The role of the international community in addressing decentralization and local conflicts in Indonesia is complex, and yet crucially important. The challenges have clearly increased because of the "war against terrorism" and the resulting changes in the orientation of U.S. policy. Virtually every issue in Indonesia, from the perspective of Washington, is now viewed through the prism of terrorism. This goes far beyond protecting American lives and interests from another Bali bombing, to how the Bush administration and State Department frame their interactions with Indonesian policymakers at the highest levels.

One notable exception has been the U.S. government's efforts at promoting a peaceful solution to the war in Aceh, which has remained a priority. In addition to pressing both Jakarta and GAM ("Free Aceh Movement") to sign a peace agreement hammered out by the Geneva-based Henry Dunant Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, the U.S. took the lead, with Japan and the World Bank, in convening a special meeting of donors in Tokyo on December 3, 2002 to assess ways the international community might contribute to the social and physical reconstruction of Aceh should hostilities end. In fact, the Tokyo conference could be a useful model for other possible forms of international intervention in regional conflicts, using funding and other positive incentives, rather than threats, to promote change.

But in general, the overriding priority for the U.S. has been to exert intense political pressure on the Megawati government to shut down alleged terrorist cells, cut off funds to suspected terrorist networks, and enact laws and decrees to make it easier to detain individuals who might in some way be involved in terrorist activity.

There are risks and trade-offs to the U.S. pushing weak political and legal institutions and their fragile democracy to take these and perhaps other, even more far-reaching actions. Human rights lawyers and democracy activists in Indonesia, while generally supporting efforts to eliminate terrorism, have raised serious questions about the two government decrees enacted after the Bali bombing, largely due to pressure from the U.S., Australia and other nations. Government Regulation No. 1/2002 on Eliminating Criminal Acts of Terror allows the police to arrest and detain suspects for six months based on intelligence reports as prima facie evidence; Regulation No. 2/2002 applies the new powers retroactively to the Bali bombing case.

It is too early to tell exactly how the new regulations will be used, but there is growing concern that the counter terrorism campaign may ultimately lead to greater reliance on the military to go after terrorists. This has already been the pattern in many regional conflicts: the police fail to adequately protect civilians or to apprehend suspects, and the army steps in, claiming it is the only guarantor of peace and stability.

"An international agreement to declare war on terrorism may unwittingly open the door to increased military power, which was kept in check by civil supremacy during the reformasi period," warned Todung Mulya Lubis, a leading human rights attorney, in a recent column in TEMPO (November 11, 2002.) "Once again, the United States has pledged military assistance to Indonesia…But giving birth to a new legal paradigm containing repressive elements will merely stifle the seeds of democracy that have begun to grow in Indonesia."

Now more than ever, the international community can and must play a constructive role in helping Indonesia deal with its multiple crises - and the underlying causes.

In this article, I'll address three specific issues: the role of the media, the role of international investors, and interaction between U.S. and Indonesian military and civilian institutions and how this is affected by the Administration's "war against terrorism."

1) Media:
Last summer, months before the Bali bombing, I met with two U.S.-based newspaper reporters about to be assigned to Jakarta. They realized that terrorism and the war on terrorism, though clearly important to American readers, are not the whole story. They were mainly interested in learning about the various local and regional conflicts and the role of TNI under President Megawati, but with the caveat that covering terrorism must be their major emphasis. That's what the editors back home are expecting. The challenge is how to do it in a responsible way that emphasizes the local roots and causes of much (if not most) of the violence and threats of violence in Indonesia, and not turn everything into a story about terrorism or Indonesian links to al-Qaeda.

Two local politicians can be murdered in cold blood in one week, as happened last June in Aceh, and this gets very little or no international media attention. Even the news about a planned signing of the Aceh peace agreement has generated scant media attention outside of Indonesia and the region. But suspected al-Qaeda links to Laskar Jihad, or plots to bomb the U.S. embassy, or threats by militant groups to "sweep" hotels to look for Americans spark CNN headlines and front page stories. These are important issues, and should get covered. But they should not define how the world looks at Indonesia and the difficult, ongoing struggle to build a democratic country after thirty years of Soeharto's authoritarian rule.

Last August, a violent attack on Freeport McMoran employees in Timika, West Papua resulted in major stories in the U.S. and international press. But if two American teachers had not been among the victims, it's not clear that the incident would have attracted editors' attention or much space.

