Military Expansion of West Papua

TNITNI && POLRIPOLRI FORCESFORCES ININWESTWEST PAPUAPAPUA

Restructuring & Reasserting SovereigntyRestructuring & Reasserting Sovereignty

Matthew N. Davies1

CONTENTSSummary...........................................................................................................2Acronyms, abbreviations & terms / main military symbols.............................3Introduction...................................................................................................... 4‘The bigger picture’: national military expansion............................................5Restructure & expansion for West Papua field units........................................7‘Counterterrorism’: new anti-guerrilla mode & ‘Trojan horse’......................12Overlaps & anomalies: territorial base command restructure........................15 Streamlining & priority: appointments in intelligence & strategy..................21The Merauke case: operations & perceptions.................................................32Harvest time: Pak Ogah Arafuru & phoney infowar......................................36

Figures1 ‘TNI primacy’: structural overlap of military seniority..................................162 Restructure of Indonesian Army territorial commands, West Papua..............173 Career background of senior TNI territorial officers, West Papua 2005—6..204 West Papua- and Merauke-focused command & intelligence, Jan. 2006......225 Relationship diagram: key army command & staff, West Papua...................256 ‘Fast tracks’: executive-level posting duration...............................................27

Maps1 TNI commands, bases and deployed units in West Papua.................................82 POLRI commands, bases and deployed units in West Papua..........................103 Mixed events & perceptions: the Merauke area, 2004—6...............................35

AppendicesI Identified TNI key territorial leadership, West Papua 2002—6.......................42II Identified POLRI territorial chiefs, West Papua 2002—6................................43III Estimated Indonesian force strengths, West Papua 2006.................................44

1 Linguist and former Australian Dept of Defence (Army) intelligence analyst. Author of Indonesia’s War over Aceh: Last stand on Mecca’s porch, Routledge ‘Politics in Asia’ series, 2006, and ‘Indonesian Security Responses to Resurgent Papuan Separatism: an Open Source Intelligence case study’, Strategic & Defence Studies Centre (SDSC), Australian National University (ANU), 2001. This paper was researched from April to August 2006, here based largely on a briefing given to the Indonesia Study Group (ISG) at the ANU on 14 June 2006. The author thanks ISG attendees who contributed questions and criticism, which became further consideration in this paper’s draft.

DAVIES TNI & POLRI Forces in West Papua p. 2

SummarySince the Aceh peace agreement of mid-2005, Indonesian military planning and operations in and around West Papua2 revealed that area’s priority and emphasis in defence and internal security. Upon the voyage of 43 asylum seekers to Australia in January 2006, West Papua’s situation also took renewed prominence in bilateral diplomacy with Indonesia’s southern neighbor.

The confrontational Indonesia—Australia diplomatic posturing from early 2006 occurred amid a nationwide Indonesian plan for military expansion. Publicly available detail confirmed much of the general planning, and major parts of its achievement, where changes appeared in locally based and deployed force composition, territorial structure and senior command and staff appointments. New local infantry formations reduced the dependency on centrally deployed units, while new special operations forces paralleled concurrent developments in other sites of Indonesian counterinsurgency. The issue of counterterrorism facilitated much of the political and bureaucratic means crucial for renewed TNI dominance of Indonesia’s polity.

Recent events surrounding the 43 asylum seekers’ voyage by to Australia indicated sophisticated TNI-run psychological operations combining strategic-level concerns with past methods of infiltration and manipulation into West Papuan resistance groups and their sympathizers. Arrangements in command and control, alongside key officers’ operational expertise and record, further indicated a TNI campaign to penetrate the Australian Government’s leadership elite’s ‘decision cycle’, or its basic, driving cognitive and decision-making processes, around informal migration to Australian shores. Beneath the Indonesian military’s planned ambitious and expensive, ongoing build-up and renewal, that most recent episode in Indonesian—Australian diplomacy indicated the Jakarta leadership elite’s strategic-level success in West Papua operations. Such success would likely see West Papua become the table on which Indonesian leaders could bargain for the most beneficial results of a restored bilateral security treaty with Australia.

MelbourneAugust 2006

2 This paper uses the conventional name ‘West Papua’ simply to cover both Indonesian provincial entities of ‘Papua’ and ‘West Irian Jaya’ (Irjabar).

BAIS Badan Intelijen Strategis Strategic Intelligence AgencyBAKORINDA Badan Koordinasi Intelijen Daerah Regional Intelligence Coordinating BodyBIN Badan Intelijen Negara State Intelligence Agency BKBPM Badan Kesatuan Bangsa dan National Unity & Community Protection Perlindungan Masyarakat Agency*BRIMOB Brigade Mobil Police 'Mobile Brigade'DEPDAGRI Departemen Dalam Negeri Interior MinistryIrjabar Irian Jaya Barat West Irian Jaya (Province)kabupaten - regencykesbangpol kesatuan bangsa dan politik national unity & politics (agency)*KODAM Komando Daerah Militer Military area commandKODIM Komando Distrik Militer Military district commandKOMINDA Komunitas Intelijen Daerah Regional Intelligence CommunityKOPASSUS Komando Pasukan Khusus (Army) Special Forces CommandKOREM Komando Resort Militer Military sub-area commandKOSTRAD Komando Cadangan Strategis Army Strategic Reserve Command LANTAMAL Pangkalan Utama Angkatan Laut Primary Naval BaseOPM Organisasi Papua Merdeka Free Papua OrganizationPOLDA Kepolisian Daerah Police RegionPOLRES Kepolisian Resort Police PrecinctPOLRESTA Kepolisian Resort Kota Municipal / Urban Police PrecinctPOLRI Kepolisian Republik Indonesia Indonesian Police ForcePSYOPS - psychological operationsSARA suku, antar-golongan, ras, agama tribal, class, racial & religious (divisions)satbanintel satuan bantuan intelijen intelligence support forcesatgas satuan tugas task forcetaipur pengintai tempur combat reconnaissanceTNI Tentara Nasional Indonesia Indonesian Defence Force

* May be interchangeable in reporting; probably distinguishable by hierarchical level in formal references

ACRONYMS, ABBREVIATIONS & TERMS

This study uses a hybrid of Indonesian and past NATO-standard military symbology.Maps used the following sources:KPU (Komisi Pemilihan Umum, General Election Commission), Peta Pemilu Provinsi -Daerah PemilihanAnggota DPRD, 20 November 2003. Online: <http//:www.kpu.go.id> (accessed November 2005), andANU West Papua Project series. Online: <http//:www.papuanet.org/gb/peta/index.html> (accessed April 2006. This excellent resource also includes saved KPU maps from 2003).

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IntroductionThis paper’s research began in mid-April 2006 as Australian political, media, academic and activist circles continued their renewed interest in West Papua as a regional security issue. That broader public interest followed an unusual incident in January when 43 West Papuan asylum seekers made a voyage to Australia’s mainland, proclaimed their unambiguously pro-independence sympathies since arrival, then successfully applied for refugee status. From that straightforward factual background to the resurgence in public attention to West Papua, this study aimed to contribute to such wider discussion of the subject, but with particular emphasis on that area’s ongoing status as a scene of Indonesian counterinsurgency operations. Given the prominent role of Indonesia’s military (TNI) in West Papua, and the Indonesian security forces’ direct relevance to issues of West Papuan independence struggle and considerations of regional security, this paper intended to add to an earlier contribution by updating 2000—1 research presented in the ANU SDSC working paper: ‘Indonesian Security Responses to Resurgent Papuan Separatism’.

In particular, this study strove to avoid publicity only indirectly related to Indonesian forces in West Papua i.e., where bilateral diplomacy and local party-political debate concerned a proposed bill amending Australian territoriality in cases of informal, unauthorized migration. Such publicity seemed to overwhelm this study’s own non-conformist appearance in the Australian media,4 where mention of findings from research here was all but lost under a domestic discussion preoccupied with adversarial debate in Canberra about the migration bill and the accompanying display of parliamentary democracy.

Note on sourcesAn underlying motive for this paper was therefore to shift attention to the available detailed information sourced closer to Indonesian security forces’ activity and events in West Papua itself. Primary importance was accorded textual sources originating as close as possible to events and protagonists as defined in the title i.e., Indonesian-Malay language reports from official statements, journalism and resistance activists. That research process was far from exhaustive, instead aiming to identify detail most indicative of major changes since the 2000—1 study. The priority was public domain, or ‘open sources’, in order to demonstrate the material’s wider accessibility, and to encourage its further exploration, while keeping to the 2001 study’s underlying ‘open source intelligence’ (OSINT) agenda. By contrast, anonymous sources and claimed needs for protection of sensitive sources would contribute to cults of secrecy and other exclusive mystique starkly at odds with both the spirit of public debate and the very notion of research open to review, criticism and further inquiry.

In most of the detail presented here, factors of repetition, direct quotation from officials, public exposure, and long-term confirmatory redundancy all lent solid credibility to primary source material where depicting straightforward factual matters. Assessment based on contrary, critical treatment of primary sources e.g., in cases of assessed ‘black psyops’ disinformation, are explained by reason of plausibility. This study’s sensitive subject matter and timing meant that it appeared beside other accounts hastily compiled out of apparent Australian institutional needs to deflect public attention from unsettling facts. During this period the subject seemed to attract unusually high attention from pseudonymous authors and sources, sometimes resorting to blatant fabrication, in a delicate political atmosphere unlikely to stabilize for the foreseeable future.

4 The Sunday Age, ‘Indonesian strategy “defeats” Australia’, 13 August 2006.


‘The bigger picture’: national military expansionAll three TNI services embarked on significant post-2002 increase in headquarters (HQ), units and bases throughout Indonesia, with particular emphasis on West Papua and other areas with international boundaries. Army, navy and air force enacted and publicized initiatives in force growth and ongoing plans for greater institutional scale, equipment upgrade, and both counterinsurgent and conventional warfighting strength.

The TNI and other state agencies publicized much detail about plans for force increases and such plans’ progressive realization. The most obvious, implicit purpose of such TNI intentions was the reassertion of national sovereignty internally i.e., in a message to separatist and disaffected populations. TNI expansion and modernization made a clear public depiction of the state’s improved ability to project repressive forces to the outer, border provinces. By explicit contrast, presidential instructions in 2005 specified the high-priority TNI (and police - POLRI) mission to assert sovereign national boundaries secure from infiltration, combined with procurement and modernization programs to help achieve that aim.5 That presidential directive’s emphasis was also a concession to foreign pressure urging Indonesia to apply its military more as a defence and deterrent against potential external threats, or at least to be seen doing so, especially where decentralizing those units and commands holding higher command seniority and deployment readiness.

However, such programs’ consistently most discrete aspects were their great cost, and their funding sources, whether for TNI expansion already realized or the yet more expensive units, facilities and equipment still in planning and procurement stages. As presidential instructions indicated, the Defence Department (Dephan) was to become increasingly involved in TNI procurement, refurbishment and construction works for the TNI’s ambitious expansion plans.6 As foreign donors and Indonesia’s government strove to boost and regulate TNI budgets under greater Dephan control and oversight, the challenge of meeting the forces’ higher costs of a TNI-initiated build-up became a major factor in Indonesia’s politics and diplomacy, if not also an actual TNI operational objective in some cases of international brinkmanship.

