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Concerned
by Indonesia's Voice of Caution
U.S.,
Asian Diplomats Say Vice President Preventing More Forceful
War on Terror
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The
Washington Post Reuters Tuesday
May 14, 2002; Page A17 |
By Rajiv
Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 14, 2002; Page A17
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Vexed by
assertions that international terrorists may have burrowed into
Indonesia, Vice President Hamzah Haz decided to find out for
himself -- by hosting a dinner at his house for the country's
Islamic extremist A-list.
Among those invited was Abubakar
Baasyir, a cleric alleged to be the ideological leader of an al
Qaeda-linked organization that plotted to blow up several Western
embassies in Singapore with truck bombs.
Jafar Umar Thalib, whose Laskar
Jihad militia has fought to evict Christians and implement Islamic
law in the Moluccas islands, also was in attendance. So was Al-Habib
Muhammad Rizieq bin Hussein Syihab, the leader of a group that
threatened to forcibly expel Americans from Indonesia after the
United States started bombing Afghanistan last year.
Haz, who leads Indonesia's largest
Muslim political party, said the four-hour discussion over dinner
in late March reinforced what he suspected, leaving him
"certain that there are no terrorists in Indonesia."
"They only want to see that
Indonesia has a religious society," Haz said in a recent
interview. "None of them have an extreme character."
Although the vice presidency is a
largely ceremonial office in Indonesia, Haz's opinions about
Islamic radicalism are politically significant. Since Sept. 11, he
has emerged as one of the most influential architects of the
government's approach to dealing with terrorism, a role that has
troubled the United States and some of Indonesia's neighbors.
Indonesian officials and Western
diplomats said Haz has counseled President Megawati Sukarnoputri
to move cautiously in rounding up alleged terrorists and clamping
down on extremist groups, arguing that such actions require not
just suspicions but incontrovertible proof of wrongdoing, which
the country's intelligence service lacks.
Thus far, Megawati appears to be
heeding that message. Despite requests from the governments of
Singapore and Malaysia, Indonesian authorities have opted not to
arrest Baasyir, who runs a large religious school where he
lionizes Osama bin Laden and preaches about the importance of
fighting holy wars. Government officials said they do not have
evidence indicating he has broken Indonesian laws.
"There are some in the
government who want to take firm steps against some of these
groups," said a senior Indonesian security official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity. "But there are others,
including the vice president, who are telling the president to be
careful, not to go too fast."
Indonesia's reluctance to rein in
extremists and detain suspected terrorists has prompted concern in
Washington and neighboring Asian capitals that the world's most
populous Muslim country could become a base from which to plot new
attacks. Although Western diplomats here said they respected
Indonesia's insistence on having evidence before making arrests,
they question whether authorities have been looking hard enough.
"They're not really at the
point where they see international terrorism as a big problem for
them," a senior U.S. official said.
Political analysts said that
despite preaching prudence to Megawati, Haz, 62, a career
politician from the Indonesian half of the island of Borneo, has
shaped anti-terror policy more by what he has not said than by
what he has.
Because Megawati is not regarded as
sufficiently devout by conservative Muslims, she views Haz's
support as crucial to neutralize the backlash from a crackdown on
hard-line groups, the analysts said. "But he's refused to
give her the green light, and she's uncomfortable to proceed
without that backing," said Jusuf Wanandi, a senior fellow at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research
group in Jakarta.
"He's the ballast in
Indonesia's fight against terror," said a Western diplomat
here. "He's not playing a helpful role."
Since taking office last July,
Megawati has spent relatively little time reaching out to
conservative Muslim groups, leaving that task to Haz, Wanandi
said. "She's let him set the agenda with the Muslims,"
he said. "She hasn't reined him in."
Haz said he does not condone
terrorism, but added that he does not regard radical groups as
worthy of automatic suspicion. Among senior government officials,
he has some of the most sympathetic attitudes toward the
activities of Baasyir and other hard-line Muslim figures.
Haz said his stance was shaped by
32 years of dictatorship under former president Suharto, when
scores of Muslim leaders were jailed on trumped-up subversion
charges.
"We are living in an era of
human rights and supremacy of the law," he said. "In the
past, you could arrest people just like that. Now we can't do that
anymore."
Haz said there are "probably
only one or two" hard-line Islamic leaders in Indonesia.
"But none of them has an organized network with a power to
create chaos and cause instability," he said. "There is
no such thing."
Jafar, the Laskar Jihad leader,
said he appreciated the opportunity to talk to the vice president.
"He asked us directly whether we were terrorists," Jafar
said. "Then, he discussed the issue with us."
Police arrested Jafar earlier this
month on charges that he ordered an attack on a Christian village
in the Moluccas in which 12 people were killed. Haz visited Jafar
in his jail cell to "offer sympathy" as a "Muslim
brother."
Haz first riled U.S. officials a
few days after Sept. 11, when he told worshipers at a Jakarta
mosque that the attacks in New York and Washington "will
cleanse the sins of the United States." In the interview, he
insisted the quote was taken out of context. He said he was not
condoning terrorism but simply looking at the tragedy as a devout
Muslim would.
"As a Muslim, if we face a
misfortune or we are in an accident, we still have to thank
God," he said. "The misfortune will cleanse our sins.
That is the context of the quote."
Haz, who wears a fez-like prayer
hat made of black felt, prays several times a day. He has two
wives who have official security details and attend government
functions. Local media organizations have reported that he also
has two other wives, a subject upon which he would not comment.
"It's between me and God," he said.
Haz is widely expected to vie for
the presidency during the country's next general elections, in
2004. Analysts said that although they do not think he will get a
majority, he could emerge as a strong contender to represent a
coalition of Muslim parties.
In 1999, he lost the vice
presidency to Megawati when she lost the presidency to Abdurraham
Wahid. Her party had received the most votes, but Haz and other
Muslim leaders opposed her becoming president because they did not
believe a woman should serve in that role. After parliament
dismissed Wahid last year, a decision that improved Haz's chances
of gaining the vice presidency, he dropped his opposition to
Megawati's ascension.
Haz's rise to power illustrates the
growing clout of Muslim-oriented political parties since Suharto
stepped down in 1998. Although the platforms of the Muslim
parties, which collectively control about one-fourth of the seats
in parliament, are in many ways identical to those of their
secular rivals, particularly on economic and security issues, they
have a markedly different social agenda. Several of them want to
transform Indonesia into a strict Islamic nation, replacing the
country's secular legal system with Islamic sharia law.
Several radical Islamic leaders
have been critical of Haz, saying he has not pushed forcefully
enough for sharia since becoming vice president, a shift that
appears to have been calculated to improve his popularity.
Haz denied backing down from his
support for sharia, but he said he wants it implemented not by
vigilantes but by parliament. "It is the obligation of Muslim
parties to struggle for matters related to Islamic laws and
values," he said. "Of course we want to implement
Islamic regulations. But in our struggle we have to be realistic.
We have to see whether the struggle is possible constitutionally
and democratically. We don't want to create any instability."
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