U.S.-Indonesia military ties
extensive
By THOMAS C. FOX
Facing increased pressure from Congress, human rights groups and
outraged world opinion, President Clinton earlier this month suspended
military-to-military ties (including remaining training programs), government
military transfers and commercial weapons sales to Indonesia.
The White House said the order would suspend $2.5 million in
government-to-government military deals and $40 million in pending commercial
transactions, including agreements for spare parts for F-16 fighter jets. It
would also put a question mark on $400 million worth of military contracts
already underway.
The announcement came just three days after State Department
spokesman James P. Rubin downplayed U.S. influence upon Indonesia, saying that
U.S. military assistance this year comes to just $476,000. Its not
as if we have a military assistance program that could be cut off, he
told reporters.
That remark triggered quick responses. Typical was one by William
D. Hartung of the World Policy Institute in New York. The Clinton
administrations recent statements on the massive slaughter being
undertaken by anti-independence militias in East Timor have portrayed the
United States as an innocent bystander with little or no leverage over the
Indonesian armed forces actions in the territory. Nothing could be
further from the truth.
What influence does the United States have to rein in the
Indonesia military, by all reports deeply involved in the killings of thousands
of East Timorese civilians? That question forces yet a larger one: What
responsibility does the United States have in these killings?
The answers begin to emerge in a look at U.S.-Indonesian military
ties over the past quarter-century, a period involving five U.S.
administrations. It is a story, with few exceptions, of presidents working with
the Pentagon and arms manufacturers, placing economic interests ahead of human
rights concerns.
U.S. military involvement in Indonesia developed in the mid-1970s
after President Suharto succeeded President Sukarno, taking the archipelago out
of the communist bloc and aligning it with the West. Thats when the Ford
administration and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger got the United States
involved.
Writing in the Aug. 26 issue of Mother Jones, J. J.
Richardson states that a declassified memorandum of a July 1975 conversation
between President Gerald Ford and then-Indonesian President Suharto
demonstrates the extent of the new U.S. support. The memo shows Ford asking
Suharto bluntly: How big a navy do you have and how big a navy do you
need?
It was in December 1975 that Portugal pulled out of East Timor and
Indonesia invaded. The Ford administrations implicit acceptance of
Indonesias actions there can be traced to the eve of that invasion.
According to Richardson, on Dec. 6, 1975, Ford and Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger met with Suharto in Jakarta; the next day, Indonesian troops flooded
into Dili, capital of East Timor. That same year, Ford approved the sale of 16
OV-10F Bronco ground-attack aircraft to Indonesia.
The Indonesian annexation, never approved by the United Nations,
set off a bloody independence struggle in the territory. It also set off brutal
acts of Indonesian military suppression that have lead to the deaths of an
estimated 200,000 East Timorese, up to a fifth of the mostly Catholic
population.
That struggle and those deaths went largely unnoticed in the
Western press. This changed, however, in the wake of the Aug. 30,
U.N.-sponsored independence vote. For five days, with the worlds media
focused on the island territory, the Indonesian military and militias and their
brutal tactics were in full view.
The events following the vote cast U.S.-Indonesian military ties
in a new light. During Clintons first presidential campaign, he called
the United States approach to East Timor unconscionable. As
president, however, he has continued to supply the Indonesian military with
much of what it has requested. In 1993, the first year of Clintons
presidency, the Pentagon negotiated nearly $30 million worth of arms sales to
Indonesia.
A World Policy Institute analysis of official Pentagon and State
Department statistics on arms exports reveals that since the first year of the
Clinton administration in 1993, the United States has supplied Indonesian
forces with over $148 million worth of weapons and ammunition, including
technical support and spare parts for Indonesias arsenal of U.S.-supplied
aircraft and armored vehicles.
Furthermore, commercial sales of U.S. military equipment licensed
by the State Department have increased substantially over the past three years
from $3.3 million in 1997 to an estimated $16.3 million last year.
