Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Washington is Neglecting a New Friend
by Stanley A. Weiss
JAKARTA - "Indonesia is not a country," defense minister Juwono Sudarsono tells me, "it's a happening." As a regular visitor here for two decades, I've always admired the dynamism and diversity of 225 million people comprising 300 ethnic groups, speaking 500 languages and dialects, spread across 17,000 islands.
Still, on my first visit since last year's devastating tsunami, I've been startled by the new mood of optimism among political, business and military leaders here. After decades of dictatorship and years of political and economic drift, the world's third-largest democracy finally seems poised to start realizing its potential.
There's genuine hope that the peace agreement signed in Helsinki on Monday between Jakarta and Acehnese rebels may finally end the fighting that has killed 15,000 in the rebellious province since 1976.
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the country's first directly elected president, remains popular for his "pro-growth, pro-poor, pro-employment" and anticorruption agenda. Erry Riyana, deputy chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission, tells me that the number of investigations and prosecutions of business and political elites is "unprecedented."
Although still rebounding from the 1997-98 Asian economic meltdown, the Indonesian economy is defying expectations with 6 percent growth so far this year. Foreign investment is on track to nearly double this year to $7 billion, according to Muhammad Lutfi, chairman of the Investment Coordinating Board. Microsoft recently announced it will build its fourth international research lab in Indonesia, putting Jakarta in the ranks of Cambridge, Beijing and Bangalore.
In a recent poll, 81 percent of Indonesians described their quality of life as "good" or "very good." This, in a country where December's tsunami killed 130,000, where 40 million are chronically unemployed, and where 110 million subsist on under $2 per day.
Yet it is precisely this schizophrenic nature of life here that makes Indonesia so vital. If it succeeds as a prosperous democracy, this strategically located archipelago with the world's largest Muslim population promises enormous political, economic and security dividends for the entire world. Alternatively, Indonesia can simply stumble along, proving - as Charles de Gaulle famously said of Brazil - that it has "great potential, and it always will."
Indonesia's neighbors are not taking that chance. Six years after Australian-led U.N. troops battled Indonesian-backed militias in East Timor, Australia's ambassador, David Ritchie, says that relations between Canberra and Jakarta have "never been better."
China is getting over its own dark history with Indonesia, which has often treated its small Chinese minority business class as a scapegoat. After a failed Communist coup in 1965, tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese were slaughtered and Jakarta severed ties with Beijing for a quarter century. An estimated 100,000 Chinese-Indonesians fled the country during deadly anti-government riots in 1998.
This spring, however, Beijing and Jakarta unveiled a new strategic partnership bringing together the world's second-largest consumer of oil (China) with one of the world's largest producers of oil and liquefied natural gas (Indonesia). Last month in Beijing, Yudhoyono secured a Chinese pledge to invest $7.5 billion in new oil, gas, coal and railway projects.
But while neighbors like China and Australia are paying attention to Indonesia, refusing to let old disagreements obscure common strategic interests, America risks squandering the good will it engendered here for its tsunami relief efforts. Congressional neglect toward Indonesia has gone from benign to malign. Indonesians are still enraged by a vote of the House international relations committee in June questioning the circumstances of Papua's 1969 integration with Indonesia. One Indonesian suggested to me that his parliament revisit the Cherokee Indian nation's "integration" with the United States.
In the Senate, a few members continue to oppose the Bush administration's attempt to restore full military ties with Indonesia even though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice certified earlier this year that Jakarta is cooperating with the investigation into the murder of two Americans in Papua in 2002. Despite personal appeals to senators by Yudhoyono and Sudarsono, the $800,000 requested by the Bush administration to train Indonesian officers next year under the International Military Education and Training program may never see the light of day.
Indonesians tell me they don't understand the selective self-righteousness of U.S. politicians who deny their struggling democracy access to a small program to help professionalize their military while throwing billions of dollars in military support to serial human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan.
In addition, many here see the U.S. war on terrorism as a war on Islam. It's easy to see why more Indonesians have a positive view of China (73 percent) than the U.S. (38 percent), according to the Pew Research Center.
At the White House this spring, President Yudhoyono told the story of an American student who sent a letter to a child in tsunami-ravaged Aceh, along with a bracelet used to raise donations for victims. To which the young girl from Aceh replied, "I am so glad you are paying attention to us here." She would wear the bracelet, she wrote, "to remind me that I have new friend."
Perhaps she should send her bracelet to politicians in Washington who don't seem to realize what others in Asia already know. You have a new friend in Indonesia, and it's time to pay attention.
