Indonesia

President Obama must not let his postponed trip to Indonesia scuttle U.S. plans to forge a lasting strategic partnership with an emerging world power, writes CFR’s Joshua Kurlantzick.

Although the White House’s meeting with the Dalai Lama has overshadowed news that President Obama will visit Indonesia in March, in the long run, the Indonesia trip will have a greater impact on policy. It’s rare to have an opportunity, during any U.S. administration, to dramatically change the course of relations with a major nation. Yet the evolution of democracy in Indonesia, the changing strategic environment in Southeast Asia and growing fear of China, and Obama’s personal popularity in Indonesia combine to create this chance. In the long run, Indonesia could become the kind of partner in Southeast Asia America has lacked in Thailand and the Philippines, our formal allies. On the trip, Obama should focus on several critical points: 1. Indonesia’s leaders don’t want the country to be portrayed as a “Muslim democracy,” even though the country has the most Muslims of any nation on earth. There are sizable numbers of Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus, and Indonesians don’t see themselves, necessarily, as some example to other Muslim-majority states. In any even, most Arab leaders see Southeast Asia as a kind of backwater of Islam, and would be loath to take advice from Jakarta anyway. 2. Learn from Indonesia’s counterterrorism strategies. Sure, there are still occasional terrorist attacks in Indonesia, but the government has seriously degraded Jemaah Ismaliah, the main terror network. And it has done so without serious compromises of the rule of law. 3. Although Obama is not going to meddle in domestic Indonesian politics, he should find a way to subtly show support for the country’s embattled reformers. Vice President Boediono and Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati both are under attack from some of the most retrograde elements of Indonesian politics. President Yudhoyono, though a committed democrat, is also a slow-moving consensus builder; without enough pressure, he could be convinced to throw Sri Mulyani and Boedino, the best hopes for reform, overboard. 4. Treat Indonesia like one of the BRICs. It’s not, technically, but after a decade getting its own domestic politics in order, Jakarta’s leaders want to reassume the country’s position as the leader of Southeast Asia and a significant player in international affairs.

A profile of the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, the group allegedly responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings.

A profile of Abu Bakar Bashir, the Indonesian cleric whose fiery invectives have motivated terrorist attacks like the 2002 Bali bombings, and who some experts say is affiliated with al-Qaeda.

This publication is now archived. Is Indonesia a haven for terrorists? Yes. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim county, is a vast archipelago with porous maritime borders, a weak central government, separatist movements, corrupt officials, a floundering economy, and a loosely regulated financial system—all characteristics which make it fertile ground for terrorist groups. While Indonesia is known as a secular, tolerant society that practices a moderate form of Islam, radical Islamists have gained momentum. U.S. officials and terrorism experts worry about al-Qaeda using Indonesia as a base for a Southeast Asian front in its campaign against “infidels,” Jews, and the United States. Indonesia resisted international pressure to crack down on local militants suspected of al-Qaeda ties until a devastating October 2002 attack on a Bali nightclub—and the simultaneous bombing of a U.S. consular office on the island—which killed more than 200 people, most of them foreign tourists. To its credit, since October 2002 the Indonesian government has cooperated with U.S. and Australian officials in their attempts to disrupt terrorist networks in Southeast Asia. What sort of country is Indonesia? A sprawling chain of about 17,000 islands off the southeastern coast of Asia . Established as a constitutional republic in 1945, the former Dutch colony has faced economic and political crises in recent years as it inches toward a society based on the rule of law. Suharto, the corrupt dictator who controlled Indonesia for more than 30 years, resigned in 1998, and Indonesia ’s military came under pressure to reduce its prominent role in domestic politics. Separatist movements and interreligious violence are prevalent in much of the country, which has the world’s fourth-largest population. Is there an al-Qaeda presence in Indonesia? It seems increasingly likely, especially after the October 2002 Bali bombing. Experts say other terrorist attacks within Indonesia—including a December 2000 church-bombing campaign, the August 2001 bombing of a Jakarta shopping mall by a Malaysian national, the August 2003 bombing outside the Marriot Hotel in Jakarta, and the October 2005 suicide bombings in Bali—may also be connected with international terrorism. Since the September 11 attacks, U.S. and Asian officials have warned that bin Laden’s organization was maneuvering to establish itself in Indonesiaand perhaps reconstitute its infrastructure there. In August 2002, the United States briefly shut down its embassy in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, on warnings of an attack plot by militants with al-Qaeda ties. The United States temporarily withdrew all nonessential personnel from the country following the Bali attack. Are Islamist groups in Indonesia linked to al-Qaeda? Seemingly, but experts say it’s unclear how closely they cooperate. Chief among the Indonesian groups that trouble U.S.and Asian officials is Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the group thought to be behind the 2002 Bali bombings, which seeks an Islamist state incorporating Indonesia, Malaysia, and the southern Philippines. The group’s leader, the radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, was arrested shortly after the Bali bombings—he was found guilty in 2005 and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. Jemaah Islamiyah has been linked to terrorist plots by an alleged al-Qaeda operative recently captured in Indonesia and turned over to the CIA. One of Bashir’s disciples, who goes by the name Hambali, has been linked with a bombing plot against Western embassies in nearby Singapore and with an individual who reportedly hosted two of the September 11 hijackers. U.S. officials also worry about Laskar Jihad, a violent group aiming to eliminate Christians from the Moluccas and Sulawesi Island and establish an Islamist state. After the October 2002 Balibombing, Laskar Jihad announced it had disbanded. Its leader, Jaffar Umar Thalib, says he met Osama bin Laden while fighting in the Islamist brigades opposed to the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan but says he’s rejected al-Qaeda’s offers of funding. Some experts say that Laskar Jihad’s contacts with al-Qaeda are more extensive than Thalib admits, but no hard evidence has been found linking the two groups. Does Indonesia say it has an al-Qaeda presence? Yes, although it insisted for years that it didn’t. The October 2002 Bali bombing prompted Indonesia’s defense minister to say he was “sure that al-Qaeda is here.” But Indonesia initially rebuffed U.S. requests to investigate a September 2002 grenade explosion near a building belonging to the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, saying that the blast resulted from a local business dispute. Earlier, Indonesia’s chief of military intelligence said foreign terrorists were training in a camp on Sulawesi Island, but he withdrew his report after criticism from domestic Islamic groups. How has the Indonesian government handled its terrorist threat since the 2002 Bali bombings?While several incidents—including the bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004—have hinderedIndonesia’s success in combating the country’s terrorist threat, the U.S. says Indonesia is continuing its counterterrorism efforts. According to the State Department’s 2004 Country Reports on Terrorism, Indonesian officials arrested dozens of terrorist suspects including JI leaders, former instructors at JI training camps, financiers of attacks, and members of splinter terrorist networks.  Since the bombings, prosecutors and courts have convicted more than 100 members of JI or affiliated groups on terrorism charges.

