US has ended lethal weapon sales ban to Indonesia

Image by nifwlseirff via Flickr

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 07/05/2010

To quell public confusion on the state of Indonesia’s military relations with the US, the Defense Ministry confirmed that the world’s largest weapons-maker has completely lifted an embargo banning weapon sales to the Indonesian Military (TNI).

In its first clear statement on the embargo’s end, a Defense Ministry spokesman said that Indonesia could procure any type of weapon from the US because there was no longer an embargo.

“The US embargo on the sale of any type of weapon to Indonesia ended completely in 2005,” Indonesian Defense Ministry spokesman I Wayan Midhio said over the weekend.

“After the embargo ended, there were no more distinctions to be made between lethal or non-lethal weapons sales,” he said.

Indonesia can now purchase lethal weapons from the US and there is no “partial prohibition” of arms sales to Indonesia, as was previously reported, he added.

Many observers — even those well-informed on bilateral military relations — said they did not know if Indonesia could buy lethal weapons from the US or not, even after military ties resumed in 2005.

Indonesia recently proposed a plan to purchase American-made F-16 jet fighters, which are categorized as lethal weapons, and C-130H Hercules cargo jets, which are not considered lethal, if the US lifted its embargo, as previously reported.

Wayan said Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro expressed the government’s intent to buy the aircraft in a bilateral meeting with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

Image by Joel Abroad via Flickr

The US Congress imposed an embargo that banned international military education and training (IMET) and military equipment sales to Indonesia almost two decades ago.

The embargo was imposed in response to repeated human rights abuses committed by the Indonesian Army’s Special Forces (Kopassus) in West Papua and Timor Leste (then East Timor), which killed more than 100 unarmed civilians, including two US citizens, and injured dozens.

Some experts maintain that the US encouraged Indonesia’s use of lethal force against civilians in East Timor.

Padjadjaran University international relations expert Teuku Rezasyah said history shows that former US president Gerald Ford and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger gave the Indonesian government a “green light” to send Kopassus to East Timor and ignored reports of violence during official US government visits to Indonesia.

The US Congress said it would lift the ban entirely only if the US government could ensure that Indonesia addressed human rights violations.

An Indonesian government delegation led by former president Megawati Soekarnoputeri, visited the US in 2001 in an attempt to soften the policy.

The meeting between Megawati and former US president George W. Bush resulted in a US commitment to provide US$400,000 in extended IMET and to lift the embargo on non-lethal military weapon sales.

The US Congress has not approved joint military trainings between Kopassus and the US military due to alleged Kopassus human rights abuses.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is expected to raise the issue during US President Barack Obama’s planned visit to Indonesia in November.

SBY’s Timor History

SBY - top graduate 1973

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), like many of his generation of former military men, has a Timor history. Australian researcher Ernie Chamberlain shows that, while SBY may not have been in the very first wave of the 7 December 1975 Indonesian military invasion, he was on active duty in Timor in those early years of the occupation which had such catastrophic consequences for the Timorese population and resistance. While the detailed story of SBY’s roles inside Timor is yet to be told, what follows sketches the beginning of his Timor history.

Chamberlain writes:

In his senior year (1973) at the Akabri military academy at Magelang, Bambang Yudhoyono was the Dandivkortar (“top cadet”) – overseeing 3,000 cadets. On graduation in November 1973, as the “top student” among the 987 graduates (Prabowo Subianto, by the way, graduated the following year in third place), he was presented with the Bintang Adhi Makayasa medal personally by then President Soeharto.
From Akabri, he was posted as a platoon commander to Kostrad’s 330 Airborne/Raider Battalion (Commander 3 Platoon, “A” Company) serving in the period “1974-76″. That unit’s history website notes that the battalion saw service in Timor in “1975-1976″.
Indonesian journalist and author Hendro Subroto has written on 330 Battalion’s operations in several of his works. In particular, two battalions of 330 Battalion’s formation – the 17th Airborne Brigade/”Satgas B” – parachuted onto the Baucau airfield on 10 December 1975, but 330 Battalion (commanded by Major Syukur) did not arrive in Baucau from Kupang until 14 December in an airlanded operation utilising civil-type aircraft. Soon after landing, 330 Battalion led the ABRI advance south to Viqueque – meeting quite stiff Falintil opposition led by Sabika in the Lariguto/Ossu area.

SBY’s Timor entrance
But was Yudhoyono with 330 Battalion in Timor in December 1975 ? I think not.
Firstly, Hendro Subroto is an inveterate “name dropper”. In relating operations in Timor, he invariably highlights the presence/role of any later-to-become-senior ABRI officers. He makes no mention of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in the Baucau/Viqueque operation of 330 Battalion. Moreover, Yudhoyono reportedly attended English language training at the US military’s Defence Language Institute in Texas in late 1975/early 1976, followed by Airborne and Ranger training at Fort Benning in 1975-1976.
He apparently returned to Indonesia in mid-1976 – deploying to Timor in August 1976 as a platoon commander in 305 Battalion (a month after his marriage to the daughter of Major General Sarwo Edhie Wibowo a renowned/infamous commander of the RPKAD and graduate of the Australian Army’s Staff College at Queenscliff, Victoria). While little is known about 305 Battalion’s activities in Timor in 1976-1977, it reportedly operated principally in Lautem.
Among his medals, Yudhoyono wears the Satya Lencana Seroja, 1976 (Operasi Seroja – Operation Lotus – was the name given to the major Indonesian military campaign in Timor from December 1975 to November 1979)

Other connections
As an aside, over the years, Bambang Yudhoyono has had several koneksi with the Australian military – and was a close friend of Lieutenant General Peter Leahy (former Chief of Army, and now a professor heading the University of Canberra’s National Security Institute). They were in the same class at the US Command and Staff College, Leavenworth in 1990-1991 (Leahy was the “top” foreign student, Bambang Yudhoyono was “No.2″). It was planned that Yudhoyono attend the year-long “one-star” ADF ACDSS course at Weston Creek (Canberra) in 1996 – but in November 1995, Yudhoyono was quite suddenly posted to Bosnia-Herzegovina as the Chief Military Observer of the UN Peacekeeping Force.

Sources:

Subroto, S., Operasi Udara di Timor Timor (Air Operations in East Timor), Pustaka Sinar Harapan, Jakarta, 2005, pp.107-197.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susilo_Bambang_Yudhoyono

Military Academy website: http://www.akmil.ac.id

Battallion 330 website: http://www.yoniflinud330.mil.id/

More SBY biographical details: http://www.tokohindonesia.com/ensiklopedi/s/susilo-b-yudhoyono/biografi/keluarga.shtml

Ernie Chamberlain is a retired Australian brigadier, having served for 36 years – including as Australian Defence Attache in Jakarta in the mid-1990s. Since retirement in 1998, he has spent some years in Timor – including advising Defence Minister Roque Rodrigues and F-FDTL commander Taur Matan Ruak on defence policy and planning (2004-05).

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Will the Real TNI Stand Up, Please!

This morning, a Facebook friend (teman FB) asked me if the TNI had reformed. I could only give a very incomplete brief reply. No, I'm not going to tell you what I said (privacy considerations). Fwiw, here's what Wikipedia writes about TNI, and what TNI writes about TNI. Can you answer the question any better?



Wikipedia ource - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Indonesia

TNI source - http://www.tni.mil.id/index.php?