Unresolved
Indonesian Insurrections
August 31, 2018: Indonesia continues to cope with
violence caused by religious and ethnic disputes which have both resisted
permanent solution. Islamic conservatism and radicalism are largely under
control but Islamic terrorist groups still survive. Ethnic unrest and
separatism are a more serious problem. This is mainly about Papua (the western
half of New Guinea, the fourth largest island in the world), and bitter
memories of losing nearby East Timor to a separatist uprising that, after more
than 20 years of unrest, resulted in East Timor becoming independent. Indonesia
is trying to avoid a similar fate for Papua. There have long been periodic
outbreaks of ethnic violence in Papua, but now it is getting worse. Papua was
long seen as less of a problem, and a more distant one, than Islamic terrorism.
Most
Indonesians consider the establishment of East Timor in 2002 as nothing less
than foreign interference and stealing of part of Indonesia. Australian
soldiers led the peacekeeping force during this operation, and Indonesians hold
Australia largely responsible for this "land grab". The rest of the
world accuses Indonesia of atrocities in their brutal treatment of the
population in East Timor, beginning when Indonesia invaded the province after
the Portuguese colonial government left in 1975. An East Timor declaration of
independence was ignored by the Indonesian invaders and over a hundred thousand
East Timorese who resisted or protested were slaughtered. East Timor was always
a very poor and small (1.1 million people) part of Indonesia, and an even more
poverty stricken independent nation. Indonesia didn’t lose much, except
nationalist pride. Independent East Timor is propped up by foreign aid and
growing business with neighboring Indonesia. In contrast, Papua has fewer
people, more territory and less of a local economy. But Papua does contain huge
quantities of valuable natural resources. In light of the many problems the UN
encountered as East Timor gained its independence, there is not much enthusiasm
for assisting Papua separatists.
Indonesia is determined not to lose Papua, the way they did nearby East
Timor (also populated largely by Melanesians). Papua is much larger and
populated with more of a less-educated population with a more tribal culture.
As Papuans gain more education and political skills, Indonesia will have more
difficulty holding onto the place. At the moment, the government is trying to
tag the separatists as violent. But the evidence for this is often murky, and
the Indonesians security forces have often carried out secret attacks and tried
to blame them on someone else. There is definitely some violence but a lot of
it is just local tribes that have long been hostile to any outsiders.
Papua is a large area that is thinly populated 900,000 people most of
them belonging to one of the more than 300 Melanesian tribes. It is the poorest
part of Indonesia, with some thirty percent of the population being extremely
poor. The Papuans, who were ruled as a Dutch colony for centuries, were granted
independence by the Dutch in 1961, but a year later Indonesia invaded and no
one went to the aid of the Papuans. The UN called for a referendum to determine
what the Papuans wanted, but Indonesia never allowed that to happen. The UN has
continued to protest and pressure Indonesia, but nothing has changed, except
for growing separatist violence. The government has responded by arresting and
prosecuting anyone who openly demonstrates support for separatism. This has
provided the incentive for more Papuans to join the non-violent and violent
separatist groups.
Most Indonesians do not want Papua to be independent. In addition to
lots of valuable natural resources, there's lots of unused land that can be
occupied by Moslem migrants from crowded parts of the country. But that causes
friction because the native Papuans are Melanesian, who look quite different
from the majority Malays. Moreover, the Melanesians tend to be Christian while
the Malays are almost all Moslems. The Malays are better educated and dominate
the government and police. The Malays are also very corrupt and have done
little to improve the lives of native Papuans over the last half century. There
are a lot of Melanesians outside of Papua, and they are increasingly subject to
violence by Malay Islamic radicals.
The situation in Papua got worse in 2018 when WPNLA (West Papua National
Liberation Army), one of the two armed rebel coalitions, declared the start of
a new offensive. WPNLA also claimed that it had gained the allegiance of more
of the many armed separatist factions in Papua and that this would enable it to
wage a sustained campaign. Their demands were the same one Papua separatists
have been using since the 1970s; another vote on independence, but only after
all Indonesian security forces have been withdrawn. The last referendum, in
1969, was generally considered rigged. Indonesia spent three decades using a
lot of violence putting down Papuan protests. That ended when the Suharto
dictatorship was overthrown in 1998 and replaced by an elected government. This
encouraged the separatists but armed resistance was sparse and often carried
out by uncoordinated factions. That slowly changed over two decades and now
there are believed to be over two thousand armed separatists and a growing
number (nearly a majority now) willing to operate in a coordinated fashion. The
separatist demand that bothers the government most is about shutting down
foreign run mines and oil/gas operations.
