nurdin Wenda, OPM commander (Translation): The TPN/OPM want independence by 2002. That's all we want. The commanders, and everyone, want independence.

These men came down from the mountains to speak to Dateline. They took the risk because they wanted the chance to put forward their story. Their staff commander is Nurdin Wenda.

Nurdin Wenda (Translation): Indonesia says it was the OPM who killed the Americans, but that's not true. Nurdin Wenda's boss is Titus Murib, a senior commander for the Timika region, where the killings took place. Murib has been named by the Indonesians as a primary suspect, because he's armed and active in the region. The OPM is a heavily fractured movement. Supreme Commander Mathias Wenda is currently in exile across the border in Papua New Guinea. These men claim allegiance to Mathias Wenda, but they've been known to operate independently, such as when Murib chose to kidnap two Belgian film-makers last year.

Titus Murib, commander Timika region (Translation): So why do they call us a gang of terrorists? Calling us terrorists. We are not terrorists. We want independence.

Held for two months, the release of the hostages almost fell through at the final hour when a dispute broke out between the kidnappers and one of the men who came to rescue them.

Man: Sorry. Sorry. I apologise. I apologise. I'm only human too.

Man: That's enough, enough!

They eventually got out, but without their camera or this tape, which was handed on to SBS. For the OPM, there's a new sense of urgency in their fight for independence. They fear, unless they achieve it soon, Papuans will be swamped in their own land.

Sidney Jones: And it's almost now the case that Papuans have become a minority in their own land. It's about 50/50 migrants and indigenous people at the moment.

Even though the official transmigration program has been stopped, Indonesian migrants continue to pour in from mainly Muslim and overcrowded Java. Whoever is responsible for killing the teachers, it's clear that, until there's a political resolution to the question of independence, violence and injustice under Indonesian rule will continue.

Police pin ambush that killed two Americans on soldiers

Washington Post - October 26, 2002

Ellen Nakashima and Alan Sipress, Jakarta -- Police have told senior Indonesian military officials they believe Indonesian soldiers were responsible for the August 31 ambush near a copper and gold mine in Papua province that killed two Americans and an Indonesian, according to a senior military officer and a high- ranking intelligence officer.

I Made Pastika, who until recently headed the investigation as Papua police chief, told Maj. Gen. Sulaiman, the Indonesian military police commander, and another high-ranking army officer who visited Papua about a week ago that the police suspect soldiers carried out the attack near a mine owned by Freeport- McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. of New Orleans, the senior Indonesian military officer said.

Separately, Indonesian military intelligence chief Ian Santoso was told that the Papuan provincial police believe the military carried out the attack, according to the high-ranking Indonesian intelligence officer.

Pastika, who is now leading the police investigation of the October 12 bombings on Bali, denied today that he had said the army was responsible for the attack. Instead, he said he briefed Sulaiman and an assistant to the army commander for more than two hours on the investigation's findings and let them draw their own conclusions. "What I did was to explain what we have done and what we have found," he said. "I gave them all that information and explanation. It depends on them how to interpret the information."

He said he was reasonably certain who was responsible but, in keeping with the usual practice, would not state his suspicions publicly until the investigation has been completed and the case has been sent to prosecutors.

But in private meetings, Pastika and his investigators have blamed the army for the ambush, according to the high-ranking Indonesian officers. Two other Western sources said that Pastika has said privately that police believe the military carried out the attack.

If the army is found to have been involved in the attacks, it could disrupt Indonesia's relations with the United States. The Bush administration is eager to restore ties with the Indonesian military, which were cut in 1999 to protest the army's role in orchestrating militia violence in East Timor.

Pastika confirmed today that Papua police have questioned about 74 people, including 30 soldiers and about 44 civilians. He said he is waiting for the military police to decide whether to conduct their own investigation of the ambush. Papua police received permission from the senior military commander in Papua, Maj. Gen. Mahidin Simbolon, to question soldiers, but none have been named as suspects, Pastika said.

The police investigation is now focusing on the role of Indonesian army special forces, called Kopassus, according to Western sources. Last month, a Papuan man who described himself as a local militia member hired by Kopassus said in an interview that he was ordered by a Kopassus commander to accompany him and nine soldiers toward the mountain mining town of Tembagapura on the day of the ambush. During the trip, he said, he and four soldiers were let out of the vehicle, while the others continued on, and shortly afterward, he said, he heard gunfire. He said he was "100 percent sure" the shooters were Kopassus. Pastika said his team was checking the man's story but cautioned that some of the details he gave were inconsistent with what the team found in the field.

One Western source familiar with the investigation said he believes that Kopassus, whose mission in Papua is to combat the separatist Free Papua Movement, had reason to strike at Freeport-McMoRan. The source said that Kopassus officers were upset with the mine owner because they believed that company funds had been used to pay for a trip to Australia in August by activists sympathetic to the separatists. The source said this belief was unfounded.

Pastika said he had no knowledge of the allegation. Freeport- McMoRan, which has a significant investment in Papua, pays the Indonesian military to provide security for the mining operation and contributes funds for local development projects.

Pastika, a highly respected police officer who was just named the deputy chief of the national criminal investigative department, led the investigation of the killing of Papuan separatist leader Theys Eluay last November, which led to the detention of 12 Kopassus special forces soldiers. An American source said that before Eluay's killing, another Papuan separatist, Willem Onde, was slain and that US officials "had the strongest reason to believe Kopassus did it."

Two Aceh rebels killed in North Sumatra

Jakarta Post - October 26, 2002

Apriadi Gunawan and Haidir Anwar Tanjung, Medan/Pekanbaru -- A joint police-military team from Asahan, North Sumatra, killed two suspected rebels from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and arrested four others in the waters off Asahan on Friday.

Acting on a tip from locals, the joint team conducted a patrol in the waters off Asahan and searched a boat that was anchored at a port.

In the boat, the team found seven GAM fighters, weapons and documents about GAM's activities in the area over the past four months, including a letter designating Misran, a native of Tanjung Tiram Asahan, the GAM commander in the area.

The team attempted to arrest the six but they resisted, prompting the firefight that left the two rebels dead.

Those killed were identified as Ramadhan, alias Mahdan, and Tengku Ismail Syah, both from East Aceh. The other four gunmen -- Wandi, Evi, Azwar and Azlan -- were arrested and are now being detained at the Tanjung Tiram Police station and the Tanjung Tira Military Resort in Asahan regency.

The police and military team confiscated from the boat one AK-47 with 183 bullets, one SN gun with eight bullets, one 45-caliber gun with 12 bullets, one 38-caliber gun with nine bullets and one grenade.

North Sumatra Police chief of detectives Sr. Comm. Iskandar Hasan said the team was still searching for five other gunmen believed to be armed with one AK-47, one M-16 gun and four pistols.

"One of them is Misran, the one who is said to be the GAM commander for the Asahan area," he told The Jakarta Post.

According to Iskandar, the gunmen had been preying on local residents. He said the rebels often kidnapped local fishermen and demanded ransom of up to Rp 50 million.

"The fishermen remained silent until we captured the gunmen. But now they are free to say the gunmen often extorted money from them," he said.

Iskandar said the police and military had stepped up their patrols following last Tuesday's GAM attack that killed Brig. W. Sihombing of the Labuhan Ruku Asahan Police precinct and injured Sgt. Eko Laksono and Pvt. Sanen of the Navy.

Separately, the Tanjungbalai Karimun Naval Base chief for western Indonesia, First Adm. Tedjo Adhie, said security personnel had wounded a gunman, identified as Achmad, a native of Sigli, North Aceh, on Wednesday.

He said the team, comprising Marines, members of Army Battalion 126, the police's Mobile Brigade and the Sea Security Patrol, were still patrolling the waters.

Tedjo said security personnel had determined the gunman was a GAM member based on his weapons. He also said a group of gunmen had kidnapped three fishermen from Tanjung Tiram.

According to Tedjo, the gunmen entered the waters off Asahan because they were trying to elude patrols in the waters of Aceh. "They were tied up so they tried to run to North Sumatra waters to avoid being caught by security personnel," he said.

Tedjo said security personnel were monitoring the waters to prevent other gunmen from gaining a foothold in the area. "We will continue to patrol the waters to anticipate any possibility. Even in Jakarta, GAM walks around," he said.

Jakarta troops kill 6 Aceh rebels amid truce talk

Reuters - October 26, 2002

Jakarta -- Indonesian troops have shot dead six suspected rebels in Aceh a day after the government said it was ready to sign a truce with the province's separatist movement.

Lieutenant Colonel Firdaus Komarno, a military spokesman in Aceh, said a one-hour gunbattle took place on Friday not far from the local capital, Banda Aceh, after soldiers received reports from residents that rebels were operating in the area.

"The fight took place for about one hour. There were a number of armed personnel on their side but we were able to handle it," Komarno said by telephone on Saturday from Banda Aceh, 1,700 km northwest of Jakarta.

He said the six dead were part of a group of up to 15 suspected rebels. Around 30 soldiers were involved in the clash, and none was wounded, Komarno added. Representatives of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) were not immediately available to comment.

Chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Thursday that Indonesia was ready to sign a truce with the rebels next week to help quell a two-decade conflict in which thousands of people have been killed.

The latest round of peace talks with rebels is expected to be held in Switzerland before the end of this month. More than two years of periodic negotiations have done little to halt bloodshed in the resource-rich province.

The Aceh rebels demand an independent state on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island and one of their negotiators has said talks were expected to resume on October 27. GAM has not said whether it would sign a truce.

Aceh is one of two separatist hotspots in Indonesia, the other being in the eastern province of Papua. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) has estimated around 2,000 people were killed in the Aceh conflict last year alone.

Gunmen murder couple in latest Aceh violence

Jakarta Post - October 25, 2002

Banda Aceh -- Some ten unidentified gunmen shot dead a middle- aged couple identified as Hasan Basri, 50, and his wife Rosmawati, 45, at their home in the Idi Rayeuk area of East Aceh district on Tuesday, the provincial military spokesman Major Zaenal Mutaqin confirmed here on Thursday.

Zaenal blamed the separatist Free Aceh Movement which has been fighting for an independent state since 1976, but failed to provide any evidence.

More than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have died since then. Local rights activists have put the death toll for this year alone at more than 1,000.

Five more killed, including two soldiers, in Aceh

Agence France Presse - October 23, 2002

Five more people including two soldiers and a separatist rebel have been killed in the Indonesian province of Aceh, the military and residents said.

Prosecutors are meanwhile studying police reports on two foreign women who have been detained in Aceh since September 11 to decide whether to charge them with visa violations, said Zainal Said of the Aceh prosecutor's office.

Two guerrillas shot dead an army sergeant who was riding home on his motorcycle at Ubit Paya Itek in North Aceh district on Tuesday, said provincial military spokesman Major Zaenal Mutaqin.

A second sergeant was shot dead when rebels ambushed an army patrol at Lokop in East Aceh late Monday evening, Mutaqin said. The separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) was blamed for the attacks.

Police on Tuesday shot dead a suspected GAM member in downtown Lhokseumawe, the main town in North Aceh district, said Aceh police spokesman Commissioner Taufik Sutiyono.

"He had to be shot because he tried to escape with two other men after extorting some local people," Sutiyono said, adding that the two others escaped.

Residents at Peusangan in Bireuen district also said they found the bodies of two men with gunshot wounds on Tuesday. The local GAM spokesman, Tjut Manyak, said they were civilians shot dead by troops that day. Mutaqin could not immediately comment on the incident.

Three prosecutors are studying the police dossiers on British academic researcher Lesley McCulloch, 42 and American nurse Joy Ernestine Sadler, 52, Said told AFP. The team would decide in one week whether additional information is required or whether the dossiers are enough to prepare charges.

Said indicated that charges would be pressed. He said they would be charged with visa violations, punishable by up to five years in jail. Indonesian authorities had earlier tried to pursue espionage charges against McCulloch but have since dropped the plan.

Said has said the file aginst McCulloch is filled with alleged notes she made on "state secrets" -- specifically the strength and movements of security forces. It also contained copies of newspaper articles by McCulloch, photographs of victims of violence and photographs of her with GAM leaders, he has said.

McCulloch was until recently a university lecturer in Tasmania and is a frequent writer on the Aceh dispute to Asian newspapers.

An estimated 10,000 people have died since GAM began its fight in 1976 for a free state in the energy-rich province on Sumatra island. Rights activists put the toll for this year alone at around 1,000.

Government, GAM to resume peace talks soon in Geneva

Jakarta Post - October 24, 2002

Nani Farida, Jakarta/Banda Aceh -- Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Governor Abdullah Puteh said on Wednesday that the recommencement of a dialog between the government and the Free Aceh Movement would take place in Geneva on October 31 or November 1, with the Henry Dunant Center (HDC) mediating the peace talks.

Puteh made the announcement after a consultation with the Supreme Court to discuss the enforcement of Law No. 18/2001 on special autonomy in Aceh, including the establishment of a sharia court in Jakarta. "So far so good and the dialog will resume on October 31 or November 1," he said.

Puteh said GAM had given a positive response to the planned talks and both sides had agreed with the meeting's main agenda.

The peace talks, which were previously agreed on during the May meeting in Geneva, were scheduled to be held in early October, but were postponed because of mounting tension in Aceh last month and several technical problems experienced by the HDC in designing the planned meeting's agenda.

Previously, the government gave GAM until early December to sit down at the negotiating table to find a peaceful solution to the conflict. It also required that GAM accept the special autonomy law as a prerequisite and that Indonesia is a unitary state to continue further negotiations.

The government has threatened to impose martial law in the province to end the conflict and further loss of innocent victims should GAM decline to head back to the negotiating table.

Both sides have held several dialogs both at home and overseas since the conflict erupted in the 1970s but every agreement has proven ineffective to ending the conflict because of numerous violations.

Many Acehnese joining GAM have taken up arms to fight for the province's independence in reaction to rampant human rights abuses, especially during the military operation between 1989 and 1998 in the province, which killed thousands of civilians.

Puteh, who will represent the Aceh administration in the peace talks, said both sides were scheduled to discuss GAM's acceptance of the special autonomy law and its implementation.

"GAM has accepted special autonomy as a starting point to end the prolonged conflict that has claimed thousands of people but its acceptance will be further discussed in detail," he said.

