Asia Times: US ends love affair with Indonesian military



	September 17, 1999	atimes.com

Indonesia Crisis

US ends love affair with Indonesian military
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - The destruction wrought this month in East Timor by the Indonesian army and militias under its control has fuelled a debate in America over the value of longstanding US military ties with Jakarta.

At stake not only is the future relationship between the world's only superpower and the armed forces of the world's fourth most populous nation, but also the Pentagon's hopes of continuing to be the world's most important trainer and supplier for Third World military establishments.

Already on the defensive for its training of some of Latin America's most abusive military officers, US military brass are worried that the Indonesian army's rampage in East Timor could result in new curbs on its cooperation with foreign armies.

The opening salvoes in this debate already have been fired. Senior Pentagon officials insist that relationships built up over the years with top Indonesian army officers, including armed forces chief General Wiranto, played a key role in persuading Jakarta to invite a UN peacekeeping force into East Timor to help restore security.

But Pentagon critics say that the army's role in the violence and mayhem that followed the August 30 independence referendum proves that Washington should keep its distance from abusive militaries abroad. ''There could not be a more conclusive refutation of the notion that American military assistance brings out the human rights impulse in other militaries than what's been going on here in Indonesia,'' insisted Rep Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts.

This debate has emerged amid reports that the Pentagon has strongly resisted President Bill Clinton's decision last week to suspend military ties and commercial arms sales . ''It's a measure of the both the influence and single-mindedness of the Pentagon that the last sanction announced [by the administration] was military sales,'' said one Congressional aide Tuesday. ''That should have been the very first.''

The delay did not surprise long-time observers of US-Indonesian relations. Since the early years of the Cold War, the US military has cultivated a special relationship with its Indonesian counterpart, lavishing hundreds of millions of dollars of aid, equipment, and training on the armed forces.

Washington has seen Indonesia as a regional counterweight to China, a source of vast reserves of oil, gas, and raw materials with a strategic location, astride the Malacca Straits, the narrow passage through which oil from the Middle East reaches Japan and beyond.

US policy makers also saw Indonesia's army, despite Jakarta's official policy of non-alignment, as the one institution capable of countering alleged communist subversion in the sprawling archipelago and protecting US interests there. ''By 1957, the United States had decided that the way to rid Indonesia of Communists was through the army,'' said Indonesia specialist Daniel Lev, who teaches political science at the University of Washington in Seattle.

That dream was realized during the army's bloody attack on the Indonesian Communist Party in 1965. While Washington's precise role in the killings remains murky, former US embassy and CIA officers have told reporters they helped to compile lists of suspected Communists that were then passed on to the army during the violence that killed an estimated 500,000 people.

The close-knit military relationship continued to flourish over the following decade as US economic investment and Jakarta's importance as a key US regional ally grew, particularly after Washington's ill-fated foray into the Vietnam War.

When Indonesia invaded and occupied East Timor in December, 1975 - a process which, over several years, is believed to have killed as many as 200,000 Timorese - the United States declined to condemn it. Indeed, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who had met with then-President Suharto in Jakarta only hours before the invasion, became infuriated with aides who suggested that Indonesia had violated US law by using US-provided ships and aircraft to carry out the invasion. Even Jimmy Carter, the ''human-rights president'', shied away from any criticism.

Over the next 20 years, Washington provided Indonesia with more than $1 billion in military aid, training and sales.

It was only with the end of the Cold War - when Washington emerged as the world's only true superpower - that new questions were raised about US support for the Indonesian army. After the November 1991 massacre by soldiers of some 200 people in Dili, East Timor's capital, Congress began imposing restrictions on US military aid to Indonesia.

Despite strenuous Pentagon opposition, lawmakers banned Indonesia's participation in the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. When the Pentagon was found to be circumventing the ban by admitting Indonesian officers to an ''advanced'' IMET course if they paid their own way, Congress reacted with anger.

Still determined to maintain ties with the Indonesian brass, the Pentagon quietly sponsored more than 40 joint training exercises with Indonesian special forces (Kopassus) over the next several years. After the Washington Post disclosed the existence of these joint training exercises last year, however, the administration, under intense Congressional pressure, suspended the program. Kopassus is the unit which many observers believe is chiefly responsible for organizing the violence in East Timor.

Yet, as recently as last month, the commander of US Pacific forces, Admiral Dennis Blair, reportedly recommended that Washington resume joint maneuvers and training with Indonesian forces. Ironically enough, it was Blair who informed Wiranto last week that Washington was suspending military ties.

Pentagon officials also have made much of the role played by telephone conversations last week between the US armed forces chief, General Harry Shelton, and Wiranto in persuading the Indonesian commander to reverse course. ''We don't know what [the Indonesian military] might have been doing had they not had the training they've gotten or had we not had the contacts we had,'' said one senior military officer.

But independent analysts say that the Pentagon is exaggerating its own influence. ''Foreign militaries will respond to their notions of national - and institutional - interests, rather than America's,'' wrote Benjamin Schwarz, a former military analyst at the Rand Corporation, in the Los Angeles Times.

Lev, who just returned from Indonesia, agrees, calling the Pentagon claim an ''egocentric conceit''.

(Inter Press Service)

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©1999 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.