September 4, 2003

INDONESIA, THE UNSTEADY GIANT

by Srdja Trifkovic

On September 2 an Indonesian court acquitted a Muslim cleric of heading the Jemaah Islamiyah, a terrorist group associated with al-Qaeda, and plotting to overthrow the government. In a surprise verdict certain to raise doubts about Indonesia's willingness to fight terrorism, the court sentenced Abu Bakar Bashir to four years in prison on a far lesser charge of "having knowledge of a plot to overthrow the Indonesian government" and violating immigration laws. In his evasive and occasionally jumbled ruling the presiding judge, Muhammad Saleh, declared that "the acts of treason were proven" but "there has not been enough evidence to prove Abu Bakar Bashir was the leader of treason acts of trying to oust the lawful government."

Prosecutors had demanded a 15-year sentence for Bashir's involvement with the group that has been blamed for many bombings in Indonesia and the Philippines, including the string of attacks on churches throughout Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000 that killed 19 people. Bashir was arrested in the immediate aftermath of the spectacular Bali bombings that claimed over 200 victims, 88 of them Australians. His group was also suspected of a car bomb attack on the Jakarta Marriott hotel that killed 12 people on August 5. Throughout his imprisonment and trial he defiantly claimed that the Jemaah Islamiyah did not even exist, and that he had been framed by the CIA and Israeli intelligence.

Joyous cheers from hundreds of Bashir's supporters greeted the ruling, some of them apparently assuming that he was cleared of all charges. The lesser sentence notwithstanding, they had ample reason to celebrate: the outcome reflects the government's unwillingness to risk fresh terror attacks and street violence that had been threatened in case of the guilty verdict.

The result is widely seen a victory not only for Bashir, the founder of an Islamic boarding school in Central Java, but also for the growing Islamist movement in the most populous Muslim country and the fourth most populous country in the world. Of Indonesia's 210 million people close to nine-tenths are Muslims, dispersed over an elongated archipelago consisting of thousands of islands. The aftermath of Bashir's trial is bound to present a fresh challenge to the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Her coalition government depends on the support of moderate Muslim parties, but she also wants to be seen in Washington as a reliable partner in the "war against terror."

Over five years after Indonesia's long-time dictator Suharto stepped down in May 1998, the country faces the dilemma familiar to other Muslim countries experimenting with an alternative to authoritarianism: is "democracy" in the Muslim world inevitably synonymous with "Islamization?" Can the Indonesian state-constructed in an arbitrary manner, and composed of widely different ethnic groups and cultures spread across an elongated archipelago-survive the twin challenges of religious radicalism and ethnic-religious separatism?

Suharto was not a devout Muslim but he nevertheless used Islamic fanatics as allies for his own political ends. This was notably the case in his clampdown on Chinese communists and their alleged accomplices that killed over 500,000 people, many of them Christians, in 1965, and in the war against East Timor that claimed 200,000 Christian lives-a third of the former Portuguese colony's population-in the aftermath of the Indonesian invasion in 1975. Suharto's anticommunist credentials nevertheless enabled him to preserve the support of the U.S. government for over three decades. During his rule the nation's unity was enforced from above. He imposed a veto on discussion of racial, ethnic and religious issues. He was a self-described nation-builder but the structure that he left behind proved to be fragile.

In the first post-Suharto elections in 1999 the winner was Abdurrahman Wahid, a Muslim cleric. The most notable event of his brief tenure was a year-long terrorist campaign of persecution, destruction of property, and killing of Indonesia's Christians by a group of Islamic militants. The worst atrocities were committed on the island of Ambon, where an upsurge in violence followed the arrival of 2,000 members of Laskar Jihad from Java and South Sulawesi. While the authorities were careful to condemn violence, the government's response was inadequate and lukewarm. The Army's reluctance to confront attackers prompted rumors that military intelligence service was involved in the running of Laskar Jihad. By the time the campaign finally abated in 2001, thousands of Muslim migrants from the overpopulated islands of Java and Sulawesi had taken over the homes and the lands of expelled Christians on Ambon.

The political establishment in Jakarta, prompted by the military, soon exploited Wahid's undeniable incompetence to initiate his impeachment by parliament-thus paving the way for the rise of Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia's first post-independence leader Sukarno. Her administration relies on support from two dissimilar quarters: a powerful general, Susil Bambamg Yudoyono, is her closest advisor. At the same time her vice-president-elected by parliament, not chosen by her-is Hamzah Haz, the leader of a supposedly moderate Islamic political party.

The challenge to Megawati from the radical camp does not come only from the Laskar Jihad. In Jakarta the "Islamic Defenders Front" became prominent by smashing up bars and discos as symbols of Western decadence, while the Jemaah Islamiyah hit the headlines in the aftermath of the bombing in Bali. The government responded with emergency legislation broadening its powers of detention, but with the disappointing outcome of the Bashir trial it is not a tool likely to be used with much enthusiasm again.

As Indonesia prepares to hold its first direct presidential election next year it remains in a state of chronic crisis. The Islamic challenge embodied in Bashir's anticlimactic trial comes atop latent separatist sentiment in Aceh and Papua, an uncertain decentralization process, and periodical outbreaks of inter-communal violence. The Indonesian putative nation-state was the product of a Dutch colonial regime that sought administrative efficiencies rather than the dynamics of a coherent, unified polity. Over half a century after independence no such polity has developed. Militant proponents of the global caliphate see in this unsteady giant an opportunity the like of which they have never had before.

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