also: JP update: SBY to meet Howard soon in Batam to boost ties; and JP Op-Ed: Five pillars of national security

Sydney Morning Herald Thursday, June 8, 2006

Security Treaty to Smooth Over Rift with Jakarta

Mark Forbes Herald Correspondent in Jakarta

INDONESIA and Australia will commit to a historic security treaty when the Prime Minister, John Howard, meets President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono this month to thaw relations that have been frozen since March, when Canberra granted asylum to 42 Papuans.

The presidential spokesman, Dino Djalal, confirmed to the Herald that "we are working on a security treaty". There had been hopes to complete and sign the treaty at the leaders' meeting, on the Indonesian island of Batam, in the last week of this month.

But the treaty will not be completed in time. Instead, sources said, Mr Howard and Dr Yudhoyono would sign a declaration committing to the security agreement and broader bilateral co-operation.

The surprise move, after months of diplomatic turmoil, would begin a new era in relations between Australia and Indonesia. The only previous security agreement was struck - controversially and secretly - by former leaders Paul Keating and Soeharto, then torn up after Australia intervened in East Timor in 1999.

The new treaty is expected to include significant military-to-military co-operation, intelligence sharing and joint naval and surveillance patrols. Ties between armed forces will be strengthened by exchange and training programs.

Australia will pledge support for Indonesia's territorial integrity. However, the treaty is unlikely to guarantee military assistance if either country is attacked.

Mr Djalal said the treaty had been discussed by the countries' foreign ministers, Alexander Downer and Hassan Wirayuda, in Singapore last month.

Dr Yudhoyono wanted to "strengthen bilateral relations and to do it in a way that makes the relationship more resilient to issues such as the 42 Indonesian Papuans who came over to Australia, an issue that rocked the relationship for some time", Mr Djalal said.

The Singapore meeting had defused the diplomatic stand-off that followed Australia's granting of asylum in March to Papuan independence activists who had alleged human rights abuses by Indonesian authorities.

Dr Yudhoyono froze relations and recalled his ambassador, Hamzah Thayeb, after his personal guarantee to Mr Howard to protect the asylum seekers if they returned was ignored.

It was claimed that Australia was undermining Indonesia's sovereignty over Papua.

In Singapore, Mr Wirayuda had welcomed Canberra's changes to immigration laws to force future asylum seekers to be processed on Nauru, where they would have no recourse to Australian courts.

He had also accepted that Canberra could not overturn the Papuan asylum decision made in March or prevent Australian activists campaigning for Papuan independence.

Mr Thayeb will return to Australia this weekend to help facilitate negotiations for the new treaty.

Federal Government sources have confirmed that Australia has submitted a draft treaty to Jakarta. It covers comprehensive co-operation across a wide range of areas, including countering terrorism, combating international crime, preventing illegal migration and government-to-government assistance.

The most controversial inclusions are a security agreement and the boosting of military ties.

Although both nations have supported the idea of a comprehensive treaty to cover bilateral relations, it had not been expected to be completed this year, because of the crisis provoked by the asylum-seeker issue.

Human rights groups oppose closer ties to the Indonesian military because of its record of human rights abuses.

However, this year the US resumed full military ties, which had been frozen since the November 1991 Santa Cruz cemetery massacre in Dili, East Timor, by Indonesian soldiers.

The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, visited Jakarta this week to emphasise the strategic importance of relations with Indonesia and the key role it could play in the global campaign against terrorism.

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The Jakarta Post June 7, 2006

SBY to meet Howard soon in Batam to boost ties

Tony Hotland, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is slated to meet his Australian counterpart later this month for talks on normalizing the two countries' diplomatic relationship, which went downhill after Canberra granted temporary protection visas to 42 Papuans in March.

The meeting, which will be held on Batam Island, will be preceded by the reinstatement of Indonesia's envoy to Australia, Hamzah Thayeb, who was called back here following the visa case, presidential spokesmen Dino Patti Djalal said Tuesday.

"We're still working on the exact date and we will announce it in the next two days. Most likely and almost certainly the location will be in Batam," he said.

Dino said the location had been switched to Batam for logistical reasons, as President Yudhoyono was already scheduled to be in the area at the time of the meeting.

Jakarta and Canberra currently have a strained diplomatic relationship. The decision to grant visas to the Papuans, who claimed they were being hunted by the Indonesian military, was damaging to both countries relations, President Yudhoyono said, and as a result he was now seeking for a review of the bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard called Yudhoyono the day after the May 27 earthquake in Yogyakarta and Central Java to discuss humanitarian aid and their meeting.

"We are expecting a lot from this meeting. We wouldn't have agreed to this meeting if we didn't see any promising signals that it would go toward the improvement of the relationship," Dino said.

The decision to reinstate Ambassador Hamzah, said Dino, was taken because Indonesia had many interests in Australia and the presence of an envoy to keep such interests guarded was important.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda had previously said Australia was beginning live up to its promise to support Indonesia's sovereignty, including by revising its immigration policy toward Indonesians through the Pacific Solution policy.