Ground forcesThe TNI’s most obvious growth appeared in its army, traditionally a state priority for the near-constant counterinsurgency tasks since Indonesia’s birth; the army continued as the TNI’s overwhelmingly most numerous and politically influential service. The TNI’s essential ground force elements i.e., its infantry, expanded by an additional ten new army battalions from 2003, with at least another four army infantry battalions to be raised, or so underway at the time of writing. Across the TNI’s three services in the brief period from late 2002, the TNI raised, or began the process of raising, a total of at least seventeen infantry battalions, most of them reportedly over-strength i.e., comprising nearly twice the hitherto standard number of soldiers for such units.7 Based on the new units’ planned strengths, infantry expansion calculated up to 16,000 extra TNI troops i.e., not counting the concurrently planned and raised combat support

5 Peraturan Presiden Republik Indonesia Nomor 39 Tahun 2005 tentang Rencana Kerja Pemerintah Tahun 2006, (Perpres No. 39 2005 RKP 2006), Appendix p. 39—41, 43—4.6 ibid. p. 37—8, 41.7 Reports indicated that many of the battalions’ ‘over-strength’ status was to cover operational tasks previously performed by two or more battalion entities i.e., routine ‘static’ point and route security tasks alongside ‘mobile’ rapid-reaction functions. Infantry expansion was ongoing, so this study did not confirm the exact total achieved by the time of writing. For comparison, the TNI’s total additional infantry battalions’ troops would roughly triple the Australian Army’s standing line infantry component; many of the new battalions’ scale resembled that set for the abortive Australian ‘pentropic’ battalions (and US ‘pentomic’ divisional battlegroup equivalents) from the late-1950s.


units (armor, engineers, artillery, etc.) or new territorial command formations with their additional hierarchy of HQ staff and smaller, co-located sub-units.

Planned new territorial-based brigade formations accompanied the TNI’s strengthened infantry, especially in the country’s outer border provinces. Reporting all but officially confirmed plans for brigade HQ in Aceh, Kalimantan, West Timor and West Papua, with another two, probably Java-based, to complement the two, hitherto only, territorial infantry brigades (1 and 15 infantry brigades on western Java).8

TNI amphibious forces - the navy’s Marine Corps - already raised new infantry battalions from 2002. By mid-2005, all three new marine battalions, based in southern Sumatera’s Lampung area, were combat experienced from Aceh deployments. Both the army and marines concurrently embarked on acquisitions of new small arms, artillery, armor and other equipment often allocated as complementary additions for the new TNI infantry and combat support units. Unlike army territorial counterparts, the centrally commanded marines placed their new infantry battalions into a brigade formation immediately upon completing those units’ establishment.

A related development from 2003 was the intensive ‘Raider’ conversion training and re-designation for ten TNI infantry battalions: two from KOSTRAD (Army Strategic Reserve Command) and the rest from eight of the army’s territorial military area command (KODAM) high-readiness ‘strike’ (pemukul) battalions. A new East Java-based infantry battalion was raised to replace one such unit retrained and redesignated ‘Raider’9. Indonesian Jakarta-based observer Aris Santoso stated that the ‘Raider’ battalions would require that new units be raised to replace the previously designated battalions in territorial KODAM formations;10 if accurate, up to seven more additional territorial infantry battalions could so raise in coming years.

Air & maritime forcesPublicity trumpeted increased TNI aerial surveillance and planned basing of fighter aircraft for patrolling East Timor and Australian borders from Kupang.11 Airpower upgraded via gradual barter acquisitions of Sukhoi SU-29 and -31 fighter jets, and army aviation’s upgraded MI-35 Hind-series attack helicopters. Potentially important for TNI operations in West Papua’s airspace, the high-profile upgrades were less significant than more defensive additions and plans for local ground-based air defence. A new radar unit raised at Biak within a national expansion, restructure and renumbering of TNI ground-to-air early-warning and intercept capability (see Map 1, p. 8). Radar assets in Biak were to prepare the new Air Defence Sector Command IV as the node for planned units including Jayapura, Timika and Merauke sites.12

Indonesia’s notoriously neglected maritime forces attracted scrutiny in TNI

8 See, for example: Pos Kupang, ‘TNI tempatkan pasukan brigade di perbatasan’, 28 May 2004. Online: <http://www.indomedia.com/poskup/2004/05/28/edisi28/2805uta1.htm> (accessed May 2006), Gatra.com, ‘Hingga 2009, TNI AD akan Tambah 19 Makodim dan 3 Makorem’, 22 March 2005, andJawa Pos, ‘TNI-AD Siap Perkuat Perbatasan’, 27 March 2005.9 Bojonegoro Regency Goverment web site, ‘Batalyon 507 Untuk Bojonegoro’, 14 September 2005. Online: <http://www.bojonegoro.go.id/nando007/lengkap.php?IDBerita=579> (accessed April 2006).10 Republika, ‘Divisi Infanteri di Papua’, 25 March 2006.11 Tempointeraktif.com, ‘Amankan Pulau-Pulau Terluar Indonesia di NTT’, 9 March 2005, andTempointeraktif.com, ‘TNI AU Tempatkan Satu Kompi Paskhas di Kupang’, 6 April 2005.12 Puspen TNI, ‘KOHANUDNAS Terus Kembangkan Sistem Deteksi Dini’, 10 February 2006. Online: <http://www.tni.mil.id/news.php?q=dtl&id=113012006110644> (accessed April 2006),Puspen TNI, ‘Satuan Radar 242 Tanjung Warari Biak Resmi Beroperasi’, 4 April 2006. Online: <http:// www.tni.mil.id/news.php?q=dtl&id=113012006110928> (accessed April 2006), andDetiknet.com, ‘DPR Minta TNI AU Tingkatkan Sistem Radarnya’, 9 June 2006. For previous study of earlier reported ground-based air detection units’ restructure and upgrade plans: cf fn 1 - Davies, ‘Indonesian Security Responses...’, op cit., p. 22, 25—7.


and Defence Department planning, with the navy’s fleet modernization and restructure made a major part of force expansion and upgrade. New primary naval bases (LANTAMAL) were planned for the Padang, Merauke and Tarakan areas: navy chiefs publicized their intention to have those first two new lantamal – X & XI - underway in 2006. The Indonesian Navy’s simple two-fleet structure would obviously be unbalanced by the new bases, so the naval expansion was set to form three new fleet commands as replacement. Like corresponding army and mooted further marine corps growth, this new fleet structure would concentrate more maritime power in outlying areas at Tanjung Pinang, Makassar and Sorong. Surabaya would assume its logical role as the national fleet command centre.13 The projected Sorong-based Eastern Fleet planned for a deepwater capability, including plans for up to twelve new submarines, including at least two contracted by the time of writing. Other major purchases and refurbishment, and some bilateral projects, brought energetic Indonesian defence negotiations within a wide choice of prospective and established partners, including Russia, South Korea, Japan and the Netherlands.

Restructure & expansion for West Papua field unitsCompared with other regional Indonesian military expansions and plans, West Papua caught the greatest attention for build-up and projected cost. Local force restructure plans for the longer term (to 2019) would ensure previous levels of troop deployments in West Papua were far exceeded by the shift to new locally based units. By the time of writing, new army territorial units either filled the gap from reduced outside deployments, or increased troop numbers in some areas. As elsewhere in Indonesia, local TNI infantry expansion was intended to reduce Jakarta’s reliance on rotated unit deployments of non-local infantry to high-priority areas, especially in the areas of the Freeport mining complex, remote highland centres of insurgency, and along the generally porous Indonesia—PNG border. However, infantry and restructured special forces from outside of West Papua continued to deploy there for this period.

Three over-strength territorial infantry battalions added to the three (751, 752 and 753) already based in West Papua’s two provinces: that plan was already official by at least May 2003.14 In March 2004, KODAM XVII Trikora Chief Major-General Nurdin Zainal announced that the new West Papua-based infantry battalions would be fully raised during 2004—6; outside KODAMs’ infantry-run recruit training centres (rindam) already contributed 260 troops by that early stage, though the local Jayapura-based rindam would certainly contribute some, if not most, of its own locally recruited trainees. Posting over 1,000 troops each, the new battalions apparently used a less tenured system of individually contracted recruitment, while pre-existing local battalions reportedly prepared for increases to the over-strength scale.15

Initial use of such territorial troops in Aceh and West Papua revealed their greater

13 Berita TNI-AL, ‘TNI AL Rencanakan Miliki 12 Kapal Selam’, 21 April 2006,Puspen TNI, ‘Kasal Harapkan 2008 Tiga Komando Wilayah Terealisasi’, 15 May 2006, andCenderawasih Pos, ‘KSAL: Armada Butuh 5000 Personel’, 3 July 2006.14 Palagan, ‘Jenderal TNI Ryamizard Ryacudu: Rakyat Minta Komando Kewilayahan Dipertahankan’, October 2003 (citing then Army Chief Ryamizard in a pre-Aceh Military Emergency speech).15 Cenderawasih Pos, ‘Tahun 2006, 3 Batalyon Baru Terbentuk’, 5 March 2004. Several sources early reported the over-strength status for territorial infantry battalions in Aceh, Papua and elsewhere: cf fn 1 - Davies, Indonesia’s War... op cit., p. 63. Some later specific references included: Sinar Harapan, ‘Kostrad Bangun Markas di Papua’, 26 March 2005, andBatam Hot, ‘140 Prajurit Infantri Amankan Karimun Telah Tiba’, 28 July 2005. Online: <http://www.b atamhot.com/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=59&Itemid=40> (accessed March 2006). For an anecdotal, though detailed, description of such new units’ sub-contract-style recruiting in Aceh, see: acehkita.com, ‘Tentara Kontrak’, 23 December 2003.

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unit flexibility for commanders. Some of these ‘organic’ territorial battalions’ sub-units worked as ‘Raider’ and Rajawali companies in more aggressive ‘strike’ roles hitherto reserved for externally deployed, ‘non-organic’ infantry.16

The TNI’s most ambitious plans for local ground forces expressed in TNI executives’ wish for unprecedented projection of rapid-reaction KOSTRAD and marine brigades. After the Marine Corps’ near-thirty per cent increase in infantry and other amphibious elements from 2002, any ongoing corps growth would signal a conspicuously radical shift in TNI force structure. It was more in optimism than determination that the Corps’ executives proposed the raising of 3rd Marine Force (Pasmar 3) at Sorong, West Irian Jaya, as mooted in Gus Dur’s presidency.17 Not surprisingly by contrast, army publicity about its similar plans reflected institutional confidence as a more powerful service, and a greater certainty in planning for future West Papua operations. The long-mooted 3rd KOSTRAD infantry division18 would become an eastern node of deployment-ready troops covering bases from Sulawesi, to West Papua’s Sorong and Jayapura. The new KOSTRAD division’s first stage was announced with the planned brigade base for northern Sulawesi’s Gorontalo Province - the first of three such new KOSTRAD brigades - over the strategic medium-term (five-year) plan to 2009.19 Consistent with the new emphasis on border defence and force expansion, KOSTRAD Chief Lieutenant-General Hadi Waluyo confirmed in March 2005 that the TNI had a mobilization of volunteers for new battalions and deployment to border areas, such as the belatedly recognized Ambalat Island in the long-disputed Sipadan—Ligitan area of East Kalimantan’s Malaysia border.20

POLRI units made modest increase to their own infantry force in the BRIMOB (‘Mobile Brigade’) Corps: its battalion-level Sorong detachment reflected the Papua Police Region’s (POLDA) upgraded status from the period of Gus Dur’s presidency. But police expansion in West Papua concentrated most on the POLDA’s subordinate territorial commands, where newly raised precincts matched many new regency and municipality boundaries. Formal seniority in decrees of civil emergency government (PDSD, darsip / darurat sipil), and routine primary responsibility for public order did not impair continued TNI command in counter-insurgency and border security tasks, where army-led operations maintained an effective TNI institutional autonomy. However, a significant local change to TNI seniority appeared in Mimika Regency’s Freeport complex, where official security responsibility reportedly transferred to local POLRI command.21 It was unclear how both the based and deployed BRIMOB units would subordinate in practice with the new co-located army brigade HQ, itself reported (probably incorrect) report as a KOSTRAD command.22 West Papua (and Aceh) precedent showed troops’ normal function in patrols, posts and checkpoints run as joint TNI—POLRI sub-units (see also Map 2 and Appendix III).