This publication is now archived. What is the history of U.S. military involvement in Indonesia? The United States for decades has supplied a variety of military assistance to Indonesia, a multi-ethnic archipelago of a country that is home to some 241 million people and, not incidentally, the world’s largest Muslim nation. During this period, Indonesia was ruled primarily by dictatorial leaders, and as a result, American military aid often was controversial. In 1998, Indonesians took to the streets to oust their longtime strongman, Suharto, opening up a period of democratic reform. But internal conflicts, some ethnic, some religious and others purely local, continue to roil the nation, and human rights groups still view the Indonesian military as a serial abuser of human rights. That set up a dilemma for Washington, which during the 1990s curbed severely its military ties with Indonesia’s armed forces, only to ramp it up again after the events of September 11, 2001. The 9/11 attacks convinced U.S. policymakers that confronting al-Qaeda-linked terrorist networks in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia, had to take priority. What kinds of security assistance is the U.S. currently providing Indonesia?U.S. assistance to Indonesia’s armed forces (TNI) and internal security agencies funds six different programs and initiatives:International Military Education and Training (IMET). Under this Department of Defense program, foreign military personnel receive training in order to increase professionalism, strengthen respect for democratic values and human rights, and cement Indonesia’s ongoing cooperation with the U.S. military. From 2002-04, Indonesia received $1.3 million from this program. The IMET program was suspended from 1999-2002 due to concerns about human rights abuses by the TNI in East Timor. In 2005, Indonesia received $600,000 in IMET funds, while President Bush plans on asking Congress to increase funding to $800,000 in 2006.Antiterrorism Assistance Program. This State Department program will spend $6 million in 2006 to train and equip a special Indonesian counterterrorism police unit called Special Detachment 88 (SD-88). SD-88 was launched in 2003 in response to the Bali bombings and has already received $14.8 million from this program.Counterterrorism Fellowship Program. The Department of Defense funds education in counterterrorism practices and strategies for Indonesian military and intelligence officials. From 2002-04, $4.2 million has been spent on this program.Military spare parts for non-lethal items. In 2000, the U.S. began allowing Indonesia to purchase, with proper disclosure, some military spare parts for "non-lethal" items. For example, in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami disaster, the U.S. sold spare parts for Hercules C-130 military transport planes so that Indonesia could deliver humanitarian supplies to Aceh province, where a long separatist insurgency has been ongoing.Foreign Military Financing (FMF). Although Indonesia has not historically qualified to receive grants and loans for weapons and other military equipment and training, Congress partially opened the door to such assistance in 2005 by providing $6 million to the Indonesian navy for maritime security. Amnesty International and other rights groups oppose this move, however, on grounds that Indonesia’s armed forces have not acted to end their human-rights abuses.Economic Support Funds. From 2001-04, the U.S. government gave Indonesia $23.2 million in general economic assistance, part of which is spent bolstering the country’s police and security forces. Why does Washington provide assistance?Indonesia is considered a central theater in the war on terrorism by many policymakers in the Bush administration. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, which, combined with rampant poverty and political instability, could fuel the growth of al-Qaeda-linked terrorist cells. The lush and luxuriant resorts of the island of Bali have already been the scene of two spectacular bombings targeting foreign tourists attributed to the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah, which has been linked to al-Qaeda. The bombing in 2002 killed 202 people, while the recent October 2005 suicide attacks have killed at least 19. Has the assistance been effective? U.S. officials claim their support of Indonesia as a partner in the war on terror has led to real strategic successes. For example, William P. Pope, acting coordinator for counterterrorism, reported in May 2005 congressional testimony that SD-88 had arrested the lead terrorist behind an Australian embassy attack in Jakarta and apprehended three terrorists as they prepared to bomb a major shopping center. However, given the most recent Bali bombings, terrorist groups are still able to successfully conduct operations on Indonesian soil. Are there restrictions placed on U.S. assistance?Currently, Congress does not allow U.S. military assistance in the form of licenses to export lethal defense articles to Indonesia and only provides limited and conditional foreign military financing. Congress has stated that these restrictions and limitations will only be lifted if the Indonesian government holds the TNI accountable for gross human rights violations committed in places like East Timor, if it tackles corruption in the army, and if it cooperates fully in the war on terror. Has the TNI improved its human rights record?According the State Department’s 2004 Human Rights report, the Indonesian government’s human rights record remains poor. The State Department goes on to say that in 2004: “Security force members murdered, tortured, raped, beat, and arbitrarily detained civilians and members of separatist movements, especially in Aceh and to a lesser extent in Papua.”Furthermore, the Indonesian Government has done little to hold accountable those in the military who have committed human rights abuses in the past. After the events on East Timor in 1999, when the island voted for independence and were met with an Indonesian military offensive killing at least 1,400 people, Human Rights Watch reports the country has investigated only five cases and brought only eighteen people to trial. The government “has failed to hold accountable a single member of the security forces for the human rights violations committed during this period.”