There is a broader, related problem of American media needing to be careful to avoid seeing Indonesia and its problems mainly from the perspective of the U.S., and what the U.S. government defines as "American interests." ?The war on terrorism will only make it even more difficult to develop the kind of in depth understanding of these conflicts - to say nothing about the complex dynamics of decentralization - necessary on the part of donor governments and international agencies to engage them in a sustained way. Politicians are driven by headlines, here, in Europe, Australia, Japan or elsewhere. And United Nations agencies move slowly, and often only react to the kind of pressure the media can create.

Non-governmental organizations like Human Rights Watch, trying to produce insightful analyses of Indonesia's human rights problems must also be careful not to fall into the trap of feeding the press what it wants, what will fit most neatly into their story; for example, reducing complicated situations into simplistic analyses of "Muslim-Christian" conflicts.

Obviously it would help if more foreign journalists felt safe going to the conflict zones in Indonesia to report from the field, and if Indonesian officials felt it was in their interest to give the international media, as well as diplomats, greater access to the internally displaced and to the local leadership on all sides of a conflict. Encouraging and actively assisting serious journalists to do that kind of in-depth coverage is a task we as NGOs, along with our NGO colleagues in Indonesia, should devote more time and attention to.

2) Role of Private Investors:
Are foreign investors part of the problem or part of the solution in Indonesia's decentralization process? Will they help reduce, or widen, income disparities as decentralization and steps towards greater economic and political autonomy move forward? Will foreign companies provide bridges between migrant and local communities, or sharpen existing differences and disputes involving land and logging? Can the efforts of some investors to provide local humanitarian and development assistance "in the form of education and access to health care" be expanded to include an ongoing dialogue with community leaders about what forms of international assistance by NGOs and UN agencies might be useful in assisting the internally displaced?

How can responsible investors also address crucial problems at the national political level? Can they be realistically expected to take on the sensitive issue of military and police impunity for human rights abuses when in some cases they depend on Indonesian security forces to protect their plans and interests? I believe that in such cases, it is even more in their interest to do so.

This past June ExxonMobil Corporation initiated an internal review process (developed by the U.S., the United Kingdom and NGOs for use by extractive industries) of its obligations as a signatory to the voluntary principles on security forces, a set of guidelines on how to prevent and respond to human rights abuses. This is one key question the company will need to grapple with as it seeks to apply the principles in Indonesia, Nigeria and elsewhere.

But these are all questions that need discussion, in a non-confrontational, open and frank atmosphere, between and among civil society groups, NGOs, and foreign investors. There is a certain level of suspicion and stereotyping on both sides: business seeing Indonesian and international advocacy NGOs as inherently hostile to corporate interests, and some NGOs writing off corporations seeing them as motivated only by profit and an obsession with maintaining stability. These stereotypes are slowly being broken down.

Keidanren, the Japanese super chamber of commerce, last year sent a delegation to Indonesia from its Council on Better Corporate Citizenship (CBCC) to begin talking to local NGOs. Japan is home to many of Indonesia's key investors, and Keidanren's effort was a small step in the right direction. The CBCC also recently began working more closely with the San Francisco-based Business for Social Responsibility, composed of hundreds of major U.S. firms. A three-way dialogue - between civil society groups in Indonesia and both American and Japanese companies - could result in some creative new possibilities for cooperation and exchange. It would also be beneficial if, for example, members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Jakarta would consider initiating an ongoing dialogue with Indonesian NGOs on topics such as corruption, legal and judicial and police reform.

It would be especially useful to figure out ways of convening informal discussions focused on specific conflict areas, to provide an off the record forum for business and NGOs to do crisis management and prevention, exchange views on the costs and social consequences of decentralization, and explore how foreign investors can help. One starting point might be developing a coordinated strategy to persuade Jakarta to invite a United Nations human rights working group or special rapporteur to West Papua or Central Sulawesi, or another conflict area.

The pulp and paper industry has rapidly expanded in Indonesia over the past ten years, and this has led to violent struggles around access to increasingly scarce timber between companies and forest dependent indigenous communities, most prominently in Riau province, Sumatra. During the 1980's and 1990's, armed police and military agents routinely seized land for plantations from indigenous communities. Since Soeharto's fall, local citizens have raised their claims to ancestral property with largely unresponsive and corrupt officials; some groups have resorted to vigilantism. When private companies have used civilian militias or other security forces to repress local protestors, tensions have escalated.

Decentralization has only complicated matters, with uncertainty and confusion over jurisdictions when it comes to taxes on logging investments, forestry permits, and other questions. (Emily Harwell, a research fellow for Human Rights Watch, carefully documented the conflicts around logging in Riau, focusing on Asia Pulp and Paper, Indonesia's largest paper producer, in a report published by Human Rights Watch in January 2003). Here is a case where the private sector is at the heart of social conflict. As an initial remedy, an independent ombudsman is urgently needed to settle land claims and claims for compensation. These are the kinds of issues that should be on the agenda of the CGI (Consultative Group on Indonesia), the annual World Bank-convened donor meeting; the next meeting is scheduled for late January 2003.