Meanwhile, Teuku Kamaruzzaman, a GAM negotiator, said that GAM had yet to accept any invitation from the HDC on the planned meeting and had yet to be informed on the main agenda to be discussed during the meeting. "We're still waiting for an invitation from the HDC," he said.

When asked about the meeting's agenda, Kamaruzzaman said that GAM accepted the special autonomy law only as a starting point for further dialog to end the conflict.

"We accept special autonomy only as the beginning of a commentary, because it was drawn up unilaterally by the Indonesian government," he said without elaborating.

A direct gubernatorial election and the planned enforcement of sharia law in the province have nothing to do with GAM's proposals to end the conflict, he said.

"During the last two meetings in February and May of this year, both sides discussed the direct gubernatorial election that would be conducted in 2004 but we have yet to agree on how it will be conducted," he said.

Government-GAM dialog should have no deadline: HDC

Jakarta Post - October 21, 2002

Nani Farida, Banda Aceh -- A visiting director of the Geneva- based Henry Dunant Center (HDC), a mediator of peace talks between the Indonesian government and the secessionist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), criticized the government's decision to set a deadline for a dialog with the movement. "It's not a good idea to set a deadline for a dialog," Martin Griffiths said at the end of his three-day visit to the strife-torn province here on Saturday.

Griffiths was apparently referring to the statement from the government, that demanded GAM accept the autonomy law for Aceh by December as a prerequisite for dialog.

Some representatives of GAM in Aceh, nevertheless, have said that GAM would accept the law provided that there were some revisions made to it, especially on direct ballots to elect local leaders. According to Griffiths, negotiation needed passion and it should not be bound by time limits. He noted that HDC's two-and-a-half year role in facilitating peace talks between the government and GAM was not a long period.

"Compared to our activities in other countries, our time here is still short," he said. Nevertheless, Griffiths commended the commitment of both the government and GAM to reach an agreement, and to do so with all speed. "But it needs courage. Let's pray together for both sides," he said.

Griffiths emphasized that the most important thing for the opposing camps would be how they could reach an agreement to stop violence before the Islamic fasting month of Ramadhan, which would begin early November.

He said that the next dialog should focus on a peace agreement and determine sanctions for those who committed violations. According to him, one effective punishment would be in the form of publication in the mass media.

He said there should be an independent monitoring team to assess the result of any agreement reached between GAM and Jakarta.

He said that during his three-day visit in Aceh he met representatives of GAM, government officials, and local community leaders. After meeting leaders in Aceh, Griffiths flew to Jakarta on Saturday to see government officials and then would go to Stockholm on Monday to meet with GAM leaders.

"I want to tell you that in the past eight weeks there has been intensive negotiation between the government of Indonesia and GAM on details of the peace agreement, based on a cessation of hostilities," Griffiths said.

In fact, the government and GAM have signed a number of agreements to end violence in Aceh. Nevertheless, fatalities remain a common sight in Aceh. The latest was the finding of six bodies by Indonesian red cross volunteers in separate locations in the province.

Rural issues

Bali's postcard paddy fields stricken by drought

Straits Time - October 22, 2002

Yeoh En-lai -- Bali's famous beaches and spas are not the only places experiencing a dry spell. The island's other hallmark, its lush-green, terraced paddy fields, are also facing long-term damage from a six-month long drought.

There has been no rain here since April and even the famous subak cooperative system of canals, aquaducts, waterlocks and dams may not be enough to save the island's second most important industry. Not even with spring and stream water is there enough water to supply to all the fields.

"Some farmers are leaving some fields to dry up and concentrating on a few," said Mr Ketut Silong, a 44-year-old farmer from Tanah Lot, one of Bali's biggest rice regions. "I haven't seen rain in six or seven months and the area is clearly experiencing a drought. Those who share a subak are being very careful," he added in Bahasa Indonesia. He proudly claims that many of the postcards that tourists purchase of Bali's rice terraces are those of his paddy fields.

Up to 15 farmers share a subak system on the hillslopes of the island's crop-producing regions. Close to 20 per cent of Bali's arable land is planted with paddy, the local agricultural board said, and its fragrant rice is not for export but goes to restaurants and hotels here.

"Fewer tourists mean fewer dollars and we don't know how much the restaurants and hotels will be able to buy anymore. We still have enough to supply them even though it has been a very, very bad year," added Mr Ketut who has been farming here since 1972.

On October 12, three bombs on the nightclub strip in Kuta killed over 180 people and injured more than 500. Since then, hotel occupancy rates have dipped 25 per cent to hover around the 50 per cent range. Almost every foreigner-dependent industry here is offering discounts.

The farmers in Tanah Lot, a 45-minute drive from Kuta, have been praying for rain almost every day. "Everything is dry. Farmers under the cooperative have to take turns with the water," added Mr Ketut. "Rice brokers who buy our rice are buying it at lower prices because they know we are getting desperate."

Rice and coffee are two of Bali's most famous agricultural products. Since tourism became a major feature of the island, farming has taken a backseat but is still the most important industry in the north and central areas here.

Mr Ketut said he now sells 100 sq m of paddy to the brokers for 70,000 rupiah. And with physical cracks in the ground showing up all over their land, the farmers sell much less now.

"If we're lucky, we can make about 200,000 rupiah profit now for every rice crop cycle," said Mr Putu Siling, another farmer in Tanah Lot. Each crop cycle is four months. The profit, he added, is not enough to purchase fertiliser, and that results in lower quality rice.

The farmers have had to shift their cash crops from water- dependent yields such as soybean, peanuts, onions, and chillies to corn and tapioca, he also said. There are two rice crop cycles to one cash crop cycle per year.

"Because we cannot afford insecticide, worms are also a major problem," he said. So what happens now? "We are dependent on rain, but also tourists so that we can sell the rice. We just have to hope and pray now," said Mr Ketut. "Maybe I can charge people for the postcards. But not now," he added with a wry smile.

'War on terrorism'

Bombs, threats link Kuta with other plots

Sydney Morning Herald - October 26, 2002

Darren Goodsir, Kuta -- Investigators hunting the Bali bombers have unearthed credible links between the Kuta explosions, the closure last month of the Australian embassy in East Timor in a terrorist alert and the arrest of Jemaah Islamiah followers in Singapore in August over an alleged plot to attack key western targets.

It is believed an analysis of intelligence compiled by the Australian Federal Police shows similarities in all incidents, including the nature of the threats and the type of attacks being contemplated.

The AFP has focused sharply on statements given in recent months by group members, some of whom are now in prison in Singapore and the Philippines, that point to the purchase last year of up to seven tonnes of TNT and 17 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, by supporters of the radical Islamic organisation.

The accounts, first publicised by Singapore authorities last month, also alluded to the desire by the group to plant seven of the "fertiliser" bombs in trucks for the blowing up of targets that included the Australian and British high commissions in Singapore.

Latest bomb data analysis shows the devices that exploded in Bali on October 12 used the same basic ingredients.

In the Dili incident, all non-essential embassy staff were evacuated after intelligence operatives received a specific threat of a terrorist incident.

Sources close to the joint Indonesian-AFP inquiry say there are elements of the East Timor plot that bear the hallmarks of events leading up to the Bali bombings.

It has also emerged that Austrac, the agency responsible for tracing money laundering and suspect financial transactions, is monitoring cash movements that could cast light on who is responsible for the attacks, and how they were financed.

In Denpasar yesterday, Indonesian police said they had taken 10 men of Pakistani origin in for questioning, after detaining them for interviews last week. They also revealed that the identikit pictures of the three "possible suspects" -- which have yet to be released publicly because the images are not sufficiently precise -- are being shown to Australian witnesses to the attack on Paddy's and the Sari Club.

A computer-generated three-dimensional map of the blast site, not yet completed, is also set to be shown to witnesses who have given the most cogent accounts of what took place in the moments before the explosions.

Once that and other essential forensic material are finalised, the AFP is expected to make a presentation, in Bali and Australia, to the surviving blast victims.

It has also emerged that the AFP is fast-tracking the development of a dedicated counter-terrorism unit.

The AFP's Bali commander, assistant commissioner Graham Ashton, said: "We have trained pyschologists up from Canberra. They are working every day with our people at the mortuary and the crime scene.

"They are seeing horrific things. But then this is what they have trained for for years ... so, in a way, in that professional sense, they are very positive about what they are doing. Morale is quite high."

The core forensic team is expected to return to Australia within six weeks, but a large investigative unit will remain in Bali until Christmas -- with a scaling back of resources unlikely before the new year.

Meanwhile, Australian officials are hopeful there will be a further repatriation of bodies within 48 hours. Only two have so far been returned to their families.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade briefings continue to be held daily with the few families who are staying in Bali until the bodies of relatives are positively identified and released.

Press accuse government of false accusations

Radio Australia - October 26, 2002

[A group of Indonesian journalist today said the Australian Government is incorrect in thinking Abu Bakar Bashir was the man responsible for the Kuta Beach bombings. The journalists say the Government has no proof to support these claims.]

Transcript:

Mark Colvin: A group of Indonesian journalists, currently in Australia, are saying we've got it wrong in pointing the finger at the Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir as the man responsible for the bombings in Bali. The group, here to observe media organisations in this country, says the Western world has been too quick to jump to conclusions when it comes to Mr Bashir. Agnes Cusack reports.

Agnes Cusack: The 17 members of the Indonesian press corps, all well known in their country, are in Australia for nine weeks. They learned of the bombings in Bali through the Australian media, and have been reporting back to Indonesia on Australia's view of events.

They feel the Australian media has failed to distinguish between moderate and fundamentalist Muslims in Indonesia, and all agree that the cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has been wrongly accused of masterminding the attack.

Reiner Simanjuntak is from the Jakarta Post newspaper:

Reiner Simanjuntak: I think the Australian media, in some ways, has jumped to [inaudible] in making the conclusion that Abu Bakar Bashir is the man behind this tragedy. We don't have enough evidence or we don't try to explore other possibilities, that there may be other groups that are behind the Bali bombings, for example.

There is also the possibility that the loyalists of former totalitarian leader Suharto could be behind the bombings, or certain groups in the military which are not satisfied with the current development in democracy.

Indonesian Reporter: I believe that here is a simple person. Some of us know that as a Muslim he is a good leader. He loves peace, he loves others, even the person who comes from another religion, not only Muslim and Islam. He loves peace, I think. He is a very simple person.

Indonesian Reporter: The Australian media tends to be used by the Americans. I think there's a certain plot that Abu Bakar Bashir became a target. I don't think that he's the culprit of the Bali bombings because firstly, he doesn't have enough money, secondly, he lives very simply, and thirdly, the United States nowadays needs an enemy, needs one enemy, but with many faces. That is Al Qaeda, and Abu Bakar Bashir fits with that. I think the message is that all Muslims are evil, all Muslims are bad, don't make a relationship with a Muslim.

Mark Colvin: Indonesian journalists visiting Melbourne, and speaking to Agnes Cusack.

Who are the terrorists in Indonesia?

The Guardian - October 27, 2002

Sidney Jones -- In the aftermath of the 12 October bombing in Bali, Indonesians are convinced they have terrorists in their midst. They're just not sure who they are. Absurd, as it may seem, if talk shows and media commentaries are any indication, the most likely candidates in most Indonesians' minds are the US government and the Indonesian army. Al-Qaeda is a distant third.

Only these three, the thinking goes, have the expertise, the contacts, and the motivation to carry out an attack on the scale of the Bali attack.

The first theory, which has gained wide currency and not just among conservative Muslims, goes like this: The US embassy issued a warning to its citizens to avoid public places in Indonesia twelve hours before the explosion. The C.I.A. picked a place that few Americans frequented. It supplied the materials for the bomb. It then tried to blame al-Qaeda and radical Islam in an effort to win support for a war against Iraq, and offered to help with the investigation as a way of infiltrating American troops into Indonesia so they can eventually establish a new foothold in Southeast Asia.

The second theory, particularly prevalent among Indonesians who live in conflict areas, suggests that the Indonesian military (Tentara Nasional Indonesia, TNI) is the culprit. The TNI has been trying since the fall of Soeharto to reassert its role in government by provoking conflict and then coming in to establish order, proponents of this theory assert. Look how the army backed the creation of Laskar Jihad, the armed militia in the Moluccas, they say, or at the involvement of the army special forces in the death of Papuan independence leader Theys Eluay. The struggle between the army and police for control of internal security has become increasingly bitter and violent in the last year, and a blast on the scale of Bali could swing support in favour of the army. Acehnese and Papuan activists are convinced that the new anti-terror decree will be used primarily against them.

The al-Qaeda theory seems to have a much smaller number of supporters for several reasons. The relentless US pressure on the Indonesian government to act against Indonesian nationals linked to the shadowy Jemaah Islamiyyah network appears to have convinced many Indonesians that their own security agencies would be forced to accept the US version of events. Thus when an Indonesian team returned from interviewing Umar al-Faruq, the man arrested in West Java in June this year whose startling revelations, leaked by US intelligence sources to Time magazine, included a plot to kill Megawati, there was little surprise that the team's information confirmed the details in the Time article.

Likewise, many members of the liberal intelligentsia in Jakarta are worried about the arrest of Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, named by al- Faruq as a key figure in a series of bombings in Indonesia and as a close associate of Hambali, the Indonesian considered a top operative of al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia.

"All the evidence against Ba'asyir comes from people in detention," one journalist told me. "We know all about forced confessions in this country. Why should we believe any of it?" Another man is willing to believe in an al-Qaeda presence in Indonesia but not in its involvement in the Bali bombing. "Why would al-Qaeda want to blow up Bali?" an Indonesian friend with an American PhD asked me. "They had a safe haven here at a time when things were too hot for them in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Why wreck it all in this way?" The two sides of the popular Indonesian response -- acceptance of a terrorism problem but scepticism about al-Qaeda -- present some serious policy dilemmas for the Megawati government.

It will be politically difficult to use the anti-terror decree to round up terror suspects unless it can present strong evidence to the Indonesian public of their likely culpability, and yet it will be under continued pressure from Western governments, particularly the US and Australia, to demonstrate determination to combat terror. The easiest way to prove determination is to make arrests; the danger is that the arrests could become, or be seen as, arbitrary.

