SBY may have had the people's support, but his hold on parliament is far from secure. His newly-formed Democratic Party won only 7.5 per cent of the vote while the ever adroit Jusuf Kalla as head of well-entrenched Golkar has real political clout.

Some think it's curious that a military man saturated in the culture of the army (his father, one son and his wife's family are all past or present members of the TNI) should be so indecisive. Generals are expected to be action men, not ditherers. But they can only exercise authority with the support of other staff; the backing of foot soldiers (read electors) isn't enough.

Many Western commentators overlook SBY's military past. They see the suit and forget the uniform. The army is an integral part of the nation's culture. It's not so up front and obvious as in the past but it remains the hidden power. SBY was a four-star general; his former superiors are still influential in a rank and status-conscious society.

Outside Jakarta the villagers and kampong dwellers look back with nostalgia to the Suharto era. Human rights abuses and economic mismanagement were of little concern because a controlled media didn't reveal the truth. The price of rice, cooking oil and other staples stayed low, and that's what they recall. Nor were there natural disasters on the scale of the 2004 Tsunami and the 2006 Yogya quake – factors the superstitious link to the overthrow of Suharto.

So SBY hasn't measured up to expectations. That isn't surprising – running Indonesia is an almost impossible job. He's still the best going, though only when ranked against other contenders. The ONA, with access to so much more information than the average onlooker, should be able to provide a more subtle analysis of the enigma. Or would helping the public understand these important issues 'dumb down' the agency?
Duncan Graham www.indonesianow.blogspot.com

##

More funny expat views of natives, through a gin haze in our Raffles Hotel? Some questions:

So Duncan claims that Indonesia stands out as different from Australia by being "a rank and status-conscious society"? Maybe he means that Indonesians don't kid themselves with Australian-style mantras about meritocracy and egalitarianism? But notice too how all of the Western focus is on SBY, as though the formal top of the hierarchical heap must define automatically the country's real political direction or progress! Very status and rank-conscious indeed...yet we Australians suffer daily media pontification by such pampered pheasants as CEOs, bankers, fund managers and their politician-minders. As for our journos, there seems (accurately, I think) little self-deprecating irony left in their use of the label 'fourth estate'.

And why should we believe that reduced fuel subsidies are a good thing (ask any Indonesian commercial drivers)? Because the IMF says subsidies are bad? Soeharto's resignation came finally because he knew he couldn't meet such post-1997 crash IMF demands without losing all credibility as a national leader - leaving aside Duncan's hazy anecdote about nostalgia among village and kampung dwellers.

Why should we expect Ward and ONA to make "more subtle analysis" of Indonesia? If they have had more-than-average access to information, it hardly follows that they'll make better sense of it. And if they place too much value on secrets then they'll be captive to whatever 'secrets' their targets depict as important information.

Please consider some examples largely ignored by our media and its 'Indonesia experts'. Just last year, Indonesia has made: serious nuclear plans with Russia and South Korea, doubtless spurred by the success of German nuclear technology in Central Java since 2001; military national service for countrywide activation from 2008; major naval acquisition and expansion projects, and; a shift to Russian credit schemes and Chinese defence cooperation.

Why would Ward claim that many Indonesians suspect evil Australian intentions in eastern Indonesia? Better ask Mari Alkatiri, or maybe anonymous Rio Tinto sources.

Dumbing-down at ONA (and the entire Australian Intelligence Community) happened long ago, when they were deemed foils for sleazy, over-confident policy.

Charged with the sacred duty of holding the disperate Indonesian archipelago together the TNI is the most powerful force in Indonesia. This mandate together with the economic clout the TNI continues to enjoy through legal and corrupt business activities ensures that Indonesian politics remains a Javanese puppet show manipulated, influenced and at times directly controlled by the TNI.
Bruce Haigh

Good Onya mil_observer

Your lucid observations and apt level of cynicism must make you a very naughty employee in this world of Opinion Channelling Employers.

You’re right that it is important to analyse our own society when dissembling other societies.

In addition to your fair comments on ONA one shouldn't forget that it (and DIO) must always be aware of the Government’s firmly held beliefs when writing "frank and fearless" assessments on such topics as SBY, Indonesia and Iraq (where of course OIL is naturally not a driving issue...).

Regards

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com

Thanks Pete. Ex-employee actually: character-assassinated, stitched up, blacklisted, the whole anti-dissident deal.