3) Civilian and Military Reform:
Over the last year or more, much of the debate on U.S. policy toward Indonesia has been driven by a continuing tug of war between various branches of the government regarding to what extent, and how deeply, the US should "re-engage" with the Indonesian military. The increasingly polarized debate, epitomized in Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's comments in a Far Eastern Economic Review interview (June 20, 2002), is being cast in terms of the Pentagon pursuing "focused cooperation (with TNI) in specific areas like dealing with communal violence and counter-terrorist activities."

A leading senator on the powerful Appropriations Committee, Senator Chris Bond, circulated a letter to all of his colleagues last summer with a Wall Street Journal editorial attached calling for full-scale re-engagement. The senator's letter said, in part:

"Post-September 11 threats from Islamic terrorists are clear and the need to establish military to military contacts with moderate Muslim nations such as Indonesia is pressing...Important military reforms have been instituted. The military has been placed under civilian control...military officers are no longer permitted by law to hold military and political posts simultaneously...and military officers accused of abuses of civilians are now subject to criminal trial for such crimes."

Aside from the misleading nature of these statements, I believe that portraying the Indonesian military as either a quick fix to the threat of terrorism, or the solution to ongoing communal or sectarian violence in Indonesia, is a misguided way to decide how the U.S. can best support the changing role of the military in Indonesia's democratic transition.

In its field report last April, U.S.A.I.D. (U.S. Agency for International Development) said that based on a series of U.S.A.I.D.-supported workshops on military reform in West Timor and South Sulawesi, "TNI continues to perform most of the non-defense functions it carried out during the New Order (security, law enforcement, and support for government policies and business projects). TNI also continued to receive operational funds from local governments, a tendency likely to increase with the ongoing process of political and fiscal decentralization...Without a fundamental review of TNI's presence at all levels of government administration, there is little prospect for comprehensive reform of the security sector."

Early in 2003, the newly elected Congress will take up the foreign aid bill for the current fiscal year, delayed until after last November's mid-term elections. Some key figures in the Congress and the Administration are determined to use Indonesia's conflicts and the terrorism threat as the rationales for stripping away most or all of the remaining human rights conditions on IMET (International Military Education and Training) and foreign military sales. These are the only two forms of military to military cooperation currently restricted by the so-called Leahy amendment in the FY 2002 foreign aid bill. The proposed foreign aid legislation for FY 2003 drafted last year would leave the conditions in place for lethal military sales, but provide $400,000 for IMET, originally suspended in 1992 following the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in Dili, East Timor.

But the focus on terrorism as a determining factor in U.S.-Indonesia military relations may totally obscure or make extremely difficult any informed discussion - in the press or on Capitol Hill - of the Indonesian military's role (and those of the militia groups it supports) in stimulating local and regional conflicts, or looking at those conflicts and their causes in a more holistic, comprehensive way that goes beyond only the security dimension.

In a special anti-terrorism supplemental assistance bill adopted last July, Congress refused to give the administration the $8 million it requested for creation of a "PKO peacekeeping unit" by TNI to intervene in sectarian and communal conflicts. This was an encouraging move. Members of Congress raised many questions with the Administration about how this so called PKO unit would actually function, and did not receive very clear or satisfactory answers.

Congress did, however, allocate funds for police training and police counter terrorism activities. The Senate specified that none of the $12 million for counter terrorism activities by the police should go to Brimob, mobile police brigade units which have a particularly egregious human rights record. A comprehensive strategy for enhanced police reform and training - including human rights training - should clearly be on the donors' agenda, to help create a civilian police force that can become a viable, competent alternative to the military in dealing with internal conflicts.

The new Congress and State Department should also work to expand support for civilian, as opposed to military reform activities. U.S.A.I.D. is already doing good work in places like North Sulawesi (focusing on the internally displaced), in Aceh (supporting women's rights NGOs and workshops on the autonomy law, as well as the Henry Dunant Center's District Monitoring Teams), and in Maluku (helping local government with implementation of the Malino peace agreement.) Expanding this kind of assistance to strengthen civil society and civilian institutions would be a far better investment by the U.S. in helping to address local and regional conflicts, rather than strengthening the military, at the regional and national levels, as the ostensible protector of national unity and stability during the decentralization process.