US seeks ties with the TNI

The Sydney Morning Herald noted that US officials were ‘deeply worried’ that the revelations of high-level TNI involvement in the Freeport murders would ‘cut across the wider thrust of US policy to open links with Indonesia’s violence-tainted military’. According to its unnamed source: ‘They know the killing of the two Americans was initiated by Kopassus [Indonesia's notorious special forces] but still they sit on the information because it hurts their larger interests.’

The decision to keep quiet about the TNI’s involvement in the Freeport killings underscores the cynicism with which Washington and Canberra are pursuing the ‘global war on terrorism’. Following the attack, the US Embassy in Jakarta immediately denounced it as ‘an outrageous act of terrorism’. And without a doubt, if the FBI or the CIA had uncovered an Al Qaeda link, the intelligence would have been front-page news around the world. But, in this case, information about the murders, including of two Americans, pointed in a direction that conflicted with broader US interests and, as a result, it has been suppressed.

The ‘war on terrorism’ has been the means by which the Bush administration has been pressuring Jakarta for closer military links, on the one hand, and to push for the US Congress to lift its ban on such ties. Despite the occasional public professions of concern about the brutal record of the Indonesian armed forces, Washington regards the Indonesian military as one of the few resources it can rely on in an increasingly volatile Indonesia and unstable region.

If the top levels of the TNI were implicated in the Freeport massacre, it would conflict with this agenda in several ways. In the first place, the Bush administration could be placed in the embarrassing position of having to call
for action to be taken against Sutarto and other top generals’that is, the very people with whom closer relations are being established’for the murder of US citizens.

The administration would also face tougher opposition to any attempt to lift the congressional ban. Senator Patrick Leahy, the sponsor of the ban, told the Washington Post that if the Indonesian military were found to have planned the killings, then the administration’s proposed military training aid, $400,000 for fiscal 2003, should not go ahead.

‘It should surprise no one that the Indonesian military may have been involved in this atrocity. It has a long history of human rights violations and obstruction of justice. The fact that the perpetrators apparently believed they could murder Americans without fear of being punished illustrates the extent of the impunity,’ Leahy said.

Commenting on the Washington Post article, US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who has been at the forefront of pushing for ties with Indonesian military, acknowledged the revelation was ‘very disturbing’ and the
administration took it ‘very seriously’. But he made clear that the US intended to establish closer relations with the TNI regardless, cynically arguing that US contact with those responsible for more than three decades of atrocities was needed ‘to support democracy in Indonesia and to support the fight against terrorism’.