After Bali

THIS MONTH, Indonesia will hold legislative elections, followed by its first direct presidential poll in July. Both votes are crucial tests of the country’s democratic and reformist credentials.
Indonesia’s Catholic bishops have published a series of guidelines to help Catholics in their electoral choices. At the conclusion of the bishops’ assembly last November, Cardinal Julius Darmaatmadja, Archbishop of Jakarta and president of the bishops’ conference, said that Catholics in the country have a great responsibility in electing a “clean” government during the forthcoming elections. “Our country has very serious problems caused by greed and corruption,” he said, adding that the Church would recommend the election of candidates known for their integrity and support of social justice. Last October, two major Muslim organisations – the Nahdlatul Ulama and the Muhammadiyah – launched a national campaign against corruption, which Cardinal Darmaatmadja praised and urged Catholics to support.

Uncertain future

The political landscape in Indonesia is anything but clear. Twenty-four parties have been registered to contest the legislative polls on 5 April. Two are led by younger sisters of the current President, Megawati Sukarnoputri, suggesting not only a bitter sibling rivalry, but also that she and her Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) could be politically vulnerable.
Following the overthrow of President Suharto, Indonesia suffered years of upheaval, including the removal of President Wahid amid allegations of incompetence and corruption, before President Megawati restored relative stability. But now even that fragile stability is threatened. Corruption is still rife, problems associated with separatist movements in Aceh and Papua persist, and there is the ever-present threat of further terrorist violence.
All this tension could play into the hands of Golkar, the party which did so much to keep Suharto in power. Recent polls suggest Golkar could replace Mrs Megawati’s PDIP as the biggest party in parliament. Though this might not make much difference in legislative terms, since Golkar and PDIP share the view that Indonesia should remain a secular, nationalist country, one of Golkar’s potential presidential candidates is the former armed forces Chief, General Wiranto. He has been indicted for war crimes in connection with the 1999 violence that marred East Timor’s independence vote.

Nation of islands

With the world’s largest Muslim population, Indonesia is spread across an archipelago of 17,000 islands between Asia and Australia. Around 6,000 of these are occupied, straddling the Equator with a strategic location along major sea lanes between the Indian and Pacific oceans. Indonesia’s people range from a simple rural class to a modern urban elite, and are ethnically highly diverse, with a volatile mixture of Muslims and Christians, superimposed on older Hindu and animist traditions, speaking more than 300 local languages across the islands. While 85 percent of the country’s 235 million inhabitants are Muslim, about 10 percent are Christian (although some regions, such as the Malukus, or Spice Islands, and Sulawesi, are majority Christian).
Indonesia’s strategic significance is no less striking than its geographical or ethnic diversity. The archipelago sits on generous oil reserves, and half of all the world’s shipping – including most of the energy requirements of Japan and South Korea – pass through its waters. Above all, perhaps, Indonesia is a democracy, as fascinating as it is fragile.
A former Dutch colony, united under one government in around 1900 as the Dutch East Indies, the country was occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War. In 1945, independence was proclaimed by Sukarno. After four years of armed struggle, the Dutch finally transferred sovereignty in 1949.
After an abortive coup in 1965, General Suharto seized power, and imposed authoritarian rule while allowing technocrats to run the economy with considerable success. However, his policy of allowing army involvement in all levels of government down to village level fostered corruption, and his ‘transmigration’ programmes – which moved large numbers of landless farmers from Java to other parts of the country – fanned ethnic conflict.
For Indonesia, the past seven years have been extraordinary. In 1997, the country was simultaneously struck by the Asian financial meltdown and devastating fires that ravaged much of its area. By then, Suharto was old, ailing and universally regarded as monumentally corrupt. In 1998, a year of massed demonstrations and violently suppressed rioting, he was finally overthrown, but has so far escaped efforts to bring him to justice for decades of dictatorship during his 32 years in office. Following his demise, stability has been hard to find. Indonesia has had three presidents since then, and fierce separatist struggles have swept across several restive provinces such as Aceh, Irian Jaya and most notably in East Timor, which in 1999 succeeded in breaking away after a traumatic 25 years of occupation.

