Bush makes a visit of mythic
proportions By Gary LaMoshi
BALI - US President George W Bush's
scheduled 10-hour trip to Indonesia on Monday has
entailed vast security preparations and logistical
inconveniences and has evoked mass demonstrations
across the country calling for the visit to be
canceled.
Indonesians' widespread distrust
of Bush and his "war on terror" is real, while
US-Indonesian relations under Bush and President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono are based mainly on
fantasies and misrepresentations. Here's a look at
a few of the leading myths in
the
warming bilateral relationship.
Myth
number 1: US wants democratic reform in
Indonesia The US State Department says
relations with Indonesia are guided by progress on
human rights, democratic reform and
accountability. Undoubtedly, Bush will pat
directly elected president Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono on the back and declare Indonesia the
healthiest democracy in Southeast Asia and the
Islamic world.
With Thailand under
military rule - again - and the other ASEAN
(Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries
that bother with elections essentially one party
states, the local competition isn't tough. In the
Muslim world, Turkey aside, the freest balloting
these days takes place in Iraq, Lebanon and the
Palestinian Territories, hardly anyone's idea of
democratic success stories.
In praising
Indonesia's reforms, the US wants to bask in the
reflected glory, as if it had something to do with
democracy's nascent revival there. For three
decades, the US sponsored former president
Suharto's autocratic regime. To be sure, the
Americans tried to blunt the worst abuses, but
mainly they tried to protect their companies in
the mining and energy industries and prop up
Indonesia as a bulwark against communist
encroachment in Southeast Asia. And stable
military rule was the best recipe for that.
The US probably hopes for Indonesian
politics to turn out more like Singapore's,
following the forms of democracy without those
pesky uncertainties over which side will win.
That's the way things were under Singapore
patriarch Lee Kuan Yew's good friend and golf
partner Suharto.
Myth number 2:
Indonesia is a global beacon for moderate
Islam For most of Suharto's 32-year
tenure, Indonesia was a textbook example of
moderate, tolerant Islam. That's in large part
because it was the only brand of Islam the regime
tolerated. About 190 million of Indonesia's 220
million people are Muslims, and the vast majority
practice moderate Islam mixed with traditional
beliefs.
But Indonesia's political history
features tension between advocates of an Islamic
state under sharia law (at the very least,
applicable to Muslims) and secularists. The
national constitution came down clearly on the
side of secularism, enshrining freedom of
religion.
Democratic reforms and a more
open society have, ironically, given religious
groups an opening. Islamists also represent a
clean break with old political corruption, as they
have in the Palestinian territories, Turkey and
Pakistan. Indonesian Islamists can also turn the
democratic ethos to their advantage: since Muslims
are a majority, they should be able to have their
beliefs respected and protected. In society where
the rule has been winner take all, that argument
has power, and scares 30 million non-Muslims.
So, while Indonesia's politics are slowly
becoming more open and democratic, Indonesian
society is undergoing more rapid Islamization: in
some regions (beyond Aceh, which enacted sharia
law under its peace deal with the government)
local laws enshrine hardline Muslim dress codes
and compulsory Koran study; Muslim vigilantes
attack churches and other heretics while police
watch, unwilling to act against religious
organizations without political cover.
Uncertainty about the role of government
in religious matters isn't confined to the police.
While the constitution guarantees freedom of
religion, Indonesia's national philosophy,
Pancasila, mandates monotheism and specifies five
accepted religions. The secular legal code
includes offenses for insulting Islam and other
laws governing worship. Unsurprising perhaps after
three decades of being told what to think, people
expect the government to tell them what to
believe. If the government won't, then others
will, and the voices of moderation rarely speak
first or loudest.
Myth number 3: US
support for the military furthers US
interests Of course, that depends on
what the US believes its interests are. The US
resumed full military ties with Indonesia last
year, based on the myth that the military has
reformed. In reality, the military remains
corrupt, prone to abuses and beyond civilian
control, so US aid undermines the State
Department's triple play of human rights,
democratic reform and accountability and in effect
makes America complicit in military wrongdoing.
America's zeal for closer military ties
buys its silence on Indonesian human-rights
abuses, such as the 2004 airborne poisoning of
anti-military activist Munir Said Thalib and
continuing protection of military intelligence
leadership linked to it. But it's also made the US
an active conspirator in the dubious conviction of
seven alleged Papuan separatists in the 2002
ambush killings of two Americans and an Indonesian
near the giant Freeport MacMoRan Grasberg mine.
Initial investigations linked the
shootings to the Indonesian military following
Freeport's termination of so-called "security
payments" to commanders amounting to thousands of
dollars a month. But the military insisted that
Papuan separatists, who'd never attacked
foreigners, were behind the ambush. Indonesia
indicted alleged separatist commander Antonius
Wamang, and the US followed suit. In hiding,
Wamang insisted they couldn't get a fair trial in
Indonesia.
So America's Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) struck a deal with Wamang:
surrender to us and you will be tried in the US.
The suspects agreed, and the FBI broke its
promise, immediately turning the accused over to
Indonesian authorities. The suspects got what they
feared, convictions in a Jakarta kangaroo court
last week. That sort of US double-cross won't win
hearts and minds in Indonesia.
One US
answer to the criticism is that its engagement
with the military is the best way to curb abuses,
through the American example of civilian control
of the military, and produce enlightened officers
like Yudhoyono, a former general. However that
view ignores history: three decades of engagement
under Suharto produced a catalogue of abuses
overseen by hundreds of US-trained, stubbornly
unenlightened officers.
The other answer
is that US support for the military is a key plank
in the global "war on terrorism". That position,
too, is steeped in fantasy. First, Indonesia's
police, the armed forces' rival, bear the brunt of
fighting terrorism. More important, the military,
eager to derail reform through destabilization, is
at the root of most extremist violence. The
military transported and armed Muslim jihadis to
expand sectarian clashes in Ambon and Poso. Those
conflicts became proving grounds for Jemaah
Islamiyah terrorists who carried out the Bali,
Marriott Jakarta and Australian Embassy bombings.
Myth number 4: Bush's visit will
benefit US-Indonesia
relations Indonesian disdain for Bush
is so widespread that not only will he dare not to
appear in public, but his visit has already
prompted protests throughout the country and
apparently even a bomb attack on a Jakarta branch
of US fast food chain A&W last Saturday.
Bush's unpopularity has provoked
unprecedented security measures. More than a week
before his helicopter lands, security forces
claimed to have undercover teams in place to
protect the area. The meeting will take place at
the Presidential Palace in Bogor, beyond the
throngs of Jakarta. Schools and business in Bogor
will be closed, roads around the palace will be
blockaded, and cell phone signals - which can be
used to trigger bombs - will be jammed.
These steps may protect Bush during his
few hours in Bogor but in the long run they'll
alienate Indonesians as signs of US arrogance and
reminders of how much of Indonesia's terrorist
problem can be laid at Washington's doorstep.
When Bush stopped over in Bali in 2003, it
could be argued that then-president Megawati
Sukarnoputri gained stature from being
photographed beside the US president. In 2006,
distrust of Bush's America is so great that the
summit will act to diminish the domestic standing
of Yudhoyono, one of America's few friends in
Indonesia. If the two leaders believe otherwise
they're just fooling themselves, which is nothing
new to the bilateral relationship.
Gary LaMoshi has worked as a
broadcast producer and print writer and editor in
the US and Asia. Longtime editor of investor
rights advocate eRaider.com, he's also a
contributor to Slate and Salon.com, and a
counselor for Writing Camp
(www.writingcamp.net).
(Copyright 2006
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and republishing
.)