Yes Bruce, valid point. But perhaps we could also explore some English metaphor for the Punch-and-Judy show of Australian federal politics, and its string-pullers? Damn, those anonymous sources at Rio still haven't come through! No 'corruption' from those quarters, or from Defence, DMO, ADF or DFAT? Maybe I should try checking with their respective lawyers, PR spinners and ministers?

But relativism aside for a moment, let's reflect on some results from corrupt Indonesia policy in Australian intelligence services.

Tampa was probably ONA's signature tune; even DSD got a guernsey there. While I accept that TNI chiefs had the means to stop Australia-bound migrants if they wished, and the high likelihood that the TNI took bribes to ensure they did not stop such travel, the hysteria, vilification and 'Pacific Solution' were a costly and embarrassing disgrace.

Last year's West Papuan 'asylum seekers' episode was a logical consequence of such over-reaction: the ensuing bilateral security agreement was (and will probably remain for some time) a windfall for the TNI. The puppet masters here got well and truly puppeteered in that case.

Our country's leadership elite has consumed itself - and most of its constituents - with Huntingtonesque visions of cultural and religious paranoia. In the absence of therapy from a mature, honest and competent intelligence, the only palliative to such paranoia would seem to be neo-con adventurism and opportunistic foreign policy.

But that latter is no cure, and it seems the TNI has been getting ready as a logical response. I don't mean to feed White Australia-inspired invasion fears, but any future TNI payback will likely be regional, strategic, allied with greater powers - and creative.

And lest we distract ourselves further by regarding corruption as a particularly Indonesian problem, think of just where much of the Soeharto clan's lucre has been received safely with open arms: Channel Islands, Knightsbridge, Toorak, etc. The TNI needs that funding too, not just what it can extort from Australian paranoid Islamophobes. Hence Tommy's recent release from jail and his attendance at Kopassus' birthday.

So many of us are lurking here, not knowing enough to even pose a sensible question.

- it's a fascinating thread. Don't stop for perceived lack of interest. Go on. Go on.

Cooke's point on SBY's fluent English seems odd. Why is it better that Indonesia's president speaks fluent English? Can Cooke properly compare presidents' abilities there, or does he mean: "Well, his accent's clearer, more time in the US", etc? Habibie and Gus Dur speak very good English (as well as several other languages). And to don that relativist's cap again, when did an Australian PM, or even foreign minister, have any command of any language other than English?

It may be humbling that the entire Indonesian civilian and military elite (and wider population) have overwhelmingly greater command of English than do any Australian counterpart groups of Indonesian. Why humbling? Indonesians will be more able to grasp what happens in Australia, what's said, and contexts of causality, implication and other significance, than would Australians in reverse comparison.

Cooke's point on terrorism seems to me his article's wooliest. How is SBY conspicuous as "committed to the war on terrorism"? Does Cooke mean that predecessors made no such commitment e.g., "It's too hard. Let that judge get shot; leave the killers"? Of course, that discussion implies the perplexing question of what 'the war on terrorism' really means; one person's 'War on Terrorism' can be another's 'War on Windmills'.

Indeed, images of windmills may best evoke the terrorism issue's wider context of energetic windbaggery, propagandist 'spin', and the various smokescreens blown before the public. After all, the bomb attack outside the Australian Embassy happened on SBY's birthday, just after he became president. Why did our media avoid that basic, incontrovertible fact?

So what has really driven 'terrorism' in Indonesia? For brevity, let's compare just two explanations:

Explanation 1. Islamic radicals detonate various bombs in order to realize an Islamic state e.g., "give us a caliphate now or the next hotel/embassy cops it", and "That's no country, that's our Mantiqi!". Such operations also draw on grass roots hostility to decadence seen in bars, fast food chains and tourist haunts which, if attacked, should eventually effect such regime change.

This explanation has many hallucinogenic aspects. The most apparent is its reliance upon

mil

I don't think JI's jihadist pursuit of its fantasies are necessarily incompatible with its skill at embarrasing the current (SBY) order.

I find it interesting that SBY's English must have been largely created in America.

Reading the Wiki record of SBY's military development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susilo_Bambang_Yudhoyono his:

- “proficiency in English was one of the reasons why he was sent to the United States to undertake the Airborne and Ranger Course at Fort Benning in 1975.”

- he “was sent to the United States again, this time to participate in the Infantry Officer Advanced Course at Fort Benning and in the On The Job Training with the 82nd Airborne Division.