The most hated of these is the Freeport operation which is one of the
largest copper/gold/silver mining facilities in the world. It employs nearly
20,000 people, most of them Papuans getting paid much less than foreign workers
(but far more than what the average Papuan makes). The problem with the
Freeport mine is the massive pollution is causes because waste from the mining
and refining operation pollutes a major river system that remains polluted even
when it reaches the sea, a hundred kilometers to the south.
At first, the growing number of attacks in 2018 were denied by the
security services. By the middle of the year, those denials no longer worked.
Police and soldiers in Papua responded to these incidents but their actions
were not immediately reported because in Papua the police restrict the media
and much of the violence takes place in isolated settlements. Eventually, the
truth gets out but that only shows that police have been using terror tactics
for at least a decade, killing a separatist every month or two and calling the
incident one involving criminal, not political (separatists) activity. The
WPNLA took credit for most of the attacks and often made it clear the targets
were Malays from the Moslem majority of Indonesia coming to settle in a remote
area and provide information for police about what native Papuans are up to. As
the WPNLA reports via the Islamic terrorists piled up it became obvious that
the security forces silence was about cover-up, not a lack of separatist
violence. The Papuan separatists gave a long struggle ahead of them and after
fifty years the separatists are more determined than ever before. That has the
government concerned but not worked. Not yet.
Islamic Terrorism
The religious problems are all about JAD (Jemaah Ansharut Daulah), an
Indonesian Islamic terror group that had affiliated itself with ISIL (Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant). At the end of July, a court finally outlawed JAD
which enabled police to more effectively investigate, capture and prosecute JAD
members and supporters. What finally convinced the government to push for a ban
and the passage of a stronger counter-terrorism law was a series of bloody
attacks in May that JAD took credit for. These attacks were largely against
Christian churches and other targets in East Java. These attacks triggered a
massive police and public backlash that quickly led to numerous arrests of
known or suspected ISIL supporters. Since these attacks police have arrested
nearly 200 suspects and killed another 17 who resisted arrest violently.
Interrogations and captured documents indicated a larger membership of JAD then
previously believed. There was also proof that Aman Abdurrahman, the cleric
that played a key role in forming JAD, encouraged the recent attacks even
though he has been imprisoned since 2009. Abdurrahman was put on trial again
and condemned to death. The date of the execution (by firing squad) has not
been set but the police made it clear that they have more than a hundred JAD
suspects under surveillance all and all of them would be arrested just before
the execution of Abdurrahman. This is meant to cripple any plans JAD might have
to carry out revenge attacks. Some known JAD leaders are still at large and
being sought. New laws were passed making it easier to arrest terrorism
suspects and hold them longer for interrogation.
Islamic terrorism continues to be a threat that is closer to where most
Indonesians live and easier to report on. Yet ISIL has very little local
support. Only about four percent of Indonesians approve of ISIL violence, the
lowest percentage in Moslem majority nations. That is still a lot of people
(over ten million) but the fact that over 90 percent of Indonesians oppose ISIL
makes it a lot easier for the security forces to hunt them down. Despite that
ISIL leaders had apparently deluded themselves into believing that they could
gain a lot of local support by carrying out several horrific attacks during a
short period of time. Al Qaeda had tried this over a decade earlier in Indonesia
and failed spectacularly. ISIL failed to note how the al Qaeda in Indonesia
fail developed because ISIL, as a more radical offshoot of al Qaeda, believed
they were immune to past realities. They were not and that may provide other
Moslem nations with another example of how a Moslem majority country can
tolerate Islamic conservatives while also being able to crush Islamic
terrorism.
Most of the recent Indonesian attackers were known supporters of ISIL
who had traveled to Syria to live in (and fight for) the caliphate and then
returned when the caliphate collapsed. Most of the Indonesians who went to
Syria did not come back. Even many of those who were not killed believed they
were safer outside of Indonesia.
The 500 or so known returnees underwent screening and extensive warnings
to not support Islamic terrorist activity while back in Indonesia. Even before
these attacks, the government was trying to get the counter-terrorism laws
changed to deal with the way ISIL operated (indoctrinating entire families and
advising them to conceal their religious fanaticism). In 2017 the government
admitted that the popularity of ISIL had led to counter-terrorism forces
detecting small groups of ISIL supporters in all but a few of the 33 Indonesian
provinces. The May 13-14 attackers belonged to JAD, which had ordered its
members to make attacks like these after a May 8th incident at a high-security
prison for convicted Islamic terrorists, including some senior JAD leaders.
