Security Forces
An interesting article appeared in the Jakarta Post on 27th January, written by no less than the former boss of the BIN, the National Intelligence Bureau, Indonesia’s answer to MI5.
Mr. A.M. Hendropriyono tells us that he was already familiar with the 29 characters on the ‘most wanted list’ issued by the security forces in Poso a long time ago. The eye of the storm of sectarian violence has been in the headlines a lot recently but evidently intelligence agencies in Jakarta could have saved themselves a lot of trouble –and perhaps several lives also - had they been prepared to act on what was known some time ago.
Hendropriyono.
The BIN boss (retired) says that he gave fulsome information to the police in 2001 but they did not believe him. Now if I handed the cops a list of names, they’d be entitled to doubt my credibility, but the chief of their own country’s intelligence network? Something’s not right here!
The information in his article may be old but is nevertheless startling, not least that understated paragraph where he states that Jemaah Islamiyah in Poso not only has a military wing (the terrorists currently being hunted) but also a political wing. This, he says
has been fighting alongside certain hard-line groups, mass organisations, and individual politicians, in the executive, legislative and judicial bodies.
In other words, sections of the local establishment are tied in with the murder gangs!
The foreign involvement is detailed too, Mr.H says the two terrorists shot dead recently were trained in Afghanistan, Santoso, aka Ryan and Mahmoud, aka Uday.
He says the aim of the terrorists is to set up a Taliban regime here in Indonesia and that they have been trained by “suspected” foreign infiltrators linked to J.I. and Al Qaeda. He asserts he is in possession of classified documents that prove this. He does not shrink from naming the key bad guys who arrived from abroad to interfere in Indonesia’s internal affairs, viz. Seyam Reda, who is apparently a German citizen involved in the financing of the Bali bombings (about time Germany tightened up its immigration laws, maybe!) as well as Omer Faroukh, Abu Dagdag, and Umar Bendal.
All this is fascinating enough, but raises real questions of who is on whose side. It evokes memories of the way Laskar Jihad terror gangs were allowed to operate in Maluku some years ago. There have been reports that Gus Dur’s presidential orders to interdict those vicious thugs were flouted, but nobody has been brought to book for such insubordinate and irresponsible behaviour.
If part of the security forces is not with us, then the logical corollary is that they are against us – and I can distinctly remember a photograph in the Jakarta Post five years or so ago, which clearly showed police at Surabaya harbour welcoming those Laskar louts back from their spree of sectarian violence in the Moluccas.
I thought at the time that it was as if British policeman had stood around smiling and clapping as IRA terrorists disembarked from the Liverpool ferry. Unthinkable, in any sane world. Those cops in Surabaya should have been dishonourably discharged the very next morning.
And what about the cops who did nothing while Ahmadiya dissenters were chased out of their homes by ignorant fanatics in Lombok? Plenty of the perpetrators were captured on news cameras. But have they been rounded up and sent down with a salutary sentence for their cowardly attack on harmless neighbours?
Personally, I always wonder whose side some of these goons in uniform are on. The torments inflicted on Acehnese civilians during the Megawati years (she who pledged that during her watch, not one drop of blood would fall on Acehnese soil), rapist troops given derisory sentences; surely such tactics were calculated to stiffen separatist feelings, not stop them.
The unleashing of animals like Laskar Jihad on innocent Christian peasants must have been aimed at inflaming separatist tendencies in Maluku. And the evidence from BIN’s Mr. Hendropriyono on the subversives ranked high in politics and the law in Sulawesi indicates that counter-terrorism is handicapped by at the very least a lack of the will to win.
It has also been reported, more than once, that the Laskar Jihad is on the loose in Papua. Whose hidden hand is it that permits known trouble-makers (and I use the mildest word I can think of) to navigate freely in troubled waters?
Or are we left to conclude that much of the security apparatus is plain stupid? I doubt that.
I ask all these questions not as a provocation but because I really have no way of knowing the answers. You may say, and many will, that it is none of our business as foreigners to stick our noses into these matters, but the fact is that jihadist bombs don’t discriminate between expats and locals.
Those of us who have lived here for years have Indonesians we care about very deeply. We wouldn’t stay if we didn’t like Indonesia, despite the many frustrations we complain about in our day-to-day routines.
And if the J.I. has its way, it won’t stop at persecuting us “foreign devils”. Its agenda is to drag Indonesia back to the Dark Ages. It will make the lives of every citizen a misery, as their soul-mates in Afghanistan did there before they were put out of business by decent Afghans supported by friends from the West.
The Jakarta Post on 16th January quoted Ahmad Syafi Masrif, of Yogya University, as saying that “pluralism in Indonesia is deep-rooted and will last a long time”.
And it has, so far, because it has been Indonesians working out their own ways of getting along. It is in danger of breaking down solely because of outside influences. And those influences don’t come from the wicked West, which believe me has its faults, which I could go on about at length, but from the poisonous perversions of Islam that are roiling away in Osama’s fevered brain and those many acolytes in the Middle East. And yes, I’ve visited the Arab world and met and liked many people there too. I’ve defended the Palestinians in public debate, and feel they have been gravely wronged by the West. But I pity the way their sufferings are exploited by the fanatics.
Ross McKay.
