We must dance with the devil

IN the wake of the Bali bombing, it is imperative that we think clearly and, if necessary, coldly, about what the national interest requires with respect to Indonesia.

Indonesia has always figured prominently in Australia's foreign policy thinking. We have pursued many goals: "good relations", of course; encouraging democracy and respect for human rights; solving the East Timor problem; promoting trade and investment; getting ourselves accepted in various regional arrangements – and so on.

Until recently, most of these goals were pursued in an optimistic spirit, in a region that was one of the world's great success stories. No clear sense of priorities seemed necessary, as most good things were assumed to be compatible and achievable.

Things have changed. Hard choices and clear priorities are now necessary.

We are living in a period of Islamist terrorism, and Indonesia is the largest and most populous Islamic country in the world. It is also a political morass. The central Government is weak and corrupt. Effective leadership is non-existent, and while much emphasis is placed on the shortcomings of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, which seem real enough, it should be remembered that her two immediate predecessors – B. J. Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid – were not appreciably better.

What there is of a civil society is in a feeble state. The democratic process is a cynical game, one recently characterised by Adrian Vickers in these pages as one "where nothing is as it seems, the truth is easily manufactured and no one takes responsibility". With the partial exception of the military, all state institutions are weak.

Violence is endemic throughout the archipelago: in Aceh, in Borneo, in Sulawesi, in the Moluccas, in West Papua, and now in Bali. The existence of extremist Islamic organisations – perhaps the only significant organisations in Indonesia that represent a combination of strong convictions, organisational discipline and firm goals – is well documented. If this continues, Indonesia is set to become both a major breeding ground for anti-Western terrorism, and an agent that will, either deliberately or inadvertently, destabilise the whole South-East Asian region.

It is a matter of vital concern that neither outcome becomes a reality. This means that our overriding national interest with respect to Indonesia is the achieving of stability and order as soon as possible. This in turn means supporting those elements in the Indonesian system capable of furthering that end. But the unfortunate truth is that the main, if not the only, institution capable of doing this is the Indonesian military, a brutal and deeply tarnished institution.

It was under the military rule of Suharto that Indonesia experienced the only decades of stability that it has so far enjoyed. They were decades of corruption and suppression, but also of increasing prosperity and stability. There is the depressing possibility that this is as good as it will get for a country like Indonesia, that the Suharto period – or at least the first 20 years of it – may seem in retrospect to be the country's golden era.

In any case, if and when Canberra recognises that stability and order must be our overriding priority with respect to Indonesia – as surely it will have to, especially if there is another terrorist episode involving Australians – it will have to swallow hard, subordinate the democratic cause, and work to strengthen the role of the military and work with it to suppress terrorism.

This unpalatable conclusion will be strenuously resisted by many Australians. It will be argued, rightly, that a properly functioning democratic system would be more conducive to stability and order than any military government. But the trouble is that there is no sign that such a democratic system is going to be available in the foreseeable future. In the long run, the circumstances favouring it may emerge. But as John Maynard Keynes famously observed: "In the long run, we are all dead" – a remark that takes on extra meaning when the subject is terrorism.

It will also be argued that all this grossly exaggerates the threat represented by Islamism in Indonesia. For it is regularly claimed that Indonesian Muslims, unlike Arab ones, are moderate and averse to violence; and that in so far as there are exceptions to this they constitute only a tiny and unrepresentative minority.

As for the first part of this argument, which has become orthodoxy over the years, the facts hardly seem to support it. Throughout the country's 50-year history, substantial numbers of Indonesian Muslims have held beliefs that have led them to resort readily to violence.

The Darul Islam guerilla movement of the 1950s in West Java did so for a decade in its effort to convert the country from a secular to a Muslim state. Again, in the 1965-66 massacre following the failed Gestapu coup, orthodox Muslims played a prominent part in the killing of hundreds of thousands of their countrymen – a more prominent part than anyone else apart from the military, according to author Bruce Grant. And today Muslims are fighting and killing Christians in Sulawesi and the Moluccas.

The second part of the argument is that only a small minority of Muslims are truly fanatical and committed to terrorism. But while this may be true, it is not necessarily reassuring. In the early days of most extremist mass movements, the dedicated activists are small minorities. At the beginning of 1917, for example, membership of the Bolshevik Party was only 23,600 in a Russian empire of more than 130 million. And in his memoir of life in inter-war Germany, Sebastian Haffner is able to describe the Nazis at the beginning of the '30s – a mere three years before they came to power – as a "ridiculous splinter party".

In circumstances where those in power lack conviction and will, while a small but organised minority is full of passionate intensity, there is every likelihood that the latter will prevail and will convert the majority, especially if they are allowed some initial successes.

The problem facing Australia is a real and distasteful one. If a stable and orderly Indonesia can be achieved only by working with and through the Indonesian armed forces – unsavoury though they may be, and bitterly opposed as such a policy would be by influential sections of Australian opinion – will the Howard Government be prepared to adopt such a policy? This is a current form of an old and crucial political question: Will he who wills the ends be prepared to will the means?

Owen Harries is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney.

LETTERS

Mr Harries is wrong to suggest that Australia needs to embrace an organisation with such a questionable human rights record as Indonesia's military.

The fanaticism needed for acts of terror is bred in populations that are oppressed. Supporting yet another form of oppression in Indonesia will never stop the cycle of violence.

It is true that Indonesia's government appears weak (at least to foreign eyes). Yet it is only through a strong democratic government that the Indonesian people will find themselves free of oppression. So for Australia to free herself from the threat of terror emanating from Indonesia, we must support the democratic institutions of that nation to the hilt.

In the short term, it may well be that some more terrorist attacks occur that may have been prevented by a military junta. But if we ever want Bali to go back to being a carefree holiday destination, if we ever want to be able to spend budget dollars on education and welfare rather than secret police and guns, we must do all that we can to assist Indonesia's government on it's path to stable democracy.

Allison Newman, Gosford, NSW

 

Modern day sages in favour of the "big stick" approach to maintaining world order remind me of the good old colonial mindset. For example, when upstart nationalists like Sukarno and Hatta raised their dissenting hands in an attempt to challenge the Dutch status quo, they were immediately packed off to Boven Digul in West Irian, only to emerge 20 years later (like East Timor's current President Gusmao) as their country's leaders.

The developed world's approach to the horror that is Islamic dissent (ie, packing them off to Camp X-Ray) will not be solved by more aggression. It requires a loosening of purse strings and the neo-imperial psyche, which has not and does not look like happening.

Brendon Perrin, Armidale, NSW

 

Owen Harries treats the elected Indonesian government and the Indonesian army almost as if they are different entities Australia has to choose between. Is it too much to hope that the army will accept the decree and serve in the interests of the elected government?

Harries should remember the expansionist ambitions of the generals – even during the "stable" Suharto years Indonesian school maps showed northern Australia as a part of a greater Indonesia – an idea they share with the fundamentalist Muslims (as reported on ABC Four Corners, October 28, 2002).

Rather than support military dictatorships in the Third World, as done by the west at least since World War II, why not try and help heal the root causes of terrorism – the immense poverty and suffering of millions of people in these countries. Why not divert the trillions spent in the west on re-armament (including production of weapons of mass destruction) and on entertainment, towards helping these populations with education and health.

This should go a long way towards eradicating the root causes of terrorism. Those who "dance with the devil" risk having him invade their home.

Dr Andrew Glikson, Canberra, ACT