Bridging Thailand’s Deep Divide - International Crisis Group

Image of Jim Della-Giacoma

Bangkok/Brussels | 5 Jul 2010

The Thai government should immediately lift the state of emergency to create conditions for national reconciliation that would allow the building of a new political consensus and the holding of peaceful elections if the country is to return to stability.

Bridging Thailand’s Deep Divide , the latest report from the International Crisis Group, says the protracted tussle between the royalist establishment and those allied with ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has left the country deeply polarised. In April and May it sparked the most violent political confrontations in decades, killing at least 90 people, injuring nearly 2,000 and inflicting deep wounds on the national psyche. Shortly before authorising a violent crackdown on anti-government protestors by the army, the establishment-backed government of Abhisit Vejjajiva unilaterally offered to opposition groups a “roadmap” to national reconciliation. It now persists with this plan despite having created an atmosphere of repression where basic rights of the pro-Thaksin “Red Shirt” movement are denied by emergency laws.

“There is little prospect that genuine reconciliation will succeed when the offer comes from the same government directly responsible for the recent deadly crackdown on the Red Shirts and their ongoing repression”, says Jim Della-Giacoma, Crisis Group’s South East Asia Project Director. “The first gesture that might demonstrate a renewed commitment to building bridges would be to unconditionally and immediately lift the state of emergency”.

Empowered by the emergency decree imposed in 24 provinces – one third of the country – authorities have prohibited Red Shirts’ demonstrations, shut down their media, detained their leaders and banned financial transactions of their alleged financiers. Reconciliation when the government’s partners in resolving this conflict are on the run and denied their political rights is impossible. While the Red Shirts have no opportunity for open and peaceful expression because of draconian laws, their legitimate frustrations are being forced underground and possibly towards illegal and violent actions.

Establishing facts of the recent violence and holding perpetrators of the crimes on all sides accountable is another critical step on the road to reuniting the country. The Independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by former attorney general Kanit na Nakhon should not only seek truth but also initiate prosecutions of those it finds to have committed violent acts. The government’s use of terrorism charges to go after Red Shirt leaders as well as Thaksin is inappropriate for what was mostly a peaceful political movement that did not target civilians. It is also short-sighted as these are the very people that will need to be brought into a national reconciliation process to address the difficult issues facing the country.

In the long run, Thailand needs to think deeply about much broader political reforms of its system of government, laws and constitution, including the role of the monarch and military. Wealth needs to be shared, justice delivered equitably, and power decentralised.

“An election that should be held as soon as possible will be the beginning and not the end of this process”, says Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director. “Only a new government, with the legitimacy of a fresh mandate, if it is accepted by all sides, can move forward with such a complex reform agenda”.

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Indonesia: The Dark Side of Jama’ah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT) - International Crisis Group

Image of Sidney Jones

Jakarta/Brussels | 6 Jul 2010

Divisions and ideological debates generated by Jama’ah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT), an organisation founded by Indonesia’s best-known radical cleric, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, show the weakness of Indonesia’s jihadi movement.

Indonesia: The Dark Side of Jama’ah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT), the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the many facets of JAT, an ostensibly above-ground organisation whose inner circle has had and continues to have ties to fugitive extremists. It has been in the spotlight since May when three of its officials were accused of helping finance a terrorist training camp in Aceh.

“JAT has a public face, advocating full implementation of Islamic law, condemning democracy as illegitimate and preaching jihad”, says Sidney Jones, Crisis Group’s Senior Adviser. “That face gives ‘plausible deniability’ to the involvement of senior JAT officials in more covert activities”. She notes that Lutfi Haedaroh alias Ubeid, arrested while fleeing the Aceh camp, was on JAT’s executive council.

JAT was founded in 2008 as a vehicle for Abu Bakar Ba’asyir’s absolute leadership. In fact Ba’asyir’s insistence on full decision-making authority within JAT makes it unlikely that involvement of senior officials in clandestine activities could have taken place without his approval. The briefing examines JAT’s structure and ideology and analyses the disputes that have erupted between JAT and other radical organisations, including Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI), exemplifying not only the fractures in the jihadi movement but also Ba’asyir’s own declining influence.