- "Yudhoyono also spent time at Panama and went through the (US) jungle warfare school.”

- he later “went to the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. While at the United States, he also took the opportunity to get an MA in business management from Webster University in 1991.”

All these US experiences must have had an impact. If he kept on coming back he must have been acceptable to the Yanks and therefore us.

His seemingly moderate to ineffectual record may have some reflection in US desires ie. "no Communism or Jihadism for Indonesia please".

Strangely, I think, SBY's record seems pretty good, so far. In comparison just look at Suharto's record in the past and how Indonesian waited while Sukarno's daughter shopped.

an essentially irrational threat which cannot conceivably defeat the preservative institutions of state i.e., the police and military.

Another obvious anomaly is casualties. Most blast victims hold no authority in state formation; indeed, their common, unremarkable identities elicit public identification with victims and hostility to perpetrators.

More scandalous, proponents of such widely endorsed and advertised explanations of Indonesian terrorism depict a threat normally imaginable only in creations of science fiction or Japanese horror films. From a centrally controlled hierarchy organized elaborately with emirs, mantiqis, and other exotica, we are expected to believe that the creature mutates into diversely fissiparous entities until, by latest versions, the threat emanates from 'DIY Jihad' on the worldwide web...

Explanation 2. Soeharto's regime infiltrates agents and forms covert groups for actions against Islamist radicals and Muslim rebels opposed to his regime i.e., activists near the centre, as targeted in the Talangsari and Tanjung Priok massacres, and Aceh's GAM, as targeted in more protracted bloody repression. Upon Soeharto's resignation, and increasingly strident demands to return looted treasure and hold trials, these covert actors become useful for Soehartoist networks' asset protection in a brinkmanship of terrorist deterrence.

Propping some political facades, however implausible their guises, such networks actively fund militant groups at every safe opportunity, thereby ensnaring gullible, desperate, mercenary and/or blackmailed 'foot-soldier' militants in the process. In other cases, such as Marriot and the Australian Embassy, even that process is largely unnecessary: bombs merely planted in commercial vehicles for remote detonation.

But this explanation's problem lies in its exposure: the agency and motive cross boundaries of state, culture - even history itself. Soehartoist riches from domestic plunder were so vast that they became part of the dominant Western-based global architecture of fiscal control, including big speculation in property and derivatives trade, for example.

Like plunder elsewhere, Soehartoist wealth became a vital part of the world's prevailing monetarist economy and its artificial mechanisms and definitions of 'growth'. In Neoliberalist religion, growth is God. In the 'War on Terrorism', growth and Soeharto's legacy spur both Western and Indonesian elites, and their servants in the booming counterterrorism industry.

I SO do not believe in the GWOT. Just as well next month's subject is conspiracy theory, because there's some rich pickings in that shabby, lunatic narrative.

Our (my) ignorance of all things Indonesian is a real worry. For comparison, if we were to be set up for some deliberate "misunderstandings" with the New Zealanders, it would be so much harder to pull off - damn near impossible given the Internet, one would think. But Indonesia couldn't be more different. And it's a travesty given that this is 2007, not 1907. Where did we go wrong?

Example: Surely no explanation of the happenings in E Timor is possible without constant reference to the struggle for resources in the Timor Gap. Yet the cornerstone of the whole thing is expunged from the everyday narrative, leaving Alkitiri, Gusmao, Horta, Reinado and the Timorese themselves looking like actors in a B-grade movie.

Someone is hiding the script. Is this commercial-in-confidence or what?

I guess we need to somehow forge stronger grass-roots links with Indonesians using this Internet thingie. English speaking Indonesians with an Internet connection are probably not yer average mum-and-dad punters, but one has to start somewhere.

- and the Baghdad bloggers showed the way -

- any good links anyone? Any good places to start?

