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Indonesians don't want foreigners meddling in their
affairs. But that doesn't mean the U.S. can't-and shouldn't-try
to prevent the country sliding into further chaos
By Melinda Liu
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
May 17 - The first point to remember about Indonesia is this: it's
an important country-and it's going to be very messy for a very
long time.
INDONESIA IS OFTEN ECLIPSED by its more vocal neighbor, China, or
its more prosperous Asian colleague, Japan. Yet Jakarta is the capital
of the world's fourth most populous nation-and its most populous
Muslim one-with 210 million people, more than 13,000 islands and
300-plus ethnic and linguistic groups. Indonesia also dominates
strategic shipping lanes which provide passage to 40 percent of
the world's commerce. It's a key oil and gas producer, an OPEC member,
and a host to Western corporate giants such as Exxon Mobil, Caltex,
Freeport-McMoran and British Petroleum.
The U.S. government regards Indonesia's painful implosion with urgency
and alarm. During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, James
Kelly, the new assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific
affairs, warned that Washington needs to support the territorial
integrity of the Indonesian archipelago lest the world wake up one
day to find a "fragmented Indonesia that feeds fundamentalism,
narrow regionalism and movements that, to put it most charitably,
are very unstable and very dangerous."
WINKING AT CORRUPTION
The second key point is that, despite Indonesia's importance to
Washington, there's not much the U.S. can do to orchestrate policy
there. The violence and disintegration now evident in Indonesia
has had a long gestation period. They are the legacy of decades
of Western financial support for Jakarta's authoritarian leadership,
which left little space for civil society. The West winked at the
corruption of President Suharto, the army general forced to resign
in 1998 after three decades of rule. Western governments tolerated
rampant human-rights abuses by the Indonesian military. They supported
Suharto's destructive social experiments, such as the massive transmigration
schemes that played mix-and-match with disparate ethnic groups-the
same groups that are now massacring each other over grim, decades-old
feuds.
In spite of these problems, Indonesia's elite does not want foreigners
to meddle in their affairs-no matter how messy those affairs may
get. "We Indonesians want to solve problems ourselves,"
says political analyst Andi Mallarangeng. "I ask the U.S. to
stay out of our business."
The occasional dose of candid rhetoric from Washington's current
ambassador to Jakarta, Robert Gelbard, has prompted howls of outrage
from Indonesian politicians, regular protests outside the American
embassy, and a nickname for Gelbard as "Ambo the Rambo."
Washington, however, must still look after U.S. interests in Indonesia.
And the Jakarta government certainly isn't doing much to help on
that score. Indonesia suffers from a paralyzing leadership vacuum,
with embattled President Abdurrahman Wahid dwelling in a twilit
state of denial, pooh-poohing calls for his resignation as "just
politics" and reassuring himself that grassroots crowds still
adore him.
WAITING FOR MEGA
Wahid seems to ignore mushrooming support for his departure from
office-and especially signs of growing impatience from his presumptive
successor, Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Yet Mega herself,
as she's called, is too inexperienced in economic affairs-an area
in which Indonesia sorely needs leadership-and too cozy with the
country's generals to ease Washington's misgivings. Even many Indonesians
know the country's current crop of leaders "is not perfect,"
admits Mallarangeng. "But we must give them a chance, he says.
"There's no guarantee with Mega, but there's absolutely no
hope with Gus Dur [the popular nickname for Wahid.]"
Even the once-monolithic military-the brutal but efficient enforcer
of Suharto's day-is now sullen, demoralized and fragmenting. As
for democratic institutions, Indonesia never had any before Suharto's
1998 ouster. Today many such institutions are embryonic at best.
Deadly bombings have gone unsolved. Convicted economic criminals,
such as Suharto's son Tommy, remain at large. Massacres erupt without
anyone being held accountable. "In order to cement democratic
institutions, you need a functioning and independent judiciary,"
says one Western diplomat in Jakarta, "You just don't have
that here."
The result is that many Indonesians are taking the law into their
own hands. In February, supporters of the Indonesian president went
on a destructive rampage to show their displeasure after Wahid was
censured for alleged involvement in two financial scandals. In early
March, Muslim residents of Ambon, capital of the strife-torn Malukus,
invoked Sharia (Islamic law) and stoned to death a 30-year-old Islamic
warrior for raping a girl. Muslim leader Jafar Umar Thalib, who
heads a militant Islamic group called the Laskar Jihad, was detained
by investigators looking into the death. But his supporters argue
that the death penalty is "an integral part of Islamic teaching
and an expression of religious freedom."