The pressure for quick results is already leading to a restructuring of intelligence agencies. Better coordination between the police and military is highly desirable, especially with contradictory statements coming out of the two nearly every day. (On Friday morning, an army special forces spokesman announced that the identities of the bombers had been determined, whereas a police spokesman in Bali said the perpetrators were still unknown.) The danger is that the army will take the lead role and undermine all the work that has been done in the last three years to build up the police as a civilian agency responsible for internal security. The more the army benefits, the more the theory that the TNI was somehow involved in the bombings in the first place will gain credence -- and the more the scepticism about an al-Qaeda role will grow.

As long as many Indonesians believe the US was responsible, there will be no incentive for radical Muslims attracted to Ba'asyir-style teachings to disassociate themselves from jihadist views. The horror at the casualties in Bali is deep, and if it could be conclusively proven that a few Indonesian Muslims were involved, condemnation of those individuals and what they stand for would follow. But Western pressure on Indonesia for results just deepens the conspiracy theory and makes acceptance of Indonesian involvement all the more difficult.

The presence of so many foreign police and intelligence specialists helping with the investigation in Bali has been received thus far with more gratitude than suspicion, but the mood could easily shift. A war in Iraq in particular could ignite all the nationalist fears that in fact, the Bali bombing was only the precursor to serving a larger US agenda. Before Bali, the backlash in Indonesia of a war in Iraq was probably manageable. Now, it could be much worse.

[Sidney Jones is Indonesia Project Director, International Crisis Group.]

Attacks aimed to break up Indonesia, says Hamzah

Agence France Presse - October 24, 2002

Kuta -- Indonesian Vice-President Hamzah Haz yesterday paid his first visit to the scene of the devastating Bali bombing and said the attackers aimed to break up the country and wreck its economy.

"This action is uncivilised, it's aimed to break up Indonesia and to paralyse the economy," said Mr Hamzah, who until the Bali bombing had denied the existence of terrorism in the country.

"They don't want to see any recovery in the Indonesian economy and want to distance Indonesia from the rest of the world." He told reporters that the nightclub bombing, in which more than 190 are confirmed dead, would deal "a severe blow" to the economy, both in the resort island and the rest of the country.

"We'll face tremendous economic pressure into 2003. Whoever is the terrorist, whoever is involved in the attack, including ulema, we will not protect them or forgive them," he said, in reference to Muslim religious scholars.

Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, whom Mr Hamzah supported previously, is under detention in hospital. Police are waiting for him to recover from respiratory and other problems so that they can question him on earlier bombings and an alleged plot to assassinate Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri before she became President.

Mr Hamzah, who leads the country's largest Islamic party, is acting head of state while Ms Megawati attends an Asia-Pacific summit in Mexico.

Asked if he believed that terrorists exist in Indonesia, he replied: "It is clear there are terrorists with this attack." He was scheduled to go on to Sanglah hospital where most of the injured are being treated. He had visited Bashir's boarding school at Solo in Central Java earlier this year and declared afterwards that there was no Islamic terrorist network in Indonesia. The Bali blast is seen as having damaged his political standing.

"The government urges that statements that are not objective, that there are no terrorists in Indonesia, should not be repeated again," Top Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said shortly after the bombing, in an apparent rebuke to Mr Hamzah.

Bali? Blame 40 years of US state terrorism

The Mirror - October 24, 2002

John Pilger -- What passing bells for these who die as cattle?" wrote the great First World War poet Wilfred Owen. His famous line might have been written for those who perish in today's secret wars and terrorist outrages.

His generation never used the word "terrorism", but the slaughter they suffered was terrorism on a breathtaking scale, whose perpetrators were not shadowy zealots but governments: men who spoke up for king and country while blowing millions of human beings to bits.

Last week's atrocity in Bali, like the September 11 attacks on America, did not happen in isolation. They were products, like everything, of the past. According to George W Bush, Tony Blair and now Australia's prime minister, John Howard, we have no right to understand them. We must simply get the criminals, dead or alive.

The fact that the Bush posse has caught no terrorist of proven importance since September 11 makes a grim parody of Bush's semi-literate threats and Blair's missionary deceptions as they prepare a terrorist attack on Iraq that will be the horror of Bali many times over. "Terrorist attack" is not rhetorical; the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, has told the government it could find itself before the International Criminal Court if it goes ahead.

State terrorism is a taboo term. Politicans never utter it. Newspapers rarely describe it. Academic "experts" suppress it; and yet, in many cases, it helps us understand the root causes of non-state atrocities like Bali and September 11. It is by far the most menacing form of terrorism, for it has the capacity to kill not 200, but hundreds of thousands. In each shower of cluster bombs that will fall on Iraq will be countless Sari Clubs. The dropping of the atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima was the equivalent of the horror of the Twin Towers 100 times over.

State terrorism, backed by America, Britain and Australia, has scarred Indonesia for the past 40 years. For example, the source of the worst violence is the Indonesian army, which the West has supported and armed. Today, troops continue to terrorise the provinces of Aceh and West Papua, where they are "protecting" the American Exxon oil company's holdings and the Freeport mine.

In West Papua, the army openly supports an Islamic group, Lashkar Jihad, which is linked to al-Qaeda. This is the same army which the Australian government trained for decades and publicly defended when its terrorism became too blatant.

In 1999, when the people of Australia's closest northern neighbour, East Timor, which had been invaded and annexed by the Indonesia dictatorship of General Suharto, finally had an opportunity to vote for independence and freedom, it was the government of John Howard that betrayed them. Although warned by Australia's intelligence agencies that the Indonesian army was setting up militias to terrorise the population, Howard and his foreign minister, Alexander Downer, claimed they knew nothing; and the massacres went ahead. As leaked documents have since revealed, they did know.

This was only the latest in Australia's long complicity with state terrorism in Indonesia, which makes a mockery of the self- deluding declarations last week that Australia had "lost its innocence" in Bali. Certainly, few Australians are aware that not far from their holiday hotels are mass graves with the remains of some of more than 80,000 people murdered in Bali in 1965-66 with the connivance of the Australian government.

Recently-released files reveal that when the Indonesian tyrant General Suharto seized power in the 1960s, he did so with the secret backing of the American, British and Australian governments, which looked the other way or actively encouraged the slaughter of more than half a million "communists". This was later described by the CIA as "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th Century".

The Australian Prime Minister at the time, Harold Holt, quipped: "With 500,000 to a million communist sympathisers knocked off, I think it's safe to assume a reorientation has taken place." Holt's remark accurately reflected the collaboration of the Australian foreign affairs and political establishment. The Australian embassy in Jakarta described the massacres as a "cleansing process". In Canberra, officals in the Prime Minister's department expressed support for "any measures to assist the Indonesian army cope with the internal situation".

Suharto's bloody rise might not have succeeded had the United States not secretly equipped his troops. A state-of-the-art field communications system, flown in at night by the US Air Force planes, had high frequencies that were linked directly to the CIA and the National Security Agency advising President Johnson. Not only did this allow Suharto's generals to co-ordinate the killings, it meant that the highest echelons of the US administration were listening in and that Suharto could seal off large areas of the country. In the American embassy, a senior official drew up assassination lists for Suharto, then ticked off the names when each was murdered.

The bloodbath was the price of Indonesia becoming, as the World Bank described it, "a model pupil of the global economy". That meant a green light for western corporations to exploit Indonesia's abundant natural resources. The Freeport Company got a mountain of copper and gold in the province of West Papua. An American and European consortium got the nickel. The giant Alcoa company got the biggest slice of Indonesia's bauxite. Other companies took the tropical forests of Sumatra and Kalimantan; and Suharto and his cronies got a cut that made them millionaires and billionaires.

IN 1975, the violence that had brought Suharto to power was transferred to the Portuguese colony of East Timor. Suharto's troops invaded, and over the next 23 years more than 200,000 people, a third of the population, perished. During much of East Timor's bloody occupation, Suharto's biggest supplier of arms and military equipment was Britain. In one year, a billion pounds' worth of Export Credit Guarantee loans went to Indonesia so that Suharto could buy British Aerospace Hawk jets.

Today, Suharto has gone, but decades of foreign plunder, in league with one of the greatest mass murderers, have produced fault-lines right across Indonesian society. The "model pupil" of the global economy is more indebted than any country; and millions of Indonesians have descended into abject poverty. It is hardly surprising there are resentments and tensions, and support for extreme religious groups.

Who was responsible for the Bali bombing? We do not know, but Indonesia's generals have plenty of motives to destabilise the elected government of President Megawati. A number of them are implicated in war crimes, and, unlike the Balkans, there has been minimal pressure from the West for the guilty to be tried. Democracy has ended important army privileges, including a block of guaranteed seats in the parliament. Last month, the army appeared to be sending a message that it is now targeting foreigners when troops in West Papua staged an "ambush" they claimed was the work of local guerrillas and two Americans were murdered.

What is likely is that the pressure exerted by America, Australia and Britain on the secular government in Jakarta to "crack down" on Islamicist groups, in a mostly Islamic country, will polarise communities. To some, this will seem a familiar game of the powerful. In the 1960s, the West backed the Islamicist groups when they thought Indonesia would "go communist". They were expendable. When Bush, Blair and Howard are next shedding their crocodile tears and grinding the language into a paean of cliches about the "war on terror", those in Indonesia with long memories might be forgiven for thinking nothing has changed.

[John Pilger's new book, The New Rulers Of The World, is published by Verso.]

Military linked to terrorist groups

Green Left Weekly - October 23, 2002

James Balowski -- The brutal murder of nearly 200 people in Indonesia's tourist resort of Kuta on the island of Bali on October 12 occurred as the US is attempting to pressure Jakarta into supporting its War on Terror. As part of this effort, Washington and Canberra are also attempting to re-engage with the Indonesian armed forces, the TNI.

At a speech to the first anniversary dinner of the C.E.W. Bean Foundation on September 25, Australian defence minister Robert Hill said that Indonesia remains of enduring strategic importance to Australia.

This strategic importance is based on the existence of what Hill describes as: "... an arc of militant Islamic influence -- albeit at the margins of society -- [which] stretches across the region, from Malaysia and Singapore across into the southern Philippines and Indonesia, including Sulawesi and Maluku".

While admitting that "sensitivities were obviously exacerbated by events in East Timor in 1999..." (referring to the campaign of violence unleashed by anti-independence militia, funded and backed at the highest levels of the TNI leadership which resulted in Washington and Canberra severing military ties in 1998), Hill went on to say: "Like Indonesia's other institutions, the role of the Indonesian military forces -- TNI -- is evolving in a fluid and difficult environment as they move away from the `dual function' they had under the New Order [of former President Suharto].

"But TNI will remain a fundamentally important institution in Indonesia. Its handling of difficult internal security problems across the archipelago will have a crucial bearing on stability. As a secular organisation it will remain key to the government's efforts to promote tolerance and harmony between Indonesia's many different faiths. This is particularly important in the context of current concerns about the potential attractiveness of radical forms of Islam in the region.

"The current TNI leadership seems committed to developing a more professional Indonesian military, and we are keen to assist this process. It would be a mistake to overestimate the amount of influence Australia can have over this process of evolution, which after all is a matter for Indonesia. But TNI's continuing importance in Indonesia and Indonesia's importance to Australia mean we have an undoubted stake in the outcome." Resuming ties with TNI Emboldened by the climate of fear created by the Bali bombing, Hill went further last week, saying that Australia is now considering resuming military links with Indonesia's notorious special forces, Kopassus. "We are aware of the role that Kopassus has in relation to counter-terrorism responsibilities in Indonesia, and therefore it might well be in Australian interests to redevelop the relationship", Hill told the Australian parliament on October 16.

In the past, Washington and Canberra have repeatedly said that if military ties were to be restored, this would not include Kopassus and the Mobile Brigade (Brimob) which have been at the forefront of suppressing peaceful democratic and separatists' movements.

In response to the Bean Foundation speech, Australian Financial Review correspondent Tim Dodd wrote on September 2: "Now let us see if we can follow this logic through. According to Defence Minister Robert Hill, in the new uncertain international environment Australians may have to rely on the Indonesian army to protect them from terrorists.

"And this Indonesian army is the same outfit whose special forces, the Kopassus, are suspected by many of being involved in the murder of three teachers in an armed ambush near the Freeport mine in Indonesia's Papua province last month [on August 31]. The killings, in which two of the dead and many of the wounded were American, are the most serious incidents which could be classified as terrorism that Americans have experienced in Indonesia for many years." Although Dodd acknowledged that "We do not know whether or not the army was involved in the killings" he went on to write: "But the most telling point against Kopassus is that no seasoned observer of Papuan affairs has ruled out the possibility that this so-called elite unit, or other soldiers for that matter, were involved in the killings.

"The reason why is that the Indonesian army is, at best, an ill- disciplined, poorly trained and badly equipped military force. And at its worst it can only be described as a group of brigands specialising in protection rackets, robbery and corruption ... [it] has shown no ability whatsoever to promote tolerance and harmony. In fact, it is a prime mover in fanning Indonesia's most dangerous ethnic and religious conflicts." The US has denounced the Bali bombing as a "despicable act of terror" and claimed that the al Qaeda network is behind the attack. So far no group has claimed responsibility and the Indonesian police say they "have no idea" who is behind it.

Many have pointed the finger at the radical Muslim group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) -- which allegedly has links with al Qaeda -- or one of several other radical Islamic groups operating in Indonesia.

TNI involvement? However, the possibility of TNI involvement cannot be ruled out. The reasons are two-fold. Firstly, the TNI has a long history of creating, funding and backing right-wing Islamic groups which have been inciting regional and communal violence and are used against pro-democracy groups. Secondly, the TNI directly benefits from maintaining such conflicts, particularly in areas such as northern Aceh, West Papua and the Maluku islands.

A report released last December by the International Crisis Group (ICG) -- a Belgium-based think tank -- suggests the TNI created the network now said to be South-East Asia's most serious terrorist threat. The report says that JI was created in the 1970s by the head of Indonesia's military intelligence. The goal was to compromise Muslim opponents of Suharto and to depict them as fundamentalists.

The ICG report says that JI has its roots in the Darul Islam rebellion in Indonesia in the 1950s which sought to transform Indonesia into an Islamic state. Suharto seized power in 1965 after slaughtering as many as one million communists and left- wing sympathisers -- a campaign supported by right-wing Muslim militias trained by the predecessor of the TNI.

