One issue, above all others, starkly differentiates the jobs of
Indonesian President and Australian Prime Minister. When our Prime
Minister wakes each morning, the first question she asks isn’t: “Do I
still have a whole country to govern today?”
The challenge of maintaining national sovereignty and territorial
integrity has beset incumbents of Jakarta’s presidential palace since
the earliest days of the Indonesian republic. Not all Indonesians were
as enthusiastic about a macro Indonesian state as the mostly Javanese
and Sumatran nationalist leaders who declared and struggled for
independence from 1945. Insurrection and separatism have been constant
features of the Indonesian experience since the 1950s.
In the west of the archipelago, disaffected elements of the
Indonesian Army formed an anti-Jakarta revolutionary government in
Sumatra, which was quashed in 1957. Separate attempts to create an
Islamic state in Aceh began in 1953, inflamed as much by oil and gas
revenues as by religious zeal—it took the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, and
the persistence of former Vice President Jusuf Kalla, to bring a lasting
peace with the Free Aceh Movement.
On Sulawesi, a brief, CIA-backed military rebellion
in Manado was defeated in 1958, while communal conflict continues to
erupt today around Poso, in the centre of the island. In West Java, the
Darul Islam separatist movement expanded steadily in the 1950s to
Sumatra, Sulawesi and Kalimantan, being finally brought under control in
1965.
To the east, sporadic fighting to form a breakaway Republic of South
Maluku lasted from 1950 to 1963—a self-proclaimed government-in-exile
still exists in the Netherlands. Further to the south, FALINTIL
guerrillas fought for independence from the moment of Indonesia’s
invasion of Timor-Leste in 1975 until the arrival of international
troops 24 years later.
In the far eastern end of Indonesia, near its border with Papua New
Guinea, the Free Papua Movement, or OPM, has been engaged in
secessionist conflict since 1965. Hostilities continue today.
Keeping 250 million citizens, from over 300 ethnic groups, across
thousands of islands stretching the distance from Sydney to Perth,
aggregated into a single unitary state, still seems a tall order in
2013. But it works. And it’s in our vital national interest that it
continues to work. We want our neighbour, the world’s fourth largest
polity, to remain stable.
Our decision late last century in assisting East Timor’s independence
from Indonesia was taken for all the right altruistic reasons. But the
supervening consequences of East Timor still cast shadows over our
relations with Indonesia. Our national self-interest was dealt a
crushing body blow that we’re slowly recovering from. There’s nothing
more sensitive or more sacred to Indonesians than their territorial
integrity. In the popular and often-proclaimed phrase, Indonesian unity
is considered harga mati – non-negotiable.
In the region around us, there could be only one thing worse for
Australia than being viewed by a generation of our neighbours as a
conspirator, complicit in the excision of East Timor from the map of
Indonesia. And that’s if it happened again in Papua.
Among some observers and commentators, there’s a kind of bleak,
almost fatalistic, anticipation that Indonesia is on track to repeat the
same mistakes in its provinces of Papua and West Papua that led to
overwhelming international support for East Timor’s separation. In the
conventional wisdom, Papua will follow a similar path. This would be
disastrous for Australia. And there’s a real danger this sense of
inevitability could become self-fulfilling. Before that happens, we
would do well to take stock of the situation and find ways to halt the
runaway train that such thinking could create.
For starters, we need to give the elephant in the room a name and
recognise the danger it poses. Yes, there’s risk involved in engaging
with Indonesia on sensitive issues. But the risk of not doing so
is greater, lest either side misread the interests and misjudge the
intentions of the other. How much better to head off the strategic shock
of policy failure in Papua, than trying to improvise when the problem
becomes a crisis?
In most discussions between Australian and Indonesian officials,
trespassing is forbidden on the subject of Papua and Indonesia’s poor
handling until now of its social, political, security, economic and
cultural challenges. Its sensitivity, especially in the light of the
East Timor precedent, makes it a taboo topic. In the next part of this
post, I’ll discuss the diplomatic challenges Australia has faced with
Indonesia on Papua, point out the biggest hurdle both sides will need to
clear in moving forward on the issue, and suggest why Papua isn’t
necessarily the next East Timor.
Gary Hogan is a former Professor of Grand Strategy at the US
National Defense University. He was the first foreigner to graduate from
Indonesia’s Institute of National Governance (Lemhannas) and was
Australia’s Defence Attaché to Indonesia 2009 to 2012. Image courtesy of
Flickr user.
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