Indonesian Poll Result Poses Regional Security Threat

A man wearing a mask handed out by poll organizers promoting this year’s elections. (JG Photo/Safir Makki)

The presidential election will be here in just over seven months. We can expect all the hopefuls, with plenty of ammunition at their disposal, to compete fiercely in the coming polls. They will fight a heated battle with strong determination to get as many votes as possible and win the nation’s highest office.

What is at stake is not only their reputation as high-caliber politicians, as shown by their constant public exposure, but also the reputation of their parties: the Golkar Party, the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the Democratic Party and the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) are some of the parties jockeying for space in print and electronic media.

Although there is already a clear sign of coalitions building, the public is still in the dark about who will actually be representing which parties.

Despite that, the parties will still throw their weight around by introducing into the battlefield their candidates in a way that reflects both the current sentiment of the public and the desires of their fellow party members. The presidential hopefuls will have to prove they can resist criticism from their competitors.

While the candidates themselves will definitely not engage in physical clashes, no such guarantee can be given about the behavior of their supporters at the grassroots level.

What the candidates need to do is come together and put in place the tools they need to wage “a war of ideas.” So what we will see perhaps is not the candidate’s hostility, but rational moves through which voters will align themselves.

There will definitely be a clash of concepts, visions, images and, perhaps particularly, the interpretation of them.

The respective candidates will not only be involved in the “Indonesian way” of debating, as we saw in the 2009 presidential election, but also in an advertising battle, which has already been taking place since the last quarter of 2013. These will essentially be about power and influence, just as actual wars over territory and material resources are.

The stakes will run high as we approach election day and the candidates begin to further expose themselves to those two categories of the war of ideas.

The latter is a serious matter for the presidential hopefuls. The stakes are high and the consequences of failure potentially severe, regardless of how little literal warring is actually involved.

That is exactly the play the public will actually witness in the election process.

The “war of ideas” may not matter too much for the candidates as it will only end after the official announcement of who will actually walk out as the winner of the contest.

What matters most and the main concern of the public at large will be whether the new leader of Indonesia can guarantee a smooth process toward a full-fledged democracy.

There are always reasons to expect that smooth political changes will help produce political stability and guarantee the continuation of economic development.

There have been cases where potential changes in leadership would have set off waves of uncertainty, apprehension and political turmoil.

A change in leadership can also be destabilizing when candidates lose their political battle at the ballot box, but cannot accept defeat, and mobilize their grassroots supporters against the winning and accepted leaders.

This could happen in our elections this year if political tensions continue to mount after the election period.

In other words, there is no guarantee that the new leader, whether it be Joko Widodo, Prabowo Subianto, Wiranto or perhaps even Megawati Soekarnoputri will follow the same path as their predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has seemingly planted the seeds of stability and democracy.

If their priorities seem to be on the home front, but the home front is in trouble, the leaders might become more nationalistic, thus ignoring the importance of the country’s foreign relations.

Reference has often been made to the thinking of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) when one discusses the essential link between democracy and stability.

It is argued that democracy is one of the main components for a prosperous and stable region. But the democratic process in Indonesia in the post-election period can become a serious problem for the stability of the region unless the new leader has all the skills and commitments to carefully and properly manage the country’s political process.

All of the presidential hopefuls and their supporting political parties have yet to introduce to the public what they perceive as the main ingredients for a perpetuated democracy as envisioned in Kant’s thinking. They will not care what Kant’s thinking is all about, even if they know it.

But perhaps it may not be the right time for them to reveal the real ingredients for Indonesian democracy as they are still in the process of testing the public over the how well their candidates are received.

As the political process continues, the presidential hopefuls cannot keep avoiding the imperative to discuss with the public the importance of maintaining the spirit to move toward a full-fledged democracy.

That means the presidential hopefuls need to boost the country’s high degree of awareness that democratization requires hard work in promoting not only a sense of stability — domestically and regionally — but also corruption-free and transparent government.

