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| Southeast Asia |
| Aceh leader asks troops to stay |
| 2005-01-13 |
| The Sydney Morning Herald, January 14, 2005 IMO, this is Page 1/WOT stuff because, if handled right, our natural acts of compassion will erode a reservoir the islamofascists would like to draw upon. The acting governor of Aceh has asked foreign troops and aid workers to stay and provide "long-term support" for victims of the tsunami despite growing pressure from the Indonesian Government for all foreign troops to leave by the end of March. *snip* His remarks are strongly at odds with those of Indonesia's Vice-President, Jusuf Kalla, who said on Wednesday that foreign forces should leave Indonesia by the end of March, three months after the tsunami struck and killed as many as 130,000 people in Aceh and made at least 300,000 homeless. *snip* Although thousands of bodies still lie in Banda Aceh's streets and work has barely begun on the refugee camps set to house 400,000 people, there are growing calls within the Indonesian Government for an even quicker departure of foreigners. The push to get foreign troops out fast is partly driven by nationalist politicians and the military. But according to some Westerners close to the Government, the deadline and new requirements for aid workers to register and report to authorities are an attempt by Jakarta to regain control over the aid effort. FWIW, IMO what's going on in Aceh is very complex. At a minimum two main elements, and a host of others, are in play. You've got an aggressively autonomy seeking province in dire need of international aid, and that aid could be used by those forces in Aceh to advance the province's drive toward independence. As I've noted previously (see link), "the politicians of Indonesia are keenly aware that any move toward autonomy on the part of any subculture/people group (including islamofascists) could precipitate a cascade of seditionist autonomy seeking that would result in the very dissolution of the nation. Cohesion is king -- naturally leading to some paranoia and (at times) flat out abusive tactics." So, the central government is going to be more than just a bit wary about how aid is distributed in Aceh. ALSO, as a separate issue, you have the islamofascist elements in Indonesia and in Aceh (a large subset of the Textual Muslimin, 12% of the overall population) that are being shown up by the compassion of the Judeo-Christian West. They want us out of there yesterday. They wish we'd never even shown up in the first place. They'd rather see everybody dead, with the few living being told that the disaster was the wrath of their god for people not being islamofascist enough. The Textual Muslimin faction tends to give the impression that our generosity in Indonesia is going unappreciated, and they love to appeal to the nationalist interests of the rest of the Indonesians -- just like the LLL here likes to talk about "values." HOWEVER, THE TEXTUAL MUSLIMIN ARE JUST A FRACTION OF THE INDONESIAN POPULATION. The majority of Indonesians are going to be very appreciative of the help given by the West, even while wary of 1) events that may undermine national unity, and 2) events reminiscent of colonialism. THIS IS THE WEST'S FINEST HOUR, AND ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS LIVE OUT OUR VALUES, AND IGNORE ALL THE B*!!SH!T. Of course we won't colonize, that's not our nature. Our values mesh well with those of the Abangan and Priyayi, and are not at odds with the Syncretic Muslimin.More foreign troops are arriving in Aceh, with the Australian supply ship HMAS Kanimbla reaching Banda Aceh yesterday with about 400 troops and earthmoving equipment. Indonesia's Welfare Minister, Alwi Shihab, who is co-ordinating the relief effort, told Al-Jazeera television yesterday that Indonesia expected to have enough infrastructure in place before the end of March. He said some people in Jakarta were worried about having soldiers from so many nations in Aceh. *snip* |
| Posted by:cingold |
| #26 I understand that to cingold, when native colonialists slaugther their neighbors in large numbers to take their land and enslave their people, it's only brown people killing brown people. When it's the white man conducting operations against brown rulers, taking care to avoid actions against civilians except as limited punitive actions - why, that's racist oppression. Yup, and theres good reason for that. The whites come in and dont just conquer, they go around telling people theyre all superior and everyone else is barbaric. they spread ideas like Christianity, democracy, even socialism. Which some of the locals take seriously. They then hold the whites to the "universal" values the whites taught them. They DONT care much at that point about what their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. Besides, theres a difference between being oppressed by someone like you, and an outsider. Youre oppressed by someone like you, you think you COULD be on top, its just luck. Not the humiliating notion that youre intrinsically inferior. Theres more to this than material harm - humiliation is REAL. We ignore this at our peril. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2005-01-14 12:02:01 AM |
