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By Bill Guerin
JAKARTA - Unbridled and mindless terror unleashed on hundreds of
innocents. Bodies buried alive and others smashed to smithereens.
New York or the West Bank? Take your pick, but both scenes of
terror have had far-reaching repercussions in Southeast Asia. The
United States, heartily sick of the incessant attacks and threats
against its nationals all over the world, seized on the September
11 attacks as a just cause to raise the stakes to a degree that
has now affected us all.
Palestinians, indisputably the new victims of Israeli acts of
terror cloaked in the guise of a fight against the same terror,
had cheered in the streets at the news of the US attacks last
year, shouting "Allahu Akhbar" (God is Great). This was
a measure of the depths to which a concerted campaign of
propaganda can drag the simple-minded, but it also highlighted the
problems ahead in convincing Muslims that the clash of cultures
was surely between the civilized world and global terrorism and
not, as so many try to say, between Islam and the West.
Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who leads the largest
Islamic population in the world, went to the US one week after
September 11, and, sitting in the Oval Office with a beaming
George W Bush, expressed her unqualified support for his
administration (in return for a considerable amount of aid). The
US saw her visit as the chance to elicit an endorsement for the
coming campaign of attrition against an enemy who is here, there
and everywhere at the same time. After all, as leader of the
largest Muslim country in the world, her full frontal support for
a unilateral action, outside of any official UN consensus, was a
real chance for the US to grab the moral high ground from the
outset. But, this was not to be. Even as Megawati beamed her way
back to Indonesia, with an implied endorsement of her legitimacy
and promises of US largesse, the storm clouds were gathering back
home. Before she even touched down in Jakarta the trouble had
started.
The storm of protest from Indonesian Muslims was the forerunner of
a sustained rear-guard action by her political adversaries who
seek to weaken the fragile consensus between the forces of secular
nationalism, which Megawati represents, and political Islam.
During Megawati's absence, Vice President Hamzah Haz had told a
crowd of Muslims after prayers at a Jakarta mosque that the
attacks in New York and Washington "will cleanse the sins of
the United States". His attempt at damage control, when
pleading that he was not condoning terrorism but looking at the
tragedy from a Muslim point of view, was a theme that was to prove
consistent. Indonesian Muslims' unfettered sympathy and
brotherhood with Muslims all over the world had lain dormant
awaiting a cause.
Haz's September stance, and Bush's wrong-footed cry for a
"crusade" against terrorism, gave thousands of
unemployed Indonesian youths, albeit Muslims, the opportunity to
make some "demo attendance money", in support of causes
which they need not even attempt to understand.
Last month, Haz also visited jailed Laskar Jihad leader Jafar Umar
Thalib, who is alleged to have called for a further war against
Christians in the Spice Islands (Malukus). National police
spokesman Saleh Saaf charged that Thalib "violated the law -
has been preaching and insulting the government and has provoked
Muslims and asked them to prepare bombs". But once again, Haz
said it was a purely Islamic thing and that he was only offering a
"brother Muslim" sympathy over his plight. He also told
the militants that Jafar was not a terrorist and that terrorism
did not exist in Indonesia.
In the end, there was no breakdown in law and order in Indonesia
over the bombing of Afghanistan, nor were US or other foreign
interests seriously threatened. But there was a subtle but telling
damage to Indonesia's fragile political equilibrium, and the die
had been cast, helped along by the vice president.
Megawati has been unable to deliver on the deal made in her
earlier meeting with Bush and now, almost exactly eight months
later, it is Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia who made
the long trip this week to the White House, for 35 minutes with
the leader of the free world, not Megawati. What went wrong?
First of all, Mahathir has played his cards like the veteran he
is. Megawati leads some 210 million people, Mahathir a mere 23
million. But Malaysia's leader for 21 years has seen his country
dubbed a "beacon of stability" in Southeast Asia, by US
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
James A Kelly, following its detention of dozens of militants,
some suspected of links to a regional network allied to al-Qaeda.
Malaysia came down hard on Muslim militants from the start, with
Mahathir sensing the threat to his rule and the stability of his
country. He ordered the rounding up and jailing of suspected
militants.
In Indonesia, however, a complex mix of cultural factors combined
with a real fear of the potency of Islam fundamentalism, go some
way to explain why the government and the police steadily lost
ground against the Islamic radicals and have never taken seriously
the charges that part of this network operated on their sovereign
territory. Although Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia have
all taken action to crack down on terrorism, Indonesia has so far
made no arrests in connection with the alleged network.
A case in point was the police invitation to Abubakar Baasyir, an
Islamic 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, to come to police headquarters for a
"discussion". He was not charged and remains free to
this day.