Nation building may not be the main objective to be achieved through the election as the country’s 15 years of reformation have seemingly produced such an objective.

But to some, nation building is still a prerequisite in the democratization process if one is to avoid Indonesia becoming a failed state as religion, ethnicity and race sentiments continued to be manipulated by certain elements of society. Can post-election Indonesia prevent such a scenario and offer hope for a more stable country?

We may witness the new leaders in Jakarta, whoever they are, continue to move the political reform process toward a stable democratic order.

But that will be contingent on whether the new government will be able to have a full grip on the economy and can maintain investor confidence, enforce the law and eradicate corruption and nepotism within the bureaucracy.

The emergence of forces that backtrack and work against democracy must be prevented at all levels.

If the next government is able to manage those challenges successfully, then the prospect for Indonesia moving toward a full-fledged democracy would certainly be improved.

A stable, strong and democratic Indonesia would strengthen Indonesia’s already productive and effective leadership role in Southeast Asia, provided the new leader in Jakarta has a sense of strengthening Indonesia’s international position.

Conversely, an unstable Indonesia with its fragile democracy would make the national and regional security environment uncertain and even dangerous.

This would mean that while the countries in the Southeast Asian region highly value the strategic importance of Indonesia, failure in the democratic process could see Indonesia become a regional trouble spot.

For most countries in Southeast Asia, the still-overriding concern about Indonesia is perhaps not whether it is democratic or not, but how security and stability will be maintained in the country.

The issuance of a presidential instruction last year to tighten security may have been intended to anticipate and solve problems of domestic security disturbance that may result from the election.
The countries in the region will be very curious to see how Indonesia, under its new leader, will be able to balance its need for both democracy and stability. While the people of Indonesia yearn for democracy and aspire to be democratic, it is also true that it is not the panacea for all ills.

And in the end, the new government will need to identify security issues accurately and be effective in addressing them. The political situation before, during and after the 2014 elections will be a really testing time for the country.

It will have implications for social stability, territorial integrity, external relations, cultural cohesion and governance. Security risks resulting from the election process call for broad security measures to be taken.
Bantarto Bandoro is a senior lecturer at the School of Defense Strategy at the National Defense University in Jakarta

A samurai without a master

Japan’s intention to reinterpret its peaceful Constitution amid the changing geopolitical environment in Asia Pacific should be deemed as a compelling strategy toward uncertainty and the risk of restoring an old regional bloc in the region

We still believe that building a stable and peaceful Asia after the end of the Vietnam War and Cold War is not by threatening neighbors but through extensive meetings and talks with one another.

This has been done by the ASEAN regional grouping as a way to avoid any confrontations of the type that were common during the hype of the Cold War, which split the world into blocs of ideological beliefs. Every member country of ASEAN understands that political calm and security top the priorities in the region due to enormous overlapping territorial claims among them, which could easily ignite armed conflicts.

Territorial conflicts among Asian nations have manifested in two areas. First has been the seeking of settlement through international arbitrage, such as in the cases of Preah Vihear Temple between Thailand and Cambodia and the Sipadan-Ligitan Island between Indonesia and Malaysia. Second has been the increasing tone of nationalism by means of megaphone foreign policy, such as in the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands between Japan and China or — in a more extreme way — the adoption of an “insult policy”, as in the case of the Scarborough Shoal between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea.

The most worrying conflict would be the overlapping territorial claims between China and Japan in the East China Sea, which has seen not only increasing nationalist sentiment but also unilaterally actions that could jeopardize the security of the entire Asia-Pacific region. Japan has moved to establish a National Security Council, in line with the US model, to open opportunities for expanding the capabilities of its Self-Defense Forces.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s new foreign and defense policies coincide with the country’s Abenomics policy, which would change the overall Japanese posture in world affairs. Being overtaken by China as the second-largest economy in the world in such a short period changed Japan’s attitude toward regional and global affairs into a more active and outspoken one, not only by strengthening its ties with traditional allies but also by trying to expand its knot of alliances with the willing to contain China’s rise.