By the 1970s Suharto had become concerned about the opposition groups' growing popularity and set about to discredit it. In a sting operation, Suharto's intelligence chief General Ali Murtopo persuaded former Darul Islam members to reactivate, ostensibly to prevent "communist infiltration". When they did so in 1977, the security forces arrested 185 activists and accused them of seeking to establish a fundamentalist state.

References to JI first surfaced in court documents as the organisation the activists thought they were setting up at Murtopo's behest.

Most of those arrested were released in the 1980s, and some -- radicalised by their experience in prison -- organised to fight the Suharto dictatorship. These included Abu Bakar Bashir, a Muslim cleric now accused by Singapore of being JI's ringleader.

ICG country director Sidney Jones says senior TNI officials retained close ties to the group at least through the 1980s. "If you scratch any radical Islamic group in Indonesia, you will find some security forces involvement", Jones told the Associated Press on August 12.

Laskar Jihad Another of Indonesia's violent Muslim extremist groups, Laskar Jihad -- which coincidentally was officially disbanded hours before the Bali bombing -- has been supported by the TNI and high ranking members of government.

In January 2000 for example, parliamentary speaker Amien Rais and vice-president Hamzah Haz were speakers at a rally organised by Laskar Jihad (LJ) members calling for a holy war against Christians in the Maluku islands if the government could not contain the violence.

When the LJ declared that it would leave for Maluku, then- president Abdurahman Wahid explicitly ordered it not to go. But the security forces at the Tanjung Perak port of Surabaya in East Java did nothing to stop members of LJ boarding ships heading for Maluku.

The security forces claimed that the LJ members carried no weapons so there was no justification to prevent their departure. They soon obtained modern automatic weapons -- presumably from sympathisers in the military -- and they are believed to have been involved in large-scale attacks on Christian communities which led to heavy casualties.

In a letter sent to US law makers in October, a group of Indonesian human rights organisations urged the US Congress to maintain tough conditions on renewing US training of the TNI. Backed by reports from the State Department, these groups argue that there has been virtually no progress by the TNI on meeting conditions attached to any resumption of training. They note that the TNI continues to use militias in other conflict areas, such as Aceh, Papua, and the Maluku islands to terrorise the local population and human rights activists, and pursue its own political and economic interests.

"Like the US government, we are also concerned about the existence of radical Islamic groups in Indonesia. But only a very small minority of Indonesians are involved with these organisations, which have little to no proven connection to international terrorist networks", the groups wrote.

"Moreover", they continued, "these groups frequently operate with covert and, in some cases, overt support of elements of the military, police and government. The greatest threat Indonesians face, and the greatest obstacle to real democracy, is the military. If the standard definition of `terrorism' is applied to events in Indonesia, then the true terrorists are the security forces." Any "stabilising" role the TNI may play in Indonesia will be to suppress popular discontent as the country continues to slide into an economic, political and leadership crisis which will only be worsened by the attack in Bali.

Contrary to Hill's assertion that the TNI is "... a fundamentally important institution ... [which] will have a crucial bearing on stability", recent events highlight the fact that the TNI is little more than a bunch of murderous thugs in uniform.

Bali attack intensifies political crisis

Green Left Weekly - October 23, 2002

Max Lane, Jakarta -- As of October 18, the Indonesian police investigating the terrorist bombing of the Sari night club on October 12 -- which killed nearly 200 foreign tourists and Indonesian workers -- have not announced any clear leads as to who carried out the attack. Journalists in Jakarta, who have been informally briefed by police, have told Green Left Weekly that the police have no idea who the perpetrators are.

On the streets of Jakarta, and among political activists and journalists, opinion is sharply divided as to who carried out the crime. This is unusual. There have been several bombings in Indonesia over the past few years and targets have included the Jakarta Stock Exchange, the Philippines ambassador's residence, churches and mosques. Several people have been killed. Following those attacks, most people pointed to the Indonesian military (TNI) or one of its factions as the most likely suspects. Police have not discovered who was behind those bombings.

This time almost every group that can be alleged to be taking advantage of the situation created by the bombing is under suspicion. So far, those accused include: the TNI; Indonesia's intelligence services; Tommy Suharto, the disgraced son of the former dictator; unnamed factions of Indonesia's elite seeking to distract attention from their problems; the US government and the CIA; Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network; Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a Malaysia-based fundamentalist group; Abu Bakar Bashir, a cleric accused of being linked to JI; various other religious groups; anti-Australian, right-wing East Timorese; rival night club owners; and drug interests.

This widespread suspicion underlines the fact that broad sections of the Indonesian people lack confidence in the major actors in Indonesian politics. This crisis of confidence reflects the widespread perception that the ruling elite is politically and morally bankrupt, and has no solutions to the country's deep crises of poverty, unemployment and social and economic dislocation. The elite is perceived as totally self-seeking, deceitful and capable of anything, including murder and terrorism.

Repressive powers As well as the popular suspicion that the TNI or intelligence services were involved in the attack, there have been widespread accusations that the bombing has revealed the gross incompetence of the military, police and intelligence apparatus. This sentiment is a further blow to an already deeply discredited security apparatus.

The government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri and the security apparatus have moved quickly to seek extra powers in the wake of the tragedy. A new presidential regulation giving the security apparatus wide powers of detention of people suspected of being involved in, or having information about, acts of terror is likely to be quickly approved by parliamentary leaders. Criticisms of "weak intelligence" are being used by military spokespeople to argue for a strengthening of the security apparatus.

The new regulation, which was hailed by Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer, has been condemned by Indonesian human rights and civil liberties organisations. However, opposition has meant that a second regulation forming a special security body contains a provision that it be used only to investigate the Bali bombing and be disbanded as soon as somebody is convicted in relation to that crime.

Opposition from democratic rights organisations had held up the passing of an anti-terrorist law in the parliament. This may pass in the wake of the attack.

The right wing of the Indonesian political elite comprises the TNI leadership, former dictator Suharto's party Golkar and a range of organisations and political parties that campaign under the banner of Islam. For some time, Indonesia's political Islamic groups have been divided between those aligned to Golkar and the TNI on the one hand, and those who contest the army's power and support formal democratic rights.

The National Awakening Party and the Indonesian Islamic University Students Union, both closely associated with former president Abdurrahman Wahid, are the main Islamic organisations that support political liberalisation and secular politics.

TNI-backed paramilitary groups committed to the "struggle for Islam" have attacked student activists and left-wing groups in many parts of the country. They have also been used to create political and social instability -- in areas such as Maluku -- by launching anti-Chinese and anti-Christian violence and agitation. The activities of these reactionary groups have created more space for right-wing, Islamic fundamentalist groups to campaign.

Fundamentalists After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, some fundamentalist groups and individuals -- such as Abu Bakar Bashir -- felt confident enough to openly campaign in defence of Osama bin Laden, claiming that he was being set up by Washington. These activities brought them and their links with like-minded international groups under the spotlight.

The Malaysian and Singapore governments have arrested a large number of alleged JI members. JI is accused of planning acts of sabotage, although no such acts had been carried out in either Malaysia or Singapore. No trials have taken place. These groups, including those associated with Bashir, accuse the US government of setting them up and deny being behind the Bali bombing.

Moves by the Indonesian government to detain leaders of Islamic fundamentalist groups will cause major tensions within rightist political forces. These will be heightened further if evidence is produced to prove that one of these groups was behind the Bali bombing.

(Obviously, the crisis of the government would be even greater if military involvement is also proved. TNI headquarters has already felt it necessary to issue denials of involvement. It is clear from some military statements that they are hoping it can be shown that the bombings were the work of "foreign terrorists".) The implications for the right go further than this. In recent weeks, other so-called mainstream figures on the right, such as Amien Rais, chairperson of the National Mandate Party (PAN), have made demagogic attacks on the International Monetary Fund. Rais, who is also chairperson of the Indonesian parliament, has used his attacks on the IMF to appeal to the xenophobic anti-Western sentiment that has been whipped up by the fundamentalist groups.

Rais's party Rais's party is based on a section of the organised Islamic community. PAN has not generally agitated for a fundamentalist program, but quickly shifts depending on which way the wind is blowing from its supporters. PAN's inability to come up with any credible answer to solve the country's deep social and economic crises has meant that fundamentalist views have gained ground in the party.

Following the Bali bombing, Rais has softened his xenophobic demagogy. He now faces the danger of being associated with terrorism if an Islamic group is proven to be guilty of the bombing, or if such suspicions gain ground as a result of government and media propaganda.

Meanwhile, it is becoming clearer that President Sukarnoputri has no solutions to the country's problems. In a speech on October 18, she blamed government ineffectiveness on the necessity of having to constantly consult with parliament.

At one level, this is an appeal to be freed from the constraints of democratic accountability. However, it also reflects the fact that the Indonesian parliament, being fairly representative of the factions of the political elite, is an arena for extreme factional horse trading and deals. The political elite is incapable of quickly reaching agreement on anything until enough money has been spread around.

The Indonesian parliament has long ceased to represent any significant popular sentiment. Any credibility that the parliament may have had immediately after the 1999 general election has been lost. Megawati's appeal for more executive power is likely to be viewed with cynicism and hostility by the Indonesian people.

The bombing's devastating impact on Bali's tourist industry, and the likelihood that there will be a big decline in foreign and domestic investment throughout Indonesia, means that the country's social and economic crisis will become even deeper.

Government & politics

Megawati under pressure following Bali bombings

International Crisis Group - October 24, 2002

Jakarta/Brussels -- Widespread criticism of President Megawati's performance following the 12 October attacks in Bali means she is no longer a virtual certainty for re-election in 2004 but other political and security consequences remain question marks.

An International Crisis Group briefing paper published today, "Impact of the Bali Bombings", considers the implications for Indonesia's fledgling democracy including likely presidential candidates, and attitudes toward the military and reform as the country comes to terms with the shock.

ICG Indonesia Project Director Sidney Jones said: "The Bali bombings are going to have a profound effect on Indonesia's political course. Perceptions that the President is weak will no doubt throw up other candidates, but the military could also benefit from the sense of a lack of leadership. Urgently needed reforms could be set back as the domestic and international focus reverts to security".

However few of Indonesia's radical Islamic groups are likely to change their ideas following the Bali attacks. Most are convinced, as are many Indonesians, that the US government planned the bombings as a way of prodding reluctant countries to support the war on terrorism or a campaign against Iraq. Horror over the bombing, therefore, is unlikely to lead to a perceptible change in the extent or content of radicalism in the nation with the world's largest Muslim population.

The arrest of Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the alleged leader of the Jemaah Islamiyyah network, suspected of involvement in the Bali attacks, is also unlikely to reduce danger, particularly when the man who appears to be the operational commander, Riduan Isamuddin alias Hambali, remains at large.

The economic blow -- particularly to tourism -- could wipe as much as one percentage point off GDP in the coming year. Bali itself has been devastated. As donors, governments and international financial institutions give much-needed assistance, however, they should pay careful heed to where the money is going to ensure that still extensive corruption doesn't set back the progress Indonesia has made since the fall of Suharto.

Golkar 'rebels' join call for Akbar's suspension

Jakarta Post - October 23, 2002

Muhammad Nafik, Jakarta -- Cracks in the wall the Golkar Party has built up around its embattled leader Akbar Tanjung are becoming increasingly evident, as support from party legislators for the demanded suspension of the convicted House of Representatives speaker gains momentum.

At least 15 legislators from the second largest faction in the House have reportedly joined other lawmakers in signing a petition demanding that Akbar be suspended from the top post in the legislative body.

"The number may even be more than 15 members of the Golkar faction," Ariady Achmad, one of the signatories from the Akbar- led party, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Dwi Ria Latifa from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), who is one of those spearheading the anti-Akbar motion, confirmed that at least 15 of the 120 Golkar lawmakers had signed the petition.

"I have received information from fellow legislators in Golkar that at least 15 of their colleagues have joined with us," she told the Post separately on Tuesday.

Dwi said support from the Golkar legislators brought the number of anti-Akbar petition signatories to at least 118 legislators. A petition containing only 68 signatures was submitted to the House last month demanding that Akbar be suspended as the body's speaker.

"Around 50 more legislators, including 15 from Golkar, have signed the petition. The number of signatories has now increased to 118," Dwi said.

People's Consultative Assembly Speaker Amien Rais has said support from at least 150 signatories would be "significant", increasing pressure on the 500-member House to oust Akbar.

The 15 Golkar signatories included Ariady, deputy party leader Marwah Daud Ibrahim and two other legislators, Husni Thamrin and Sarwoko Soerjohoedojo.

Ariady declined to give the names of other Golkar lawmakers who supported the petition calling for Akbar to step aside temporarily after having been sentenced to three years in prison for corruption.

Akbar was found guilty last month by the Central Jakarta District Court of misappropriating Rp 40 billion in funds belonging to the State Logistics Agency (Bulog). Many say the funds were used to help finance the Golkar campaign for the 1999 general election.

The convicted House speaker has remained free pending the outcome of his appeal and has defied mounting pressure to quit his post.

Marwah, who was the first senior Golkar legislator to bluntly urge Akbar to resign, confirmed she was among the petition signatories but refrained from naming others.

She warned that Akbar should relinquish his leadership in the House before November or otherwise he would be forced to quit or unseated. Ariady also said other senior legislators from Golkar, including Fahmi Idris, Agung Laksono and Theo L. Sambuaga, were present at "two or three" meetings aimed at soliciting support for the suspension of Akbar.

"I'm not sure if they have signed [the petition] or not. But I believe they would do so," Ariady added.

He said such meetings involving Golkar politicians would be held "frequently" to discuss the "prospects of Golkar in response to this latest development" and in order to garner more support for the petition.

Akbar ally Marzuki Ahmad, chairman of the Golkar faction in the House, confirmed informal meetings of party legislators had taken place several times in order to "mobilize" backing for opposition against the House speaker.

"I know there have been meetings against Pak Akbar. But I have no knowledge about what they discussed," Marzuki said.

Commenting on the growing support within Golkar for the petition, he said: "It's a phenomenon of democracy in which anybody can express their aspirations freely. But if the party has taken a decision, all members must follow it. It's democracy".

Marzuki pledged he would never sign such a petition, saying: "As the chairman of the Golkar faction, it is impossible for me to do so."

sRegional/communal conflicts

Flores tension a symptom of troubled archipelago; Report

Radio Australia - October 24, 2002

[There are fears that the Indonesia is facing a period of increasing instability with worrying signs of tensions on the predominantly Catholic island of Flores. A report from the International Crisis Group, claims violent incidences in recent months on the usually tranquil island were apparently fuelled by disaffected soliders from East Timor and conflicts between the military and police.]