16 Puspen TNI, ‘198 Mantan Separatis Nyatakan Setia Kepada RI’, 6 February 2006. Online: <http://ww w.tni.mil.id/news.php?q=dtl&id=113012006110608> (accessed April 2006). Aceh showed some companies in ‘raider’ functions from 2004: Raider and Rajawali infantry performed similar ‘mobile / strike’ roles, standardized in KOPASSUS-led training. See: Davies, Indonesia’s War..., p. 63, 76—9.17 cf fn 1 - Davies, ‘Indonesian Security Responses...’, op cit., p. 24—5, and (for example)Marinir, ‘113 Perwira Remaja Perkuat Korps Marinir’, November 2005.18 Lowry, Bob (1993) ‘Indonesian Defence Policy and the Indonesian Armed Forces’, Canberra Paper on Strategy & Defence No. 99, p. 83, 110. Indonesian sources mentioned 1980s proposals also.19 Gorontalo Provincial Goverment, ‘Pembangunan Brigif Segera Dimulai’, 9 May 2006. Online: <http://www.gorontalo.web.id/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=811&Itemid=2> (accessed August 2006), and RRI Online, ‘TNI Bangun Brigade Infanteri di Gorontalo’, 18 May 2006.20 Gatra, ‘Satuan Kostrad Siap Diterjunkan ke Perbatasan’, 9 March 2005.21 Infopapua.com, ‘600 Personel Polisi Resmi Dikirim ke PT Freeport’, 4 July 2006.22 Kompas, ‘Pembangunan Markas Kostrad di Timika Meresahkan Masyarakat’, 4 April 2005.

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Special operations & counterintelligenceAmong post-2002 perception-management measures around the assassination of West Papuan activist leader Theys Eluay, and the shooting of US and Indonesian civilians near Tembagapura, the local KODAM’s then chief Major-General Mahidin Simbolon announced in February 2003 a permanent withdrawal from West papua of the KOPASSUS unit implicated or reported as instigator and/or pepretrator in those scandalous killings. Mahidin Simbolon’s statement referred to KOPASSUS’ ‘covert warfare’ SGI task force (satgasintel, or satuan gabungan intel – joint intelligence unit), known much earlier as Satgas Maleo, later standardized as Tribuana for Aceh, East Timor and Papua deployments,23 and last re-named Satgas Cenderawasih in West Papua. Mahidin himself said: “If for example we regard our Intelligence Detachment (deninteldam) sufficient then we can temporarily cover [the loss of the SGI from Papua]”. To that effect, KODAM Trikora’s intelligence detachment raised its strength with 65 more troops. Mahidin also stressed that observers must not confuse the role of the officially non-military State Intelligence Agency (BIN) with the TNI’s duties in Papua.24 At least on that point, reported details of higher-level intelligence coordination would confirm Mahidin’s sincerity.

However, Mahidin seemed much more guarded about other specific and further-reaching changes to his formation’s special operations and counterintelligence effort against Papuan resistance.25 Checks of junior officer identities on operations revealed that both KOSTRAD and KOPASSUS substituted much of the old SGI ‘covert warfare’ force in West Papua, contrary to earlier publicity that ‘KOPASSUS was out of Papua’. The primary means for that restructure was KOSTRAD’s combat reconnaissance platoons (tontaipur) raised since 2000 under specialist KOPASSUS training. Deployments since then repeatedly indicated KOPASSUS, including its Unit 81 counterterrorist (Gultor) veterans, operating alongside KOSTRAD’s new, agile taipur units. Not that Gultor necessarily predominated among those tasked from KOPASSUS: one member of 12 Para-Commando Battalion was posted into the army’s local territorial apparatus,26 whether in the expanded KODAM Intelligence Detachment or otherwise specially assigned.

Taipur officer tours alternated between Papua and Aceh much as KOPASSUS Tribuana predecessors did. Combined with a cadre of KOPASSUS and other

23 cf fn 1 - Davies, ‘Indonesian Security Responses...’, op cit., pp. 16—17.24 “Kalau misalnya Den Intel ini kita nilai cukup maka untuk sementara kita bisa mengcover mereka”, in: Sinar Harapan, ‘Kopassus Ditarik dari Papua’, 25 February 2003. Online: <http://www.geocities.co m/batu_capeu/sinarharapan260203.htm> (accessed May 2005), andCenderawasih Pos, ‘Ditarik ke Mabes, Tugas-Tugas Kopassus di Papua Dilaksanakan Kodam XVII/ Trikora’, 26 February 2003.25 One ISG participant questioned this study’s use of ‘counterintelligence’ as the function of Indonesian special forces ‘intelligence’ units in West Papua. The conventionally valid ‘counterintelligence’ definition matched past official Australian usage i.e., action against enemy intelligence processes, and the prevention and interdiction of enemy subversion, espionage, and sabotage. This study asserts that TNI doctrine and practice has embedded counterintelligence into its operational methods of agent-handling and PSYOPS (including deception), suiting insurgency’s internal challenge as an otherwise conventional ‘counterintelligence’ matter, thereby overcoming the terms’ definitional ambiguity in counterinsurgency apparent in historical Australian doctrinal sources. See: Army HQ, The Division in Battle: Intelligence (Pamphlet No. 9), Box Hill, 1965, p. ix, 59, andArmy HQ, The Division in Battle: Counter Revolutionary Warfare (Pamphlet No. 11), Box Hill, 1965, pp. 54—5. However, the point correctly identified such usage’s potential to mislead the conventionally schooled by seeming to negate those forces’ continued reconnaissance, surveillance, collection, analysis and assessment i.e., defining basic ‘intelligence’ processes against a defined enemy.26 Cenderawasih Pos, ‘Di Argapura, Seorang Ibu Muda Nyaris diperkosa, Tersangka Diduga Oknum Anggota TNI’, 11 August 2004. Online: <http://www.westpapua.net/news/04/08/110804-di_argapura__ seorang_ibu_muda_nyaris_diperkosa__-5504.html> (accessed April 2006).


special forces, Aceh deployments depicted these units as part of the Cakra Detachment, within command and control by the predominantly KOPASSUS Satgasbanintel, or ‘Intelligence Support Task Force’.27 Unsurprisingly, KOSTRAD’s taipur troops included the black garb and counterterrorist élan of their KOPASSUS colleague-mentors. In West Papua, these units operated mainly in the highland and border areas. From such details it appeared that KOPASSUS attached officers as a leadership cadre to KOSTRAD’s brigade-level taipur companies, rotated between Aceh and Papua in much the fashion of SGI task forces of years earlier.

Despite higher command’s more vague references, detail from operations in Aceh, Maluku and West Papua revealed how the deployed KOSTRAD—KOPASSUS specialist joint forces incorporated elements of those commands’ old and new unit types with a tandem flexibility in the field. Lower-level identities inadvertently compromised the new arrangement, where separate reporting confirmed KOSTRAD officers Bahtiar S and Mufakher as deployed taipur field commanders, both operating in the same task force against resistance in West Papua’s highland Tiom District, May 2003.28 The subsequently promoted Bahtiar appeared later with his taipur company in North Aceh, September 2004.29 Both officers’ parent unit, KOSTRAD’s 1st Infantry Division, was confirmed in publicized work by a photojournalist and TV crew nearly a year later.30 During the West Papua Tiom area operations, the two above-named junior officers were locally commanded by KOPASSUS’ Major Ontang Sitindaon, himself appearing as an SGI company commander in Ambon, September 2000. In his Ambon tour Major Ontang served under Colonel Asis Wanto, who later took territorial command over that same area in West Papua (see Figure 5, p. 25).31 In West Papua, Ontang’s unit was the satbanintel (intelligence support unit, also known by the unwieldy satgasbanintel, intelligence support task force).

‘Counterterrorism’: new anti-guerrilla mode & ‘Trojan horse’Another important part of West Papua’s force restructure and expanded TNI units’ mission was ‘terrorism response’, an area hitherto normally confined to special action forces of the army’s KOPASSUS and police counterparts. Nationwide the TNI spread newly empowered ‘anti-terror’ and ‘counterterrorist’ (CT) duties to many different units. Even uniform style and equipment advertised such a trend to project an image of forces’ legitimacy as guardians of public safety. In West Papua from 2003, this ‘CT’ fashion combined with the actual retention of KOPASSUS troops in force restructure, despite their claimed withdrawal. Avowed CT priorities would help to ensure KOPASSUS’ continued presence while expanding the red berets’ influence into less specialized, less exclusive infantry units and the territorial KODAM apparatus. New, ostensibly ‘CT’ responsibilities and appointments covered all West Papua’s levels of military and police command, as well as the civil administration. 27 Kompas, ‘TNI Sergap OPM, 10 Tewas’, 6 November 2003. The reported support unit’s context and membership made implausible any normally defined ‘combat support’ or ‘service support’ functions.28 Cenderawasih Pos, ‘Dua TPN/OPM Tewas Setelah Terjadi Kontak Senjata Dua Kali di Kuyawage Wamena’, 17 May 2003.29 Modus, ‘15 Anggota Pemberontak GAM Tembaki dan Bakar Rumah Warga Afdeling-V’, 14 September 2004. Online: <http://modus.or.id/polkam/afdeling.html> (accessed February 2005).30 Yuwono, Frank Bambang, ‘Bersama id-photographer di Cilodong dan Studio Alam TVRI’, 4 September 2005. Online: <http://biawak.multiply.com/photos/album/20> (accessed April 2006).31 Siwalima Report 47, ‘Diduga, KM Anda 2 Di [sic] Dor Tiga Oknum BRIMOB’, 21 September 2000. Online: <http://www.hamline.edu/apakabar/basisdata/2000/09/24/0028.html> (accessed April 2006),Sinar Harapan, ‘Laporan Perjalanan dari Papua: Mengikuti Pengejaran OPM di Jayawijaya’, 3 May 2003 (Soehendarto), cf fn 28 - Cenderawasih Pos, ‘Dua TPN/OPM Tewas...’, 17 May 2003, op cit., andSuara Merdeka, ‘Dua Tewas dalam Kontak Senjata di Koyawage’, 17 May 2003.


More obvious, superficial changes expressed the political and bureaucratic means used to promote the TNI’s and POLRI’s increasingly claimed ‘counterterrorist’ priorities, whether as pretext, exaggeration, or even redefinition for the term ‘counter-insurgency’ too.32 KOPASSUS’ influence and institutional aura were the trend’s origin: KOSTRAD’s taipur platoons early adopted the CT style and élan as proxy imitators in this sense. The high-profile Presidential Guard (Paspampres) unsurprisingly exhibited the trend in its state VIP escort and close protection duties: all-black uniform and field garb, anti-ballistic attire, heavy close-range armament, and personal anonymity from sunglasses. More anonymous, impersonal appearance in TNI self-advertisement spread the frequent display by black-garbed KOPASSUS’ Unit 81 into imitations by the army’s ten new ‘Raider’ infantry battalions, converted from 2003 under KOPASSUS-led training. The TNI’s executive level nicknamed eight of the Raider battalions “the KODAMs’ own KOPASSUS”, repeating official publicity about Raiders as new CT assets with triple the combat power of normal infantry.33 The black uniform and ski mask / balaclava were previously almost exclusive to KOPASSUS, and detachments in the Air Force (‘Bravo 90’), the navy’s Marines (Jala Mangkara), and POLRI’s dispersed Gegana and ‘Detachment 88’. The TNI publicized its claims of wider CT capability from 2003, but troops so designated were still primarily tasked and deployed for counterinsurgency. Stealthy, often faceless CT trappings appeared much in exercises, parades and other routine, but the forces kept their main commitments in the anti-guerrilla campaigns of Aceh and West Papua.