| #25 cingold: And regarding the benevolent Dutch?: The Aceh War, which lasted intermittently from 1873 to 1942, was the longest war ever fought by Holland, costing the Dutch more than 10,000 lives. Certainly more benevolent than the Majapahit, which fought pre-modern wars. Dutch professional soldiers fought wars to settle issues between states - custody of natural resources being among these issues. Pre-modern wars were fought on a tribal basis - mass slaughter was the rule, not the exception. For the Dutch to kill 90,000 Acehnese over 70 years doesn't remotely hold a candle to the kinds of killing that the native colonialists were capable of.* The funny thing is that that amounts to just over one thousand Acehnese a year. This is what I hate about some of these historians - they lie with numbers - big time. A long running guerrilla war is made out to be some kind of slaughter. Note that the Javanese understand slaughter - they killed about a million in the 1960's during their war against the Communists (including tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese). It ain't called Oriental cruelty for nothing. * I understand that to cingold, when native colonialists slaugther their neighbors in large numbers to take their land and enslave their people, it's only brown people killing brown people. When it's the white man conducting operations against brown rulers, taking care to avoid actions against civilians except as limited punitive actions - why, that's racist oppression. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-01-13 11:49:02 PM |
| #24 A prior thread hits the four main political/social groups in Indonesia. Here is a link to that thread. About 52% of Indonesians are either Abangan or Priyayi, i.e., nationalists who are either traditionalist or modernist. While certainly culturally distinct from the US, these two groups share many surprisingly similar values. The Syncretic Muslimin (about 27% of the population) are religious, but are also traditionalists, which means NOT islamofascist. Their values, while even more foreign to ours, really aren't in conflict with ours. Itâs the Textual Muslimin (about 12% of the population) that is most influenced by Arabian ideals, and breeds islamofascism. Only parts of Indonesia are pirate havens. These tend to be rural areas near strategic waterways, like the straits of Malacca. As Indonesia becomes increasingly democratic, the government has increasingly moved to stop the pirating. IMO, if the country were to break up, lawlessness, brutality, and pirating would increase monumentally. Plus, there would be intense inter-provincial aggression. A map helps:  |
| Posted by: cingold 2005-01-13 10:45:38 PM |
| #23 Question: Indonesia is already a haven for pirates, like Malaysia. If the country breaks up, will the pirate problem improve or get worse? cingold: you casually use terms like "sycretic muslimin" and "textual muslimin", not to mention "the Abangan and Priyayi", which are not in my vocabulary. Definitions or links, please. Thanks |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-01-13 10:25:15 PM |
| #22 Hmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . didnât earn empire . . . just inherited . . . . . Dutch . . . benign rule . . . . . . . Sorry, your âfactsâ just donât square. By the time of the Renaissance, the islands of Java and Sumatra had already enjoyed a 1,000-year heritage of advanced civilization spanning two major empires.A Short History of Indonesia. And regarding the benevolent Dutch? All but one of the Portuguese holdings in Indonesia was overtaken by the Dutch and the British in the 17th century. . . . In 1824 the London Treaty was signed, giving the Dutch control over all British possessions in Sumatra in return for a Dutch surrender of establishments in India and Singapore. Dutch attempts to subdue the recalcitrant Acehnese resulted in a long drawn out struggle. The Aceh War, which lasted intermittently from 1873 to 1942, was the longest war ever fought by Holland, costing the Dutch more than 10,000 lives. . . . Dutch interest in Indonesia was primarily economic but was marked by frequent and sometimes bloody conflicts particularly in Sumatra and Java. The Dutch were, however, able to achieve control over the spice trade in the East Indies during the 17th Century. During the late 18th and 19th centuries . . . uprisings in Java nearly overthrew Dutch rule and crippled the Dutch economy in Indonesia. This economic difficulty renewed Dutch interest in the cultivation of natural resources in Indonesia. The Dutch instituted a strange tax on all land in Java. This tax was not payable in money or crops but in labor. Thirty-three percent of all labor expended by the Javanese was to be dedicated to the Dutch. This system quickly turned into a system of plantations and forced labor. The latter half of the 19th century was marked by Dutch military suppression of Indonesian laborers. This suppression resulted in the virtual enslavement of most of the Javanese peasant laborers. Because of Dutch oppression, Indonesian nationalism began to grow significantly in the early 20th century.INDONESIA: Bhinneka Tunggal Ika. The mother of our family maid in Indonesia had such memories of the Dutch that she was terrified of all of us white skinned people. She would literally quake. It was tragic and pathetic. The Dutch were particularly brutal following WW II. Zhang, I donât think the world is a black and white as you make it out to be. |