China’s response by establishing the air defense identification zone (ADIZ) that overlaps the Japanese zone is a logical strategic option on the part of Beijing in calculating and reflecting the whole of the East China Sea as its core interest. Although the ADIZ will not strengthen China’s sovereign territorial claims, it can rapidly change the East China Sea into a hot zone due to misunderstandings and miscommunications, not only between China and Japan but also between China and other nations such as Taiwan and South Korea.

After the end of World War II, Japan and other East and Southeast Asian countries have rested their security and foreign policies on the US, which has the might to pin other countries into behaving according to international norms. In some cases, they have even let Washington take over their core security interests for the sake of peace and stability in the region.

On many occasions, Japan has renewed its pledge to a “proactive contribution to peace”, not only through involvement in the United Nations’ traditional collective security measures through its peace-keeping operations (PKOs) but also in a wider security function by expanding its international role and contribution. The foreign policy assumptions that take the US presence for granted is already alarming to the regional environment, not to mention a new policy of being proactive in international security, which could endanger Japan’s claim of pacifism.

We cannot let Japan become a samurai without a master — a ronin who embraces the feudal-military code of Bushido. Japan must not abandon its pacifism by following a US-led military intervention in the region, or other parts of the world, for three reasons. First, Japanese history of imperialistic military expansion is still resented in the eyes of most of its Asian neighbors, and expanding its military capabilities in the name of a so-called “proactive contribution to peace” will not appease them.

Second, Japan was never under direct threat of invasion in its traditional or modern history, and it has been able to develop its economic and trade might without military power over recent decades. There is no reason for Japan to suffer strategic insecurity because the US’ preponderant power will protect Japan from any threat based on mutual security and a defense agreement that has been in place for the last 60 years.

Last, the triple alliance of Japan, the US and South Korea offers a balancing factor for each of them, not only in the face of any imminent missiles or nuclear threats from North Korea but also a strategic dynamic equilibrium facing the Chinese economic and trade powerhouse and expanding military expenditure and capabilities. The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the East Asia Summit (EAS) should be the logical platforms for powerful nations in the region to project their strategic trust amid the changing geopolitical environment toward confidence-building measures.

We should be fully aware that a pivotal linkage of a multilateral setting led by ASEAN is compatible for every nation to maneuver accordingly and adjust their national interests. Every country in the region has agreed that ASEAN’s role in promoting preventive diplomacy and a conflict-resolution mechanism will shape future confidence-building measures among state actors in the region, although success will depend on the willingness of the participating countries in the ARF or EAS.

The logical dynamic equilibrium among state actors in the Asia-Pacific region to achieve a common state of understanding in security mechanisms is through the establishment of the so-called disaster reliefs operation (DRO), which is equal to the PKOs under the auspices of the UN. In the past 10 years, Asia Pacific has been hurt by natural disasters, including the Indian Ocean tsunami that hit, among other countries, Aceh in Indonesia; a natural and man-made disaster in Fukushima, Japan, and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, which claimed thousands of lives and billions of dollars worth of financial losses.

The DRO should operate like PKOs with a specific mission command handling the natural disasters that occur frequently in line with global climate change. The prompt response by the US and Japanese military, followed by other nations in the region, in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan was a classic example of how the military forces from different countries synchronized their command and control efforts in accordance with confidence-building measures to save lives and ease the burden on those affected.

By having a DRO center similar to the PKO center in Indonesia, Japan’s efforts to establish confidence-building measures with other regional powers, including China, would help ensure regional security and stability. Financing a DRO to combat natural disasters would be far more welcome and beneficial than having an alliance of security mechanisms encircling a particular rising power in the region. Natural disasters are no respecters of borders; nor are the overlapping claims on empty land and reefs of sovereignty.

René L Pattiradjawane, is a senior journalist and chair of the foundation for the Center for Chinese Studies, Jakarta.