From the highest levels of state, the new ‘CT fashion’ combined with organizational changes to official command duties overseeing such rapid-response, ostensibly ‘anti-terror’, capabilities. The Security Minister (MENKOPOLHUKAM)34 and Interior Minister took on parallel ‘anti-terror’ bureaux for liaison with all state institutions and agencies. The TNI’s institutional gain from these changes was subtle, not an explicit, direct or formal takeover of civilian intelligence and related CT functions. The Security Minister supervised national-level coordination of multiple branches of civil government apparatus through various regional civilian ‘anti-terror’ desks, but ministerial supervision covered TNI coordination more as a facilitative, intermediary function than a potentially interventionist authority. By contrast, the Security Minister’s authority ran directly into the Interior Ministry (DEPDAGRI) hierarchy via its National Unity and Politics Branch (Dinas Kesbangpol), which oversaw compulsory civilian programs of militia (siskamling, pamswakarsa) and reporting (wajib lapor). In this seeming hierarchical overlap the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) supervised coordination of all defined (and ‘negotiated’) non-terror intelligence processes beside the separate ‘National Unity’ functionary chain. But the Security Minister’s enhanced formal authority and reach into the Interior Ministry effectively circumvented the previously attained official responsibilities of POLRI in such sensitive and powerful state functions. As if to demonstrate an example of the TNI’s stealthy political use of the new ‘anti-terror’ hierarchy in West Papua, ex-Chief

32 A similar trend was arguably an international or global phenomenon at the time of writing. Redefinition of ‘counterinsurgency’ too seemed part of contemporary US-led operations in Afghanistan and Iraq: official statements often described resistance forces as ‘terrorists’, while publicity made much of shadowy terrorist figures in the context of vague reports about ground-launched bombing atrocities.33 For just one example of then Army Chief Ryamizard’s strident promotion of ‘Raider’ battalions as CT troops, see: Bali Post, ‘Indonesia Miliki Pasukan Khusus Terbesar di Dunia’, 21 December 2003. Online: <http://www.balipost.co.id/balipostcetak/2003/12/21/n4.html> (accessed May 2006). A more explicit demonstration was 500 Raider Infantry Battalion’s counterterrorist exercise in Surabaya, March 2006, as given detailed photographic coverage by Jawa Pos, 11 March 2006. 34 The office’s full expansion is “Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs”.


of Biak’s KODIM 1708 Lieutenant-Colonel Harri Partono ‘civilianized’ to almost immediately become head of Jayawijaya Regency’s National Unity & Politics office at its lower level in Jayawijaya Regency.35

The interceding National Unity hierarchy, with its separate paramilitary Satpol PP (Satuan Polisi Pamong Praja), spelt the TNI’s accompanying nationwide reassertion in state intelligence functions. This gradual process was first apparent in the Aceh Military Emergency measures declared from 2003 and, over a year later, after then presidential favorite Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s (SBY) birthday and its bombing outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.36 Alongside TNI advertisement of CT fashion and related claims about various units’ tactical specialization, the ‘anti-terror desk’ concept carried much further to effectively restore nationwide de facto TNI supremacy via the National Unity shell and its ‘regional intelligence community’ coordinating bodies (KOMINDA, formerly BAKORINDA) at provincial and lower government levels (see Figure 4, p. 22). Earlier, pre-reformasi New Order practice with BAKORINDA gave army territorial hierarchies formal authority over all liaison between civilian agencies involved in their variously specialized, more limited intelligence processes. In Gus Dur’s presidency, police often assumed BAKORINDA supervision, followed by expanded police CT and other internal security responsibility. The TNI’s indirect return to all-of-government intelligence dominance began from presidential edict in 2002 and local systemic changes gradually re-naming the networks KOMINDA, first in the capital Jakarta and its western Java surrounds avowedly responding to local threats from Aceh’s GAM resistance (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, Free Aceh Movement).37

West Papua’s KODAM XVII Trikora established its own, National Unity-compatible ‘anti-terrorism desk’ by late 2005, with a separate, elite training cadre preparing local territorial troops for new roles and operational methods.38 Around the same time, KOREM 173 Chief Colonel Tri Assunu donned characteristically black CT-style garb in a parade ground address.39 The ‘anti-terror desk’ function carried into additional infantry-based rapid-response sub-units directly commanded from KOREM-level HQ. Despite the new company-minus units’ standard, specific title, 35 Papua Post, ‘Pengamanan Pemilu Dibutuhkan 5.497 Tenaga Hansip’, 3 March 2004. Online: <http:// www.westpapua.net/news/04/03/030304-pengamanan_pemilu_dibutuhkan_5.497_tenaga_hansip-4826. html> (accessed July 2006).36 Many questions still surround that bombing, especially where Indonesian journalism revealed such anomalies as: an apparent murder at the Australian police attaché’s residence less than two weeks earlier; an SMS warning to outside BRIMOB guards; claims of a “suicide bombing” when the detonation vehicle clearly stayed mobile and not on a course of direct, most effective attack, and; signs of severe pressure on POLRI in its investigators’ event reconstruction and in sudden changes affecting the duties of veteran detective and anti-terror chief Gorries Mere.37 Kompas, ‘Bakorinda Direfungsionalisasi’, 10 June 2005,Jawa Pos, ‘Pamswakarsa Diaktifkan Lagi’, 11 June 2005, andJawa Pos, ‘Bisa Membantu Tugas Kepolisian’, 16 November 2005. For detailed examples showing the subtle shifts between BAKORINDA—KOMINDA, see:Suara Karya, ‘Antisipasi GAM, Muspida DKI Bentuk Kominda’, May 2003. Online: <http://www.suar akarya-online.com/news.html?id=63580> (accessed October 2004),Pikiran Rakyat, ‘Wali Kota Cimahi Kukuhkan Kominda’, 12 Juni 2004,Institut Dayakologi, ‘Waspada, Anda Diintai!’, 2004. Online: <http://www.dayakology.com/kr/ind/200 4/108/daerah3.htm> (accessed November 2004), andKOMINDA Kukar. Online: <http://kominda-kukar.tripod.com/> (accessed November 2004). 38 Mabesad (Indonesian Army HQ), ‘Bentuk Desk Antiteror, Pangdam XVII Trikora Buka Latihan’, 8 December 2005. Online: <http://www.mabesad.mil.id/beritatniad/081205dam171.htm> (accessed April 2006), and Puspen TNI, ‘Pangdam XVII/Trikora Tutup Latihan Antiteror’, 23 January 2006. Online: <http://www. tni.mil.id/news.php?q=dtl&id=113012006110543> (accessed April 2006).39 SCTV Liputan6 (TV news), 29 January 2006.


command and staff at KOREM 171 described the actual anti-guerrilla context for its own ‘anti-terror’ unit’s primary task. Paraphrasing General Ryamizard’s earlier claim about KODAMs’ raider battalions, 171’s Chief of Staff unsurprisingly nicknamed the high-readiness 752 Infantry Battalion sub-unit “the KOREM’s own KOPASSUS”.40

In its surrounding context of force expansion and upgrade, the TNI (and to different, less certain extents POLRI) trend towards a ‘counterterrorist’ image and justification was a clear manifestation of institutional growth and reassertion. The TNI’s confident publicity around its ‘anti-terror’ initiatives in West Papua showed no trace of conscious irony: possibly the area’s most significant, recent ‘terrorist bomb’ incident, for example, occurred in suspicious, even sinister circumstances of a corruption scandal, where a serious investigation of timber racketeering apparently brought a police precinct chief under extreme pressure and national scrutiny.41 Less ambiguous was the TNI’s newly ratified means to use separate and largely autonomous anti-terror hierarchy both for wider intelligence supervision and in rapid-response, KOREM-level military units in West Papua (and elsewhere). But whatever the extent of TNI manipulation in the ‘anti-terror’ issue, its value was obvious as a vehicle for resurgent political dominance by its traditional bases of institutional power i.e., specialized intelligence functions and their related surveillance assets in the army’s geographically comprehensive territorial apparatus.42

Overlaps & anomalies: territorial base command restructureAs a military organization very different from normal or conventional combat and support units, the Indonesian Army territorial apparatus of KODAM hierarchies had less direct relevance to the TNI program of force increase and upgrade. Territorial commands made routine liaison and coordination between TNI and service HQ, and central KOSTRAD and KOPASSUS commands, especially in preparing deployments and in planning for new bases and units. For KODAM Trikora, covering West Papua, the greatest and most immediate change from force expansion was to the KODAM’s base regiment (rindam), where a likely increased demand for recruit training was off-set by contributions from outside KODAMs in formal postings into the newly raised territorial infantry battalions and other units.

As a separate administrative mechanism embedded among Indonesia’s population, the territorial hierarchy itself did not necessarily become part of such institutional expansion, except where incorporating ‘anti-terror’ roles. However, conspicuous changes to the TNI—POLRI territorial systems in West Papua called attention to particular geographical and operational priorities within those systems. Due to the TNI—POLRI territorial systems’ political importance, certain political priorities were also apparent where those systems reflected both institutions’ relative power and influence in the adjoining civilian government apparatus.43

40 Rakyat Merdeka, ‘Antisipasi Teroris, Desk Anti Teror Intensifkan Latihan’, 3 May 2006. Online: <http://www.rakyatmerdeka.co.id/nusantara/print.php?id=1002> (accessed May 2006).41 See for example: Infopapua.com, ‘Barang Bukti Hilang, Polres Sorong Berang’, 20 May 2003. The point is not meant to assume the POLRI officer’s guilt in that corruption case: a bomb scare could have plausibly originated from another party most at risk from the POLRI officer’s reasonably assumed ability to expose others to prosecution or scandal from the timber racket case. Other ‘pressure’ on the precinct chief - Deputy Chief Commissioner Faisal Abdoel Nasser - appeared in reports that his wife had written pleas to the President, and to many other institutional and departmental executives. 42 Return of TNI ‘primacy’ in KOMINDA came with publicity of “revived” babinsa (village guidance NCO) functionaries, announced with sophist-style ambiguity: the institutions had never ‘died’.43 For an explanation of the normalized Indonesian de facto martial law, and comparison with the Aceh territorial structure: cf fn 1 - Davies, Indonesia’s War... op cit., pp. 56—9.


TNI territorial command & sub-divided civilian administrationTNI—POLRI territorial commands typically overlapped at certain hierarchical levels, especially in routine executive governance by the leadership triumvirate system (TRIPIDA) and its coordinating (‘consultative’, musyawarah) leadership councils. In such manner did many senior TNI territorial commanders (and less so their police counterparts) often assume de facto seniority over two or more areas of civil government, ensuring force priorities, or a ‘security approach’, almost by default.