Five prison guards died while preventing 156 prisoners from breaking out. After
that the failed prison break there was another incident on the 10th
where a policeman, standing guard in front of a West Java police hospital was
stabbed by a man who turned out to be an Islamic terrorist. The attacker was
shot dead by other police but was identified. Police have intercepted and
arrested or shot dead (if resistance was encountered) several armed men
intercepted as they sought to get close to the prison where the escape attempt
was being suppressed. This did not indicate that ISIL was planning a larger
series of attacks. So the JAD attacks came as a surprise and in response, the
government surprised ISIL by banning JAD and finally passing the stronger
counter-terror laws.
Within a few days of the last May attack police, especially Detachment
88 were allowed to arrest dozens of people they had been watching but could not
touch because ISIL had, until then, purposely not been violent inside
Indonesia. Now the entire country was on high alert and the government quickly
obtained the new anti-terrorism law they had been seeking. The new law gives
the police and military the power to arrest “potential terrorists.” This kind
of power is unpopular with many Indonesians who remember the decades of
military dictatorship that used similar powers to suppress any critics. The
military leaders insist they will not abuse the new law and that may well be
true if the military is constantly watched for misuse of the new arrest powers.
The Indonesian remains relatively free and unrestricted.
Meanwhile, the government called for all Indonesians, especially those
active on the Internet, to report any suspicious activity. That has worked in
the past after a major attack (like the one in 2002) and worked again. Police
were soon getting lots of tips and detailed information about what turned out
to be JAD/ISIL members trying to hide in plain sight. The problem is this ISIL
stealth mode does not stand up to a lot of scrutiny, especially by neighbors.
The counter-terrorism intelligence experts quickly reconstructed the “how to”
manual Indonesian ISIL supporters created to avoid police attention. Suddenly
the local ISIL threat was a lot larger than believed. On the plus side, many of
these ISIL members were still going through training and preparations for major
attacks and could be jailed before they were ready.
What had the most impact on Indonesians was the use of children as
suicide bombers. During the first attack, there were survivors who described
how the mother triggered the vest her nine year old daughter was wearing before
setting off her own. Indonesian Moslems knew this sort of thing took place
elsewhere, like in Syria, Iraq and Nigeria. But to have it happen in Indonesia,
the most populous (264 million people) Moslem (87 percent of the population)
nation was horrific. Indonesia had always practiced a less fanatic form of
Islam, in large part because Indonesia was not converted via conquest but
gradually via contact with Arab merchants and seamen. The foreign Moslems
attracted converts via personal example, not aggressive preaching and threats
of physical harm.
But that made it easier for more conservative clerics to attract some
Indonesian Moslems who were willing to “defend Islam” against the “heresy”
rampant throughout Indonesia. Another target was the large non-Moslem
minorities of Indonesia. The government tried to placate the Islamic radicals
and that seemed to work for a while until it didn’t. Now is another of those
“they have gone too far” moments for the Islamic radicals and a growing number
of Indonesians are becoming less tolerant of intolerant Islamic conservatives.
Some of this shift in attitude is in self-defense. As Islam spread peacefully
through Indonesia (until Christianity showed up and provided some competition)
only some local Hindus, Buddhists and so on proved able to resist the
conversion trend. That conversion was helped by the fact that most of the
conversions were carried out by Indonesian Moslems who were tolerant of those
seeking to keep some of their traditional (and ancient) practices. This is
something Christian missionaries had learned to do, with great success. But
Islam was different because back in Arabia and Egypt (where the most
authoritative Islamic scholars tended to live) the word was that no such
modifications were tolerable. But Indonesia was far away and no one ever
seriously proposed a military expedition to rectify this incorrect thought.
Then came the Arabian oil wealth in the 1950s and soon there were Arab
Islamic scholars opening up madrassas (Islamic religious schools) and building
new mosques all over the world, paid for by powerful, pious and now petroleum
rich Arabs who sought to protest Islam. All this was to make it clear that a
true Moslem did not keep any old religious practices around. Most Indonesians
ignored this, but a small minority became believers and by the end of the 1990s
there were millions of Indonesians who favored this stricter Islam. Politicians
found that the Islamic parties could deliver votes reliably as long as you
supported the new lifestyle laws they wanted. So far the Islamic parties, for
all their fanaticism, are very much a minority and the majority of Moslem
politicians do not want to outlaw “traditional Indonesian Islam”, which
tolerates alcohol, night clubs, education and modern fashions for the women and
a lot of other stuff that makes the country prosper and brings in the tourists.