There is no indication that violent extremism is gaining ground in Indonesia, even though the constant shifting and realignment of groups will undoubtedly produce more terrorist plots in the future. “We are seeing the same old faces finding new packages for old goods”, says Jim Della-Giacoma, South East Asia Project Director. “Recruitment continues, but there’s more community pushback”. Ba’asyir was refused permission by the local Islamic council to speak in Banten province last month.

The truth is that the jihadi project in Indonesia has failed. The far bigger challenge for the country is to manage the aspirations of those who joined JAT for its public, non-violent message: that democracy is antithetical to Islam; that only an Islamic state can uphold the faith; and that Islamic law must be the source of all justice.

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Handing Back Responsibility to Timor-Leste’s Police

Asia Report N°180
3 December 2009

This executive summary is also available in Tetum, Portuguese and Indonesian.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Click here to view the full report as a PDF file

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The United Nations should hand over formal control of the Timor-Leste police as soon as possible. A protracted process that began in May has taken a bureaucratic approach to assessing whether they are ready to take charge, but the reality on the ground is that the Timorese police have long operated under their own command. Without an agreed plan for reforming the country’s police after the 2006 crisis, the UN and the government have made a poor team for institutional development. A longer handover may further damage relations between the UN’s third-largest policing mission and the Timor-Leste government, which has refused to act as a full partner in implementing reforms. The UN has a continued role to play in providing an advisory presence in support of police operations. For this to work, the government must engage with the UN mission and agree upon the shape of this partnership. To make any new mandate a success, they need to use the remaining months before the current one expires in February 2010 to hammer out a detailed framework for future cooperation with the police under local command.

Timor-Leste still needs the UN and stepping back is not the same as leaving too early. There is domestic political support for a continuing albeit reduced police contingent, at least until the planned 2012 national elections. A sizeable international deployment can no longer be left to operate without a clear consensus on the task at hand. Any new mandate should be limited, specific and agreed. The UN can provide units to underwrite security and support the Timorese police in technical areas such as investigations, prosecutions and training. These would best be identified by a comprehensive independent review of police capacity, and matched with key bilateral contributions, including from Australia and Portugal. In return, the Timorese should acknowledge the need to improve oversight and accountability mechanisms. The UN and its agencies must continue to help build up these structures and in the interim monitor human rights.

The UN took a technocratic approach to the highly politicised task of police reform. Sent in to restore order after an uprising in 2006, the UN police helped shore up stability in the country but then fell short when they tried to reform the institution or improve oversight. They are not set up to foster such long-term change and were never given the tools to do so. The Timorese police were divided and mismanaged at the top; the UN misplaced its emphasis on providing hundreds of uniformed officers to local stations across the country. It neglected the role played by the civilian leadership in the 2006 crisis and the need to revamp the ministry overseeing the police as part of a lasting solution. The mismatching of people to jobs, short rotations as well as the lack of familiarity with local conditions and languages clipped the ability of international police to be good teachers and mentors. Without the power to dismiss or discipline officers, the mission could not improve accountability. The government declined to pass laws in support of the UN role, sending a defiant message of non-cooperation down through police ranks.

In the absence of a joint strategy, structural reform has been limited. The government appointed a commander from outside the police ranks, compromising efforts to professionalise the service. It has promoted a paramilitary style of policing, further blurring the lines between the military and police. The skewed attention to highly armed special units will not improve access to justice, and the ambiguity it creates risks planting the seeds of future conflict with the army. Timorese leaders are attuned more than any outsider to the deadly consequences of institutional failure. To avoid this, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, an independence hero, now heads a joint defence and security ministry. Political quick fixes based on personalities may keep the police and the army apart in the short term, but they add little to more lasting solutions that respect for rule of law might provide.

For the international community, this struggle over command of the police between the UN and one of its member states contains many lessons. The slow drawdown of UN police in Timor-Leste is not the prudent exit strategy it may appear. The mission has been neither a success nor failure. Unable to muster consensus on a long-term police development strategy, it leaves behind a weak national police institution. The mission’s most enduring legacy might be in the lessons it can teach the Security Council not to over-stretch its mandates. The UN should think carefully about stepping in and taking control of a local police service, particularly, as in the case of Timor-Leste, when large parts of it remain functioning. Complex reforms of state institutions cannot be done without the political consent of those directly involved.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Government of Timor-Leste:

1. Take steps to support the rapid resolution of as many pending police certification cases as possible, including passing any necessary legislation, and ensure that those with outstanding or future criminal convictions are removed from the Polícia Nacional de Timor-Leste (PNTL).