Figure 1 TNI primacy’: structural overlap of military seniority

TNI - KODAM (military area command) POLRI - POLDA (police region)

DEPDAGRI - propinsi (province)

XVII / Trikora Papua Irjabar*

Papua

KOREM (military ‘resort’ command)

KODIM (military district command)

POLRES (police precinct) level

kabupaten (regency) level

171 / Praja Wira Tama 1704 / Sorong (POLRESTA) Sorong Sorong (municipality)*Sorong Sorong Sorong*

Raja Ampat*Sorong Selatan Sorong Selatan*

1706 / Fakfak Fakfak Fakfak*Kaimana Kaimana*

1703 / Manokwari Manokwari Manokwari*Teluk Wondama*

Bintuni Teluk Bintuni*1710 / Mimika Mimika Mimika

172 / Praja Wira Yakti 1701 / Jayapura (POLRESTA) Jayapura Jayapura (municipality)Jayapura Jayapura Jayapura

Sarmi SarmiKeerom Keerom

1702 / Jayawijaya Jayawijaya JayawijayaTolikaraYahukimoPegunungan Bintang

173 / Praja Wira Braja 1708 / Biak Numfor Biak Numfor Biak NumforBiak Supiori Supiori

1709 / Yapen Waropen

Yapen Waropen Yapen WaropenWaropen

1705 / Nabire Nabire NabirePaniai PaniaiPuncak Jaya Puncak Jaya

174 / Anim Ti Waninggap 1707 / MeraukeMerauke

Merauke MeraukeBoven DigoelMappiAsmat


Security forces’ privileged position in the territorial apparatus gave them a de facto supervisory role and governmental seniority, perhaps most apparent at formative stages of civil government sub-division, when TNI—POLRI chiefs could oversee new civil administrative entities from the point of their gestation. The overlaps of TNI—POLRI seniority were obvious at KODAM—provincial level since West Papua’s division into two provinces; legislation from November 2002, and inauguration by April the next year, enacted 14 lower-level regency (kabupaten) administrations in West Papua.44 The TNI exerted particularly broad overlapping boundaries over these new entities, with the notable exception of the already heavily militarized KODIM 1710 in Mimika Regency, site of the Freeport mining ‘vital national asset’ (obvitnas).

New ‘HQ’: hierarchical anomalies of KOREM 174 / Anim Ti WaninggapOverlapping TNI—civil apparatus in West Papua was more conspicuous from 2004—5, when army territorial hierarchy restructured in extraordinary deviation from normal TNI practice. With KODIM 1707 its only sub-unit upon inauguration, KOREM 174 ran against all normal concept of hierarchical military command and control. The unprecedented structural oddity in West Papua’s KODAM Trikora hierarchy appeared in the reported establishment of KOREM 174 in Merauke, mid-2005, publicized as a plan over a year earlier.45 The appointment of its first chief, KOPASSUS specialist and West Papua veteran Colonel Joy Sihotang, highlighted the exceptional quality of what would otherwise seem a redundant, even inconsequential, territorial HQ entity.

Figure 2 Restructure of Indonesian Army territorial commands, West Papua

44 Cenderawasih Pos, ‘Peresmian Kabupaten Pemekaran, 11 April’, 7 April 2003.45 Sinar Harapan, ‘Kodam Trikora Bentuk Korem Baru di Merauke’, 24 March 2004. Online: <http://w ww.sinarharapan.co.id/berita/0403/24/nas08.html> (accessed April 2006),Puspen TNI, ‘Pangdam Trikora Resmikan KOREM 174/1TW [sic]’, 2 Jun 2005. Online: <http://www.t ni.mil.id/news.php?q=dtl&id=1011> (accessed April 2006), andPuspen TNI, ‘KODIM 1707/Merauke Resmi Dibawah [sic] KOREM 174/Anim Ti Waninggap’, 5 September 2005. Online: <http://www.tni.mil.id/news.php?q=dtl&id=1301> (accessed April 2006).

XVIPattimura

(2000)

174

1705 17081703 1704 1706 1710 1701 1702 1707 1709

KODIM(1996)

XVIIKODAM

KOREM171 172 173

XVII

1703 1704 1706 1710 1701 1702 1707 1705 1708 1709

171 172 174 173

June2005

(KODAM VIII 1985—99) Trikora

Pattimura(1985—99)

MalukuMaluku Utara

Merauke area


Operational needs for control of field units did not explain KOREM 174’s birth: outside-deployed infantry battalions rotated through the Merauke area much as before (see Map 3, p. 33). Established local precedent of KODIM 1707’s inclusion in sector commands proved the area’s pre-existing manageability for counterinsurgency operations.46 The newly raised battalion (755 Yalet) too did not justify the KOREM’s creation: it imposed no greater strain of coordination, control or logistics than that experienced in many other sites of territorial infantry expansion, where new territorial battalions added to Kalimantan and Sumatera KOREMs, for example. Merauke’s odd KOREM did not meet normal criteria for precedents in separate, mission-specific ‘task force’ commands (satgas) either, where extremes of distance, diplomatic sensitivity, or deployed force numbers compelled extra, non-territorial HQ, as seen in contemporary cases of Aceh, and border areas of West Timor and Kalimantan.

KOREM 174’s deficiency in functioning subordinate commands should have immediately prompted serious scrutiny. Precedent in other new KOREM formations, and comments by senior TNI officers, confirmed that KOREM 174s lack of sub-unit commands was no Indonesian military peculiarity, but a military anomaly by any standard. One year of preparation was enough time at least to begin subordinate KODIM formations on an interim, preparatory basis (KODIM persiapan), as done in 1996 for KODIM 1710 in neighboring KOREM 171, for example, or in counterpart police cases in POLDA Papua’s new precincts. But two new KODIM formations were to be in place only by 2008: three years after KOREM 174’s official creation, when a new KOREM chief would almost certainly already occupy command, unless the formation was scrapped.47

174’s only KODIM - 1707 - kept responsibility for handling events in the area’s more remote (and new) Boven Digoel Regency in late-2005,48 despite claims that KOREM 174 led a cadre HQ element of 30 troops to prepare a new subordinate KODIM in that area. Only one such possible KODIM appeared by June 2006.49 By stark contrast, earlier proposals for new KOREMs in the new provinces of Riau Archipelago, Bangka—Belitung and North Maluku indicated a minimum pre-existing need for at least two subordinate KODIMs. In the Bangka—Belitung case, the KODAM chief himself explained that even two pre-existing subordinate KODIM commands were a deficiency, causing delay to the planned new local KOREM.50 For most practical purposes then, the West Papua Trikora territorial restructure rendered the single-stacked KODIM 1707—KOREM 174 a de facto ‘independent’ KODIM 46 For analysis of past sector commands and their relationship to organic KODAM and other forces: cf fn 1 - Davies, ‘Indonesian Security Responses...’, op cit., pp. 14—16, 27.47 Cenderawasih Pos, ‘2006, Kodim Akan Dibentuk di Boven Digoel dan Asmat’, 17 December 2005. Online: <http://www.infopapua.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3589& mode=thread&order=0&thold=0> (accessed June 2006), andSPMNews, ‘Korem 174/ATW Merauke Akan Kembangkan Struktur Terotorialnya [sic]’, 11 January 2006. Online: <http://www.melanesianews.org/spm/publish/article_1616.shtml> (accessed January 2006).48 Cenderawasih Pos, ‘Di Merauke, Seorang Warga Tewas Tertembak Setelah Berusaha Merampas Senjata Oknum Anggota TNI’, 2 December 2005. Online: <http://www.cenderawasihpos.com/Lintas/Li ntas.2.1.html> (accessed April 2006).49 Tempointeraktif.com, ‘Anggota Ekpedisi [sic] Jejak Petualang TV7 Hilang’, 9 June 2006. Online: <ht tp://www.tempointeraktif.com/hg/nasional/2006/06/09/brk,20060609-78648,id.html> (accessed August 2006).50 Republika, ‘Provinsi Babel Bentuk Korem dan Polwil’, 19 April 2001. Online: <http://www.republik a.co.id/koran_detail.asp?id=25006&kat_id=61&kat_id1=119&kat_id2=> (accessed August 2005),Infomaluku.com, ‘Korem akan dibentuk di Maluku Utara’, 2 October 2002 (citing Media Indonesia). Online: <http://www.infomaluku.com/arc/02/m021002id.html> (accessed October 2004), andRiau Pos, ‘Karseno, Danrem 031/Wirabima di Ujung Jabatan’, 4 March 2005. Online: <http://www.ria upos .com/web/content/view/4861/61/> (accessed December 2005).


(BS, berdiri sendiri), like the more politically delicate, high-priority KODIMs on metropolitan Java like 0501 / Central Jakarta. 1707 thus sat alone outside of its normal subordination (to Jayapura-based KOREM 172), but with the co-located appendage of a more senior HQ commander, Colonel Sihotang, and his chief of staff Lieutenant-Colonel Surono equal-ranked with the KODIM 1707 Chief.

Police restructures too contradicted the Merauke area’s ‘vertical’ growth in KOREM 174. Precinct command remained in just one POLRI territorial formation, making POLRES Merauke the largest in Papua Police Region (POLDA) until interim precincts appeared in mid-2006.51 Most other precincts already multiplied in sub-division, except those of highest operational priority: Mimika with its Freeport mining complex and; Jayawijaya’s more remote central highland and border area. The police territorial precinct structure expanded in accordance with much of the new civil administration, but the large Merauke area again stood out in the POLDA organization (see Map 2, p. 10). To the time of writing, several years of precedent allowed for informed observation of such post-reformasi changes, where security forces’ major territorial restructures appeared in Aceh, Maluku, and even the national capital Jakarta. Anomalous post-2004 organizational circumstances in Merauke Precinct and its TNI KOREM 174 counterpart indicated an unusual, temporary focus on that area.52

Recent TNI territorial command & staff appointmentsFirst examination could leave an unremarkable impression from the posting background of post-2005 senior territorial officers in West Papua. Their patterns of operational experience and specialization were generally consistent with colleagues in similar appointments elsewhere in Indonesia: a leavening of Aceh, East Timor, Ambon and West Papua operational tours, with a normally high proportion of KOSTRAD and KOPASSUS background. However, one other obvious commonality among recent appointees’ past service was experience in the territorial bases (resimen induk KODAM, rindam). The latest command and staff positions in West Papua possibly required a higher-than-usual familiarity with matters of recruitment and training, especially as they applied to the expansion of locally based infantry battalions i.e., intensified activity in drawing on and managing local and transferred recruits, selection and induction of suitable NCOs and officers, and infantry training.

Another conspicuous aspect of recent appointees’ more common background was a past regional association from southern Sumatera postings i.e., in KODAM II Sriwijaya. Possibly relevant to senior officers’ high Sriwijaya-related representation in West Papua was its demographic and operational familiarization for planned trans-migrant programs.53 Lampung Province, covered by KODAM II, was known for ethnicity-based transmigrant settlements of separate Javanese, Balinese or Madurese

51 cf fn 49 - Tempointeraktif.com, ‘Anggota Ekpedisi...’, andGatra, ‘Polisi Gagalkan Pengiriman Amunisi di Bandara Sentani’, 28 July 2006. Online: <http://www.g atra.com/artikel.php?id=96615> (accessed August 2006).52 The author’s earlier (2001) study prematurely anticipated army territorial restructure upon more limited and less precedented sub-division of civil administration: cf fn 1 - Davies, ‘Indonesian Security Responses...’, op cit., pp. 13—14, 27.One ISG participant (separate discussion, 14 July 2006) reasonably mooted KOREM 174’s possible inclusion of KODIM 1710, which would make logistical and hierarchical sense, while maintaining ‘political overlap’ with an earlier-planned third, Central Irian Jaya province (Irjateng). However, reports showed KODIM 1710’s continued subordination to KOREM 171 long after 174’s raising. See: Cenderawasih Pos, ‘Satgaspam Diminta Selalu Waspada - Yonif Linud 501/Kostrad Resmi Bertugas di Area PTFI’, 20 August 2005, andPuspen TNI, ‘Negosiasi Aparat TNI dan Polisi dengan Pendulang Emas’, 23 February 2006. Online: <http://www.tni.mil.id/news.php?q=dtl&id=113012006110725> (accessed April 2006).53 Detikcom, ‘Mulai 2007, Transmigrasi di Perbatasan & Pulau Terluar’, 12 March 2006.