This publication is now archived. What are the latest developments in the peace process in Indonesia’s Aceh province?Rebels from the Islamist Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, or GAM), which has fought for independence from Jakarta for nearly 30 years, began turning in their weapons to international monitors September 15, an important first step toward peace in Indonesia’s troubled Aceh province after a nearly 30-year civil war. GAM members will hand in a total of 840 weapons in four stages over the next three months as Jakarta withdraws thousands of soldiers and police officers. Half the current number of soldiers and police will be withdrawn by the end of the year, leaving 14,700 soldiers and 9,100 police in Aceh. The moves are outlined in a peace treaty signed by representatives of the Indonesian government and GAM in Helsinki August 15. What kind of weapons are being handed in?GAM members handed in dozens of weapons, including rifles, handguns, grenade launchers, and shoulder-fired missile launchers. There was some controversy over which weapons counted; some government representatives said the weapons must be foreign-made and in working order—like the Chinese-manufactured AK-47s seized from rebels in almost-weekly military raids during 2004—while GAM members said any weapons, including homemade ones, should count. Pieter Feith, the Dutch diplomat heading the 220-member Aceh Monitoring Mission, said any working weapons with a steel chamber and a steel barrel would count toward the total. What prompted the signing of the peace treaty?GAM has been fighting for independence in the western Indonesian province since 1976. Many previous attempts to make peace, including the latest in 2003, failed as hostilities flared between Jakarta—which has been determined to hold onto resource-rich Aceh—and the rebels. Decades of violence left over 15,000 people dead and thousands more displaced. But after the December 26, 2004, underground earthquake and tsunami devastated the Aceh province—killing some 170,000 residents, leaving 500,000 homeless, and causing $4.5 billion worth of damage—b oth sides in the conflict returned to the negotiating table with new resolve to end the longstanding dispute. What are the treaty’s provisions?The Helsinki peace deal strengthens the autonomy granted to Aceh in a 2001 agreement with the government and gives the province several special rights and privileges. The agreement also: Establishes an immediate ceasefire. Calls for GAM to disarm its roughly 3,000 fighters by the end of the year. Offers an amnesty to all GAM members, and a prison release for those being held by the Indonesian government. Some 1,500 GAM members imprisoned for their political activities have been released since late August. Restricts government troop movements in Aceh. Changes Indonesian law to allow Aceh-based parties to participate in politics. Mandates that 70 percent of the country’s natural resources will stay in Aceh. The region has vast reserves of oil and natural gas and is rich in timber and minerals. It is also a fertile agricultural region. Establishes a human rights court to expose abuses committed during the conflict, and a truth and reconciliation commission in Aceh. Allows Aceh to use its own regional flag, crest, and hymn. However, Jakarta will still control the province’s finances, defense, and foreign policy. Allows for over 200 unarmed monitors from the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries to oversee the peace process. Why do Acehnese people want independence?Aceh was an independent sultanate until the twentieth century, having fought off repeated Dutch attempts to colonize it along with the rest of Indonesia. The Dutch finally won control of the province in 1904. Aceh was briefly occupied by Japan after World War II, then was claimed by the newly independent state of Indonesia. However, the Acehnese—who historically traded with fellow Muslims from India, the Arabian peninsula, and the Ottoman empire—fought all their colonial overseers. Their cultural history—which includes a more conservative form of Islam than in other parts of Indonesia—has led the Acehnese to consider themselves distinct from the Javanese, who form the majority of Indonesians. A form of sharia (traditional Islamic law) has been practiced in Aceh since 2003, in contrast to the secular law practiced in the rest of the nation. What happened to previous attempts to end the violence?In December 2002, the two sides signed a Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoHA). But CoHa collapsed five months after it was signed over the issue of Aceh’s autonomy. The Indonesian government responded by declaring a state of emergency and launching a massive military campaign that severely weakened GAM. Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 100,000 people were displaced and many thousands murdered in that time. The organization accused the Indonesian government of torturing GAM prisoners and committing widespread human-rights violations in its report, Aceh at War: Torture, Ill-Treatment, and Unfair Trials. Will this peace deal last?Indonesian Vice President Kalla, with strong support from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, took a personal role in the negotiation process and is committed to making the agreement stick, experts say. But the difficulties of ending a 30-year-old conflict should not be underestimated, warns an International Crisis Group report, Aceh: A New Chance for Peace. What’s the state of Aceh’s economy?It is one of Indonesia’s poorest provinces, with a 27 percent unemployment rate among its 4 million people. The inflation rate is 17 percent, compared to about 7 percent inflation in other parts of the country, according to the World Bank. Much of the inflation is a result of the massive influx of aid workers and money for post-tsunami reconstruction, which pushed up costs for housing, food, and transportation. Aceh provides almost a quarter of Indonesia’s total oil and gas output, and oil and gas production make up nearly half of the province’s revenues. However, the region’s known oil reserves are predicted to run out in 2011, experts say. Despite its mineral wealth, poverty persists in the province, leading some Acehnese nationalists to accuse Jakarta of exploiting the region.