Good posts mil and Plant.
The TNI helps JI to draw breath or at least one significant part of it. A couple of months ago they moved quickly to shut down a breakaway group that wanted to knock off senior Javanese. JI has been useful for the TNI. Kept the govt. on its toes and advanced TNI's influence. Civil unrest advances TNI's longterm aspiration to resume the position of power they had under Suharto. But they don't need to rush it, they are travelling quite well at the moment.
Money being shoved down their throat to stop people smuggling and to plant trees, they are enjoying unprecendented influence domestically and externally.If they get anoyed or if Australia needs a boat or two on the horizon in this election year they can do it.
Note the reaction of the Governor of Jakarta.In the face of consistent fawning from Australia he is genuinely angry.Note the statement from Downer denying a deal over the findings of the Coroners Court.Either the Indonesian Foreign Minister is lying or Downer is.They make good bed fellows.
There is no end to the complications created by gutlessness.
Clear statements,clear policy, no matter how unpopular in the short term, might have avoided the byzantine manouverings that pass for good relations at the moment but which contain the threat of violence along the lines of Bali or worse.
Bruce Haigh

Yes Chris, an appalling situation, worsened by Canberra's bank lackeys scrapping Asian language funding. Reading Indonesian sources it amazes me how their detailed primary accounts get ignored here even though usually scandalizing their own country. Many Australians I know ignore facts and detail by assuming that Indonesian sources must all be driven by lies (except maybe English-language Jakarta Post)! Yet their press is still more old-fashioned: more diverse ownership bringing less predominance by publicity agents and big advertisers.

After examining reports on the subject for years, I regard the "JI" entity as fiction or, more properly, conspiracy theory-based reporting. The only widely publicized investigative Western treatment of Soeharto-era intelligence links to "JI" terror was one ICG report and a late-2004 SBS O'Shea story. Note that O'Shea "scooped" intriguing facts on Fauzi Hasbi two years or more after Indonesia's press did the same! And he missed the Jakarta press' similar mention about Hambali from the same time. He fingered TNI prematurely for Bali, despite large TNI business interest in Bali tourism. Why so scorched earth? Bali wasn't to secede or have an independence referendum.

So what is JI? ICG keep changing their version of "it": starting as a contained, tidy net it splinters, spreads and infects, then retracting blob-like but now, even more fantastically, as a new mind-poisoning entity ready to spread terror via podcast, for example. May as well call it "JR" for all it's worth. That's the main reason they couldn't convict Abu Bakar Baasyir for Bali I/2002; how to bust someone for leading something that doesn't really exist?

Having disagreed on the extent of TNI instigation, I certainly concur that TNI takes advantage of the GWOT, though not in the more obvious institutional ways it happens here, Bruce. And they won't need or want dwifungsi back unless maybe when in wider war mode against 1950s-style destabilization or more overt external challenge. Their current expansion is fine enough for their self-interest, and more usefully nationalist now the Soeharto clan's no longer boss, though still the main non-uniformed gangster on the block.

LOL, it makes me laugh to read some of the Australian comments made here. It is clear Australians had next to zero knowledge about Indonesia, which is not surprising since Aussies generally know nothing about foreign countries other than their idol USA and their true homeland UK.

I think SBY is "decisive" enough given the system he works in, as can be seen in his policies to cut-off the crippling fuel subsidy, implement social security nets, create tough foreign policies, and force the surrender of GAM in Aceh.

SBY is a directly-elected president in a democratic system. By definition, a president in a democracy cannot do everything as he pleased like Suharto, but must compromise with powerful parties in Parliament that got elected there by the people as well. I would've thought the author, being one of the so-called Australians who always brag about being "democratic people" would've understand this fundamental property of democracies.

I do agree that SBY need to clean his cabinet from ministers who hailed from parties who are unfriendly to SBY's programs such as PKS, PKB, and PAN.

As for the paranoid allegations against the TNI, it is clear that it was the fall of Suharto and withdrawal of TNI's internal spy network that allows Islamic terrorists to establish their network in Indonesia. There were too much freedom, and it required the two Bali bombings and two Jakarta bombings to make the people realised there freedom must have limitations, ie strong law-enforcement agencies and good internal spy network to prevent crazy terrorists from murdering people and disrupting security in the country.

BTW, English is spoken by millions of people in Indonesia. Indeed it is true Indonesians have better world-view than the insular and hill-billy Aussies.

Chris: your point is most apt about East Timor's main resource issue and the distractions of personalities cast around it in our media. I believe one subtler, more challenging but potentially very enlightening avenue of inquiry would be how recent elections there fell into Dullesian fantasies and corruption from Canberra.

PTBI: please give it a rest. I check several Indonesian chat sites, including some with aggressive flag-waving, anti-Western sentiment and your (crypto-racist?) performance just doesn't cut it. Even linguistic angles show me that you do a very questionable imitation of a chauvinist 'Indonesian' (much smooth, casual English idiom and colloquial abbreviations mixed with basic but inconsistent errors of tense and other grammar! Hmmm). I'm not OLO's first commentator to identify your pseudo-Borat schtick, conceivably bearable if infused with Cohen's ironical flair (Tony Kevin well sussed it at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5162#63159).