Rise of militant Islam

Militant Islamic groups have flexed their muscles during the past few years. After the removal of Suharto from power, fundamentalist groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) – considered to be Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Southeast Asia, largely funded and trained by Osama Bin Laden’s organisation – sent ‘jihad fighters’ to Christian regions to attack the population. More than 8,000 people died in the Malukus in three years of fighting, and thousands more have died in fighting in other regions.
Religious violence has been on the increase in Indonesia’s central province of Sulawesi. Last November, the treasurer of Central Sulawesi Christian Church was murdered 12 miles from the provincial capital of Poso. Oranje Tadjodja, 58, and his nephew, 26-year-old Yohanes Tadjodja, were found hacked to death in their car on a road between two Muslim villages. On the same day, two other Christian men were attacked and killed by a Muslim mob in Poso’s central market.
This unrest followed the killing in October of 11 Christians by militants believed to be linked with terrorist groups. Some experts suggested that the attacks could have been launched to coincide with the first anniversary of the Bali bombing on 12 October 2002, when 202 people were killed in two terrorist-related night-club bombings. The attacks raised fears of a flare up in Muslim-Christian violence in the Poso district, where sporadic clashes have continued despite various peace initiatives. Police made a number of arrests and shot dead one of the suspects, which led to street protests by Muslims complaining about police raids. Religious violence has dogged the province despite a 2001 peace deal. Between 1999 and 2000 the area saw bloody inter-religious clashes in which at least 2,000 people died.
There is a broad spectrum of radical Islamic groups in Indonesia, many of which have ties with similar militant organisations in the Islamic world. Before its defeat by the allied forces, the Taliban enjoyed close links with at least one of these groups, the Dar al-Islam, which, according to its spokesman Al Chaidar, sent hundreds of people to training camps in Afghanistan each year to learn the skills of “good fighters for Islam”. In addition, he claimed that significant assistance from an international network of Muslim extremists, including al-Qaeda, was flowing into the Indonesia.
In January, an analysis report prepared by the Jakarta-based International Crisis Group (ICG), stated that a radical new Islamic militia had emerged in the country. The newly established group, Mujahedden Kompak, was formed by hard-liners who split from JI. The militant Islamic group has a strong following in Sulawesi, and is highly concentrated in the Poso region, where Kompak, an acronym roughly translated as ‘Action Committee for Crisis Response’, is believed to be responsible for the series of attacks against Christians. Their members are highly trained in international militant camps in Mindanao and Afghanistan. According to the report, Kompak is involved in the Muslim-Christian conflicts in the Moluccas and aggressively seeks new recruits. They are ideologically prepared to launch large-scale deadly attacks, and though the report states that Indonesia’s shorter-term prospects are encouraging, it adds that there is an “under-appreciated longer security risk,” as the organisation presents a possible new partner for al-Qaeda”.

Stopping the rot

In February, ministers and senior officials from 33 countries convened for an anti-terror conference in Bali, sponsored jointly by Australia and Indonesia. Officiating at the conference, President Megawati pledged that, while Indonesia has generated more terrorists than any other nation in Asia, the security personnel of her country would never stop their hunt for them. She also expressed concern about possibilities of new attacks in the future.
Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, announced the opening of a multinational crime centre in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, to be run co-operatively by Indonesia and Australia. The centre will teach anti-terrorist skills such as forensic training, bomb disposal and response training for sabotage and hostage-taking.
A major concern for the conference was combating JI, which has an estimated 2,000 operatives on the loose throughout Southeast Asia, and reportedly finds easy targets for recruits among religious Muslims. Downer accepted that efforts to disband the terrorist organisation and thwart their activity had not been successful. “We have disrupted the JI network through the capture and detention of well over 200 JI members, but we have not disabled them,” he told delegates, who included US Attorney General, John Ashcroft. “Key operatives are still at large and JI remains highly resilient and committed to its cause”. He added that the group was planning for long-term attacks, using false identities, money laundering, fraud and extortion as tools of the trade. Rodolfo Mendoza, a senior Philippine official, said “What remains is their fanaticism. That won’t change. They will look for the day when they can come back and plan for something bigger. They want to surpass 9/11”.
During the conference – which was aimed at boosting cooperation regarding sharing intelligence, and offering anti-terror aid to developing nations such as Indonesia – Australia and Indonesia agreed to exchange financial intelligence in order to fight money laundering.
It is clear that efforts are being made to curtail the operations of Islamic extremists in Indonesia, but the process is an uphill struggle. Sectarian violence across the country’s disparate islands means that more than half of Indonesia’s army has been sent to troubled provinces to quell fighting. Such dependence on the army to maintain stability automatically means greater political influence for the military which, combined with an almost endemic corruption and massive foreign debt, is bound to limit the power of political leaders. Whatever the outcome of this year’s elections, one thing is certain – Indonesia faces a troubled future.