“There’s no question that there’s never been a better chance for peace in Aceh and for resolving their 30-year-old conflict,” says Sidney Jones, a renowned Indonesia expert and director of the Southeast Asia Project at the International Crisis Group. “But that said, it’s not by any means assured that we’re actually going to get a lasting peace at the end of it,” she says. She was interviewed by Esther Pan on August 30, 2005.What do you think of the new peace agreement signed August 15?There’s no question that there’s never been a better chance for peace in Aceh and for resolving their 30-year-old conflict. But that said, it’s not by any means assured that we’re actually going to get a lasting peace at the end of it. It was an agreement concluded with really great political will on both sides—which was missing from all other efforts at making peace—but there are a lot of outstanding issues which were addressed in principle in the peace agreement, but none of the details are there. And so a lot is going to depend on what the fine print says when it actually gets written, and also on how the parts that are now being clarified are implemented. Which issues, for example? I’ll give you a couple of examples. There’s an issue of who is entitled to compensation, and what kind of compensation. What the agreement says is that amnestied prisoners and combatants who turn in their arms and come down from the hills and anyone who suffered a demonstrable loss in the conflict will be entitled to either land, jobs, or a cash payment that will constitute a kind of social security. The problem is, first of all, it’s not entirely clear who’s going to get amnesty. It’s not clear how many people are actually going to come down from the hills; or if there’s land available, whether the people who come from the hills actually have the skills necessary to farm it. And it’s not at all clear what they mean by “anyone who suffered a demonstrable loss in the conflict. That’s basically anybody in Aceh. They’re trying now to define that more clearly, and one suggestion was that that clause was only apply to widows and the disabled—but even that is going to be a major headache to resolve. Another question is, if you give every one of the combatants a cash package, what is the reaction going to in communities where you had both people who were fighting against GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, the Free Aceh Movement), or tsunami victims, who feel the GAM guerillas are being treated better than they are? So there are a lot of people worried about some of the perceived inequities that might arise as a result of the agreement. That said, there’s a huge number of people now working to try to put the details on the agreement in a way that will draw on experience from other places. You’ve got the International Office for Migration, the World Bank, every imaginable international agency under the sun, all eager to do what they can, and every donor willing to give whatever resources are necessary to make this stick. It’s just that it was signed so quickly, with so many details left up in the air, that they’re now in the process of taking the enormous goodwill and political desire for a settlement and actually trying to turn it into something that’s manageable.What caused the goodwill? This is a 30-year-old conflict, so what changed so suddenly to lead to the agreement?First of all, the government of [President Susilo Bambang] Yudhoyono and vice-president Yusuf Kalla, actually made the resolution of outstanding conflicts part of their campaign platform in Indonesia’s first-ever direct election of a president [in 2004]. And Kalla in particular feels, with some degree of truth, that he solved two other major conflicts in Indonesia—one in central Sulawesi and one in the Molucca [Islands]—that were communal conflicts between Muslims and Christians, and he was interested in taking on a bigger one, which was Aceh. He’s now invested enormous personal legitimacy and credibility in making this work. That’s one of the reasons there was greater political will on the government side. It was a challenge to the people involved, and now they’ve put so much into it, they’re going to lose out personally if they don’t make it succeed. On the GAM side, they’ve been hurt very badly by military operations that were put in place after the last agreement collapsed in May 2003. The military operations netted thousands of suspected GAM mid-ranking figures—and much of its support base—and pushed the guerillas back, out of urban areas and villages into the hills. So there were a number of commanders who were actually eager for some kind of exit strategy. Those two factors were instrumental in securing the political will. Then you also had the sympathy factor of the tsunami, and the fact that Aceh was so devastated that it really was beyond time to worry about ideology. People wanted to get on with their lives. It wasn’t so much combat fatigue as much as it was basic survival at stake here. I think that feeling pushed both sides to try to come up with something that might last. What’s the mood among the people in Aceh? Do they support the peace agreement?They certainly do, but because they’ve had so many false hopes and so many times where peace seemed in the offing and then collapsed, I didn’t find a single person who was willing to say, “We’ve got an agreement that’s here to stay.” There were people saying, “Well, let’s see what happens in the first month or six months.” They were saying, more or less, that it’ll be a miracle if it comes off. Is there enough trust on the part of the people to make the agreement work, given the abuses the Indonesian army has committed against them?There’s no question about the severity of the abuses in Aceh, although most of the worst abuses were committed not during the most recent military operation, but during counterinsurgency operations before then, particularly from 1990-93, roughly, and then from when Suharto fell [1998] up to 2002. That’s when some of the worst civilian abuses were taking place. But there have also been a large