2. Develop a strong, independent oversight capacity for the police, either through overhauling the police’s internal disciplinary functions by making its operations fully transparent and public or, if necessary, developing a separate police ombudsman body.

3. Implement the proposed new police rank structure to improve professionalisation and decrease potential for political manipulation of the police service.

4. Avoid the militarisation of policing and clearly demarcate in law and policy the role of the police and army as well as the conditions and procedures by which soldiers can aid civilian authorities in internal security or other situations.

To the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) and the Government of Timor-Leste:

5. Ensure that executive policing responsibilities are handed over to the Timorese police as soon as possible, spelling out the steps to hand back formal authority to the PNTL, maintaining a limited advisory and support presence for the UN police in operational areas identified as priorities by the government.

6. Reorient future mission mandates towards maintaining a limited advisory presence for the UN police in those operational areas identified by the government and bolstering security in advance of the next elections in 2012, and clarify the conditions necessary before a future full withdrawal of the international policing contingent.

7. Focus the future mission, bilateral efforts and government programs on solving existing training needs, equipment shortfalls, and fixing administrative processes identified in the joint assessments from the national to sub-district level.

8. Commit to a fully independent review of policing capacity in Timor-Leste to be performed before the final withdrawal of the UN police contingent.

To the UN Security Council:

9. Set realistic goals for a future mandate extension for UNMIT and recognise the limited capacity of UN police to play an ongoing development role with their Timorese counterparts.

To Bilateral Donors, including Australia and Portugal:

10. Support an independent review of policing capacity commissioned by the Government of Timor-Leste and UNMIT, and commit to linking future development efforts to needs identified in the review under a common framework.

11. Insist on a long-term capacity-building strategy centred on building institutional values of rule of law, professionalism and human rights.

To the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations:

12. Conduct a thorough lessons learned exercise on UNMIT’s executive policing mandate, UN police’s development role, and the incomplete security sector review in order to inform future missions.

Dili/Brussels, 3 December 2009

New Man Behind Jakarta Attacks: Sidney Jones

Jum'at, 31 Juli 2009, 10:13 WIB

by Ita Lismawati F. Malau

(VIVAnews/Nurcholis Anhari Lubis)

VIVAnews - An expert on Islamic terrorist groups in Southeast Asia and an adviser to the International Crisis Group, Sidney Jones, said the name Ibrahim only appeared after the bombings in the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta.

Ibrohim was known as an employee of Cinthia Florist, whose service was used by the Ritz-Carlton, Jakarta. For the time being, he was still hunted down by the police as regards the Jakarta attacks which took place on July 17. Nine people were killed and many others were wounded during the incidents.

"Maruto is an old player. His name surfaced as of 2006 in the Wonosobo case (Central Java)," said Jones on Friday, July 31.

Maruto Jato Sulistiyono was alleged of involving in the terrorist link of the number one terrorist fugitive in Indonesia Noordin Mohammed Top.

During a police raid in Wonosobo in 2006, a member of Noordin's network, Jabir, was shot to dead.

According to Jones, the public should give the police time to filter the gathered names and then name them suspects.

She believes that people around Noordin want to be recognized as part of Al-Qaeda network.

Therefore, she said, the man behind the internet message which has attracted public attention recently concerning the JW Marriott and Rit-Carlton bombings does not have to be Noordin himself.

"Many individuals consider them part of the Al-Qaeda without having links to the center," she said.

--

Translated by: Bonardo Maulana Wahono

• VIVAnews

Honduran Crisis Offers Venezuala's Chavez Some Domestic, International Openings

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 2, 2009

CARACAS, Venezuela, July 1 -- An ally was in trouble, toppled in a military coup. And the television cameras were rolling.

The ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya could not have been better scripted for another Latin American leader who has taken center stage: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The populist firebrand has been Zelaya's most forceful advocate and could win international accolades if the Honduran eventually succeeds in regaining power.

Ever since Zelaya was hustled into exile Sunday by the military, Chávez has been a whirlwind of activity. Using Venezuela's oil-fueled influence to organize summits at which he has been the central speaker, he is spreading his vision of Latin America and calling for Hondurans to rise up against those who deposed Zelaya.