Afghanistan-Pakistan: The Covert War

With the impending drawdown of U.S. forces, a largely overlooked conflict has the potential to explode

When American special forces plucked the second in command of the Pakistani Taliban from the hands of Afghan officials this October, they laid bare the extent of a largely covert war between Afghanistan and Pakistan that has been going on for several years. With a drawdown – perhaps even to zero – of U.S. troops from Afghanistan next year, the secret war might just become an open one.

The capture of Latif Mehsud proved to be an embarrassment for the Afghans, and a vindication for Pakistan, which has long complained that the Pakistani Taliban – called the Tehrik -e-Taliban (TTP) – receives support from Karzai’s government. Afghanistan and the United States, for their part, have laid the blame for a 12-year insurgency at Pakistan’s feet, saying its intelligence agencies support the most effective insurgency group, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani.

Latif Mehsud was a close confidant of Qari Hussain, who was one of the candidates to take over the TTP after the killing of its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, by an American drone strike in 2009. When Hussain was similarly eliminated in October 2010, Latif took over as the TTP’s second in command, operating under its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud. (The two Mehsuds are from the same tribe, but not closely related.) Latif’s capture provided the intelligence the U.S. needed to kill Hakimullah, in a drone strike just a few weeks later.

Latif spent much of his time since 2010 between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it is believed he was a conduit for funding to the TTP. It now appears some of that funding might have come from Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS).

On October 5, Latif was being taken by Afghan officials to a meeting with agents from the NDS when American special forces stopped his convoy, taking Latif to Bagram, where the U.S. runs a prison of its own.

The TTP has been blamed for tens of thousands of deaths in Pakistan, in brazen attacks on government and civilian targets alike that began in 2007. The group has also claimed responsibility for an attempted car bombing in New York City in 2010.

It’s not the kind of group Karzai’s government would ostensibly want to be associated with.

Yet, the president’s spokesperson, Aimal Faizi, openly told reporters the NDS had been working with Latif “for a long period of time.” Latif, Faizi said, “was part of an NDS project like every other intelligence agency is doing.”

The Afghans evidently decided it was time to cultivate their own proxies for leverage with Pakistan.

The Haqqani insurgent network, which has inflicted the most damage on Afghan and U.S. forces, is based in North Waziristan, where Pakistan has thousands of troops stationed, but has held off on trying to clear the area of militants. It is also home to a number of senior TTP members, and has borne the brunt of American drone strikes.

“The Haqqani network…acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency,” Admiral Mike Mullen, the then top American military official told Congress in 2011. 

U.S. officials were irate, saying as far back as 2008, they had tracked the communication lines of Haqqani militants during attacks in Kabul to control rooms in Pakistan, which was directing the operation in real time. None of the evidence was made public, but the NDS was apparently motivated to offer funding to the TTP through operatives like Latif Mehsud. The TTP has a stated goal of toppling the Pakistani state, just as the Afghan Taliban hope to topple the Karzai government.

There is also speculation the NDS might be carrying out an assassination program of its own in Pakistan. In an embarrassing development for Pakistan, a gunman shot dead Nasiruddin Haqqani, a top facilitator of the insurgent group, in the Pakistani capitol of Islamabad last month.

Both the Afghan Taliban and the TTP operate across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, each country turning a blind eye to their presence. When top leadership has been detained, they have been kept as bargaining chips instead of being extradited.

In 2009, Pakistan sent troops into the Swat Valley in a bid to retake control from Taliban-allied militants there. Within months, it claimed victory, but the militants’ leadership, including the group’s head Maulana Fazlullah, had escaped, making their way through Dir and across the border to Kunar.

When a drone strike killed the TTP’s head, Hakimullah Mehsud, this November, Fazlullah took his place. He has since made several trips to Pakistan, attending TTP meetings in North Waziristan, but is thought to still have safe-houses in Kunar.