number of abuses committed by GAM, and one of the concerns a number of people have raised is, what happens when people who’ve committed abuses on the GAM side come back in the villages? How are the people who were their victims going to react? So we’ve got some nasty guys on both sides, even though the weight of the scale is far larger on the government side. But there’s no question there’s a lot of distrust and fear there, particularly in areas of the interior which have been basically off-limits for travel since the military emergency was imposed. It’s not clear what’s actually going to take place there. And the army is not happy with this agreement for a lot of different reasons. It’s going to be a real test to see if the civilian side of this government can keep the military on board. What’s the size of the government presence in Aceh? There are about 4 million residents. How many troops are there now?According to the agreement, the army gets to leave 14, 700 troops on the ground in Aceh. That will mean the pullback of about 15,000 troops, but a substantial number will be left there. GAM is already saying it’s too many, but they did agree to the final figure, so there’s no scope for changing it. There are also going to be 9,000 police left on the ground. In the last four or five years, the paramilitary police actually have a far worse record, in terms of abuse, than the army. And the Aceh Monitoring Mission—the international team of monitors from the European Union and the ASEAN countries—have been assigned these police as their guards. And the EU and ASEAN monitors are unarmed, is that right? Yes. And there’s a real dislike of international monitors in the Indonesian Parliament in Jakarta. They’re seen as embodying the internationalization of something which should have been a domestic affair. So there have been lots of  heated words about them. It’s mostly hot air, but it remains to be seen if that’s a problem in the future. What happened the last time there was an agreement is that when you had clashes where both sides blamed the other, the army mobilized civilian mobs to go and attack the monitors’ offices on the grounds that they weren’t being neutral. This time around, there is an arbiter, but nobody knows how well that’s going to work at this stage. How strong is the desire for independence in Aceh? Are the people still hoping for sovereignty?There’s no question that there’s a huge pride in Aceh’s history among the Acehnese, and probably you’d get more than 50 percent of the people saying they’d want to have their own country and be separate from Indonesia. But a lot of the people who would like to have a separate nation don’t like GAM. So it’s not at all clear that GAM is the sole representative even of the people who want independence, let alone of the people of Aceh. I don’t think it’s on the same scale as East Timor, for example.What about the agreement’s clauses on resource use, another contentious issue?Actually, there’s very little in the agreement on resources that wasn’t in the 2001 special agreement granting autonomy to Aceh. So when it says in the new agreement that Aceh will be able to keep 70 percent of its oil and gas resources, that was actually already in the autonomy agreement. There are a couple of new things: Aceh will be able to set its own interest rate, independent of Jakarta, and it will be able to attract and invite foreign investment without going through Jakarta. Does that mean Aceh could sell its own oil and gas exploration rights?I’m not sure. Some of those details have yet to be worked out. But it’s important to note that the decision-making authority rests with the provincial government of Aceh, not with GAM. So if they’re setting a new interest rate, or making revisions to the criminal code to bring it in line with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights–another provision of the agreement—it’s going to be the provincial parliament and the provincial government, both directly elected, that will make those decisions.Does Aceh already have a provincial government and parliament, or will they be elected in the same round of local elections that the rest of Indonesia is going through this year?   They don’t have a directly-elected governor now. They are going to have direct elections for governor and local officials, according to the agreement, in April 2006. That was designed to give enough time for GAM to field candidates if it wanted. In the agreement, Aceh has also been granted the right—which no other province has—to form local political parties with a view toward the 2009 [national] parliamentary elections.I see. And how do you think the prisoner release will go?Well, it’s already all messed up. It was supposed to start on Sunday, and then it turns out the presidential authorization of the amnesty hadn’t actually been signed. Then it was supposed to take place today, and it still wasn’t signed. The poor people trying to arrange the logistics for taking the prisoners back to their home villages…all of that has been placed on hold. This is related to the fact that this whole agreement was signed with major logistical implications which nobody thought through. There was no agency given implementing authority for it, and nobody had decided what the procedures were for enforcing each of the provisions. So people are flying by the seat of their pants now—and not doing a bad job—but it’s not surprising that, under the circumstances, you’ve had this kind of bureaucratic delay.So overall, how would you evaluate this agreement versus previous agreements? Well, as I say, I think it’s got a far greater chance than other agreements had. I would put the chances now at 55 or 60 percent that it’ll work, which is far higher than I would’ve put any previous agreement. It’s just a lot of history and bureaucratic problems to overcome. Ultimately, it’s going to be up to the two parties on the ground in Aceh—with the added complication of politicians in Jakarta—to determine whether this will actually succeed or not. But it’s got more of a chance than Aceh’s ever had before, no question.