Figure 3 Career background of senior TNI territorial officers, West Papua 2005-6*

townships. That area often preserved ethnic identities in the transplanted communities and trading networks into the province’s interior. Close TNI monitoring of such populations, and enlistment and supervision of their members for militia and other internal security tasks, would be very relevant experience for West Papua’s transmigrant nodes and, yet more important, where it could aid local recruitment for the increase in KODAM XVII Trikora-based territorial infantry battalions.

Another aspect of some officers’ Sriwijaya background, though more tentative, was its possible indication of political considerations in certain appointments i.e., where loyalty and some personal vested interest may have determined recent West Papua command postings. As is widely known, President SBY’s only territorial command from provincial levels was in 1996—7, for KODAM II Sriwijaya. Of course, this aspect of recent West Papua appointments could be mere coincidence, but any remote presidential connection may prompt better understanding where such possible influence on recent postings concerned the area’s significantly higher operational and diplomatic priority. The closest parallel in this regard was the temporal association between recently appointed KODAM Trikora Chief Major-General George Toisutta and SBY’s KODAM Sriwijaya command in southern Sumatera. Given SBY’s risen political fortunes since, any such connections would likely survive SBY’s earlier tenure when he had the most direct influence on appointments and links within the civilian community. The other two senior West Papua commanders with identified KODAM Sriwijaya background were there after SBY’s KODAM tenure: KOPASSUS veterans Colonel Tri Assunu at Biak’s KOREM 173, and; Colonel Joy Sihotang at Merauke’s odd, new KOREM 174.54

As ex-Chief of Aceh Operations Command (Pangkoops) and West Papua’s recent KODAM Trikora Chief, Major-General Toisutta obviously reflected the TNI’s priority in West Papua operations since the Aceh peace settlement; continuity in such high-profile postings confirmed Toisutta’s proven record as a reliable and responsible commander. Elsewhere in KODAM Trikora, and in its Merauke area in particular,

54 In response to more abbreviated presentation of associated detail than that listed here, Harold Crouch rejected this study’s assessed indication of possible presidential-level considerations in recent West Papua appointments. Less reliable than the clearer circumstantial indicators of other ‘Lampung links’ on p. 40, the point is not to pretend conclusive substance, but rather grounds for further inquiry.

Instructional / training roleOperational areaStudent roleUnit / territorial command / staff

* Covering 1995-2005. Approx. 12 more appointments unidentified Not including new appointments from mid-2006

RINDAM: Resimen Induk KODAM- KODAM base (training) regiment

KOPASSUS

KOSTRADSESKO

/Lemhanas

MabesAD

DAM VII/WRB

Sulawesi

DAM Jaya

Jakarta Raya

DAM IM-I/BB

AcehSUMUT

Aceh (DIA / NAD)

DAM II/SWJ

SUMSELJambi

LampungBengkulu

Rindam

DAM VI/TPR

Kalimantan

Rindam

DAM IX/UDY

Bali,NTBNTT,Tim2

East Timor

DAM XVI/PTM

Maluku

Ambon

DAM VIII- XVII/TKR

PapuaIRJABAR

West Papua

attaché


command and staff appointments showed clearer professional connections where officers’ posting background and operational experience were significant for the restructured territorial command apparatus and its new, expanded local sub-units in the field. Further contradicting earlier claims to have ceased KOPASSUS activity in West Papua, several senior career KOPASSUS officer postings showed that command’s disproportionately strong influence and seniority in TNI planning, operations, and unit training (including for ‘anti-terror’ and other rapid-response roles). Other significance from the new Merauke-based KOREM 174 was apparent in concurrent appointments and events involving related activities of KOPASSUS specialization i.e., intelligence, counterintelligence, and PSYOPS.

Streamlining & priority: appointments in intelligence & strategy The above-described organizational changes in planned and realized force expansion, rapid-response mechanisms for exaggerated (if not redefined) ‘terrorist’ threats, new state intelligence processes, and territorial rezoning were all followed by related changes in key senior TNI officer appointments. At operational- and strategic-level positions since 2005, the TNI discernibly sharpened its focus on West Papua operations and related command and staff positions. TNI and army HQ concentrated certain influential, West Papua-experienced intelligence and special forces figures into the same specific chain of command and reporting, from West Papua’s regions up to the national level. High-priority and new West Papua-related positions increasingly converged by late 2005, with greater significance to special intelligence functions.

National-level intelligence promoted the experience of recent West Papua KODAM Chief Major-General Nurdin Zainal into the TNI Chief of General Staff’s Assistant for Intelligence (asintel kasum TNI) then, just five months later, extra office as Chief of BAIS (TNI Strategic Intelligence Agency). Not since the 1980s had an officer held both senior TNI intelligence positions together. Nurdin Zainal had some three years of continuous duty as KODAM Trikora Chief and Chief of Staff before overseeing the TNI’s entire intelligence apparatus: his previous BAIS exposure was as attaché a few years earlier in the Netherlands, with its relatively large population of Indonesian (covering West Papuan, Acehnese, etc.) émigrés and activists.55 Apart from protracted duty in West Papua command, Nurdin’s overseas intelligence experience indicated his proven record in Indonesian diplomatic circles. He graduated as an officer in 1974, along with: the Security Minister’s ‘Papua Desk’ Head Setia Purwaka;56 Trikora Chief and Chief of Staff colleagues Mahidin Simbolon, Getson Manurung and Sudarmaidy Subandi (see Appendix I); ex-Army Chief Ryamizard Ryacudu, and; KOPASSUS luminaries Prabowo Subianto and Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin.57

Brigadier-General Hotma Marbun, like Nurdin, entered the KODAM Trikora executive circle after a term as Army Deputy Security Assistant (Waaspam KSAD). An obvious advantage from both Nurdin’s and Hotma’s previous internal security roles was their continuity in restricting access to sensitive matters. The KODAM

55 It was highly probable that BAIS experience covered part of the unidentified past postings of recent KODAM Trikora senior officer appointees, especially where gaps arose in publicity about officers recently assigned as Trikora KOREM chiefs and chiefs of staff (see also Figure 3, p. 20). BAIS’ secretive role limited this study’s findings to Nurdin Zainal’s initial and current BAIS postings.56 Suara Karya, ‘TNI Tingkatkan Pengawasan di Garis RI-Papua’, 3 April 2006. Online: <http://www.s uarakarya-online.com/news.html?id=139910> (accessed April 2006).57 See: apakabar, posting 27 August 2001: Akademi Militer Magelang ‘Lulusan AKMIL Tahun 1974’. Online: <http://www.hamline.edu/apakabar/basisdata/2001/08/27/0010.html> (accessed August 2003). Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin became Defence Department Secretary-General in this period (see Figure 6, p. 27). Sjafrie’s PSYOPS-related agent handling background, and direct interest in force expansion budgetary concerns, suggested his informal influence in deliberations on recent TNI West Papua operations.


Chief of Staff was well placed to pay particularly strict attention to limiting certain operational detail to a minimum among commanders and staff, in a conventional ‘counter-intelligence’ role preventing mission compromise. Streamed as a career KOPASSUS officer, Hotma took up his new post as Trikora Chief of Staff just after that office created its own rapid-response forces for ‘anti-terror’ and its formal reach into militia and civil surveillance via the officially autonomous, but lower-ranked National Unity & Community Protection Agency (BKBPM, kesbanglinmas).

From Nurdin Zainal’s above-mentioned army academy colleagues came a special ministerial-level appointment for presidential oversight of West Papua operations in the same way President SBY created facilitative roles when Security Minister coordinating Aceh operations. Just as the anti-GAM campaign from 2003 brought an ‘Aceh Desk’ under SBY’s protégé and election campaign staffer Lieutenant-General Sudi Silalahi, a similar ‘Papua Desk’ arose in reporting by early 2006. That desk’s head, Major-General Setia Purwaka, was reportedly another of SBY’s long-term confidantes. TNI Chief and Chief of Staff posts also indicated attempts at presidential oversight: those senior officers graduated from their academy training in 1973: the same year as the President himself. Of course, such executive- and ministerial-level positions took no direct part in intelligence functions, but their responsibilities included approval for assigning officers and units to intelligence-related posts for West Papua operations.

Figure 4 West Papua- and Merauke-focused command & intelligence, Jan. 2006Presiden

LTGEN (rt) SBYRoutine subordination / coordinationReporting / intelligence coordination

BAIS

?

?

TIMINTELREM

DENINTELDAM

COL K. J. Sihotang

LTCOL Totok SuronoKASREM

KASDAMBRIGGEN Sudarmaidy S.

CAPT Akmal

LTCOL Didi Suswandi

ASINTEL TNI KABAISMAJGEN Nurdin Zainal

KASUM TNILTGEN Endang S.

AM Djoko Suyanto

Desk Anti-Terror

174

1707

Desk Anti-Terror

Babinsa (NCOs)Ramil(villages)

KOMINDA

MAJGEN (rt) Syamsir Siregar

KOMINDA

Desk Anti-Terror

(provinces X 2)

(regencies X 4)

(districts)BKBPM

(Multiple hierarchies)

Siskamling

BKBPM?

Bupati MeraukeJohn Gluba Gebze

Gubernur

RES

POLRI(Intelkam)

(Bina Mitra)

Papua

Babinmas NCOs

Polsek

ASINTELDAM

DEPDAGRIKAJATI

Satpol PP

BINTNIPOLRI

(etc.)'Wajib Lapor'

'Wajib Lapor'

COL Kaharudin Wahab KOMINDAKESBANGPOL

'Papua Desk'MAJGEN Setia P.

MenkopolhukamPanglima TNI

Desk Anti-Terror

Desk Anti-Terror

KamswakarsaPASIINTELDIM

KABINADM (rt) Widodo

MAJGEN George ToisuttaXVII

IRGEN A. M'bai

MENDAGRIMENSESNEG KAPOLRI

(etc.)


The army territorial apparatus’ overlap of civilian bodies was crucial to the TNI’s reaffirmed lead throughout state intelligence (including counterintelligence). Figure 4 locates key TNI officers as appointed by new year 2006, but within an altered state intelligence and army territorial apparatus already in place by mid-2005.58 Although abbreviated to show only the main, relevant bureaucratic links and specializations, the reconstruction here could still easily baffle observers familiar with simpler, more conventional hierarchical models. Despite superficially apparent interlocking hierarchies and duplication of effort, such reconstructions should be regarded as both organizational chart and network diagram i.e., not a normal layout of separate organizations’ vertical seniority. De facto TNI authority and greater, routine lateral coordination indicated in Figure 4 were the means by which the Indonesian state system coerced a ‘security approach’ onto civil government: overlapping the territorial commands onto cadastral civilian zoning; weakening of POLRI powers by the National Unity hierarchy’s separate Satpol PP; ensuring practical TNI seniority over POLRI and civilian colleagues, and; a solid BAIS—KOPASSUS and army territorial intelligence apparatus almost entirely beyond non-TNI scrutiny.