Extreme groups like ISIL are forcing Indonesia to decide how tolerant it will
be of an intolerant form of Islam.
One nasty side effect of all this enthusiasm for “defending Islam” was
increased intolerance of any actual or suspected religious disrespect from
non-Moslems. For example, a Buddhist woman was recently convicted of blasphemy
and sentenced to 18 months in prison because she complained (privately, to
friends) that the sound volume of public address system used by the local
mosque was too loud and it would be nice if they turned it down. That casual
comment turned into a rumor that Buddhists were critical of Islam and saying
unspecified nasty things. That soon resulted in a mob of Moslems attacking a
local Buddhist temple. That led to the woman who made comment being tracked
down, arrested and prosecuted. The reaction to all this from most Indonesian
Moslems and the Moslem clerical establishment was largely negative. These mob
actions and prosecutions for “blasphemy” were seen as unjust and embarrassing
by most Moslems. Moreover Moslems were fed up with getting bullied by a
righteous minority. Another such embarrassment occurred recently when some
Indonesian clerics tried to ban the use of a new measles vaccine that contained
tiny amounts of material from pigs. There was no substitute available and
Islamic clerics in other Moslem majorities where the vaccine had been used
declared that this sort of thing was allowed under Islamic law. In short the
“more Islamic than thou” attitudes that enabled ISIL to get established and
grow in Indonesia had backfired.
This
recent and quite major outbreak of ISIL violence was not unexpected, but ISIL
did manage to gain the element of surprise. Up until May, there had not been
much Islamic terrorist violence in 2018, even though a lot of Indonesian ISIL
members were coming back from Syria and other places where ISIL had been
crushed. In February there was an attack on a church in Java. The attack
consisted of an attacker armed with a sword. He was subdued but not before he
wounded several people. That attack did not set off calls for a major crackdown
because it was apparently a “lone wolf” operation. It was the high-security
prison breakout attempt on May 8th that did get the attention of
counter-terrorism experts. The prison contained dozens of key Islamic terrorist
leaders and technical experts. Such an effort to get them out of a heavily
guarded prison indicated that many of the returned ISIL members had been busy,
and discreet. Four days later the attacks on Christians showed that the local
ISIL activists were desperate, determined but not prepared for a major effort.
Indonesia has established a remarkable record of suppressing Islamic
terrorist violence within its own borders but that has resulted in most
Indonesian Islamic terrorists fleeing the country and showing up elsewhere.
This approach to suppressing Islamic terrorist activity required continuous and
active measures to detect and arrest Islamic terrorists. But ISIL was
different, even though most Indonesian ISIL recruits also fled the country.
Until recently there was no indication that something big was coming.
While the war against ISIL in Syria and Iraq was raging during 2016
Indonesian counter-terrorism forces crippled ISIL efforts to expand into
Indonesia. Counter-terror forces crushed MIT (Mujahadeen Indonesia Timur, or
Mujahadeen of Eastern Indonesia), the last of the older Islamic terrorist
organizations still active in the country. MIT was long led by Santoso (single
names are common in this region), who openly declared MIT part of ISIL in 2014.
In 2016 a series of raids and arrests left Santoso dead and MIT reduced to
fewer than ten active members. MIT carried out some attacks before 2017 but
suffered heavy losses in the process. Since 2014 MIT concentrated most of its efforts
on recruiting and setting up trained cells of terrorists in other parts of the
country.
After late 2014, with the Islamic state established in eastern Syria and
western Iraq Indonesia cooperated in identifying its citizens suspected of
going overseas to work with Islamic terrorist organizations. Thus hundreds of
Indonesians were arrested overseas (usually in Turkey) and deported to
Indonesia to face prosecution or, at the very least, constant surveillance.
This was because many Indonesians remembered what happened when several dozen
Indonesians who went to fight in with al Qaeda in Afghanistan during the 1980s.
