US seeks to resume Indonesian training
By Charles Fromm
WASHINGTON - The administration of President Barack Obama hopes to resume
United States training of an elite Indonesian military unit whose members have
been convicted of gross human-rights abuses in East Timor and elsewhere in the
sprawling archipelago.
The leaders of Indonesia's controversial special forces division - the Komando
Pasukan Khusus, or Kopassus - were in Washington to discuss the proposal this
week.
Its meetings come ahead of President Barack Obama's state visit to Indonesia
later this month. The trip will launch "The US-Indonesia Comprehensive
Partnership" - a bilateral strategy to
enhance security and economic cooperation between the two countries.
"In the next few months, the US State Department will conduct a review of the
ban [indicating] that military-to-military relations will be restored ... to
allow Kopassus officers to be trained in the United States," former defense
minister Juwono Sudarsono told the Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Under the so-called Leahy law, first approved in 1997, Washington is banned
from providing training or other kinds of assistance to any foreign military
unit if there is "credible evidence" that it has committed "gross violations of
human rights". The ban can be waived if the secretary of state certifies that
the relevant foreign government is "taking effective measures" to bring to
justice responsible members of the unit.
Kopassus has become notorious for the brutal tactics it began to employ in the
1970s, particularly in East Timor, Aceh, Papua and Java. Various human-rights
groups, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the East Timor
Action Network, have accused the unit of murder, torture and kidnapping among
other egregious rights abuses.
The plan to resume US training, however, proposes to limit participation to
younger members of Kopassus as their age would make it more likely that they
had not participated in the group's most notorious abuses.
The new efforts to engage the Indonesian military follow Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton's comments last week at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee
meeting that the administration hoped to expand its military partnership with
Indonesia and enhance counter-terrorism cooperation.
However, this policy is not without opposition. Critics argue that Kopassus
continues to commit serious abuses with impunity and that restoring a
cooperative relationship could actually prove counter-productive.
"US military assistance harms reform and sets back human-rights accountability
in Indonesia," said John M Miller, national coordinator of the East Timor
Action Network.
"The best way to prevent future violations is to hold accountable those
responsible for the multitude of human-rights crimes committed by the
Indonesian military in East Timor, West Papua and elsewhere. Many of these
crimes occurred while the US was most deeply engaged with the Indonesian
military, providing the bulk of its weapons and training," he added.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, sent an open letter to
the White House late last month in which he called for Obama to "seize this
opportunity to reaffirm that human rights and the rule of law are essential
pillars of US engagement in Indonesia".
Roth also asked him to "condition even limited re-engagement with Kopassus" on
the firing "of any personnel previously convicted for human-rights abuses", and
the establishment of a tribunal to thoroughly investigate the disappearance of
some two dozen student activists in 1997 and 1998. Rights groups have charged
that Kopassus units were responsible.
He also called for wide-ranging structural reforms to enhance civilian control
of the military in all realms, from the jurisdiction of military tribunals to
the vast military-run businesses that exercise a major influence in the
Indonesian economy, particularly in resource-rich regions such as Papua.
The push to renew US training of Kopassus units constitutes the latest
developments in a gradual rapprochement between the US and Indonesia's
military, the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI).
Washington first began heavily supporting Indonesia's army in the late 1950s.
Since then, the military has long been seen, especially by the Pentagon, as the
one effective - if corrupt and often brutal - national institution in an
archipelago that spreads across thousands of kilometers and includes hundreds
of islands.
After a massacre by Indonesian troops of more than 100 demonstrators in East
Timor in 1991, the US Congress cut off Indonesia's eligibility for
International Military Education and Training programs and for buying certain
kinds of "lethal" military equipment.
When the TNI, Kopassus and their local auxiliaries rampaged through East Timor
after its electorate voted to secede from Indonesia in 1999, the administration
of former president Bill Clinton severed all remaining ties with TNI, but then
quietly restored contacts the following year.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the
administration of former president George W Bush tried to circumvent the ban on
providing some support for the TNI by providing limited
counter-terrorism-related assistance, albeit not to Kopassus. Bolstered by the
2002 bombing attack on a nightclub in Bali that killed nearly 200 people, it
argued that Indonesia's territory was being used by al-Qaeda affiliates.
The following year the administration released funds for training a limited
number of TNI officers, despite strong objections from congress, which had
demanded that Jakarta first investigate the killing of two US teachers in Papua
and bring the perpetrators to justice. The ban on Kopassus, however, remained
in effect, due to the Leahy Law.
In 2005, Washington repealed its arms embargo on Jakarta and
military-to-military ties have steadily increased since then.
The Obama administration sees much to gain by enhancing military ties with
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and the largest economy in
Southeast Asia. The strategically located archipelago has critical sea-lanes
and an historic distrust of China that has long made it a desirable partner for
containing Beijing.
In recent years the US has found itself vying with China for influence in the
region. The Chinese government's "non-interference policy" of funding
development and infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia - without
conditioning such assistance on compliance with human rights or other "good
governance" criteria - has helped to expand its influence.
On Thursday, Indonesia's Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro told Reuters that
his forces in the Malacca Strait would be on increased alert following a
warning by the Singapore navy of a possible terrorist attack against oil
tankers traveling through the channel.
Piracy has long plagued the waterway, but a terrorist attack could have serious
economic repercussions in surrounding areas. The strait contains "choke
points", or narrow passages that, if obstructed, could easily create
bottlenecks for commercial and energy flows from the Indian Ocean to the Sea of
Japan, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
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