Pakistan, which would like to negotiate a peace deal with the TTP, needs to get access to Fazlullah, but the key middle man is sitting in an NDS prison in Afghanistan.

Maulvi Faqir Muhammad was one of the founding members of the TTP, and commanded a force of more than six thousand fighters – Pakistanis, Afghans, and Arabs – in his native Bajaur Agency. When Pakistani troops flushed militants out of Bajaur in 2010, Faqir moved across the border into Afghanistan.

Faqir had a falling out with TTP leadership last year, when he openly called for negotiations with the Pakistani government. But he was reinstated soon after, at the behest of Fazlullah, and it is thought Faqir could help persuade the TTP head to consider peace talks. Or, if things don’t work out, Faqir could help locate Fazlullah so Pakistan, or maybe a U.S. drone strike, could take him out.

Getting to Fazlullah means getting at Faqir, much like finding Hakimullah Mehsud needed the cooperation of Latif Mehsud, who reportedly provided the intelligence used to locate the TTP’s former leader.

This February, Faqir was arrested by Afghan intelligence agents, and Karzai’s government has refused to extradite him to Pakistan. Afghan officials have said they are unwilling to do so until Pakistan hands over senior Taliban leaders in its custody like Mullah Baradar. Baradar was once the second in command of the Afghan Taliban, and is the natural point of contact for initiating peace talks between the insurgents and the Afghan government. Pakistan released him from prison in September, but only recently allowed Afghan negotiators limited access to him.

So each country now controls access to key militant leaders that could be used to influence the insurgency plaguing its rival.

Even as the covert war between Afghanistan and Pakistan continues, real skirmishes at the border have seen a dramatic rise over the last few years, foreshadowing the kind of tensions that might arise after coalition forces withdraw.

Pakistan and Afghanistan maintain more than a thousand border posts along the disputed, largely unmarked 2,600 kilometer border, but militants still move across with apparently little difficulty.

Pakistani forces have been known to, at the very least, ignore Haqqani network militants launching attacks into Afghanistan, but officials have also long accused the Afghans of doing the same thing.

In 2010, U.S. troops pulled out of strategic areas along the border like the Korengal Valley, redeploying to urban centers to protect the population from the Taliban insurgency. The move left a hole in the border, allowing for militants based in Kunar to strike targets in Pakistan.

In August, 2011, more than three hundred TTP fighters – Afghans and Pakistanis – crossed the border into Pakistan’s Chitral region, carrying out assaults on seven security posts over the course of several days, killing 32 Pakistani security personnel.

Two months later, more than two hundred fighters crossed into Pakistan’s Upper Dir area, sparking clashes that left one Pakistani soldier and 30 militants dead.

In neighboring Bajaur Agency, which Pakistan says it had cleared of militants by 2010, groups of up to 300 militants crossed over from Afghanistan during the summer of 2011 on three separate occasions, attacking government security posts and sparking clashes that lasted several days.

The raids have continued unabated in the last two years. In an effort to pursue the fighters, Pakistan routinely shells Afghanistan, often drawing retaliatory shelling by the Afghan National Army, which also fires at insurgents fleeing its own forces. Between the raids and the shelling, there has been a dramatic rise in casualties in the region: in 2009, 15 people were killed in cross-border violence, by 2012 the number of dead had reached 314.

If U.S. troops leave a vacuum in Afghanistan that the Haqqani insurgents begin to exploit, the Afghans are going to want leverage to force Pakistan to crack down on sanctuaries in its territory, and it seems that leverage will be the TTP. If the TTP’s insurgency in Pakistan picks up and the group’s leadership is still operating out of Afghanistan, there will be intense pressure on the Pakistanis to take military action – perhaps even a ground incursion – across the border.

Unless the Taliban on both sides of the border are pacified – either politically or militarily – before the U.S. withdrawal, the cross-border skirmishes could turn into an all-out war.

Umar Farooq is based in Pakistan, where he works as a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal. He has also written for The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Globe and Mail, and The Nation.