This publication is now archived. What is the significance of Indonesia’s local elections?They are the first direct elections for district and provincial leaders in the world’s most populous Muslim country. Indonesia held its first direct elections for president and parliament in 2004, and experts say this year’s local elections could cement the establishment of democracy in the country. "These local elections are extraordinarily important," says Jeffrey Hadler, assistant professor of South and Southeast Asian studies at the University of California, Berkeley. "They will give people a real sense of democracy in action," he says. "We’ll see which local party officials have done a good job." What is the time frame for the elections?They will run over a period of five years. During this time, each of Indonesia’s 32 provinces will elect provincial governors, and each of the country’s more than 450 districts will choose mayors and district heads, known as walikota and bupati respectively. The elections are staggered due to the difficulty of organizing simultaneous polls among the nation’s 224 million people, spread over 17,000 islands. Experts say the results of these votes are important, both for local representation and future political positioning. "The party that dominates local elections will have a head start in the general [presidential and parliamentary] elections in 2009," says Leonard Sebastian, senior fellow and coordinator of the Indonesia Program at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. How will these polls work?Each candidate will run in his or her local district, many on a slate with a running mate. The candidates with the best chance of success, experts say, will run on slates nominated by political parties, which have the support structure to aid their campaigns. Some experts say the major parties have too much influence in the local races. "Local elections seem to have become another channel for parties in their quest for influence," Sebastian says. How do these elections mark a break from the past?General Suharto--who, like many Indonesians, used only one name--took power from Sukarno, the first leader of post-colonial Indonesia, in 1966. Suharto ran the country as a dictator until 1998, when he was overthrown by a popular uprising. Under Suharto’s rule, the country’s local leaders were appointed by the Department of Home Affairs in the capital, Jakarta. "Many of them were not even from the districts they ran, and functioned more as agents of the central government than as representatives of the people," says Roderick Brazier, assistant Indonesia country representative for the Asia Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports democracy and development in Asia. Many experts say Indonesians are hopeful that decentralizing power to the regions will improve accountability and the delivery of services from their elected representatives. Elections for local leaders in small villages and districts, where everyone knows each other, will hinge on "real personality politics," Hadler says, and the quality of the candidates will likely matter more than the party they belong to. How were Indonesia’s leaders chosen before 2004?Under Suharto, Indonesians voted for political parties, not individuals. Parties then awarded slots to candidates on their slates based on the percentage of the vote the party won. Often local voters didn’t even know which candidates would represent them until their local officials were appointed. Members of parliament, who took their seats in this manner, selected the president. In 2004, Indonesia modified its system to hold direct elections for president. However, members of parliament are still elected from national party lists. Which major political parties are contesting?Indonesia’s two most powerful political parties are secular, although Islamic parties have seen strong gains in the last few years.The secular parties are:Golkar. A technocratic party with strong support from government bureaucrats, this is the party most connected to former ruler Suharto. Many Suharto loyalists from the time of his rule, known as the New Order period, still hold leadership positions in Golkar. Experts say Golkar, which continues to be tremendously influential, will likely hold onto power and protect business interests instead of offering any real reform. In many rural areas outside of Java, the most populous Indonesian island, "Golkar still has the strongest party machine," Hadler says.PDI-P, or Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle. The nationalist party of Sukarno, PDI-P is now led by his daughter, immediate-past president Megawati Sukarnoputri. The party has a strong power base in central Java, where the capital, Jakarta, is located. Experts say Megawati still holds a grudge against current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono--a former member of her Cabinet who defeated her in the 2004 election--which may limit PDI-P’s ability to work effectively with his government. Critics say the party is a cult of personality for the Sukarno family and charge that it is has not been able to modernize or build effective political structures, particularly outside of Jakarta. "The party is struggling to stay united and be more than a Megawati fan club," Brazier says.The main Islamic parties are:PAN, or National Mandate Party. This party was founded by Amien Rais, a university professor who also headed Muhammadiyah, a massive Islamic social welfare organization that provides community services--including healthcare and education--to its members, who are mostly middle class, urban, and educated. Rais also helped establish the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals, which aimed to influence the governments of both Suharto and his hand-picked successor, B.J. Habibie. The party has struggled to broaden its appeal to the rural poor with little success; critics say its influence is fading.PPP, United Development Party. Under Suharto’s rule, all Indonesian politicians considered Islamists--those who wanted Islam to play a stronger role in political life--had to join one party, the PPP, says Joseph Errington, a Yale anthropology professor who studies language and identity in Indonesia. The PPP leaders were once energetic opposition figures, but have now become "professional politicians," he says. While the PPP emphasizes Islamic morals and principles, it has not pursued a traditional Islamist agenda; for example, it has not tried to increase the role of sharia, or Islamic law, in Indonesian society.PKB, National Awakening Party. The political wing of Nahdlatul Ulama, PKB is the country’s other main Islamic social welfare organization, with a huge following in East and Central Java. Former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, who served from 1999 to 2001, was a PKB member; he was dismissed by parliament in July 2001 on charges of corruption and incompetence. Since then, the party