During the scheduled meeting, Indonesia will ask Australia to show its commitment to supporting Indonesia's sovereignty through a written document.

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The Jakarta Post June 7, 2007

Op-Ed

Five pillars of national security

Andi Widjajanto, Jakarta

Indonesia relies on a national security policy based on the doctrine of total people's defense (Sishankamrata). This security doctrine adopts a hybrid concept of people's war and conventional war that mobilizes the nation and its people to defend the country against any security threat. Based on this doctrine, Indonesia's security system is based on five pillars.

The first pillar places primary emphasis on the Army, the dominant service in the Indonesian Military (TNI). Indonesia's current defense capabilities indicates that the TNI's structure has always been patterned for low intensity conflict operations to address Indonesia's internal security predicaments.

For more than five decades, the TNI has relied on its Army territorial command. Arguing that Indonesia's resources did not allow TNI to develop a professional defense force, TNI has institutionalized its presence through a vast network of territorial units from the state to the village level. This territorial system has established an effective military shadow administration (KODAM-BABINSA) that runs parallel to the institutions of civilian government from the national to subdistrict level.

To respond to security challenges, regional military command (Kodam) battalions conducted territorial operations. Territorial operations are carried out by combat or territorial units and their goal is to restore political, economic, or social order.

The National Police is the second pillar of Indonesia's security system. Like the Army, the police force is organized along territorial lines, with a vertical national chain of command and links with the civil administration. The National Police performs all the functions normally associated with police forces, maintaining a visible community presence and carrying out intelligence-gathering and investigations.

The total population is considered to have rights, and responsibilities for, maintaining public order. The police provide the professional core but rely on public involvement for their success. An extension of this relationship is the volunteer Neighborhood Security System (Sistem Keamanan Keliling -- Siskamling) and the private security units (Satuan Pengamanan -- Satpam).

Siskamling is a system that mobilizes civilians to keep watch over their local communities. This system is designed to reduce crime by involving the people most concerned with it and by limiting criminals' freedom of movement. It is most effective in rural communities and more stable urban areas, where people know each other and notice strangers. In lower-class urban areas with more mobile populations, the system is less effective.

The third pillar is the intelligence agencies. Intelligence work is handled by two important institutions: The Strategic Intelligence Agency (BAIS), responsible for military and foreign intelligence, and the State Intelligence Agency (BIN).

In addition, each regional military command has an intelligence staff that reports to the Army chief of staff. Under the New Order regime, intelligence personnel also staffed the Agency for the Coordination of Support for National Stability Development (Bakorstanas), headed by the armed forces commander. This agency kept track of any political threats to the Soeharto regime.

The fourth pillar is the civil defense. According to the 1982 Defense Law, the whole Indonesian population shares responsibility for defense and security. Those not in the armed forces are considered the trained population (Rakyat Terlatih) and a special group of these is trained in emergency services. This group is trained to maintain public order, protect the people, and to handle public security, and the people's resistance. The group assigned to protect the people is responsible for emergency services in the event of natural disasters or damage caused by war.

Both the trained population and emergency services are known as civil defense (hansip) and are administered by the Home Ministry. Civil defense personnel may be mobilized and placed under the command or control of the government administration.

The fifth pillar is the local government. Local government in Indonesia has its own security agency known as the National Integration Agency. This agency functions as a preventive regime that tries to implement specific preventive procedures.

The five pillars of Indonesia's security system indicates the vast existence of shadow networks. These remarkably fluid networks consist of groups of people acting below, above and within the security structure to improve their material and political standing on the basis of economic or other material linkages.

The security predicaments that arise due to the existence of these networks are due to the active involvement of many of the political elite. These shadow networks can easily tap into state resources or even run a hidden economy. The scarcity of resources has led to heightened competition between the security actors that actively participate in these networks.

Another predicament is that the security actors are able to utilize the shadow networks to extract resources that can be used to fund covert security operations. These operations are usually part of an intelligence operation that relies on the deployment of a small unit. The combined character of covert and intelligence operations discourage civilian authorities from exercise their supremacy over various security agencies.

To eliminate these shadow networks, it is imperative to reenergize the political vision of security reform i.e. to create capable and professional security agencies in a democratic society. Lack of security, for the state and/or for its citizens, is a major obstacle to development in Indonesia. If Indonesia is to create the conditions in which it can escape from a downward spiral wherein poor security, criminalization and underdevelopment are mutually reinforcing, socio-economic, governance and security dimensions must be tackled simultaneously. An integrated approach to conflict prevention and to development is much more likely to succeed than one that seeks to pursue different dimensions in isolation.

The term security sector reform is widely used to encapsulate this new logic. The security sector is defined as all those organizations which have the authority to use force, or the threat of force, to protect the state and its citizens, as well as those civil structures that are responsible for their management and oversight.

Indonesia still needs to develop and give priority to its own unique security policy. However, Indonesia should begin its security reform by designing an organizational transformation that will rectify political deficiencies in Indonesia's security system.

The writer is a lecturer at the School of Social and Political Science, the University of Indonesia. He can be reached at andi_widjajanto@yahoo.com.

-------------------- Joyo Indonesia News Service

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