Presenter/Interviewer: Anita Barraud

Speakers: Sidney Jones, Director of the Indonesian chapter of the International Crisis Group.

Jones: "There were a couple of incidents in July and August which really shook the town of Maumere, one in July when a protestant from North Sulawesi who happened to be a crew member on a visiting ship inadvertently entered a Catholic church on a Sunday during mass was offered the communion wafer, the host, and he didn't know what to do with it and he took it in his hand and started to go out of the church, and a near riot broke out."

"And he was eventually taken to the police station and within about a half an hour suddenly trucks full of by one estimate about 8,000 men came into the area around the police station demanding to basically lynch this particular prisoner and the violence was not stopped by the police to the point that mobs of men marched toward the local mosque, even though this individual was not a Muslim. It was precisely the local mosque that became the target of the mob wrath. No one that we talked to believed the violence was spontaneous."

Barraud: So you're saying that it was an organised event, it appears that it was an organised event?

Jones: "It appears that it was an organised event and the question is why would the local mosque still have become the target? And I think there are a couple of things going on here, one is that there really is genuine resentment by the Florenese towards migrants from other parts of Indonesian who have come and settled in Flores, and this is a pattern you see all over Indonesia. And they were talking about Madurese in Kalimantan or we're talking about Bugis from Sulawesi in Papua, but also another development that's taking place here is that many people suspect the army of wanting to create trouble so that they can come in and say look, you need we the military after all, you need to have us here in charge of the local situation."

Barraud: In your report you also say that there's some unresolved issues regarding East Timor?

Jones: "Flores is very close to East Timor, after the violence in 1999 in September when everybody fled to West Timor the Indonesian military was faced with the problem about what do we do with all the soldiers, regular army soldiers who had been stationed in East Timor? What they did was to take the soldiers who had been stationed in Dili and insert them into different district level and sub-district level posts, most of them in Flores. This not only created far more military presence, it also meant you had a lot of young men, who were soldiers, who were angry, and who were basically under-employed and those people are prime candidates to become troublemakers."

Barraud: Under-employed and underpaid?

Jones: "Right, there's a second incident that happened in Flores in August, a fight broke out at a local pub between police officers and military officers and who led an assault on police headquarters and in the process we had fully armed police confronting fully armed military in this tiny little town."

Barraud: Why such tension between the military and police?

Jones: Again what's going on in Flores is a reflection of many problems that the rest of Indonesia is facing, but the police used to be a member of the armed forces. When they were split off in the process of democratisation they were given primary role for internal security. The army across Indonesia felt affronted that these poorly trained often highly corrupt, poorly educated people they looked down on, were now taking over from them and getting international donor assistance in some cases. As a result there has been tension rising across the country exacerbated by the fact that a local level police and army compete for spoils, they compete for extortion benefits, they compete for drug trade, they compete for who runs the prostitution rings and so on."

Maluku separatists get two to five years imprisonment

Jakarta Post - October 22, 2002

Ambon -- The Ambon District Court here on Monday sentenced 14 men for between two and five years for raising four flags of the outlawed South Maluku Republic in the provincial capital Ambon on April 25, Antara news agency reported. They are all members of the Maluku Sovereignty Front pro-independence movement.

April 25 is the anniversary of the proclamation of the South Maluku Republic (RMS) in 1950, a movement which was quickly quashed by the government of then president Sukarno. Most of the activists and leaders of the group fled to the Netherlands.

"Their actions to separate from the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia has caused concern among society and helped to fuel the conflict in the Malukus," Judge Riyono said. All defendants said they would appeal.

Maluku was ravaged by three years of sectarian violence pitting Muslims against Christians since Jan. 1999. More than 5,000 people were killed. Intermittent violence has continued since both sides signed a government-backed peace pact in February.

Some Muslims said the mainly Christian separatist movement helped fuel the sectarian violence, while Christians blamed the Laskar Jihad Muslim militia.

Alex Manuputty and Samuel Waileruni, the leader and senior official of the Maluku Sovereignty Front, are on trial in Jakarta. The two are accused of subversion by setting up an illegal organization and raising the banned separatist flag. They face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Human rights/law

Two tried for insulting Megawati

Jakarta Post - October 24, 2002

Jakarta -- The fate of two demonstrators charged with insulting the President and Vice President by stomping on their pictures during a protest, is expected to be announced by the Central Jakarta District Court on Thursday.

Chief prosecutor Luhut Sianturi has earlier asked the court to sentence Muzakkir, alias Aceh, and Nanang Mamija, alias Junet, to 18 months in jail for their actions outside the State Palace on June 24.

The defendants were participating in a peaceful rally held by the Populist Youth Movement (GPK) and the National Farmers Federation (STN), demanding the dismissal of President Megawati Soekarnoputri and Vice President Hamzah Haz.

At the end of the rally, Muzakkir and Nanang allegedly stomped on posters of Megawati and Hamzah and poured rotten food on the damaged pictures.

The defendants, who have been detained since June 30 and July 1 respectively, were charged under Article 134 of the Criminal Code on insults against the president or vice president. The charges carry a maximum penalty of six years in prison.

Focus on Jakarta

Evicted street vendors want to resume operations

Jakarta Post - October 24, 2002

Ahmad Junaidi, Jakarta -- Dozens of street vendors who had been evicted from Pulogadung bus terminal in East Jakarta visited the City Council on Wednesday, asking for the legislators' help to force the city administration to allow them start trading again.

"We can manage ourselves properly if we are allowed. We won't cause traffic jams," vendors' association chairman Flator Tambunan said during the meeting with the council.

He condemned the administration for evicting the vendors on Sunday morning even though the Council had earlier asked the administration to hold discussions with the traders first.

More than 1,000 street vendors, however, were forcibly evicted from in and around the bus terminal. The city transportation agency chief, Rustam Effendi, claimed that the vendors had been informed about the plan beforehand.

Councillor Aziz Matnur of the Justice Party said on Wednesday that the city administration should talk to vendors before conducting any other eviction operations.

"We will also inspect the Pulo Gadung terminal and discuss the matter with the vendors," added Aziz, who is a member of the Council's Commission A for administrative and legal affairs.

Separately, Sutiyoso pledged to continue the administration's policy of raiding street vendors who were considered to be disrupting order and security in public places, including terminals.

"We will allow the vendors to do their jobs, but they must conduct themselves in an orderly manner. They violate other people's rights by creating traffic jams and disorder," Sutiyoso said during a visit to Kampung Rambutan bus terminal in East Jakarta.

He said street vendors also caused losses to their fellow vendors who paid taxes and occupied official stalls, such as those in the Kampung Rambutan terminal. According to Sutiyoso, the city administration planned to build more stalls in Kampung Rambutan terminal, and also in Pulogadung terminal, for street vendors.

"But of course, the stalls won't be enough for all the street traders. This should be understood," he said without mentioning whether the stalls would be sold or given free of charge to the street traders.

Activist Azas Tigor Nainggolan, who accompanied the vendors on their visit to the City Council, said that he had heard the administration planned to build stalls in the Pulogadung terminal and sell them to the vendors for Rp 500,000 each.

According to Tigor, who is the chairman of the Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta), this was too expensive.

Tigor said the vendors' association also planned to file a lawsuit against the administration for conducting forced evictions, and wrecking the vendors' stalls and pushcarts, which caused millions of rupiah in losses.

Vendors evicted from Pulogadung

Jakarta Post - October 21, 2002

Jakarta -- About 1,000 street vendors were forcibly evicted from in and around the Pulo Gadung bus terminal in an operation involving around 2,200 officers from the East Jakarta public order agency, the police and the district military command on Sunday.

"The officers have evicted about 1,000 street vendors in and around the bus terminal," said City transportation agency chief, Rustam Effendy, who witnessed the operation on Sunday morning.

The officers, who started the eviction at 5:30 a.m., demolished all of the vendors' stalls and pushcarts in and around the bus station on Jl. Bekasi Timur and Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan.

Unlike previous forced evictions in the area and in other areas of the city, the eviction proceeded peacefully without any resistance from the vendors or local residents.

Rustam said they had told the vendors of their plans prior to the operation so they were ready to accept and anticipate the reality.

"We evicted the vendors because they are the main cause of traffic jams around the bus terminal. Their presence has also made it dirty and increased crime," said Rustam.

Jumroni, 30, a food stall owner outside the bus terminal, said that he managed to remove his belongings before the officers started demolishing his stall.

"But I don't know where I can open my business tomorrow. Maybe I'll find a place a bit further away from the terminal," he told Antara on Sunday.

Rustam said a number of officers from the public order agency, civilian guards and police would guard the area to prevent the vendors from reopening their businesses in the area.

"We'll also install space dividers in the area to prevent the vendors from rebuilding their stalls or installing their pushcarts," he said.

International relations

Australia-Indonesia military links risky

Asia Times - October 26, 2002

Sonny Inbaraj, Melbourne (Inter Press Service) -- Australia's move to restore links with Indonesia's feared special forces after the October 12 bombings in Bali is risky and short-sighted, say activists and analysts.

They were reacting to this week's disclosure of Australia's plans to train Indonesia's special forces, or Kopassus, by Defense Minister Robert Hill, who was speaking on Australian Broadcasting Corp TV's Lateline program on Tuesday.

"Kopassus has not had a good human-rights record, but it is Indonesia's most effective response to terrorism," Hill said, especially after the Bali bombings that as of the latest count killed 190 people so far, most of them Australians. Added Hill: "It's really its [Indonesia's] only counter-terrorism capability.

You can therefore argue that it's in Australia's best interests to be working with them to protect Australians and Australian interests in Indonesia."

Within hours of the Bali bombings, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer named Indonesia-based Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah as the prime suspect.

On October 15, Prime Minister John Howard announced that Australia would propose that the group be placed on the United Nations list of terrorist organizations for having links with al-Qaeda.

The explosion of a huge car bomb at 11:30pm on October 12, followed shortly afterward by a second one, was targeted at nightclubs packed with tourists in Bali's famous Kuta beach -- an area frequented by Australian surfers and backpackers.

Hill's comments immediately attracted criticism from human-rights activists.

"For neophyte Defense Minister Robert Hill to proclaim the way to combat terror in Indonesia is to train and enhance Kopassus is insulting. The fox in charge of the chicken coop as many would suggest," said Rob Wesley-Smith, the convenor of Australians for a Free East Timor.

"East Timor activists have known since 1975 that the masters of terror were the Indonesian military. The worst of these were the Kopassus commandos," Wesley-Smith said, citing their notorious rights record, especially in the Suharto era.

"The head thug for many years was Prabowo, Suharto's son-in-law, who was Kopassus commander. He took personal hands-on pride in terror for terror's sake in East Timor," added Wesley-Smith.

Australia's military training of Kopassus was suspended after the September 1999 East Timor violence, carried out by Indonesian military-sponsored militias after the UN-sponsored independence ballot.

"The Kopassus role in training and leading East Timor's militias is well documented, but what is less clearly recorded is this same role with other shadowy militia groups in places like West Papua, Ambon and Aceh," said Damien Kingsbury, who observed the East Timor ballot and now teaches international studies in Deakin University.

"In each case, Kopassus has trained armed vigilante groups to deflect from the military responsibility for atrocities," he added. "Support for the Indonesian military generally, and Kopassus in particular, is a major error of judgement," stressed Kingsbury.

In late September, Hill gave hints in a speech that training for Kopassus would be resumed, when he made an observation that the Indonesian military, known by its Indonesian acronym TNI, was fundamentally important in the country.

He described the armed forces as a secular organization and the key in the Indonesian government's efforts to promote tolerance and harmony among the different faiths in the mainly Muslim nation, struck in recent years by communal tensions in different areas.

But TNI's role in playing with the fire of Islamic extremism and staging violent incidents within Indonesia was brought up at a forum organized by the Asia Link Center for the Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages and Societies.

"To suggest that the TNI stands apart from religious conflict is just wrong," said Professor Merle Ricklefs, director of the Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages and Studies.

"This is rather ironic because we know that the Indonesian military was at least tolerant of and possibly running [the Islam militant group] Laskar Jihad and sending them to Christian areas in Ambon and Sulawesi," Ricklefs told the forum.

Peter Mares, an Indonesian specialist with Radio Australia, agreed with Ricklefs.

"Clearly, Indonesia's security apparatus would have to play a role in fighting terrorism, but the problem is if you asked many Indonesians what was the greatest source of terror in their lives -- particularly Indonesians in Aceh and Papua, they would say, indeed, the Indonesian military," said Mares.

"So are the Indonesian military part of the solution or part of the problem?" he asked.

While many Australian officials deride them as "silly", questions are being asked by some on whether TNI should be on the list of suspects of the Bali bombings.

Tim Lindsey, director of Melbourne University's Asian Law Center, explained that it is possible that some in the military are in illegal or criminal activities because only one-third of the military's budget comes from government sources and they have to find other funding.

"So it is inevitable that any major criminal event regardless of religious affiliation -- of people performing those acts [communal strife] -- will at some point link to rogue elements [within TNI] or some individual officer or to particular barracks," he said.

"For example armaments and explosives -- the best way to obtain them is through gangster linkages into military barracks and so forth. So it would be bizarre if there was not a military link," he argued.

An Australian Federal Police team in Bali indicates that the explosives used in the Bali attacks were one kilogram of TNT and a device with 100kg of ammonium nitrate and diesel oil -- easily obtained in Indonesia.

But Indonesian police say that C4 plastic explosive was an active ingredient in the blast at the Sari club. The 1999 al-Qaeda attack on the destroyer USS Cole, which killed 17 US sailors, employed C4 as well.

Taking the war against terror to Indonesia

Melbourne Age - October 26, 2002

Australia, with a nod from Washington, is rebuilding its relationship with Indonesia's military. Michael Millett, Marion Wilkinson and Matthew Moore look at the realpolitik behind the moves.

It was an unlisted engagement on the Downer itinerary: a hurried dinner in Jakarta with a key Indonesian figure. The dinner came at the end of the Foreign Minister's emotion-charged trip to the Indonesian capital in the wake of the Bali devastation.

Downer and his high-powered team had just struck an unprecedented accord with their Indonesian counterparts, including President Megawati Sukarnoputri, for a joint investigation into the blast.

