Balancing Act for Obama on Indonesia Security Ties

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - The United States and Indonesia have plenty of common security interests, but U.S. President Barack Obama faces a difficult stumbling block when discussing closer military ties during his visit this week — human rights. Indonesia’s military, and in particular its Kopassus special forces, have an abysmal rights record in past campaigns against separatists in East Timor, West Papua and Aceh.

A new video showing the torture of Papuan men has brought the issue back under the spotlight as Obama visits Indonesia. The two countries have a longstanding security relationship.

Indonesia’s Detachment 88 anti-terrorist unit, set up after the 2002 Bali bombings, is funded, equipped and trained by the United States and Australia, and has scored impressive successes. The militant threat in Indonesia has been greatly reduced in the past decade.

Groups loyal to al Qaeda have been scattered and many key leaders have been killed by forces from Detachment 88. Obama needs to ensure that close cooperation continues in the fight against militancy in the world’s biggest Muslim country.

Jakarta, too, wants to foster security ties, partly to act as a bulwark against an increasingly hawkish China which has been flexing its muscles in territorial disputes in the South China Sea with some of Indonesia’s southeast Asian neighbours.

“I think any president in the U.S. must take Indonesia as a good friend,” said Indonesian security analyst Noor Huda Ismail, vice president of Sekurindo Global Consulting.

“They have no choice but to make friends with us because we will be their bastion in the region, to contain China.” Obama’s balancing act is to foster and deepen security cooperation without appearing to condone human rights violations by Indonesia’s military and police.

His Indonesian counterpart Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono also has a balancing act to perform. China is the dominant power in Asia, in economic as well as military terms. In his cooperation with Washington, Yudhoyono must try to avoid antagonising Beijing. Torture video complicates ties

In July, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced during a visit that Washington was ending its ban on ties with Kopassus. He said this followed steps by Indonesia to remove convicted human rights violators from the ranks of the special forces.

But human rights organisations reacted with outrage, saying Kopassus still harbours officers guilty of crimes against humanity. And the leaking of a video showing the torture of Papuans, where a low-level separatist insurgency has simmered for decades, has made the issue even more sensitive.