has had a leadership vacuum, experts say. "The [PKB’s] goal was to unseat Suharto, his family, and his cronies," Errington says. Once that happened, experts say, the PKB--like many opposition parties--struggled with actually governing.PKS, Prosperous Justice Party. A young, dynamic party with an Islamist outlook, the PKS made great gains in the 2004 parliamentary elections. It has strong support on the western island of Sumatra. The party says it supports diversity, openness, and freedom of religion, and has won widespread respect for its disciplined organization and strong anti-corruption message. Experts say, however, it is not yet clear if the PKS is really as tolerant as its members claim, or if a more restrictive agenda will emerge more strongly in the future. How influential are Indonesia’s Islamist parties?For the nearly 90 percent of its citizens who are Muslim, Indonesia has always had its own inclusive version of Islam, experts say, rooted in local traditions and very different from the hardline Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia. Most mainstream politicians, whether practicing Muslims or not, favor either secular government or an Indonesian compromise that respects Islam but also protects the country’s diversity and plurality. While Islamist parties have gained popularity recently for vowing to deliver services and clean up corruption, many experts say there is little allure for ordinary citizens in radical calls for violence or jihad. "People want results. The thing to be worrying about right now is not Islam, but delivery," Errington says. What is the current role of the military in politics?The Indonesian army, which played a central role in national politics under Suharto, has accepted a more limited role without putting up too much of a fight, Brazier says. However, the army’s support is still critical to Yudhoyono, a former general, "since [he’s] one of their own," Sebastian says. The military’s leaders are trying to build a modern and professional force, but experts say their efforts have moved slowly due to a lack of government funds. What problems have affected the elections?A massive corruption scandal has rocked the country’s General Election Commission since April, when election commissioner Mulyana Kusuma was caught bribing a state auditor to keep quiet about bribes received by the election commission during last year’s presidential vote. So far, investigations have revealed the commission took some $2.1 million in bribes to give out preferential contracts to suppliers of ink, ballot papers, and ballot boxes in last year’s election. This national scandal has not directly affected preparations for local elections, but it highlights the uphill battle faced by Indonesians--including President Yudhoyono, who made fighting corruption the centerpiece of his campaign--who seek a more honest government.

Sidney Jones, a leading expert on Indonesia and its terror movements, says there are “solid links” between Osama bin Laden’s network and Jemaah Islamiyah (J.I.). But, she adds, “I am also very strongly of the opinion that al Qaeda doesn’t control J.I.” The Indonesia Project Director for the International Crisis Group and the author of a recent report on J.I., Jones says she was surprised to find that while the group had grown to at least several thousand, many Indonesians refuse to believe it exists. She also says that that the failure of prosecutors and judges to show “a bit more spine” in the case against Abu Bakar Bashir, the suspected former head of J.I., has produced sympathy for him and sharply undercut Indonesia’s war on terror.Jones was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on September 4, 2003.Is Jemaah Islamiyah a threat to the Indonesian government?I don’t think it has any capacity to overthrow the government. Nor do I think it has any mass base support of any significance in Indonesia, although it certainly has some. For most Indonesians, it really is a radical fringe and one that most people would steer clear of. But it does have the capacity to engage in further terror.How would you describe the government’s efforts to crack down on J.I. and on terror in general?I would say that since the Bali attacks in October 2002 [that killed 202 people], the government and, in particular, the police have done a very creditable job. They have systematically pursued the network; there are now more than 90 people in prison. But the government doesn’t speak with one voice. The police and a couple of cabinet members are willing to take firm action. There is a reluctance on the part of other members of the cabinet and, to some extent, President Megawati [Sukarnoputri] herself, to call a spade a spade and actually say this is a nationwide network that needs to be eradicated. That reluctance makes it very difficult to go after those [Islamic boarding] schools where we know in effect bombers are being produced.Why is President Megawati reluctant to act?She has no Muslim credentials. She is seen by conservative Muslims as being almost tantamount to a Hindu. In order to maintain credibility as president, she had to get a hard-line vice president to, as it were, balance the ticket. Some of the conservative Muslim groups were raising concerns about a woman president, let alone a woman president with all these Balinese connections. She can’t do anything that would seem to be going against Muslim interests in Indonesia unless other hard-line Muslims in the cabinet follow suit.What is the “Bali” problem?The people in Bali are largely Hindu. Megawati is the daughter of Sukarno, the founder, in a sense, of Indonesia whose mother was Balinese. Megawati has strong support in Bali. She also not seen as a particularly devout Muslim, and right before the 1999 election, she made a highly publicized visit to a Balinese temple, which outraged the conservative Muslim community.In your report, you say there are several thousand members of J.I. How did you get that number?When I first started this research a year ago in August, I was convinced we were dealing with an organization that numbered probably in the low hundreds. The more I got into this, the more I was convinced that the organization was much larger than I had thought. And some of the most recent information we got suggested it is in the high thousands, but I am not sufficiently confident of the numbers to put a clear figure on it.Are all of them graduates of the Islamic boarding schools— the pesantren— that operate in Indonesia?No, they are not all graduates of the boarding schools and not all of them are people who would actually get involved in bombings. I think if we look at the people who are the real terrorists and take part in jihad operations, we’re talking about people who went through training either in Afghanistan or Mindanao [a predominantly Muslim island in the southern Philippines]. And that comes out to about 150 to 400 people, total. But there are a lot of foot