The ‘security approach’ meant that army territorial chiefs could expect the civilian apparatus to cooperate in surveillance and information, but without the reciprocal or reverse process beyond TNI—POLRI tasking for information and advisory briefings on threat. The system was characterized more by its networked and militarized rather than departmental and civilian qualities, reinforced in civil agencies’ de facto military supervision by TNI retirees or serving specialists under the Security Minister, BIN and DEPDAGRI, and closer civilian—police structural and practical alignment. POLRI’s weakened status in these arrangements could seem unclear: after all, a senior policeman Inspector-General Ansyaad M’bai headed the National Unity ‘Anti-Terror’ Desk. However, his authority extended only to the Interior Ministry’s Satpol PP: more a token force of ministerial security guards or pseudo-police than a means of deploying armed power against identified or claimed threats. In a more specific, situational sense – whether in Central Java, Aceh or West Papua - the army placed its new KOREM-based anti-terror units of higher-readiness local infantry almost invariably at higher positions covering wider territory. By those same means could TNI intelligence functions preempt and counter any potential bureaucratic rival, whether from POLRI, the Chief Prosecutor (Kajati), BIN, or the Security Minister’s interceding National Unity & Community Protection chain itself.

Although Figure 4’s most conspicuous ‘anti-terror’ changes applied across Indonesia’s provinces, the army’s Trikora restructure with KOREM 174 accentuated effects of TNI intrusion, influence, and control in that system’s post-2005 West Papua transformation. KOREM 174 added an extra layer of command in the Merauke area to shift pre-existing command and staff into a lower-level concentration from the regencies onto districts and villages. Reports indicated a chief of staff and an intelligence officer as the only other functionaries in Colonel Joy Sihotang’s Merauke KOREM HQ. That limited detail possibly reflected a coincidence of source deficiency in this study, but the previously mentioned (and confirmed) anomaly of KOREM 174’s lack of subordinate KODIMs further suggested the extraordinary nature of Colonel Sihotang’s tasks. One report showed that KOREM 174 directly commanded a timintelrem (KOREM Intelligence Team);59 another of that command’s anomalies

58 Note that Figure 4 applies less to ‘Martial Law’ (Military Emergency, darurat militer) patterns of subordination, which formally delegate direct authority to the TNI chain of command.59 Cenderawasih Pos, ‘Di Merauke, Seorang Warga Tewas Tertembak Setelah Berusaha Merampas Senjata Oknum Anggota TNI’, 2 December 2005. Online: <http://www.cenderawasihpos.com/Lintas/Li ntas.2.1.html> (accessed April 2006).


given the TNI’s established territorial hierarchy for intelligence staff and units. Normal subordination from the KODAM’s ‘detachment’ (denintel) descended to a KOREM’s tonintelrem (platoon) to the next-lower KODIM level’s smaller ‘section’ (siinteldim), sometimes also termed the timintel.60 Intelligence commanders used the title of ‘chief’ or ‘head’ (kasiintel) at KOREM, with direct command of KODIM sections by a ‘section intelligence officer’ (pasiintel). In these details too KOREM 174’s intelligence chain overtook KODIM 1707: further to its unusual ‘team’ status, KOREM 174’s intelligence head held the same rank (captain, not a KOREM’s normal major) as the previously noted KODIM 1707 counterpart: Captain Mandjakala. Thus did Colonel Sihotang’s KOREM add an extra specialist layer (or merely take on some KODIM staff). Just as anomalous, its single KODIM command and staff almost certainly concentrated their efforts at the lower sub-district commands (KORAMIL).

Some changes merely formalized processes already underway from 2003, when the civil government apparatus became the vehicle for a major increase in detailed information on local civilian activity and indications of activist or guerrilla links. As the routine ‘coal face’ operator among the lower levels of civil government apparatus, POLRI used appeals to Christian piety when calling on West Papuan resistance (OPM) members to surrender. The technique combined with TNI—POLRI supervision of compulsory militia-style surveillance and reporting, publicly described as volunteer self-defence networks, or a system of ‘grass roots’ vigilantes (siskamswakarsa).61 Both tactics closely resembled contemporary TNI—POLRI activities in Aceh under the syariah (Islamic Law) decrees and mobilization of siskamling conscription for night watch (jaga malam) in populated areas. One apparent result came from the KOREM commands, especially 172 at Jayapura and 173 at Biak, reporting an increased yield of surrendered OPM resistance guerrillas and supporters by early 2006: TNI organs publicized detail of several hundred claimed victories in that regard.62 Missing from such trumpeted counterinsurgency successes were details about the methods often used i.e., surveillance and interrogation from within the civilian populace itself to identify resistance supporters. As seen from parallel militia—territorial operations in Aceh, guerrillas could be compelled into surrender when aware that TNI—POLRI and / or militia cadres had detained family members as virtual hostages (though detained ostensibly for their own protection against loyalist anger). Such were the intended results of a pervasive counterintelligence network and its militia proxies.

But at lower levels too, officers’ career progression and past associations were useful background information when analyzing new intelligence appointments for any unusual changes. Colonel Sihotang’s posting to the new KOREM 174 highlighted the

60 Tanter, R. (1989), “The Totalitarian Ambition: Intelligence Organisations in the Indonesian State” in Arief Budiman (ed.), State and Civil Society in Indonesia, Clayton: Monash U.P., 1994, p. 228,Davies, M., “The ABRI Intelligence Apparatus: a ‘corps’ of many lanyards”, in Australian Defence Force Journal, January—February 1999, andSuara Pembaruan, ‘TNI Tolak Berdialog Dengan GAM’, 16 August 1999.61 ElshamNewsService, ‘Semua Warga Biak yang Terlibat Separatis OPM Diancam Menyerah Sebelum Batas waktu yang Ditetapkan Berakhir’, 29 July 2003 (reproducing Biak-Numfor Police Precinct letters Biak 67/VII2003/BinaMitra and B/867/VII/2003/BinaMitra. Online: <http://www.westpapua.net/news/ 03/07/290703-semua_warga_biak_yang_terlibat_separatis_opm_dia-3171.html> (accessed July 2006).62 Puspen TNI, ‘Tahun 2006, Pertahanan Negara di Papua Semakin Baik?’, 3 January 2006 (G. T. Situmorang). Online: <http://www.tni.mil.id/news.php?q=dtl&id=1837> (accessed May 2006),cf fn 16 - Puspen TNI, ‘198 Mantan Separatis...’, 6 February 2006, op cit.,Puspen TNI, ‘Di Marauke [sic], Tiga Mantan Separatis Serahkan Sepucuk Senjata’, 10 February 2006. Online: <http://www.tni.mil.id/news.php?q=dtl&id=113012006110647> (accessed April 2006),MetroTV News, ‘Puluhan Anggota Separatis Papua Menyerahkan Diri’, 20 April 2006. Online: <http:// www.metrotvnews.com/berita.asp?id=15174> (accessed May 2006).


Figure 5 Relationship diagram: key army command & staff, West Papua

* Sources available to this study did not indicate KOPASSUS background for Nurdin Zainal, though such streaming was a more plausible precursor to BAIS appointments.

priority and focus seen from the appointments of Nurdin, Hotma and Setia Purwaka. Joy Sihotang’s West Papua experience was recent enough: his previous time there was as KODAM Trikora Operations Assistant some four years earlier. Another career KOPASSUS officer, Sihotang’s record included an Army Command & Staff School instructional position (1998—9) and, before KOREM 174, command of the KODAM Sriwijaya Base Regiment. His most specialized past role, and probably greatest career success, was as commander of the KOPASSUS Sandi Yudha (Covert Warfare) Maleo Task Force in its tour of West Papua over the drawn-out 1996 Mapenduma—Geselama hostage siege.63 In that mission, Maleo was fundamental to activities of reconnaissance, agent-handling and infiltration into OPM circles, where the task force’s influence was critical, especially when the case became an international issue due to the several foreign hostages taken allegedly on the orders of regional OPM veteran chief Kelly Kwalik. It would not be far-fetched to conclude that Sihotang’s 63 Suara Pembaruan, ‘Kasum ABRI Kunjungi Timika - Pangdam: Penyandera Akan Dikejar Terus Sampai Dapat’, 28 August 1996. Online: <http://www.suarapembaruan.com/News/1996/08/280896/He adline/pangdam/pangdam.html> (accessed January 1999), andKompas, ‘Sandera di Irja Tinggal Tiga Orang’, 1 September 1996. Online: <http://www.kompas.com/9 609/01/UTAMA/sand.htm> (accessed January 1999).

PREVIOUS POSTING / DEPLOYMENT LINK

174COL Kitaran Joy Sihotang2004-5: Rindam II/SWJ2000-1: Asopsdam XVII/TKR

1996-7: Satgas Maleo Dam VIII (inc. West Papua)

1999: SESKO Susreg Ang XXVI

2005>

171COL Kristian Zebua2004-5: Aslogdam II/SWJ2002-3: Kazidam II/SWJ

2005>

173COL Ervi Tri Assunu1999: SESKO Susreg Ang XXVI1998-9: Asopspassus1997?: Satgas Tribuana Rem 011 (Dam I/BB)

2005>

KOPASSUS LINK

172COL Asis Wanto2000-1: Sektor I/Ambon

2005>(KASDAM)

BRIGGEN Hotma Marbun

2001: Pusdikpassus2003-5: Wadanjenpassus

2006

2005-6: Waaspam KSAD

XVIIMAJGEN Nurdin Zainal

2000-1: Dam XVI/PTM

2003-5

2002-3: KASDAM

2001-2: Waaspam KSAD

??

?*

MAJ Ontang Sitindaon2003-4: Satgasbanintel Dam XVII/TKR2000-1: SGI Dam XVI/PTM

2003-4


success in Maleo brought him institutional prominence, if not fame, in discrete KOPASSUS and army circles: then KOPASSUS Chief Prabowo Subianto directly contributed by adding a local higher-level field command, with CT (Gultor) and other troops in a separate strike role. However, Joy Sihotang’s force had the most significant presence in the siege, though it was far more discrete in news reporting.

A parallel appointment to Sihotang’s was that for KOPASSUS colleague Colonel Ervi Tri Assunu, posted to command the pre-existing KOREM 173 at Biak from the same time i.e., mid-2005. Ervi Tri Assunu also had previous ‘Covert Warfare’ experience from command of the Tribuana Task Force (the standardized succeeding title for Maleo and similar missions in West Papua, Aceh and East Timor). Available sources specified Tri Assunu’s tour of Aceh in that function, but the nature of such missions probably saw his ‘rotation’ in a deployment cycle covering West Papua too. However, unlike Sihotang’s role, Tri Assunu’s did not imply the same level of professional accomplishment which would apply from a case such as the 1996 Mapenduma siege; neither did it involve a new, anomalous command like KOREM 174 in Merauke. From the available detail on senior post-2005 army West Papua officer appointments, Joy Sihotang appeared to hold almost central importance in a less formal sense. Past links and experience, quite apart from formal authority and function, depicted Sihotang as an esteemed ‘hub’ in West Papua’s KODAM Trikora hierarchy from mid-2005, deemed most suitable for allocation to a command with the TNI’s highest priority among all of West Papua’s KOREMs (see Figure 5, p. 25).