LIMITED OPTIONS
Against such a backdrop, Washington's options are limited. But with
a new U.S. administration in place, it is essential to examine those
options closely-and make adjustments before more chaos erupts.
What can the Bush team do to help Indonesia?
Its first step should be to help strengthen and develop democratic
institutions. Already the U.S. is helping train an Indonesian police
force independent from the military. The separation of the police
and the army is a post-Suharto reform that remains crucial to the
country's long-term democratization. Yet the civilian law enforcers
remain undertrained, ill-equipped and hampered by a massive inferiority
complex.
The second step should be to re-examine relations with the Indonesian
military. A problem here is that Washington has little room to maneuver
because the U.S. Congress has responded to the Indonesian army's
shabby human-rights record by placing bans on bilateral exchange.
For now, the U.S. military can interact with its Indonesian counterpart
solely in humanitarian exercises.
And yet one source of long-term leverage over Jakarta's brass-especially
younger officers rising up through the ranks-is precisely through
close ties, training and transmission of a more enlightened "military
culture." James Kelly, the State Department's new Asia guru,
has warned clearly that "by isolating the Indonesian military,
the U.S. is forfeiting its influence over it."
SIDESTEPPING CONFRONTATION
Still, Kelly neatly sidestepped a confrontation with the Congressional
bans during his Senate confirmation hearing by simply stating it
was hard to imagine Indonesia holding itself together without military
cooperation.
A third step is for the U.S. to make it clear that it will not help
the various secessionist movements in their struggles for independence.
The international community set an awkward precedent after Suharto's
fall when it helped pressure Jakarta to grant independence to East
Timor, a one-time Portuguese territory invaded by the Indonesian
military in 1975. Now other separatist leaders-especially in oil-rich
Aceh and Irian Jaya, which has vast copper and gold mines-argue
that "any other area that has been colonized by the Indonesian
government has the right to its independence," as an Acehnese
rebel commander recently put it.
But with literally hundreds of discrete ethno-linguistic groups,
Indonesia could keep unraveling indefinitely if the separatist trend
were to gain momentum. Washington can express sympathy with ethnic
concerns and support government moves toward granting regional autonomy.
But unless the Bush administration has the stomach to bankroll and
baby-sit a proliferation of dependent Southeast Asian protectorates,
it needs to make clear that Yugoslavia-style disintegration is not
in the U.S. interest
A fourth measure is for the U.S. to enhance counterterrorist measures,
including training for the Indonesian police. As the chaos deepens
in Indonesia, U.S. citizens and businesses could become the focus
of Islamic extremists seeking soft targets. Already there are more
than four organizations in Indonesia linked to international terrorist
Osama bin Laden, according to a foreign diplomat in Jakarta, and
Indonesian mujahedin, or Islamic holy warriors, have trained in
guerrilla camps in Afghanistan and the southern Philippines.
"Two things happen when authoritarian governments fall in Muslim
countries," says the Western diplomat. "People gravitate
toward Islamic fundamentalism, and Islamic extremists gravitate
toward the country."
OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXTREMISTS
To be sure, Indonesia's government has remained strictly secular
throughout its history as a nation. And the country's brand of Islam
is a syncretic, moderate form that does not usually encourage militancy.
Still, the ferment in Indonesia and the tattered state of law enforcement
could provide an opening for opportunistic Islamic extremists of
the sort who executed the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa.
Then there's a final cautionary note. Some officials in the new
American administration want to revamp the IMF's policies in Asia.
The IMF overreached in the '90s, and its own officials admit to
having meddled too deeply in Indonesia. "No one, including
the fund, can judge itself free of part of the responsibility for
this tragedy," the new IMF managing director Horst Kohler said
recently. George W. Bush's team includes advisors who, at least
in the past, were disdainful of multilateral financial solutions.
(Treasury's new undersecretary for international affairs, John Taylor,
once suggested abolishing the IMF altogether, for example.) In 1998
the Treasury Department's decision to overrule an IMF proposal to
prop up the ailing rupiah helped send the Indonesian currency into
free-fall-and helped bring down Suharto's regime.
Now, once again, Indonesia is cause for great IMF concern. A $5
billion IMF-led bailout for Jakarta has flopped. The IMF has yet
to disburse a crucial $400 million credit tranche, due last December,
because Jakarta has failed to implement promised economic reforms.
The IMF's stand, in the face of Indonesian recalcitrance, will play
a significant role in the unfolding political drama. But if Washington
doesn't proceed cautiously, a full-fledged Indonesian economic collapse
could threaten to destabilize the entire region
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