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.