Maybe PTBI tells his corporate mates he's doing 'info ops'? Methinks PTBI's post rather reveals subtle elements of spectacular failure in Australian "analysis" of Indonesian politics; many in the general public find it hard to believe, but lack of language skill is actually one major policy drawback. Note PTBI's caricatured rehash of a most superficial treatment of SBY and TNI interests in GWOT.

Note too the timely absence of any mention of Australian Government policy farce in East Timor. Yet when talking with politically inclined Indonesians lately, especially the nationalist 'red and white' variety, Australian resource grabs and muddling in East Timor are a serious and relevant scandal; first cab off the rank (yes, PTBI grasps that expression too!). We'll see whether the establishment gains from a silk's call for war crimes prosecution and cop harassment theatrics in a Sydney hotel ("A car's waiting outside the Jakarta Lobby"!). Although I fear the bored East Timorese reaction...

Perhaps without PTBI's cover and failed schtick there'd be other embarrassment for the establishment when Joe Public sees what can pass for an Australian "academic analyst" of regional politics (oh, and "leftist", etc.) nowadays?

So what's next "Proud": hire some desperate visiting Indon student to discreetly take the rap?

Well said mil,you are on the money.
Bruce Haigh

mil and Bruce

I wouldn't go down too hard on PTBI. He seems to have a certain sort of TNI related outlook but the concepts he brings up of a balance between democratic freedom and security body control is quite apt.

Many in Indonesia would see violent jihad as a legitimate and nationalistic goal. To keep the potential violence in check a closer watch is probably required there than here. The TNI is the largest disciplined body in Indonesia so running down its watching (surveillance) role after Suharto was obviously premature. In contrast reducing the TNI's corruption and its coercive tendencies after Suharto was laudable.

As PTBI said 2 bombings in Bali and 2 in Jakarta led to an expansion of surveillance. This phenomenon has been repeated after 9/11 in every major country including Australia.

So I think PTBI is frank but not a fascist - and I like Borat very much ;-)

Pete

Pete
Who watches the watcher,who oversights the policeman in Indonesia.
We are not above this problem in Australia with respect to the AFP.
In Indonesia the TNI runs a very large informer network. They have a pretty good idea of what is going on,they have to, that is their mandate, that is the reason for their existence, that is one feature of their continued pre-eminance at the centre of the political system.
I agree the so called JI is amorphous, analysis of which is beyond Sidney Jones.Parts of the 'JI' may be controlled and run by the TNI.
Watch in the wash up from Glebe what the Generals do to save face and to hit back.
Bruce Haigh

You've bugged my lounge room, Bruce!? Exactly what I was speaking this morning in a separate chat on the issue. ;-) Watch the disaster unfold, as if in slow motion.

The blast and open gang war in Dili (just yesterday I understand) is one aspect suggesting how this scenario is hardly a surprise run from Canberra. Circumstances around Sutiyoso's visit also need some clarification.

Make no mistake viewers: our brothers in Tebet, South Jakarta and Batujajar, Bogor are quite under-rated here - which suits them fine.

I've been telling these guys for years, long before being harassed out of the system, but instead they brand me as the traitor or at least crank.

Meanwhile, our 'experts' go on about E. Timor as "liberated" as though it was Paris '44. A lawyer re-writes history to save Australian faces and they think it's Nuremberg, but without so much as a warrant issued. From my personal encounters with these people, many of them are actually about as "left" as J-M. Le Pen.

I'm not the only Australian who'll dance and spit on their political graves.

Mil,
Who are'these people to the left of Le Pen'?
I am a bit slow tonight.
They don't bug your lounge room, they bug your mobile and computer.
All the best
Bruce

Nice call...no, no, they're in the light globes!
I was referring to the token, face-saving theatrics running through our legal and political system at the moment. As we know from vast public record, the East Timor occupation was genocidal, initiated and maintained with explicit and tacit support of our political establishment. Such microscopically isolated attention on the Balibo case, and some belated subterfuge about that complicity, seem to me an affront to the East Timorese people and, for example, those of Iraq. Indonesians I know view it with the same disgust at such hypocrisy and its crypto-racist implications.

Saturday 9th June 2007.

Pity this thread came to an to end. It was fascinating.

See you down the track.