As Downer says, if there has been any positive outcome from the mayhem at Kuta beach, it has been the "extremely" productive cooperation between the two countries.

But his departing dinner will touch off anxieties about where this new era of cooperation is heading.

Downer's dinner companion was Indonesia's supreme military chief, Endriartono Sutarto. While Sutarto has avoided association with some of the murkier parts of the Indonesian army's history, the armed forces (TNI) have long been regarded as a black feature of modern Indonesia, too ready to abuse their political and physical power to pursue their own ends.

One of the central parts of Australia's Indonesian strategy after the collapse of the repressive Suharto New Order regime was to prise open the grip of the military on almost every aspect of Indonesian life. The tactic was deemed to be central to encouraging the republic's fragile democracy.

Now, a reassessment is being made. Australia is, with some fairly heavy nudging from Washington, now actively re-engaging Indonesia's top brass.

Not everyone agrees with the strategy. It has raised some difficult moral, practical and political issues. But the mindshifts involved demonstrate just how much Bali has changed the diplomatic landscape.

The bomb blast did more than shatter Australia's complacency about the risks it faces in this new era of global terrorism. It has catapulted Australia and its closest and most important South-East Asian neighbour, Indonesia, into an uneasy new relationship.

To the seasoned veterans of the Jakarta-Canberra interplay, this is "grit your teeth time". It is easily the biggest test yet of a connection that over the past few years has, at best, struggled to achieve any sort of stability and, at worst become seriously dysfunctional.

Washington, too, the perennial third player in the relationship, has become more assertive, vastly complicating the new diplomatic picture.

For Indonesia, particularly its shaky leader, Megawati, the risks are sky-high. The overwhelming majority of Indonesian Muslims have no truck with either the methods or objectives of the militant fanatics behind the Bali mayhem.

But nationalism and anti-Western feeling is easily stirred up in Indonesia's current democratic ferment. A Muslim backlash provoked by a heavy security crackdown could easily push the nation into chaos.

The real worry, say seasoned Indonesian hands, is that the nation sits uncomfortably between two polar extremes: nationalist fervour and Islamic outrage on one side and a lapse back into authoritarianism as the other bleak possibility.

For Australia, perched at the end of Indonesia's sprawling archipelago, these are very nervous times.

East Timor stretched relations between Canberra and Jakarta almost to breaking point. Defending the fragile new nation has cost Australia heavily in terms of money and military resources.

September 11 and Bali have forced Australia to commit even more to homeland defence and to global hot spots such as Iraq.

The prospect of dealing with an out-of-control Indonesia on top of all these problems is almost too frightening to contemplate. "It's always been a very difficult relationship to manage at the best of times," one senior government figure says. "This is really going to test us." While much of the public attention has been preoccupied with the mopping-up exercise in Bali, Canberra is already starting to grapple with the wider diplomatic issues.

The fear, according to many inside Canberra's military and bureaucratic circles, is that the Howard administration may be chasing two mutually exclusive objectives. That the immediate security priority -- to get Jakarta to shake off its reticence to move against Islamic fanatics like Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the organisation believed to have orchestrated the Bali attack -- may collide, heavily, with the need to nourish and protect Indonesia's fragile democratic reform in the interests of longer-term stability. This is where "gritting the teeth" comes in.

Realpolitik is suddenly the main game. Downer's dinner with the Indonesian top brass was just one indication that Canberra is starting to review its strategy towards the immediate north, making some fairly ruthless assessments about what is needed.

This means utilising TNI's resources to strike against the terrorist scourge.

Defence Minister Robert Hill has gone even further, arguing that Indonesia's notorious special forces unit, Kopassus, will need to be enlisted in the fight. He also floated, to Indonesian amazement, the prospect of Australian commando forces operating on Indonesian soil in a joint anti-terrorism operation.

Kopassus has a dreadful human rights reputation. Its role in arming and training militia groups in Timor, some of whom fired on Australian troops, is well-documented. It has even been linked with some of the extreme Islamic groups now being connected with the Bali blast.

Kopassus became too hot to handle for the Australian military even before Timor. Formal links, such as unit involvement in SAS training programs in Australia, were abandoned in the mid-1990s. But Hill admitted this week that an assessment was being made about re-establishing training links.

"Kopassus does not have a good human rights record, but it is Indonesia's most effective response to terrorism. It really is its only counter-terrorism capability," he said.

"You can therefore argue that it's in Australia's best interests to be working with them to protect Australia and Australian interests in Indonesia." This mindset alarms Melbourne academic Damien Kingsbury, who has written extensively on the links between the TNI and extremist Muslim groups in Indonesia.

In Kingsbury's view, Australia is being used by both Washington and the TNI to achieve ends that have little to do with Australia's long-term interests.

Four months ago, while lecturing at an Indonesian staff training college, Kingsbury says he was approached by senior military brass who expressed a keen interest in "putting the Australian relationship back on track".

"Everybody recognises that if Australia re-establishes links with the TNI, this will give the green light to America to do the same," he says.

"This is the game plan. They don't want Australia for Australia's sake. The military is starved of hardware as a result of the [US] Congress ban. It is all about getting Congress back on side." Kingsbury believes the tie-up will happen and that it will cause enormous damage to the fragile state of democracy in Indonesia.

"There is no way this is going to help in the fight against terrorism. The TNI is an out-of-control organisation and keeping it firmly under civilian control is a crucial part of the Indonesian process of reform and democratisation. Supporting the TNI in its current form is completely contrary to that process." Downer readily acknowledges that the Howard Government has begun "rebuilding our relationships with TNI".

"The fact that I had dinner with the head of TNI is an illustration of the point. But it's a million miles from saying that the Australian Defence Force and TNI would be involved in some joint operations," he says.

"You're not talking about dealing with the Indonesia of President Suharto ... believe me, having dealt with both, it is completely different ... The military is run by civilians, the president is a civilian, the defence minister is a civilian." The director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Hugh White, agrees, arguing much of the apparatus needed to fight terrorism in Indonesia is now in civilian rather than military hands.

"I am not sure that TNI is the most important part of the [post- Bali] picture," White says. "The important work has much more to do with intelligence and police operations. That is where the responsibility for counter-terrorism lies." But even Downer concedes the TNI is "understating" its case when Sutarto told him that while it was happy to lend some assistance to the fight against terrorism, the military "no longer had much of a role any more in society".

The private belief in foreign affairs circles is that Megawati will need to use elements of the TNI if the terrorism scourge is to be eradicated.

Implicit in this is a recognition that "some excesses" will need to be tolerated. It sits uncomfortably with Australian notions of justice, but as one government source says: "When you are in a situation approaching a state of war, views change." Some hardheaded assessments are being made about the willingness of the Australian public to tolerate "such excesses" as part of the global fight on terrorism.

While the polls continue to show opposition to Australian participation in a US attack on Iraq and give few leads to the desired public response to the Bali tragedy, the Howard government's view is that attitudes will harden. This will involve a demand for action to rein in terrorism in South-East Asia.

The Prime Minister, an astute reader of the public mindset, is already positioning the government. Hill's comments about the possible existence in Australia of JI operatives is being seen as part of this exercise, reinforcing the public desire for swift, decisive action.

View from Washington Washington, the crucial third player in the US-Australian-Indonesian diplomatic triangle, is also playing its hand.

Back in August, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, on his first visit to Jakarta, expressed his hope that TNI would play an active part in the war against terrorism.

The US Congress cut military ties after the massacres in Timor but, ever since September 11, their restoration has been seen as critical.

"What we are trying to do is to help President Megawati and her leaders and the TNI to enhance their capabilities and be better able to deal with the threats that President Megawati and the leaders of Indonesia have determined exist within the country," Powell told Indonesian reporters.

In the weeks that followed, that confidence was sorely tested. Two Americans along with an Indonesian were killed in an ambush on US mining company Freeport in Papua; a confession from an al Qaeda operative revealed plots by Indonesian extremists to attack the US embassy in Jakarta and in other regional capitals; terrorist alert warnings for Americans were upgraded and then the bombs exploded in Bali.

Throughout those weeks, US officials from the President down had urged Megawati to move more decisively against JI, and Bush even sent a special emissary from Washington in September to talk with her.

But until this flurry of activity from Washington, Indonesian experts say that Indonesia was "a backburner" problem for the Bush administration ever since it took office. While the September 11 attacks focused some attention on Jakarta, that focus was lost after the campaign against Iraq consumed the White House.

Professor Bob Hefner, an Indonesia analyst from Boston University, says that despite the pressure of September 11, there was a widespread view, particularly in defence, that Indonesia "would muddle through somehow". While some in the State Department were increasingly concerned about Megawati's weak civil administration and the bloody unrest in the regions, Indonesia did not make it to the top of Bush agenda. The Bali attacks and the tensions in the UN over Iraq have sparked some rethinking, but how much remains to be seen. So far, much of the US effort in Indonesia has been narrowly directed towards the restoration of military ties. This policy is strongly backed by Australia, according to Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage.

But some in the US administration remain worried about the links between TNI and violent Muslim militias, such as Laskar Jihad, which, until recently, operated with the support of the Islamic extremists in the army and Kopassus.

Hefner says the US learnt a difficult lesson in 1998 when key Indonesian military officers thought to be aligned to the west, such as President Suharto's son-in-law, joined in violent anti- American and anti-Chinese propaganda campaigns when the regime was collapsing.

They also viewed with concern the link between Islamic extremists in the army and militants, who pushed for the removal of President Wahid. "The primary threat in Indonesia is not extremism in the public as a whole but the efforts of a small but influential faction in the political elite to hijack the political process and the Muslim community," says Hefner.

In the aftermath of September 11, the US did pressure Megawati and the TNI to dismantle the military's links with Laskar Jihad that were not only fuelling bloody regional conflicts but seriously undermining efforts in the US Congress to restore military ties.

Evidence of senior TNI officers funnelling millions of dollars and arms to Laskar Jihad were given to the administration at the same time the group was pumping out virulent anti-US propaganda in its publications.

By May this year, says Hefner, there were clear signals that the TNI was winding back its support for the group, and its anti- US and anti-Jewish propaganda was also being curtailed. Even before the Bali bombings, Laskar Jihad was moving to disband and transform into a political organisation.

"This was a response to US pressure mediated through the civilian and military elite in Indonesia," says Hefner.

Powell also stepped up pressure on Indonesia to move towards a peaceful solution in the war-torn province of Aceh, where thousands of civilians have died in the past year. Former US special envoy to the Middle East, retired General Anthony Zinni, turned up in Jakarta as a private mediator in the conflict in August.

But there is no doubt the confession of the al Qaeda Indonesian operative, Omar al-Faruq, in early September pushed the US- Indonesian relationship to a new crisis point. Al Faruq's claims of a widespread terrorist plot to attack US and Western interests in the region and of attempts to assassinate President Megawati, led the US to urge a far more serious crackdown on JI and other extremist groups.

According to Hefner, by this time it was already clear that the hardline Islamists were mobilising not only against Western interests but against Megawati as well.

Following the Bali bombing, Bush took the usual step of publicly calling on Megawati to show more resolve. Many in Washington believe Megawati's prevarication applies equally to her inability to handle Indonesia's economic and political problems. But while there is little optimism about her government, for the present, Washington has no choice but to work with her.

View from Jakarta

For Megawati, the next few weeks are shaping up as the defining time of her presidency as she balances the fight against terrorism with her own fight for political survival.

In the fortnight since the horrific blasts in Bali, her administration has sought to show the West it is taking serious steps to counter terrorism.

It has enacted two anti-terrorism regulations to give police sweeping powers of arrest and detention not seen since Suharto's government. It has signalled it is in step with the West by moving against JI. And it has half-arrested the cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, a rallying point for Islamic, anti-Western sentiment.

All of this it has done in spite of the ever-present suspicions in Indonesia that such measures are not so much anti-terrorist as anti-Muslim. With Indonesia nearly 90 per cent Muslim, any anti- Muslim fears that get traction can quickly become a potent political force.

Cabinet debates since Bali have seen the secular nationalist politicians, such as Security Minister Bambang Yudhoyono, triumph over Muslim politicians such as the Deputy President, Hamzah Haz.

Yudhoyono has won new powers to draw up anti-terrorist plans and arrest terrorist suspects. The fear of Muslim organisations, including the moderate ones that represent the great bulk of the country, is that these powers may soon be used to arrest Muslim politicians in the lead-up to the 2004 election.

But in the aftershock of the Bali blasts, such considerations have been swept aside as the new powers were forced through cabinet. Indonesia's traditional suspicion of foreign security forces was also shelved to allow police from Australia and other western countries to take a major role in searching for the Bali bombers.

While these developments have pleased Western governments, Indonesia's relationship with Australia will require a lot of work at the ground level to overcome suspicions entrenched over many years.

Take the investigations over the composition of the main bomb. On the Monday after the Saturday night bomb, Indonesia's national police spokesman said the "indications" were the bomb was made of C-4 and TNT. Two days later, official results from the police forensic laboratory said the explosives used were C-4 with RDX and TNT.

When Australian investigators revealed their findings that the bomb was a fertiliser bomb, like that used in Oklahoma City, along with some TNT, Indonesian investigators looked to have blundered badly.

The official Bali police spokesman then denied police had ever said C-4 was involved, and by late this week, questions about C-4 were simply being left unanswered. The disagreement over the bomb's components may not be a critical issue. But it is likely to be the first of many as two very different police forces attempt to cooperate on an investigation that could branch off into all sorts of sensitive areas, including Muslim groups or parts of the military. Defence Minister Robert Hill quickly found out how sensitive security issues are when he floated the idea of Australian troops possibly fighting alongside Indonesian troops in a battle against terrorists.

While Indonesia had worked with other countries on issues such as people smuggling and the fight against terrorism, "we would not accept the presence of foreign military on our soil," a government spokesman said.

Australia's decision to advise its nationals to consider leaving has also sparked resentment from many who see it as further evidence of the West portraying Indonesia as a hotbed of terrorism.

For Megawati, hardly Indonesia's most decisive politician, this is all a tough ask. She is already being criticised in Jakarta for failing to use her opportunity post-Bali to build a coalition of moderate Muslim organisations to take on the extremists.

In the present environment, nationalist and religious outrage can easily erupt.

