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| Southeast Asia |
| Indonesian army - Islamist complex |
| 2003-03-10 |
| American spooks and intelligence agencies call it "blowback": that phenomenon when good people go bad and blow back to take out American targets, like the World Trade Center. The Bulletin's investigations of last October's Bali bombings suggest that Indonesia may have experienced its own version of blowback. No one is suggesting Indonesia's fractious armed forces are responsible for Bali, but there are old military fingerprints and curious connections linked to the bombing of the two nightclubs. The Indonesian army is up to almost as many shady dealings as the Pakistanis, what with Papua, East Timor, Aceh, Laskar Jihad and the world class corruption. With democratic Indonesia's police functions now separated from the military, bombing investigators have been free to pursue inquiries without army influence. And some of the things they have unearthed are revealing. In safe houses used by the bombers, Indonesian military maps and other material, including army-issued weaponry, has been found. Experts investigating other bombings in the archipelago have also uncovered similar links. In Solo, the central Javanese city where the Islamic fundamentalist Abu Bakr Bashir and his shadowy Jemaah Islamiyah group derives its influence, a donor to Bashir's religious school is reportedly the big local textile company, Sritex, which makes military uniforms for the Indonesian army, as well as for NATO. There are also reported business connections between former ministers of the disgraced Suharto regime, military intelligence officers and senior clerics of the Bashir boarding school. Sounds even more like Pakistan... Many of the links can be traced to Solo, which was a particular theatre of military manipulation during President Suharto's New Order regime from 1965 to 1998. Before Suharto came to power, Solo was a stronghold of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI), the answer of the impoverished Javanese masses to the region's aristocratic — and occasionally despotic — heritage. But the PKI's emergence also spooked Java's anti-communist political elite, which actively promoted Islamist groups to counter the PKI's rising influence. And these Islamist groups played a big part in the anti-Communist massacres of the mid-60s that killed 500000 people, with many of the victims being Chinese. It was a strategy that required a delicate hand. Suharto's coup was right-wing and backed by a military that included many Christians in high-ranking positions who saw themselves as guarantors of state secularism. But for Suharto, who wasn't that religious and whose wife, Tien, was Solo-born, providing arms and other support to Islamic groups helped him remain in power. "He unleashed them when it suited him," says academic and Indonesia specialist Gerry Van Klinken, "and then cracked down when they either got out of hand or when it suited him to do so." But Abu Bakr Bashir was one true believer who refused to be manipulated. He exiled himself to Malaysia in the mid-1980s, where he ran an Islamic school that police now believe was a training ground for terror. He returned to Solo in late 1998 and developed close links with local hardline Islamic groups. In 1985, the ancient Hindu temples of Borobudur were bombed by Islamist groups. Bali was next on the terror agenda but the plan was foiled when a bomber blew himself up by accident as he was heading to the Hindu island. Suharto jailed the terrorists but many in that group have since been released. Intelligence officials say quite a number of them were present at several JI meetings in Solo over recent years. Maybe they should be rearrested then... |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #1 there should be a special nuke with 'java' written on it |
| Posted by: anon 2003-03-11 07:13:16 |