As recently as 1997 the Pentagon, according to the World Policy
Institute, violated the spirit of a congressional prohibition on providing U.S.
military training to Indonesia by giving assistance to Indonesias
notorious Kopassus counterinsurgency units under the Joint Combined Exercise
and Training program.
Kopassus has long been implicated in acts of repression in East
Timor. Kopassus members are suspected of involvement in the recent campaign of
murder and harassment of pro-independence figures in the territory.
The militias were witnessed carrying M-16s from the United States
as their primary rifle, rifles most likely given to them by members of the
Indonesian armed forces.
Since Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, the U.S. government
has approved sales of over $1 billion in U.S. weaponry to the Jakarta regime,
according to the study by the World Policy Institute. This has made it a
mid-level arms purchaser among the nations of the world.
Ford was the first president to begin significant arms sales to
Indonesia. That policy continued -- and grew -- during the Carter presidency
despite Jimmy Carters professed concern for human rights, Richardson
writes. He adds that presidents from Carter to Clinton repeatedly approved the
sale of lethal equipment. Weapons ranged from 12 Northrop Grumman F-5E Tiger 2
fighter/ground-attack dual-use aircraft, sold in1977, to the 1986 sale of 12
General Dynamics F-16A Fighting Falcons (now manufactured by Lockheed Martin).
The Falcons are lightweight fighters specializing in air-to-ground combat.
Critics of these policies have charged that Indonesia, facing no
external threats, has concentrated on building forces capable of suppressing
internal dissent.
U.S. policy toward Indonesia began to change following a November
1991 massacre in Dili. Indonesian military forces -- using American-supplied
M-16 assault rifles -- fired on a crowd of peaceful Timorese demonstrators,
killing as many as 271 by some estimates. Two American journalists, Allan Nairn
and Amy Goodman, witnessed the massacre; both were severely beaten.
News of the massacre prompted international outrage. Fifty-two
U.S. senators wrote to then-President George Bush encouraging the United States
to support the territorys right to self-determination. Congressional
opposition to the U.S.-Indonesian relationship grew. In October of 1992
Congress voted to cut Indonesias military training aid provided under the
U.S. International Military Education and Training program. The
$50-million-a-year program trains foreign military officials in the art of
conducting warfare.
In 1994, the State Department -- responding to continued pressure
from Congress and grassroots organizations alike -- banned the sale of small
arms, riot gear and other crowd control items to Indonesia. Despite
the ban, the Pentagon directly negotiated over $11 million in arms sales to
Indonesia, and Washington approved over $90 million in commercial sales,
according to Richardson.
In 1996, the United States proposed selling nine Lockheed Martin
F-16 fighter/bomber jets to Indonesia. However, in June 1997 the Indonesian
government withdrew from the planned fighter purchase, saying it was being
branded unfairly as a human rights abuser.
Military training exercises have been a key element in
U.S.-Indonesian military ties over the years. According to the Center for
International Policy, the Pentagon spent nearly $1 million in funds to train
Indonesian armed forces in 1997 alone. U.S. Green Berets, Marines and Air Force
commandos participated in some 41 exercises between 1992 and 1997.
Unless Congress can muster the will to force a more stringent and
permanent ban on arms shipments to Indonesia, the freeze in
U.S.-Indonesian military ties will likely be a temporary pause in an otherwise
cozy and long-term relationship.
Indonesia and arms information Web sites |
Americans for Democratic Action:
www.adaction.org Amnesty International USA:
www.amnesty-usa.org Arms Control Association:
www.armscontrol.org Center for Defense Information:
www.cdi.org Council for a Livable World:
www.clw.org/cat East Timor Action Network:
www.etan.org Institute for Policy Studies:
www.ips-dc.org Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns:
http://www.maryknoll.org/GLOBAL/OFFICE/office.htm NETWORK:
www.networklobby.org World Policy Institute:
www.worldpolicy.org |
Thomas C. Fox is NCR publisher.
National Catholic Reporter, September 24,
1999
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