Many of these men returned to Indonesia and formed Islamic terrorist groups
that, after 2001, carried out several spectacular attacks, including one in
2002 that killed nearly 200 foreign tourists. This resulted in a major
counter-terrorism campaign that eventually killed or drove into exile nearly
all the active Indonesian Islamic terrorists. There was a real fear that some
of those ISIL members returning from Syria will try to emulate what the Afghan
veterans did. In 2015 police revealed that they were monitoring returning ISIL
men and would act against any suspected of engaging in terrorist activities in
Indonesia. Many arrests since then are apparently a result of that surveillance
program. ISIL responded by urging members to conceal their Islamic radicalism
as much as possible.
There were some forms of Islamic terrorism that were more acceptable
with Indonesians and ISIL exploited that by attacking non-Moslems. That had
already led to increased counter-terror activity each year on Java and Sumatra
before Christmas. Police make numerous arrests and seized bombs or bomb
components intended for attacks on Shia and Christian communities. Christians
are ten percent of the population while Shia are less than a half percent of
Indonesian Moslems while Buddhists and Hindus are about two percent. These
minorities are not evenly distributed so there are areas that are all Moslem
and easier for Islamic terrorist groups to recruit and survive. The Christian
islands used to be almost entirely Christian, but since the 1980s the
government has encouraged (with laws, money and land) Moslems from
overpopulated areas to move to less populated Christian territories. This has
created frictions on islands like Sulawesi that are not entirely religious.
Islamic terrorist groups began forming in the late 1990s and concentrated their
attacks on non-Moslems, both local and foreign (tourists).
Since 2013 small ISIL type (or affiliated) groups gave been appearing
and single out Shia Moslems as well as Christians and other non-Moslems (or
Moslem sects ISIL does not approve of). Islamic conservatives in the government
(especially parliament and the judicial system) deliberately target Christians
by accusing them of anti-Islamic acts. These accusations are almost always
false but because of the way politics works in democracies with a Moslem
majority, such accusations mobilize many Moslems who are willing to
demonstrate, often violently, in support of “defending Islam.”
That explains why Islamic terrorism continues to survive in Indonesia.
The government does not want to offend the many Islamic conservatives out
there. The Islamic conservative politicians use religion as a tool to get what
they want, which often has nothing to do with religion or the “infidel
(non-Moslem) threat.” Islamic political parties are unable to gain wide
popularity but together they have gained control over 10-20 percent of the
seats in parliament. The percentage varies depending on how active Islamic
terrorists have been.
But there is something else unique about Indonesia, the nation with the
largest Moslem population in the world. Islam is not the state religion of
Indonesia as it is in most other Moslem majority nations. Indonesia officially
recognizes five religions; Islam, Roman Catholicism, Protestant Christianity,
Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. The founders of the Indonesian state
(formerly a Dutch colonial government) found the Dutch approach to religion
(deliberately allowing multiple religions and prohibiting religion based
persecution) could work in Indonesia because the Dutch had demonstrated that.
So Islamic political parties face a formidable number of constitutional and
cultural challenges to gaining control of the government. Most Indonesians are
fine with letting the Islamic parties operate openly as long as they observe
the laws and constitution. So far that has worked.
The recent ISIL attacks, especially those using young children, puts the
Islamic politicians on the defensive for a while. The major Islamic party, the
PKS (Prosperous Justice Party) has, since 2004, managed attract and keep about
eight million voters. The next elections are in 2019 PKS is expected to once
more escape any blowback from the outbreak of ISIL violence. While PKS is led by
Moslem clerics it has managed to hold onto voters by playing down Islamic
lifestyle rules (over blasphemy and vaccines) and concentrating on reducing
corruption and promoting what Westerners would see as a socialist economic
platform. PKS also encourages more foreign investment and economic expansion.
Yet lurking in the background is the fact that Islamic scripture (depending on who is interpreting it)
approves of and encourages violence against non-Moslems and Moslem heretics. Islam
is the only major religion to be burdened by that and it is a persistent
problem that no one has found a permanent fix for. Indonesia, however, is the
only Moslem majority nation that deliberately prohibits Islam from dominating
the nation. No Indonesian ruler ever invoked “defending Islam” to justify his
rule. Indonesia does allow a lot of experimentation. For example, the province
of Aceh (the first part of Indonesia to be converted to Islam centuries ago)
was allowed to implement Islamic law as part of a deal to end a separatist
rebellion. Aceh is still subject to federal laws and the use of Islamic
(sharia) law does not appear to have made life better for the people of Aceh.
Most Indonesians expect Islamic terrorism to be similarly tamed. So far Islamic
terrorism is still around, regenerating each time it is crushed.
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