| Posted by: cingold 2005-01-13 9:41:20 PM |
| #21 Maybe, we should ask the Imam, if we should stay? |
| Posted by: tipper 2005-01-13 9:33:01 PM |
| #20 cingold: 400+ years of colonial rule, and a huge potential powder keg of cultural diversity, make the government types pretty cagy and paranoid. What makes the government paranoid isn't 400+ years of colonial rule - people in the region massacred each other in wars of annihilation long before the Portuguese or the Dutch ever showed up. The root cause is the fact that the Javanese inherited, rather than earned their empire in the usual way, by conquering it. If the provinces simultaneously rebelled, there is no way the Javanese could continue lording it over the rest of the country. Java itself could break up - it was never unified prior to European rule. As to the word "colonial", it might be better applied to the various kingdoms that contended for power and won. The reason the kingdoms in the Dutch East Indies submitted so rapidly was because Dutch rule was relatively benign, compared that of their neighbors. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-01-13 8:37:14 PM |
| #19 They don't like outsiders poking around anywhere. 400+ years of colonial rule, and a huge potential powder keg of cultural diversity, make the government types pretty cagy and paranoid. SBY will be good for the country, IMO. |
| Posted by: cingold 2005-01-13 7:36:35 PM |
| #18 Cingold: that article left out some details. He made the declaration that the fossils weren't a separate species without having seen then. THEN he confiscated them from their discoverers. Is Flores another potential E. Timor, where they don't want outsiders poking around or something? |
| Posted by: Phil Fraering 2005-01-13 7:33:13 PM |
| #17 It looks to me like it's an academic dispute (those are worse than political disputes). See, e.g., Scientist Rejects Flores Hobbit Claim. |
| Posted by: cingold 2005-01-13 7:23:13 PM |
| #16 While we're discussing Indonesian politics... y'all are aware of the recent anthropological discoveries on Flores, and the ongoing dispute over ownership of the fossils, right? Does any of the above have any bearing on why some of the authorities in Indonesia seem particularly eager to declare the fossils to be representative of pygmy homo sapiens with some sort of brain disorder rather than a new species, simultaneously with sequestering the fossils away from the joint Indonesian/Australian team that discovered them? |
| Posted by: Phil Fraering 2005-01-13 6:53:13 PM |
| #15 Aceh is only one of a half-dozen hotspots for the Indonesians. The main island of Borneo is hotly contested by otherwise ineffective natives. Papua New Guinea covets the other half of the island of New Guinea, and most of the native population would rather belong to Papua New Guinea than to Indonesia. There are problems around the island of Timor, and in a half-dozen other flashpoints. If the Indonesian government should fail to meet the needs of the Acehenese, all he$$ could break loose. Not to mention the fact that Indonesia has lost a third or more of two of its most valuable cash crops - coffee and rubber - to the tsunami. Recovering from either will be a 30-40 year project. That doesn't include any mention about the loss of half the ricefields in Aceh, thousands of acres of arable farmland, banana and cocoanut plantations, harbors, and at least one oil export terminal south of Calang. The Indonesian government is in deep doo-doo no matter what it does. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2005-01-13 6:41:38 PM |
| #14 The central government doesn't want the West (or anyone else) showing how blase (or incompetent) it is about the damage done to what is - after all - a rebellious (actually, secessionist) province What Zhang said. The central fact of nearly ever third world government is its incompetence in the delivery of basic public goods, related usually to varying degrees of kleptocracy and brutality. This incompetence rises the further one gets from the capital city or economically and ethnically dominant region. As a result, most such governments seek legitimacy from their miserable citizens through a mixture of (if they're reasonably advanced politically) co-optation of ethnic, union etc leaders; bribery; and demogaguery, usually in the form of foreigner-bashing. It seems that none of these options is very attractive to the Jakarta leadership. They refuse to co-opt or devolve any power to the Aceh people; they're too greedy (or stupid) to pay them off; and it's crystal clear in the tsunami's aftermath that foreigners are lifesavers, not villains. So best to boot the foreigners out and get back to stealing from and brutalizing the people. |
| Posted by: lex 2005-01-13 5:18:26 PM |
| #13 I say we ask Jimmy Durante... he laid it out in song, didn't he? |
| Posted by: .com 2005-01-13 5:14:08 PM |
| #12 Heh, this is going to be interesting to watch. Aceh leaders say stay, Indonesian government leaders say go. What next? Stay tuned. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2005-01-13 5:12:14 PM |