Dr Greg Fealy, a research fellow in Indonesian politics at the Australian National University, put it like this: "Megawati needs to show she's acting on the demands of law, not on the demands of the West."

[Marion Wilkinson is The Age's United States correspondent, Matthew Moore is The Age's Indonesia correspondent.]

Australia gets off on the wrong side in Jakarta

Australian Financial Review - October 24, 2002

Damon Kingsbury -- Defence Minister Senator Robert Hill has said that in a bid to counter terrorism, Australia will restore its links with the Indonesian army's special forces, Kopassus, and strengthen intelligence links with the country.

This decision was disturbingly predictable and very short- sighted.

The government has been edging towards closer cooperation with the Indonesian military for over a year but has been restrained by the popular memory of why military links were broken off.

The public perception of events in East Timor in 1999 has not appreciably changed but the government now sees terrorism, in particular that with a radical Islamic character, as being the prime threat.

However, support for the military generally, and Kopassus in particular, is a major error of judgement at two levels.

The first is the history of Kopassus' involvement with terrorism, along with the TNI more generally. The second is that such support implicitly endorses and reinforces the types of political structures that have led to most of Indonesia's problems now.

The Kopassus role in training and leading East Timor's militias is well documented, but what is less clearly recorded is this same role with other shadowy militia groups in places like West Papua, Maluku (Ambon) and Aceh. In each case, Kopassus has trained armed vigilante groups to deflect from the military responsibility for atrocities.

Kopassus members were, for example, involved in the training of the notorious Laskar Jihad in West Java. This group was responsible for the deaths of many thousands in Maluku and Central Sulawesi and many members had previously fought with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The organisation most publicly linked with the Bali bombing, Jemaah Islamiyah, was also one of the sources of funds for the Laskar Jihad. It was just a short step from Jemaah Islamiyah to Kopassus, especially via the Green (Islamic) generals of the Soeharto era.

Kopassus also had its modus operandi stamped all over the murders of hundreds of moderate Islamic clerics in East Java in late 1998 -- the so-called Ninja murders. It was also involved in the kidnapping and murder of student activists in 1998, political activists, unionists and others throughout the New Order period and the killings in East Timor from 1975 until 1999.

It is Kopassus members who are charged with the murder of Papuan independence leader Theys Eluay in November 2001.

The TNI has also been implicated in the recent attack near the Freeport mine in West Papua, in which two American and an Indonesian were killed.

If there was any doubt about the formal -- as opposed to rogue element -- role of Kopassus, it was spelled out in its training manual. This cited tactics and techniques for conducting psychological warfare, propaganda, kidnapping, terror, agitation, sabotage and other operations. This is not directed against external enemies of the state, but against Indonesian citizens.

Kopassus does have some small claim to opposing terrorism. In the early 1980s a small radical Islamic group referred to by the military as Komando Jihad bombed the Borobudur Buddhist monument in Central Java and in 1981 hijacked a plane to Bangkok. Kopassus troops stormed the plane and rescued most of the passengers and aircrew. The Komando Jihad was in fact set up by Major-General Ali Murtopo to discredit political Islam ahead of the 1982 elections.

In terms of Australia's long-term relations with Indonesia, a foreign policy position that again backs the military will end up having a profoundly negative impact on civil and political rights in Indonesia.

We are already seeing the military taking a repressive line in West Papua and Aceh. The continued detention in Aceh of Australian-based academic Dr Lesley McCulloch on a visa charge is a small but meaningful illustration of that approach.

Interestingly, Politics and Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has already warned of more terror attacks, but specifically in Aceh. This meets the TNI's long-term plan of having the Free Aceh Movement listed as a terrorist group even though its independence claim is purely local.

Yudhoyono's comments on the terrorism that led to Bali, however, have been far more subdued and equivocal.

At a time when there was still some, albeit fading, hope of reducing the TNI's political role, this move will legitimise its claim to be the guardian of the state. The TNI will in any case use Bali to assert its authority and, as so often in the past, Indonesia is likely to see its fledgling middle ground consumed by extremism on either side.

In this, Australian foreign policy advice derives from a narrow source, one that saw Soeharto's corruption as not a problem, his East Timor militias as not dangerous and believed that there were no meaningful militia-TNI links.

It also posited recently that radical Islam in Indonesia did not have terror links. That same source of advice is now recommending that Australia back Kopassus.

How often do we need to get it wrong before we start getting it right?

Australia's policy must recognise Indonesia's problems that lead to resentment and attempt to address, rather than repress, them. Support for the judiciary, police investigators and the health and education sectors will do much more to address the real problems.

Support for the TNI, and in particular its most brutal branch, Kopassus, may eventually restore stability, of a brittle type. And it may not. But the price now being paid in the form of support for Indonesia's Islamist extremism is a consequence of political manipulation and repression under the previous military-dominated government.

Australia's support for another one would be a profound mistake.

[Damien Kingsbury is a senior lecturer, philosophical, political and international studies, Deakin University.]

Keep your troops, Indonesia tells Hill

Sydney Morning Herald - October 24, 2002

Matthew Moore, Mike Seccombe and Marian Wilkinson -- The Indonesian Government has flatly rejected a suggestion by Australia's Defence Minister, Robert Hill, that Australian troops could pursue terrorist organisations in Indonesia.

A spokesman for Indonesia's Foreign Affairs Department, Marty Natalegawa, said last night that Indonesia "would not accept the presence of foreign military on our soil".

He said Australia had not formally conveyed to the Indonesian Government any suggested changes to the relationship between Australian and Indonesian forces. He was one of a host of Indonesian military and foreign affairs officials who expressed surprise at the overtures Senator Hill made on national television for closer co-operation between the two military forces.

Senator Hill told ABC's Lateline on Tuesday night that Australian forces could be sent to Indonesia to help root out terrorist organisations. Asked if that could mean SAS troops, for example, operating in Indonesia with that country's forces, he said: "That's already happening in our region, where the US is working with the Philippines military to tackle their terrorist issue. "I don't think it's out of the question that some time in the future our forces may well be working with forces of other regional states to tackle this joint [terrorist] enemy." He also said Australia may need to train Indonesian Kopassus, or special forces, troops, since Kopassus was "Indonesia's most effective response to terrorism".

Indonesian defence sources said they were concerned about any move to send Australian troops to Indonesia. One senior Defence Ministry official said there had been no discussions about using troops from other countries. Also, the tension between the Australian and Indonesia military -- including the cessation of Kopassus training in Australia -- resulting from East Timor was yet to be resolved.

An Indonesian security official said an agreement between Indonesia and Australia, negotiated by former prime minister Paul Keating, had been frozen during the East Timor independence ballot. A similar agreement was needed before any changes to existing arrangements could proceed.

Only last week, in Jakarta, Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, denied a report that Australia was planning to start training Indonesia's Kopassus troops again. Human rights groups in Australia and Indonesia are certain to be alarmed at any moves to re-establish links with Kopassus, because of its long history of human rights abuses.

Senator Hill also let slip secret intelligence information that people trained by al-Qaeda are in Australia, and that supporters, and possibly operatives, of the radical Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) -- which is the chief suspect in the Bali bombings -- are probably here, too.

He said there had been "constant movement from Indonesia into Australia" and indicated the Government had been aware of the presence of these people for up to six months. Senator Hill said: "We know that within Australia there are those who were trained by al Qaeda. We know there has been constant movement from Indonesia into Australia and that may well include JI supporters. It may even include JI operatives."

The Opposition leader, Simon Crean, said he had been given the same highly classified information and had kept it confidential. "He blurts out what I'm sworn to secrecy on," he said. Meanwhile, the US Government is expected to announce today that the JI is being officially added to its list of terrorist organisations. The JI is also expected to be included on the UN list of known terrorist entities whose finances can be tracked and whose assets can be seized.

Too soon to resume military ties with Indonesia

Heritage Foundation Backgrounder - September 21, 2000

Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world and a cornerstone of security and economic development in Southeast Asia, is a continuing source of international concern amid worries that President Abdurrahman Wahid is not in control.

The September 14 car bombing under Jakarta's stock exchange, which killed at least 15 people, is only the latest example of the instability in this nation of 6,000 inhabited islands. Just weeks ago, an Indonesian military-supported, militia-led mob killed three United Nations relief workers in West Timor, including one American. Yet the Clinton Administration, which has condemned Jakarta for not keeping order and controlling its military, is working to renew US military engagement with Indonesia's military, the National Armed Forces (TNI).

The TNI is widely considered responsible for the September 1999 chaos in East Timor and the armed attacks that continue in that newly independent state. About 120,000 refugees who fled last year's violence remain scattered in camps in West Timor. Militias continue to terrorize them as well as UN workers. All international aid workers were withdrawn from West Timor in September 2000 as a result of the continued presence and activities of army-sponsored militias. The TNI is also being held responsible for provoking bloody sectarian violence in the Moluccas islands and for the savage suppression of independence movements in the provinces of Aceh and Irian Jaya (Western Papua). It also retains important political appointments in the legislature, even after the government's transition from an authoritarian dictatorship to a nascent democracy, and owns legal and illegal business ventures in all the provinces.

To remedy Indonesia's numerous security problems, the National Defense University's Institute for National Security Studies, in Washington D.C., recommended that the United States increase "the number of TNI officers enrolled in professional military education institutions in the United States." This traditional solution to civil-military problems of increasing the number of Indonesian soldiers trained in US military schools is unlikely to resolve Indonesia's numerous problems. It is time for a new approach.

A better way to address Indonesia's enduring problems would be to continue forgoing military-to-military training for Indonesia until the TNI is under Jakarta's control and placed under civilian authority. The TNI must demonstrate that it respects the rule of law. Indonesian officers who have received training in the United States should be encouraged to use that training to build a professional armed force in Indonesia by sharing the values they learned about democratic ideals and the importance of a civil society.

TNI still corrupt

Engagement with foreign militaries, especially in the form of military schooling, has become an increasingly important national security tool. It offers an opportunity for the United States to build important relationships with foreign armed forces, particularly those of its allies and potential coalition partners. It also helps small or poorly funded forces to develop institutional strength. Finally, military-to-military engagement helps to spread democratic values and respect for the rule of law.

During the Cold War, it was easy to argue that engagement with the Indonesian armed forces was beneficial. At that time, Southeast Asia was a hotbed of Cold War confrontation. In 1965, Indonesia had the largest communist party outside of the communist bloc; it received extensive Soviet military support; and its army was locked in a power struggle with the communists. In 1966, after a bloody purge of the communists, Suharto assumed the presidency, backed by the Indonesian army. Suharto's reign ended in 1998 when he was forced from power in a democratic revolution.

Although the Indonesian government was authoritarian and undemocratic, the Cold War and the fact that the Indonesian armed forces shared America's security objective of a non-communist Indonesia justified US engagement with the regime. Nevertheless, at the conclusion of the Cold War, the US

Department of Defense did not reevaluate its strategy. Military- to-military engagement was still touted as the best way to influence the government of Indonesia.

The results of this policy decision have been dismal. Indonesia's military remains systemically corrupt, and the professional education of many of its officers in the United States did little to change the nature of the armed forces. Engagement, instead of fostering such American interests as political stability, economic development, and democracy, allowed the Indonesian armed forces to create or aggravate every security crisis in the country.

TNI's powers over civilian society

Today, the Indonesian military and its activities are the greatest threat to the security and territorial integrity of Indonesia. The TNI is heavily vested in both public and private power structures. It owns businesses throughout the islands. Members of the military have been appointed to the national legislature. And its officers show little respect for the law, despite decades of military engagement with the United States. Though various officials in Washington praise military-to- military engagement with Indonesia, they fail to show how engagement with Indonesia's armed forces is complementing US foreign policy objectives. From Aceh, Indonesia's westernmost province, to Irian Jaya, the easternmost, the TNI has been intimately involved in civilian society; worse, it has instigated or aggravated nearly every security crisis.

'Sweeping operations' in Aceh2

The chronic insurgency in Aceh seeks independence or substantive autonomy from Jakarta. Although the Indonesian government negotiated a "humanitarian pause" for peaceful negotiations with the rebel group GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka), both the military forces and the national police largely ignore the truce. Sixty- four people were killed in Aceh this year between the start of a truce on June 2 and August 21. Of those, 51 were civilians.

The TNI's maneuvers in Aceh, called "sweeping operations," typically move troops into an area; these troops proceed to rob indiscriminately, burn villages to the ground, and shoot anyone engaged in suspicious behavior -- which could include anything from raising an Aceh flag to sitting peacefully in a cafe. When a military unit moves into an area to conduct a sweeping operation, the inhabitants flee; consequently, there are now tens of thousands of displaced refugees within Aceh and neighboring northern Sumatra.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the majority of people in Aceh would rather remain citizens of Indonesia than push for independence, but the arbitrary and cruel actions of the TNI have eroded that slim margin of support.

Inciting militias in Irian Jaya

As in Aceh, the people of Irian Jaya fear and hate the military and the police. They are fighting for independence, but they are much less willing than the people of Aceh to seek autonomy. Indigenous leaders are willing to negotiate peacefully with Jakarta to gain a peaceful and just transition to independence; nevertheless, the TNI refuses to permit peaceful discussions of the future status of Irian Jaya.

Along with its brutal suppression of and disregard for human rights in Irian Jaya, the TNI has created a pro-Jakarta militia to provoke riots and other security-related incidents, which in turn are used to justify its repressive tactics. The TNI had used a similarly indirect method to attack the local population in East Timor during its 24-year occupation of that state. There, militia units terrorized the local population and were principally responsible for the destruction of East Timor after the people passed a referendum on independence in August 1999. Elements of the TNI are believed to continue to fund, train, and equip former East Timor militias to infiltrate that country and shoot at UN peacekeepers.

Violence in the Moluccas Islands

The problems in Aceh and Irian Jaya pale in comparison to those of the Moluccas islands, where more than 4,000 people have been killed in the past 18 months. This formerly peaceful province has been wracked with sectarian violence between evenly divided Christian and Muslim populations.

Many observers suspect that the TNI is inciting the fighting in the Moluccas islands, since no substantive underlying issues seem to be driving the combatants to battle. Compared with Aceh and Irian Jaya, there has been no insurgent uprising in the Moluccas. Leaders of both sides proclaim their desire to remain in Indonesia and to live together peacefully. Evidence of TNI involvement came after the initial rioting between Muslim and Christian communities began to ebb and new fighters from Java called the Laskar Jihad (Soldiers of Jihad) appeared. Their funding is widely believed to come from members of the TNI and the Suharto family.