"I just cannot stay here with my arms crossed," Chávez declared in one of many speeches calling for the new Honduran government to step aside.

Luis Vicente León, a pollster and political analyst in Caracas, said the crisis is "perfect" for Chávez "because he's not defending a tyrant; he's defending an elected president who was overthrown. It's showtime for the showman."

The extent of Chávez's influence on the Honduran crisis is unclear, many analysts said. But with Venezuelan state media publicizing his every pronouncement, some analysts say he is using the crisis to shift his countrymen's attention from domestic problems he has struggled with at a time when his popularity has been slipping.

Indeed, Zelaya, 56, is on the surface an unlikely benefactor of Venezuela's support. He is a rancher and logger from Honduras's upper classes who came late to Chávez's alliance of left-leaning nations, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which includes Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and others.

But Chávez has characterized Zelaya as a leftist fighting for the poor and said those who overthrew him hail from an oligarchy intent on maintaining the status quo. Chávez has even taken to mockingly calling Roberto Micheletti, the lawmaker who replaced Zelaya as president, a "gorilla."

"I swear as president: We are going to make your life impossible," Chávez said in one speech, directing his ire at Micheletti.

Chávez has also said that the CIA could have had a hand in Zelaya's ouster. On Monday, Chávez gave a long speech to fellow Latin American leaders, recounting U.S. interference in the region and his survival of a brief coup in 2002. The speech was televised by government stations here and CNN's Spanish-language service.

Milos Alcalay, who was Venezuela's ambassador to the United Nations until breaking with Chávez in 2004, said the Venezuelan president has quickly taken advantage of the crisis to cast himself as the leader of progressive countries battling the dark forces of Latin America's establishment. Alcalay said that, for Chávez, there is no middle ground or nuance in his approach to the Honduran crisis -- nor recognition that Zelaya had erred by pushing a nonbinding constitutional referendum opposed by the courts and his own party.

"He is, in essence, defending his ideological project, and the rest of the countries follow along," Alcalay said, referring mainly to Venezuela's closest allies. "He is following the vision of leadership set by Simón Bolívar, a mantle that he believes he now carries. It's megalomania on the international stage."

With the United States, Europe and big regional players such as Brazil and Mexico condemning the coup, Chávez's role in propelling Zelaya's possible comeback may be peripheral, some political analysts said. Indeed, Carlos Sosa, Zelaya's ambassador at the Organization of American States, said the demands made on Micheletti by other Latin American leaders have been vital.

"Hugo Chávez's role is like that of other leaders," such as Mexico's Felipe Calderón, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, Argentina's Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Obama, Sosa said in a telephone interview.

Mark Schneider of the International Crisis Group, a Washington-based policy organization that studies countries in crisis, said: "Chávez is clearly taking advantage of the opportunity, but he is not calling the shots."

Going by the Venezuelan state media, though, it would be hard to conclude that Chávez is not spearheading the effort. Nor is there any mention of the contradiction of Chávez demanding that the Hondurans adhere to democratic principles when his closest ally is communist Cuba. Although he labels Micheletti's government a military dictatorship, and decries the violence against protesters, state television makes no mention of a botched coup led by Chávez in 1992 in which dozens died.

León, the pollster, said the coverage is part of a larger strategy that helps the government deflect attention from grinding domestic problems it has been unable to address, including rampant crime and a troubled economy.

León said Chávez has been searching for a lift. The polling company León helps run, Datanalisis, said that more than 60 percent of Venezuelans supported Chávez in February, when he won a referendum on a constitutional amendment that permits him to run for reelection indefinitely.

But the popularity rating has slipped to slightly more than 50 percent in recent weeks, León said, as Venezuelans have become increasingly worried by what he called Chávez's "radicalization." Polls show that 75 percent oppose the government's expropriations targeting landholders and big companies. An additional 65 percent oppose the president's efforts to wrest power from local governments led by political opponents, León said.

"He is talking for the benefit of the local population because it allows him to put people's minds, for at least a while, on other issues and not their own problems," León said.

Still, Leon and other analysts said Chávez is often most formidable -- and effective -- on the international stage.

Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a policy group in Washington, said Chávez's attempts at leading his allies in an effort to reinstate a deposed friend dovetail effectively with his frequent invocation of images of coups against leftist leaders.

"He puts his money where his mouth is, and there's a grudging respect for that," Birns said.