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Indonesians
face a painful truth - the CIA didn't do it
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The
Sydney Morning Herald January
21, 2003
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Indonesians face a painful truth
- the CIA didn't do it
Conspiracy theories
blossomed after the Bali bombings in a country that refused to
believe Muslims would carry out such an attack. Matthew Moore
writes.
In a nation where conspiracy
theories and rice are two of life's staples, Indonesians appear to
be changing their habits. You can still get rice with your
Kentucky Fried, but conspiracy theories are suddenly harder to
find, at least as far as the Bali bombings are concerned.
In the days and weeks after Bali,
the CIA, the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) and unidentified
foreigners were all accused of planning and executing the attacks.
While Western governments
immediately blamed Muslim extremists, many Indonesians were deeply
sceptical.
"The CIA did it" was
always the favoured alternative view. For a while it was
everywhere, on the streets, peppered through the media, heavy in
the tabloid press and in the pro-Muslim Jakarta broadsheet Republica.
On Monday, October 14, barely a day
after the blasts, the popular tabloid Rakyat Merdeka ran a
page one headline: "Scenario - America behind Bali
attack".
A page one story from Republica
on the same day quoted a man portrayed as an intelligence expert,
A. C. Manullang, explaining why the US had to be involved.
"In the World Trade Centre no Jew died. In Bali, no American
died."
Less offensive, but no less wrong,
he continued his argument: "It's simply impossible for
Indonesians to make such a big plan. Only a superpower country is
capable of making such a plan."
Even Vice-President Hamzah Haz
jumped into the issue assuring his countrymen: "The Bali bomb
blast I'm sure was not an act of Muslims."
The sceptics reasoned that the
United States had been frustrated with its inability to prove its
claims that Indonesia was harbouring terrorists. By blowing up
Bali nightclubs it would be proved right and thereby help ensure a
crackdown on Indonesian Islamic groups while also building support
for its war on terrorism.
With no tangible evidence, even
airing such long-bow theories might seem absurd to the West. But
in a country that has long held a deep suspicion of the US, and
especially the CIA's involvement in Soeharto's coup of 1965,
people have learned it usually pays to distrust official versions
of events.
In the 30 years of Soeharto's
dictatorship, Indonesians also learnt the wisdom of suspecting the
military when blood was spilled.
Within days of the bombings an air
force officer became the first person accused. After his innocence
was quickly established there was a new flurry of excitement when
it was revealed two army generals had been in Bali suspiciously
close to the time the bombs went off.
And then there was the bomb itself,
which has been analysed obsessively. Numerous Indonesian experts
concluded locals could not have made it because it was either too
big or too sophisticated. Indonesian police confused things
further with their doubtful finding that the bomb was made of RDX,
an explosive they said was "usually used by foreign
military".
When police arrested their first
suspect, Amrozi, and accused him of the bombings, the scepticism
seemed to grow.
How could a normally bungling
police force catch a bomber so soon? Why would he admit to his
crimes so quickly? Why would he have returned to his home town in
Java if he was a suspect?
And then, within weeks, the alleged
organiser of the mission, Imam Samudra, was arrested on a bus to
Sumatra. When he appeared in chains, stared hard at the cameras,
and cried "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) he blew a good
hole in the conspiracy theory balloon.
It's been losing altitude ever
since as more and more alleged bombers have been picked up across
the country. As each one has been arrested, local and
international media have descended on their towns, talked to
relatives and friends and pieced together their lives.
A huge amount of detailed evidence
has been published since Amrozi's arrest. Overwhelmingly, the
stories told by those who know the suspects have reinforced the
police version of events.
The crushing weight of this
evidence has silenced the Indonesian sceptics - too many people
have given too many common accounts for them now to be seriously
questioned. Supporters of the Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, the
alleged spiritual leader of JI, have retreated from the public
eye. With them have gone the fears of many ordinary Indonesians
that Abu Bakar's arrest and detention could lead to a surge in
support for hardline Muslim groups.
A hundred days after Bali,
Indonesian attitudes appear to have shifted markedly. The signs
all suggest most Indonesians now accept what in October was
unthinkable for so many - the bombings were planned and executed
by a group of extremists, mainly Indonesian Muslims, not by the
CIA, the TNI or nameless foreigners.
Matthew Moore is the Herald' s
correspondent in Jakarta.
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