President Wahid ordered the TNI to prevent the Java-based terrorist organization from deploying to the Moluccas islands, but the military claims it is powerless to stop them. More than 2,000 heavily armed Laskar Jihad fighters have been seen provoking instability in the Moluccas. For months, the TNI denied any involvement in the fighting, but the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) succeeded in filming an Indonesian army unit as it provided covering fire for Laskar Jihad fighters. Now representatives of the Indonesian army and the Ministry of Defense are blaming this problem on "rogue" elements.

Repressing citizens is not the TNI's only involvement in violent affairs. The TNI has been linked to a spate of bombings in Jakarta: The bombs and equipment used appear to be military in origin. Indeed, Akbar Tanjung, Speaker of the Indonesian Parliament, specifically linked these bombings to the military.6 The TNI's motivation for its activities, especially in Aceh, Irian Jaya, the Moluccas islands, and Jakarta, seems to be a desire to retain political and economic power by holding hostage the security and territorial integrity of Indonesia.

Seeking more power

US foreign policy makers should understand that in Indonesia, the goals of the government and the TNI are not necessarily the same. The Indonesian military is an independent political, social, economic, and security entity outside government control; yet it has the strength to manipulate the instruments of political power. It is not responsible to the Indonesian government, and the president is the only figure with constitutional authority over the armed forces; yet presidential control appears to be more formal than real. Since 1966, the military has co-ruled Indonesia through a doctrine of its own creation, called dwi fungsi ("dual function"). This doctrine postulates that the Indonesian military has a double role: defender of the country and sociopolitical leader. The doctrine legitimized the military's self-promotion into politics, the government bureaucracy, and large portions of the economy.

At its peak during Suharto's presidency, the military controlled 100 seats in the national legislature, important cabinet positions, and the governorships of several provinces, while it also appointed representatives to every village in Indonesia.

During the Suharto era, the president and the army worked in unison, each supporting the other's position. With the introduction of a democratic government in 1999, justification for military control disappeared, but the TNI's pervasive influence did not. The security apparatus that had supported Suharto and effectively suppressed political dissension still exists and is unapologetically unreformed. President Wahid, to his credit, attempted to gain control over the military by reducing its presence in the legislature (abolishing all military presence by 2004), appointing a civilian defense minister, dismantling the territorial command structure, and prosecuting members of the military who were suspected of human rights violations. Sadly, most of these measures have come to naught.

Today, the TNI maintains its territorial command organization embedded throughout the country. The organization runs parallel to the government down to the village level, and in many cases the authority of the army supersedes local government authorities. Although there has been substantial discussion in Jakarta about the territorial apparatus, it is still very much in place.

As Harold Crouch, an Australian observer of Indonesia, has said, "This territorial structure has given the army considerable capacity to intervene in local politics under the guise of maintaining stability."

Through open intimidation and blunt threats, Indonesia's army generals convinced the last parliamentary session to extend the TNI's numbers in the national legislature until at least the year 2009. The parliament also granted them a blanket amnesty for past human rights abuses. Although there was an enormous public outcry against the extension, legislators afterward admitted that they had voted for it because of threats from the generals. Juwono Sudarsono, Indonesia's first civilian defense minister, admitted that he is powerless against the TNI: "The Ministry of Defense is not directly in charge of the chain of command. I cannot order them around." Most informed observers have concluded that the Indonesian military is, in fact, the most intransigent obstacle to the development of democracy.

Constraining the economy

In Indonesia, government intervention in the economy through state-owned enterprises has skewed entrepreneurial choices and stunted economic development. The TNI now controls many businesses and "foundations." Ostensibly, this was a way to augment Indonesia's tiny defense budget and improve soldiers' welfare, but coupled with rampant corruption, such involvement in the economy distorts economic incentives and impedes progress.

The military-owned enterprises date back to the 1950s, when many military units seized Dutch businesses during the decolonization period. They justified their larceny by citing political disagreements with their former colonial masters. Generally, businesses grew rapidly because of their relationship with the TNI.

The armed forces made liberal use of the resources they gained, including considerable political clout. Over time, the TNI's dependence on these enterprises has grown to the point that today, the government's defense budget covers only an estimated 25 percent of military expenditures. The rest of the military's funding comes from the foundations and businesses it owns, both legally and illegally.

There are about 50 military-owned businesses and seven foundations associated with each of the armed services and major commands, but it is almost impossible to measure the size of these foundations and businesses or their economic impact. The government began its first-ever audit of the TNI businesses in June 2000 and already has uncovered many irregularities, especially in the areas of bookkeeping and procurement. The government's response: Under pressure from the army leadership, it relieved from duty a prominent reform-minded general who had pursued an investigation into the financial dealings of his unit's foundation too enthusiastically. It appears unlikely that the government will prosecute any officer for mismanaging or stealing funds from these enterprises.

Legitimate business activity has often served as a front for illegal business dealings, including unlawful logging and animal poaching in West Papua, fuel smuggling across the archipelago, and marijuana production and smuggling in Indonesia's western- most province. Army Chief of Staff General Tyasno Sudarto stands accused of coordinating the largest counterfeiting operation in Indonesia's history, and many other officers are believed to be involved in illegal activities and innumerable questionable businesses independent of their military duties. Many observers regard this widespread corruption as a leading cause of the TNI's rampant disorder and factionalism today.

A New US-Indonesia policy

Washington should reevaluate US policy toward Indonesia based on US national interests, such as enhancing security, bolstering economic prosperity, and promoting democracy and human rights. To that end, the United States should support Indonesia's nascent democracy and bruised economy while working to isolate the errant Indonesian military. It should assist Indonesia's process of democratization and support its newly elected president.

However, the Clinton Administration has chosen another path. It is rewarding the TNI with renewed military engagement even as it condemns the government for not keeping order. For example, in May and July 2000, Indonesian military officers and units participated in military exercises in Thailand and Indonesia, respectively, at the Pentagon's invitation. These exercises are a prelude to a much larger military-to-military engagement program that the Clinton Administration hopes to send to Congress soon. Then, in September, when Indonesian militias reportedly backed by the TNI killed three UN aid workers in West Timor, President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright criticized Jakarta for neither meeting its obligations nor restoring order. The President also dispatched Secretary of Defense William Cohen to Jakarta to tell Indonesia's leaders that if the government did not restore order, it might lose international support, economic assistance, and military ties.

Support for Indonesia's government is not equivalent to military-to-military engagement with the TNI. For professional military organizations such as the US armed forces, it is practically inconceivable that officers who are duty-bound to protect and defend their country would act as officers of the TNI have acted. While the TNI is a large and sophisticated institution with a national monopoly on the use of force, it is not a professional military.

Therefore, in order to increase security in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, the United States should encourage the subordination of Indonesia's military to the legally constituted civilian government. Specifically, the United States should:

Cut off military-to-military contact at all levels. TNI officers are likely to view any contact with the uniformed members of the US military as American military validation of the TNI and its activities. The only way to convince Indonesia's military officers that there is no latent sympathy for their activities and to impress upon them the importance of democratic values is to restrict all TNI contact with uniformed American officers. The current policies toward the Burmese military should serve as a model.

Review the necessity of having a TNI representative accredited to the Embassy of Indonesia in Washington, D.C. As long as the Indonesian military retains a direct political role and acts as an obstacle to democratic reform and a cause of regional instability, there is no reason to credit the TNI with an official representative to the United States.

Use current assistance dollars to train Indonesia's legislature to conduct proper legislative oversight of the military. After decades of the legislature's rubber-stamp acquiescence to the regime and fear of reprisal, Indonesia's new democratic parliament is not increasing oversight of the military. In one respect, it is unfamiliar with appropriate means and methods to oversee military activities. Providing US expertise on legislative oversight to members of the Indonesian legislature would enhance civilian control, increase respect for the rule of law, and create necessary transparency in the TNI's activities. Experts from other Asian parliaments that have armed forces oversight committees could be included in these training sessions.

Train a cadre of civilian defense experts to staff a future Ministry of Defense. The creation of a civilian-led Indonesian Ministry of Defense should be a priority for US policy. An immediate obstacle is the lack of a cadre of indigenous civilian experts on defense management, budgeting, and acquisitions that could staff a Defense Ministry once it has been put in place. The United States should use current security assistance to train a cadre of civilians who could be selected to occupy positions in a Ministry of Defense.

Resume military-to-military training only when the TNI is firmly under civilian control and is disengaged from political activities. Reform of Indonesia's armed forces, following more than 40 years of corruption and political association with authoritarian dictators, will be a Herculean task.

At a minimum, the TNI should be subordinated to civilian authority; otherwise, professional military standards will have no meaning. As long as the Indonesian military has a direct political role, any assistance rendered by the US military would prove to be little more than giving assistance to a specific, albeit heavily armed, political party.

Thus, no training program should begin until (1) the Indonesian military has surrendered all seats in the legislature, (2) the Defense Ministry is legally superior to each of the services and functions as the commander in chief of the armed forces, and (3) members of the military are subject to civilian courts. Milestones for restoration of military-to-military engagement with the TNI should be attainable and worthy, but not mobile.

Conclusion

The problem of controlling the military in Indonesia stems in part from the lack of political will in Jakarta. The United States can help by showing disfavor toward the unrestrained behavior of members of the TNI and showing support for the democratic government of Indonesia. American leaders should look very carefully at any proposal to expand military-to-military engagement with the TNI; in fact, US policy leaders should refuse to work with the TNI at all levels unless it is fully subordinate to civilian authority. Not only will this benefit the citizens of Indonesia, but it also will support US interests over the long term.

[Dana R. Dillon is a Policy Analyst on Southeast Asia in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation. Notes ommitted.]

Economy & investment

Economic terrorism in Indonesia

Asia Times - October 26, 2002

Tony Sitathan -- The recent bomb blasts in Bali have created what some experts describe as a "terrorism risk premium" not just to Indonesia but to all of Southeast Asia. Many economists warn of capital flight and low foreign investment. And in fact, immediately after the October 12 bomb blast, most of the Asian basket of currencies dropped by as much as 2-3 percent while the stock markets took a bad mauling.

"The Jakarta Stock Exchange index and most blue-chip counters slipped by almost 35 percent. That sent shock waves throughout the financial and business community in Indonesia almost overnight," said Iwan Yoniton, of Bahana Securities a state-owned securities company.

Although this sent panic down the spines of local businesses and foreign companies in Indonesia, many felt that the after-effect of the Bali bombing was overrated.

"We thought there would be panic selling in the Jakarta bourse and also most businesses would come to a standstill, but nothing of that kind happened. Its seems like it's business as usual in Jakarta," said Freddy Irawan, an electronics importer based near the Chinatown district of the Indonesian capital.

Thanks to the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, the Bank of Indonesia, the central bank, intervened to prop up the sliding rupiah. "However, it's not sure how long this can be done, since more than US$20 million has been dumped in a single day by the central bank continuously within the first week of the Bali carnage," said Iwan.

The crackdown on terrorism by the Megawati administration, the promise of closer cooperation with other Association of Southeast Asian Nations governments, and the swift arrest of the head of an Islamic fundamentalist group in Indonesia helped to prevent a heavy economic fallout in the economy that has been chugging along slowly since early this year.

More has to be done to reassure local industry as well as foreign investors who have been warned against even making trips to Indonesia and other Asian countries, including Singapore. "With the growing trend of globalization among nations, it's inadvertent that if one national economy shows signs of slowing down or is badly affected, it could negatively influence the rest of region, and what happened in Indonesia does have a direct impact on the rest of the Asian economies, with the exception of India and China, that have a large enough base to be self- sufficient," said Agus Widjaja, a professor of economics at Pancasila University and a principal consultant for a state-owned mining company based in Kalimantan.

The battering of Indonesia may not be over yet. According to several reports by the army's intelligence wing, major cities such as Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya and Medan have been classified as Code Blue, where security forces are on a high state of alert to prevent another major catastrophe like the one in Bali.

Instead of pointing the finger and accusing foreign powers, the Indonesian government or the military for the Bali mishap, something more concrete has to be done, says Mickey Effendi, a businessman trading in seafood produce in Indonesia. "The politicians and those in the military seem to be engaged in a virtual power struggle in Indonesia. It's about time something of national interest [is] done to exonerate the image of Indonesia to its neighbors and to the outside world," he said.

A realistic anti-terrorism purge is meant to safeguard the national interests and solidarity of Indonesia. More effective policing and cooperation among anti-terrorism task forces of neighboring countries has to be in place. Nipping terrorist practices in the bud would improve the image of Indonesia. Security and political stability is considered one of the prerequisites for foreign investments, and a nation without it cannot hope to achieve much.

"Already the arcane policing laws and differing political ideologies are causing havoc in the minds of the investor. What is needed is a tough stand on terrorism before the next conclusive decision [is] taken to ally the fears of foreign investors," said Agus Widjaja.

The fear of economic terrorism that serves to hijack the interests of the business community has to be addressed squarely. Certainty and continuity of stable economic policies are necessary for progress. Yet the general rank and file of the business population in Indonesia is more concerned with daily issues rather than issues that concern national interests.

Abdullah Hade is a wholesale supplier who sells vegetables to vendors in the Cinere night market in Jakarta. To him what matters most is the ability to sell his vegetables on time. Even a single day's delay would affect his turnover. "What I need most is good roads in place and a sensible trucking system, not something grandiose," he said.

To Goenawan Sejarir, what is needed most is less interference from the authorities. "I run a bakery in the heart of Glodok in downtown Chinatown. What is most depressing is the shakedown and the payments one has to pay the authorities and the police, so that my business can run smoothly without any interference," he said. He wants greater transparency among government bodies and an end to corruption.

While the business community in major metropolitan cities is aware of the larger threats to security and political stability, what is more important sometimes are such daily issues as having sufficient electricity, housing, and water, and eliminating corruption and improving infrastructure development.

If Indonesia can address these smaller but essential issues, then perhaps it can also try to include the larger issues on its wish list. "There has to be a concerted effort by the government to be able to address these fundamental issues and hence create a sense of belonging to the general population and by giving them a stake in Indonesia. That would be the ultimate challenge for Indonesia and Indonesians, especially in these times of uncertainty," said Agus Widjaja.