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Southeast Asia
Singapore to work closely with RI against terrorism
2003-12-19
Singapore will work closely with neighbouring Indonesia to combat international terrorism, visiting Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan said Thursday. Tan, who is also co-ordinating minister for security and defence, was speaking after a meeting with Indonesia's senior security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. "Terrorism is a menace and terrorism today is international," Tan told reporters. "It is not possible for any one country to combat this menace and we have to cooperate together."
Up until the Bali bombings, Indonesia was the weakest link in a not very strong antiterrorism chain in Southeast Asia. Singapore's always taken it seriously — Lee Kwan Yew's a secular kind of guy, with a short fuse when it comes to nonsense. Bali highlighted what seems to be a very capable police organization in Indonesia (as opposed to the army and most of the government). Here's hoping cooperation will expand the sphere of competence within Indonesia, rather than end up degrading it in Singapore.
Earlier Thursday the Singapore government announced two more Singaporeans had been arrested for being part of the al Qaeda-linked Jamaah Islamiyah (JI). This brings to 35 the number detained in the city state for alleged JI links. Yudhoyono praised excellent intelligence and police cooperation between Indonesia and Singapore and said Indonesia would like to see its regional neighbours holding joint military and police training exercises in the archipelago. Tan is due to meet President Megawati Sukarnoputri on Friday.
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#7  Liberalhawk,

The movie (which I think provides a fairly balanced, if entertaining, view of those times) deals with a reporter (played by Mel Gibson) who goes to Indonesia right before a fairly serious attempted communist coup of the country and lives through those times. The movie underscores some of the deep seated problems of that country, many of which remain to be addressed, but does not really flesh out the attempted coup and how it was suppressed. The coup plotters took out (i.e., killed) virtually all the military leadership in Indonesia, but missed Suharto. The story is that Suharto escaped over the wall of his house and saw them killing his kid as he fled. He rallied the troops and purged the country of all communists following that . . . and of anyone accused of being a communist . . . and of anyone who could have been accused of being a communist . . . and of . . .

His rather crushing (pun intended) victory is what gave him the power to become president of Indonesia following the coup, and the power to introduce nepotism and to exert a most pervasive control over all sources of revenue (often resulting in familial gain). Sukarno lost favor because he had been friendly with the communists, or so the story goes. Now Suharto and his family are out, and the Sukarno family back in. Oh well, at least these are known commodities. The islamofascist problem is more recent than the events described in the movie, but the movie gives a good overview of the culture into which the fanatics are trying to graft their poison.
Posted by: cingold   2003-12-19 4:30:47 PM  

#6  Dar - forgiven :) we all make mistakes - Id like to go back and see that movie again, with WOT perspective.
Posted by: liberalhawk   2003-12-19 3:48:48 PM  

#5  Dar: [*rimshot*] that's all you get....
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2003-12-19 2:27:44 PM  

#4  Yep--I'm an idiot... I read more of the articles linked to her name after I posted my feeble attempt at being witty. Live 'n' learn...
Posted by: Dar   2003-12-19 2:15:36 PM  

#3  Her parents. Sukarnoputri = daughter of Sukarno(leader of Indon from independence in 1949 to his death in 1965 "The Year of Living Dangerously") More or less a princess - like all them Nehru-Gandhis in India.
Posted by: liberalhawk   2003-12-19 1:58:19 PM  

#2  Megawati Sukarnoputri
I guess his parents lived near a power plant?
Posted by: Dar   2003-12-19 11:34:10 AM  

#1  I agree Indonesia had virtually no interest in policing Islamic militants before the Bali bombing, but do you really think they are a weaker link than Malaysia? My take is that the Indonesian government thought of all the Christian killing, etc. (e.g., the Aceh issue) as acceptable losses to keep the Islamic militants complacent. After the Bali bombings, the government recognized the miscalculation and took immediate steps to eliminate the threat (e.g., the current military action in Aceh, which up to that time was moving toward autonomy under a “peace accord”).

The great majority of Indonesians, perhaps especially those in the government, do not share the radical Islamofacist view of JI. In contrast, I think a much greater percentage of the government in Malaysia is sympathetic to JI. For that reason, Singapore really has to watch out. However, Singapore is quite good at internal and external security (one of the few countries to ever benefit from being under one-man rule).
Posted by: cingold   2003-12-19 10:38:37 AM  

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