THE UNITED STATES is funding, training and arming specially screened Indonesian policemen in a new pilot programme that will ultimately leave Indonesia with a self-contained, 400-strong counter-terrorism unit capable of tackling everything from bomb investigations and terrorist acts to hostage-taking and armed assaults. When fully operational in 2005, it will be able to respond swiftly to incidents throughout the archipelago. The U.S. expects that the new force, dubbed Detachment 88, will significantly strengthen the police’s ability to shoulder most of the burden in the war against terrorism in Indonesia.
This is a good move, the Indon police have done a fine job tracking down and arresting JI terrorists, while the politicians play political games to get the Islamist vote, and the Indon Army gets up to all sorts of murky dealings in Aceh, West Papua, support Laskar Jihad etc.
Western military experts say, however, that it may take several years before it can match the capabilities of Indonesia’s 4,500-strong military special forces, which have traditionally been responsible for counter-terrorism operations. The police already have a core of U.S.-trained hostage negotiators but, as one Western military officer points out, "they really aren’t yet capable of doing high-level tasks."
The Indonesian special forces have an atrocious human rights record, killed some Americans in West Papua in the hopes that seperatists in that province would get the blame from Washington.
| Indonesia's military tradition is rooted in WWII, when it was set up and trained by the Japanese. |
The officials say that if Detachment 88 builds on the successes the police have enjoyed so far in rounding up the terrorists responsible for deadly bombings in Bali and Jakarta over the past 13 months, the U.S. is also likely to supply the unit with helicopters and C-130 transport aircraft. So far the Americans have graduated three 10-man police investigation teams, three eight-man tactical response units and three five-man bomb squads in a programme that will effectively merge three police departments into one. Security experts familiar with Indonesian police capabilities expect most of the instruction on bomb disposal will centre around improvised explosive devices. All recruits to the counter-terrorism force are vetted to ensure that they have clean human-rights records and have not served in the former Indonesian territory of East Timor.
| I hope they're also checking to make sure they haven't put any time in at any pesantren, either... |
On a more mundane level, the police’s decision to call their counter-terrorism unit Detachment 88 was made when the Americans first began offering Indonesia anti-terrorist assistance, or ATA as it is more commonly referred to. The Indonesians mistook the acronym and the way it was pronounced for 88. "Once we got all that cleared up," explains U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce, "we all got together and decided to call it 88 anyway." |