| #11 and the odds are excellent that at least SOME of those statelets would end up as failed, in the control of salafist islamists. Then wed have to either assemble some of the other statelets to go in, probably unsuccessfully, or go in ourselves. Yet more overstretch, more alienation of hearts and minds, etc. But oh yeah, all that hearts and minds stuff is for weepy liberals, and all that overstretch is propaganda from the liberal press. Right. Indonesia is far from perfect, and yeah, they do a fair amount of catch and release, but theyre economizing on US force. ZF - you read Luttwaks "Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire"? |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2005-01-13 4:57:05 PM |
| #10 ZF - if you could wave a magic wand and set up dozens of free republics that way, maybe. But thats not in the cards - if seditionist autonomy spreads, Java will fight hard to keep control, and there will be other fights as well (does a Republic of Sumatra necessarily let Aceh go, forex?) It would make Yugoslavia look like a picnic. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2005-01-13 4:52:54 PM |
| #9 LH: yes, in all likelihood. The dissolution of Javanese empire (since Indonesia is run by Javanese Muslims) might be a good thing. It would certainly set free the Christian minorities in the Moluccas and the Hindu majority on Bali. Indonesia isn't really meant to be a unitary state - it is merely the remnants of Dutch empire in East Asia. The dissolution of Indonesia would remove a large Muslim state from our list of long term strategic threats. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-01-13 4:49:50 PM |
| #8 could precipitate a cascade of seditionist autonomy seeking that would result in the very dissolution of the nation.--- Is this a bad thing? yes, in all likelihood. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2005-01-13 4:45:22 PM |
| #7 could precipitate a cascade of seditionist autonomy seeking that would result in the very dissolution of the nation.--- Is this a bad thing? |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2005-01-13 4:38:07 PM |
| #6 Money can't buy me love... |
| Posted by: Captain America 2005-01-13 4:30:32 PM |
| #5 If RI catches and releases, how is that different than us? Isn't it all about the evidence? Take for example the recent case of Mamdouh Habib. See prior Rantburg thread. We released this guy because we werenât sure a military tribunal would convict him -- based on the evidence we had -- despite the fact we clearly think he is a very, very bad apple. |
| Posted by: cingold 2005-01-13 4:14:42 PM |
| #4 NO OTHER country in the world has captured and released more islamofascist terrorists as well. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2005-01-13 3:42:32 PM |
| #3 Zhang, You paint such a bleak picture . . . Is there nothing to be done? //sarcasm off IMO, if we follow the policies of President Bush, there is much reason to hope millions more can be empowered in their own pursuit of life, liberty and happiness -- "even" in Indonesia in general, and in Aceh. We have the sword for the warring, and our right hand of friendship for the peaceful. Indonesia has shown itself to be a partner and an ally, not an enemy. Disagreements along the way are irrelevant. NO OTHER country in the world, apart from us, has captured, killed or convicted more islamofascists. |
| Posted by: cingold 2005-01-13 3:36:04 PM |
| #2 Aceh fought the Dutch colonialists for 80 years, the bloodiest of Holland's colonial history with 10,000 Dutch deaths and 90,000 Achehnese lost, right until the Japanese seizure of the colony, and then they fought the Japanese just as fiercely. Post war they were quite sure of their independence until the Dutch, without returning, signed Aceh over to the newly formed Indonesian state which was glad to have the oil resources. This outraged the Achehnese who perceived it as a clear violation of their sovereignty and UN resolutions regarding colonies... tensions simmered until the period 1989-1998 when Aceh was declared a Military Operational Area and brutally supressed with military force and martial law by the Indonesian government. |
| Posted by: DANEgerus 2005-01-13 3:27:58 PM |
| #1 cingold: FWIW, IMO whatâs going on in Aceh is very complex. Actually, I would say it's pretty simple - with the caveat that there are multiple interests involved. The central government doesn't want the West (or anyone else) showing how blase (or incompetent) it is about the damage done to what is - after all - a rebellious (actually, secessionist) province. The provincial government wants help to rebuild the province, even if it means inadvertently filling the coffers of the rebels. The rebels want aid with no strings attached - they can't fight if they're all starving. They want the aid, as long as Western troops aren't part of the package. And what of the people actually affected? The people actually affected want all the help they can get. Except they will end up with a tiny sliver of the aid, only after the rebels, the central government and the provincial government get their piece of the action. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-01-13 3:26:08 PM |