Washington's pragmatism, on the other hand, apparently knows no
bounds. Though at loggerheads with the region's longest serving
elected leader since then vice president Al Gore, in Kuala Lumpur
in 1998, provoked Mahathir into his more normal anti-West mode,
Mahathir went to Washington this week with the real clout of a
friend of the US. Gore had voiced support for groups protesting
against the trials, for sodomy and abuse of power of Anwar Ibrahim,
Mahathir's former deputy leader who openly challenged him that
year, in line with the Clinton administration's stance that the
trial was political.
Mahathir was to also meet the other power brokers in the Bush
administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a sure sign that all is forgiven and
that Mahathir's abysmal record on human rights is of nothing in
the interests of the greater cause.
Conversely, Indonesia remains cordoned off, denied spares for
US-made aircraft by a Congress that still judges the record of
human rights in Indonesia as a means of leverage. Megawati, unlike
Mahathir, walks a thin tightrope, and has been unable to juggle
and balance the needs of her country, in terms of a secure and
safe environment for investment, and the excruciatingly subtle
threats posed to Indonesia's vast majority of peace-loving Muslims
by the radicalized few.
Consequently, there has been much more talk than action, with the
action on the streets rather than in the corridors of power. A day
after FBI Director Robert Mueller's March visit to Indonesia to
discuss the fight against global terrorism, Haz told a packed
crowd celebrating the Islamic New Year 1423 at the Bung Karno
Sports Stadium in Jakarta that Indonesia was no haven for
terrorists. A few days earlier, Mueller described the FBI's
working relationship with Malaysian authorities as a critical part
of worldwide efforts to investigate terrorist acts and financial
networks.
Islamic fundamentalism is still far off in Indonesia, yet the
terrorism issue tars all Islamic movements, political and social,
non-violent and violent, with the same brush. It also allows the
more radical and extreme leaders to take some of the moral high
ground from the government. If the West and the Islamic world
cannot meet in the middle, then the future holds only the
frightening prospect of more hatred and radicalism, the rise of
even more extremist movements, and a breeding ground for recruits
for the bin Ladens of the world.
This was a real chance for Megawati but it is proving to be one
that remains elusive. Taking the leadership position in speaking
for Muslims worldwide in a commitment to unearth evil networks in
Indonesia, and to commit to find and capture terrorists, would
have ensured the Indonesian leader the same status in Washington's
eyes as Mahathir.
As Bush has repeatedly emphasized, the consensus in the West, and
the single most important thing to it, is to put an end to
terrorism. The Muslim world believes this will only be
accomplished if all forms of terrorism, including acts perpetrated
by Jews, Christians, Hindus, radical secularists, etc, are
targeted and not just those perpetrated by those who profess
Islam. Muslim grievances vary in level of severity but prime among
these are the effects of the US sanctions on Iraq, and their
impact on more than a half million Iraqi children, the blind
American sponsorship of Israeli occupation of, and attacks, on
Palestine, and the presence of US troops on the holy Saudi Arabian
soil. Indonesian Muslim grievances tend more toward a brotherly
despair at the pain caused to Muslims wherever they may be.
The signs are that Mahathir, not Megawati, is now seen by the US
as the de facto leader for the Muslim world, and he has a chance,
however slim, of encouraging the Americans and Europeans to make
much more proportionate responses in security measures,
anti-terrorism legislation, and, ultimately, foreign policy. This
would drastically reduce the protests from Muslims everywhere,
including Indonesia.
Mahathir, on his way to Washington, fired off a warning and said
that it would be a mistake for the US to ignore the views of other
nations in facing today's problems. "For example, it is not
correct for the US to deal with the issue of terrorism solely with
military might," he said. If he succeeds in getting that
point across, Mahathir would also reinforce investor confidence in
his own country and leave Indonesia on the sidelines, with
investors here still spooked by the past two years of woolly and
wavering leadership.
Right from the start, there was a refusal from Indonesia to
condemn. But the Taliban did not, in any way, represent Islamic
doctrine and law. Governments and religious leaders criticized
them across the spectrum of the Muslim world, but not,
unfortunately, in Indonesia. Their militant and aggressive
interpretations of Islam, their cruel restrictions on women and
destruction of ancient Buddhist monuments, had nothing in common
with the culture and practices of the majority of Indonesian
Muslims and the more radical and splinter Indonesian groups were
allowed to gather a head of steam on the streets. Simple souls
were "recruited" to be sent off to Afghanistan to
goodness only knows what fate.
Indonesians in all levels of society have for long had a common
fear - the nightmare scenario which would ensue when religion
becomes the ultimate divisive parameter. The level of fear is
enhanced when the question is no longer are you a pribumi
(indigenous Indonesian) but are you a Muslim pribumi?
Islam, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and other Indonesians yearn for
a renewed belief in the sanctity of their country's law and the
return of the idealistic, stable, multi-ethnic, multIreligious
state which Megawati's father Sukarno gave them in 1945.
The US believes that somehow the civilized world will sleep easier
when its 21st century Pearl Harbor is avenged, but for Indonesia
to support this cause to the hilt there may be too heavy a price
to pay.
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