soldiers around and many of those foot soldiers do indeed come out of religious boarding schools and many of them are in central Java.What do you make of the September 2 decision by an Indonesian court to acquit the radical Islamic cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, of charges that he ordered a series of terrorist attacks in Indonesia and plotted to kill President Megawati, and instead sentence him to only four years in prison for the lesser charge of aiding and abetting treason?It was a bad decision for a lot of different reasons. I think the evidence was certainly sufficient for convicting him at least of being the head of J.I., the group that carried out a string of bombings, including the one in Bali last October, for the period from 1999 to 2002. It looks as though he was replaced as the leader in 2002, but there was overwhelming evidence, not only from witnesses but also from interrogation depositions, that shows he was indeed the amir for this period.The implications of acquitting him on those two counts is that now he is making the case that [the prosecution was the result of] foreign pressure, that in fact Australia and the United States are most concerned about his efforts to establish Islamic law and that they will undermine it at any cost. Because his lawyers have successfully focused on the foreign element in terms of putting pressure on the court to get him arrested in the first place, and have diverted attention away from J.I. and toward Bashir’s efforts to establish Islamic law, he’s gotten more sympathy as a result of this trial than he would have if both the prosecutors and the judges had had a little bit more spine.I think that both the prosecutors and the judges proceeded with kid gloves because they were worried about a possible backlash, which I don’t think they needed to fear. But because they treated it so gingerly, Bashir’s own arguments and those of his lawyers are going to now carry more weight. And that’s got, I think, very serious consequences in terms of the willingness of the Indonesian public to believe that J.I. exists. Unbelievably, up to now, many people just don’t believe it does.Many Indonesians doubt J.I.’s existence?It’s hard for people outside of Indonesia to understand in the light of what has happened that there still could be doubts about J.I.’s existence, but what Indonesians are now willing to believe is that they do have a group of homegrown radicals who make bombs. And they are willing to believe that people like Amrozi bin Nurhasyim [sentenced to death for his role in the Bali attacks] and [others] arrested are indeed the people responsible for the Bali bombings. But there’s still skepticism about the idea of a nationwide network committed to bombings and the use of violence to establish an Islamic state and to fight against Islam’s enemies. They’re even more skeptical about the fact that J.I has links to al Qaeda.Are there solid links between the two groups?There are solid links. But I am also very strongly of the opinion that al Qaeda doesn’t control J.I. The links were established in Afghanistan, where the top leadership of J.I. was trained between 1985 and 1995. They worked very closely with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [alleged 9/11 plotter who is now in U.S. custody] and a number of other people who subsequently became top leaders of al Qaeda. There were many personal bonds forged during that time. Secondly, there were money transfers. We don’t know if all the bombs planted by J.I. were financially supported by al Qaeda, but we know that some of them were, including the Bali bomb.How certain are we?[The evidence] is not yet hard enough to stand in a court of law on its own. I think if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Omar Farouk [a senior Qaeda operative in Southeast Asia, now in U.S. custody] were made available to testify, they could certainly attest to the fact that the money was transferred. But the circumstantial evidence is very clear, and there were a number of Qaeda operatives in Indonesia who were believed to be the conduit for that funding. I am convinced 100 percent that there was funding from al Qaeda for the Bali bombing. But as I say, it is not yet of sufficient clarity that it would hold up in court.Hambali, the terror suspect arrested in Thailand recently and transferred to U.S. custody, is supposed to be closely aligned with al Qaeda.Hambali, who was arrested August 12, is believed to be a member of the top council of al Qaeda and was a key operative for al Qaeda in Southeast Asia. He is a critical link, but he wasn’t the only link to al Qaeda. Even though he played a key role in both organizations, al Qaeda and J.I., I don’t think his arrest per se is going to stop J.I.You wrote in an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune that Hambali should be put on trial in Indonesia. Why is that?Unless he comes back for trial, the skepticism about J.I. links with al Qaeda will grow, and the notion that this is all an American conspiracy to discredit Islam and Indonesia is probably going to grow. The only reason that the conspiracy theories about the Bali bombing began to die off in the months that followed was that the arrests and trials of the Bali suspects were so transparent. There is no question that there is hard evidence against Hambali in terms of his links to al Qaeda and to the bombings that took place in Indonesia, but Indonesians need to hear that and they won’t so long as he remains in U.S. custody.How will the Bashir trial affect U.S. relations with Indonesia?It is clear that the United States was extremely disappointed by the lightness of the sentence, and an article in The New York Times [on the trial] quoted a senior Western diplomat expressing concern about the fact that the other charges did not stick. The United States is now giving a large amount of assistance to Indonesia for counterterrorism and it will be a little bit nervous about how much commitment there will be in the government, apart from the police, to pursuing this. One of the problems is that among the people under arrest are several known members of the J.I. organization who have not been implicated in acts of violence, including the man who is widely believed to have succeeded Bashir [as J.I. leader] in 2002, Abu Rusdan. If the judges were unwilling to stick it to Bashir, they may be even less willing to stick it to the other members of J.I. who they can’t prove were involved in acts of violence.Will the prosecutor appeal to try to get a stiffer sentence on Bashir?Now that Bashir has formally appealed, which he did yesterday, the pressure on the prosecutors to launch their own appeal is probably greater. But I understood that one of the reasons the judges gave such a light sentence was because they were terrified for their own safety. And yet, in the Indonesian press, the judges are being lauded for their courage in standing up to the United States.