While the fall of Suharto and the loss of East Timor saw a decline in the military’s reputation and status, it was President Megawati who marked its return to favour as she looked for support as her popularity waned. She had close ties to the Indonesian military and ‘repeatedly expressed her dis- agreement with the process that lead to East Timor’s overwhelming vote for independence in 1999 (Miller 2001). Further disintegration of the Indonesia state would not be permitted. The military, as protector, began a process of rehabilitation and efforts were made to set up a cordon sanitaire around the country’s trouble spots.
Significantly, despite Indonesia’s new-found press freedom after 1997, the media were unable to cover the conflicts from Maluku to Aceh, impar- tially. As we saw in the Philippine case study, where states are disintegrat- ing at the edges, threats to the safety of journalists from the parties to the conflicts become the main deterrent, and physical attacks upon them, gen- erally, go unpunished as local power elites act with impunity to protect their perceived interests (AMCBSeptember–October 2002, p. 12).
The Indonesian military blocked media access to areas of civil conflict, whilst anti-government rebels also put pressure on journalists to get their side of the story out. Megawati gave the military hardliners a free hand in Aceh. The declaration of martial law there in May 2003 allowed the mili- tary to impose harsh restrictions on the press and effectively silenced jour- nalists trying to cover the war against the rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka – GAM). Human Rights Watch doc- umented dozens of arrests, physical attacks and threats against journalists, as the Indonesian army did everything possible to keep the news media away. Two reporters were killed in the rebel zone and dozens of others were physically attacked or threatened (Human Rights Watch November 2003).
Criticism of the ‘dirty war’ in Aceh in respected publications such as Kompas and Tempo met with disapproval from both the authorities and other media, especially the broadcast media, which took a position of support for the war against the GAM ‘terrorists’. This reflected the fact that the ownership of the broadcast media remained close to the military and conservative forces, particularly the Suharto family. Where reporters tried to act independently, they were fired: Dandhy Dwi Laksono, of the inde- pendent television channel SCTV, was fired in June 2003 as a result of pres- sure from the army, which objected to a 21 May report on torture in Aceh during the 1990s. Laksono told Human Rights Watch that his editors had made no attempt to resists the army’s pressure and had described him as an
‘anti-military journalist’ (Human Rights Watch November 2003).
The central government in Jakarta cautioned the media against any lack of nationalism and failure to support the security forces. By June 2003, the military had achieved a virtual lockdown of the Aceh area, and the army announced the foreign ministry had given orders for all foreign and national journalists working for international news media to leave Aceh province (RSF 2004).
For the main part, the Indonesian media did not play the Aceh conflict as an element of the ‘war on terror’, nor was it sympathetic to GAM’s argu- ments – a fact that is reflected in attempts by GAM to pressure reporters covering the conflict. Media criticism of the government purely focused on the abuses perpetrated by the military in the conduct of the war, and did not offer wider support for the GAM cause (Jakarta Post10 January 2005).
The conflict in Aceh, however, played out in a very different environment from that of East Timor when, in 1999, the Australian-led peacekeeping troops of the International Force for East Timor (INTERFET), wrested control of the territory from Indonesia. The ‘war on terror’ meant the West was prepared to support Jakarta’s efforts to quell a separatist movement – particularly one which was led by Islamic radicals rather than the Catholics of East Timor. Realizing the crucial role that Indonesia could play in the war on terror, the US was eager to restore links with the Indonesian military. Washington pushed GAM towards accepting a political settle- ment based on autonomy within Indonesia, while assuring Jakarta that it supported Indonesian territorial integrity, providing counter-terrorism training for the TNI while continuing to pressure GAM to come to the table (MIPT 2005). By 2005, Aceh seemed to have been resolved by a process of paction between the Jakarta and Aceh elites (Radio Australia 2005).
Thus, although the army formally withdrew from politics in 2004, sur- rendering its appointed positions in the Indonesian parliament and bring- ing an end to their formal dwi fungsi, it remained one of the most important institutions in the country, it continued to intervene in internal religious and ethnic conflicts through 2006 and beyond, and ‘in parliament or out, their commander remains one of the most powerful people in the country’
(The Economist18 February 2006, p. 65).
This, the separatist rebellions and the outbreaks of social unrest which became commonplace after the end of authoritarian rule, engendered an obsession with preserving the unitary state that made bedfellows of the nationalist-minded President Megawati Sukarnoputri and military conser- vatives like army chief General Ryamizard Ryacadu and Army Strategic Reserve commander Lt.-General Bibit Walayu, who wanted to retain influence over Indonesia’s 32 provinces (McBeth 26 September 2002).
Indeed, a revival of the pancasilaideology occurred in response to fun- damentalist moves to introduce Islamic law in Indonesia in line with the Jakarta Charter of 1945. The fourth president after the fall of Suharto, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), a former Suharto-era general, called for pancasilato be the basis for reform as the Indonesian nation was recon- structed. In 2006, in a televised speech marking the ideology’s 1 June birth- day, he referred to ‘invisible hands which [were] trying to spread their ideas among us’, which was seen as a ‘rebuffto Islamists, who after being sup- pressed by the Suharto regime, [were] a vocal force in a democratic Indonesia’ (Donnan 2006).
The idea was endorsed by a number of influential figures. At its annual convention, Indonesia’s largest moderate Islamic group, the 40 million member Nahdlatul Ulama, endorsed pancasilaand spoke out against local
government efforts to introduce Koranic bylaws. Meanwhile, Defence Minister Juwono Sudarsono argued that the military would never stand for the creation of a strictly Islamic state, even one achieved democratically, as it would see the secession of the Hindu island of Bali and the Christian islands of eastern Indonesia, thus violating the pancasilaprinciple of unity.
It would also, he argued, dismantle Indonesia’s ‘sublime blend’ of Islamism and secularism (Donnan 2006).
When SBY became president in 2005, with similar internal concerns as well as a desire to please Western allies by silencing radical Islamic opposi- tion, he looked set to further reinforce the military’s central role in Indonesian society. SBY was equally aware of the importance of the TNI.
On his election to the position of president, he overturned a Megawati appointment made before she stepped down, to replace TNI chief General Endriartono Sutarto with Army chief General Ryamizard Ryacudu, known as a conservative and an ‘intense nationalist’ (Powell 2004). SBY asked Endriartono to stay on at the TNI’s helm, until he had consoli- dated his administration (Kurniawan 2004). SBY was attempting to deny Megawati continued influence with the military, as he continued to cement the TNI at the centre of the Indonesian state (Siboro 2005).