Colonel Sihotang’s return to West Papua operations occurred on the same time scale covering the premature birth of his KOREM 174 command (or HQ shell) in Merauke, as well as outgoing Trikora Chief Nurdin Zainal’s ascension to the TNI’s joint BAIS-asintel peak – and those executive intelligence functions’ combination in a single appointment. At the next-higher executive level above Joy Sihotang, the Indonesian Army expressed its own operational priority in West Papua by posting George Toisutta to command KODAM Trikora: Toisutta was earlier entrusted with the Aceh campaign’s counter-offensive phase from the start of 2004. In the same brief period from mid-2005 to early 2006, publicly available reporting confirmed the fully transferred national priority from Aceh operations to West Papua, as the Security Minister’s ‘Papua Desk’ replicated the previous Aceh-focused counterpart activating greater all-of-government discipline and coordination.

Another striking aspect of some executive-level officer appointments was their abnormally short duration. Certain critical but briefly occupied positions concentrated between late 2005 and early 2006, indicating a ‘surge’ for that period’s West Papua operations. Factors of timing, continuity from previous posts, and prominence in experience and reliability all pointed to mission-specific coordination and intensified internal security. Like the converging chain of West Papua, special forces and intelligence background in the inter-related postings from 2005, several of those same appointees ended their terms in the West Papua—intelligence command and staff chain in a conspicuous contrast with the overwhelming bulk of other officers rotating through the normal posting cycle (mutasi jabatan) of approximately two years (or longer). Although KODAM appointees in 2006 reaffirmed West Papua’s operational priority – Zamroni and Geerhan Lantara earlier held prominent Aceh commands – outgoing officers George Toisutta and Hotma Marbun had both been in their KODAM Trikora positions very briefly, at between three to twelve months. Their extraordinarily short tenure in West Papua was not possibly due to failure, but rather an emphatic confirmation of success. Toisutta moved on to take command of the army’s premier ‘heartland’ KODAM Siliwangi in western Java, the most prestigious territorial post beside KODAM Jayakarta in the political centre of Jakarta. Upon


Figure 6 ‘Fast tracks’: executive-level posting duration

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 >

PANGDAM XVII / TKR (KODAM Chief)MahidinSimbolon

NurdinZainal

GeorgeToisutta >

KASDAM XVII / TKR (KODAM Chief of Staff)> Agustadi

Sasongko PurnomoNurdinZainal

Getson Manurung

SudarmaidySubandi >

ASINTEL KASUM TNI (Intelligence Assistant for TNI Chief of General Staff)> Yoost F.Mengko

MochammadLuthfie Witto

DadiSusanto

NurdinZainal >

KABAIS (Chief of TNI Strategic Intelligence Agency)> Ian SantosoPerdanakusuma

MochammadLuthfie Witto

NurdinZainal >

(other senior appointments in text)

the close of that same short period (and just after the Merauke voyage), the TNI’s intelligence peak (BAIS—asintel Kasum TNI) reverted to its normal dual executive—liaison separation in two officers together replacing Nurdin Zainal.64

The narrow concentration of postings between late 2005 and early 2006 showed the careful and deliberate preparation for the ‘execution phase’ of a West Papua mission: career continuities in certain key officer appointments confirmed such emphasis. However, earlier unusual strategy- and budget-related postings indicated greater coordination with Indonesia’s Defence Department (Dephan) and very high-level approval for planning. In advance of the surge in specialist appointments both in West Papua and Jakarta, two senior Dephan postings in late April 2005 seemed to occur at very short notice. Both Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin and Dadi Susanto65 simultaneously vacated their respective Information Centre and Intelligence Assistant posts to their deputies: not the normal, more direct handover (sertijab) process observing military etiquette and routine where incoming and outgoing appointees together attended briefings, parades, speeches recognizing service, etc. Those two 30-year-plus veterans probably well knew the symbolic triviality of such strenuous, prosaic politesse, while their new postings would likely offer much more formal acknowledgment in due course; that sudden late-April transition instead pushed more pressing national priorities onto the two generals in their careers’ twilight.64 For reports containing detail of the unusual posting cycles, see for example:Kompas, ‘Posisi Kapuspen TNI Masih Diserahkan ke Wakapuspen’, 25 April 2005. Online: <http://ww w.kompas.com/utama/news/0504/25/212614_.htm> (accessed July 2006),Kompas, ‘Jabatan Kapuspen Diserahkan kepada Panglima TNI’, 26 April 2005. Online: <http://www.k ompas.com/utama/news/0504/26/102908.htm> (accessed July 2006), Mabesad, ‘TNI Mutasi 119 Perwira’, 9 May 2006 (citing Antara). Online: <http://www.mabesad.mil.id/ beritatniad/090506ad2.htm> (accessed July 2006), andPikiran Rakyat, ‘Toisutta Gantikan Sriyanto’, 11 August 2006. Online: <http://www.pikiran-rakyat.com /cetak/2006/082006/11/0104.htm> (accessed August 2006).65 Apparently two of the most mis-spelt TNI officers in Indonesian and outside sources.

Zamroni

Geerhan LantaraHotma Marbun

Eddi Budianto

Syafnil Armen

Eddy Yusuf (interim)

K. A. Ralahalu

Aceh tsunami

Dadi Susanto – Director Strategy, Dephan

Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin – Secretary-General, DephanKOREM chiefs 171—4

Christian ZebuaAsis WantoErvi Tri AssunuK. Joy Sihotang


Perhaps most remarkable of the shorter spans in officer appointments was that for KODAM Trikora Chief of Staff. The first brief tenure was under Nurdin Zainal, whose ‘fast track’ was marked by relatively early rise to KODAM Chief, during which term he was mooted to become the new BAIS Chief around a year before that actual appointment. Brigadier-General Sudarmaidy Subandi had the post’s next brief tenure, first covering the strange restructure with KOREM 174’s addition, ending with the asylum seeker voyage from Merauke and the ensuing diplomatic issues. The briefest Trikora chief of staff posting came after, by KOPASSUS one-star general Hotma Marbun. Hotma’s tenure was so fleeting – around three months – that it seemed his role was more a special assignment combined with the position’s authority: the time span would barely establish familiarity and routine with the staff officer HQ assistants and KOREM chiefs. Given Hotma’s previous official post as Army Security Deputy, it appeared that his Trikora posting covered a task suited to the procedural restrictions, discretion and trust in the army’s separate security assistant staff. In the context of West Papua’s diplomatic, strategic and operational priority, Hotma Marbun’s role seemed more that of supervisor for an internal security survey, or audit, to check the integrity of personnel and information within KODAM XVII Trikora HQ.

Mission for a veteran West Papua PSYOPS specialistIndications of West Papua’s strategic priority and intensified operational tempo were obvious from related postings of generals, the concentration of their appointments, and their brief time span. But the specific nature of TNI intentions became clearer at the lower operational level, ‘on the ground’ in the particular Merauke area emphasized by the strange new KOREM 174. Details of HQ staff composition, force structure and precedent elsewhere in Indonesia all depicted KOREM 174 as an anomaly probably tasked with a special, unusual mission: Colonel Sihotang’s KOREM indicated an abnormal superimposition of a more senior officer to a formation that did not really exist – at least upon his appointment and for many months later. For a well-known historical comparison, though much smaller in scale, his Merauke posting seemed similar to George S. Patton’s ‘dummy’ US army group in Britain, used as deception prior to the 1944 D-Day invasion of occupied Normandy in ‘Fortress Europe’.

Sihotang’s Maleo background in special tasks pointed to other operational peculiarities, or achievements, which better explained his new Merauke assignment in the same context of psychological operations (PSYOPS) deception as Patton’s example. Agent-handling, infiltration, deception and associated PSYOPS were major distinguishing characteristics of such KOPASSUS Covert Warfare troops’ tasks in operational areas like West Papua. In the last, more general category of ‘PSYOPS’, the TNI had no monopoly on the complex practice of trying to destabilize elusive guerrilla enemies and their support base. PSYOPS methods involved intrigues of deception and disinformation, including fabricated scenarios and spoiling tactics, to disrupt guerrilla leadership and spread publicity favorable to Indonesia’s government and security forces. Precedent from Australian counterinsurgency doctrine specified some basic PSYOPS goals and techniques thus:

b. Create dissension and distrust within the insurgent organization. c. Undermine confidence in insurgent leadership. d. Secure the defection of groups or individuals... Insurgent leaders, whose general locations and appointments are known, can be effectively neutralized through cleverly worded news releases or by planted rumors which reveal supposed cooperation with government forces. This technique is most effective immediately after a successful military operation. Names of insurgent leaders should not be mentioned but other facts should be revealed that leave little doubt as to the identity of the man in question.


That early (1965) source betrayed an underdeveloped, even formative, quality by introducing the topic with a caveat all but admitting its unsophisticated level of understanding about counterinsurgency PSYOPS, stating that such techniques: “... are limited only by the imagination and creativity of the psywar operator or his commander”.66

The TNI however was no newcomer to counterinsurgency and counter-revolutionary PSYOPS, having for years exercised its creative energies to practise such sinister warfare from East Timor, Aceh, and West Papua into metropolitan Java. Many Indonesian sources detailed specific cases of state repression where the TNI resorted to destabilization and infiltration of separatist resistance and other dissident targets, using techniques developed from local application since the early 1960s, if not earlier. The Indonesian Army inadvertently revealed KOPASSUS’ familiarity with sophisticated operational-level PSYOPS techniques in a formal army administrative instruction which survived East Timor’s 1999 sacking.67 Indeed, PSYOPS seemed the officially preferred TNI—POLRI weapon in more remote and sparsely-populated West Papua, with its resistance often tenuously united between severe topographical divides, many different languages, tribal sub-ethnicities and poor communications infrastructure. TNI special action forces retained such ‘covert warfare’ capabilities in West Papua through rapid adjustments to its deployed force structure. But from its various, longer-term changes in stealthy bureaucratic chicanery claiming exaggerated ‘anti-terror’ responsibilities, Indonesia’s military was arguably better placed than ever to wage its own preferred PSYOPS-led anti-guerrilla war i.e., via volunteer militia cadres within a large conscripted civilian base of sentry—proxies. That counter-intelligence and agent-handling effort would be overseen by special forces in training—mentoring roles and de facto field leadership over an expanded base of line infantry.

Creative PSYOPS deception could twist many intriguing permutations to misrepresent targeted resistance leaders’ loyalties, motives and even identities, but simple approaches apparently sufficed in most cases. The harsh central highland terrain, so tactically favorable to guerrillas, also favored disinformation campaigns by TNI—POLRI counterintelligence veterans whose easier access to communications and mass media afforded them almost uncontested ‘information dominance’ i.e., a situation in which Indonesian command could not only predominate in the quantity of disseminated information but even in the very initiation of scenarios designed to convey images of enemy mendacity, incompetence, disunity, etc. The highland interior therefore became the arena for a shadow war of perceptions, or ‘black’ information operations, with two prominent cases useful for retrospective consideration. The first case was the 1996 Mapenduma hostage siege; the second in the smaller 2001 kidnapping in the nearby Ilaga area. The targets in both cases were the legendary and staunchly committed local OPM field commanders Kelly Kwalik and Titus Murib.68 66 cf fn 25 - Army HQ, Counter Revolutionary Warfare, op cit., p. 59, 70.67 Buku Petunjuk Pembinaan tentang Sandhi Yudha TNI AD (Administrative Guidebook on Army Covert Warfare), Nomor: 43-B-01, 30 June 1999 (signed: Dankodiklat MAJGEN Sumardi; covering letter LTGEN Lumintang). Relevant scanned excerpts of the Army Administrative Instruction first appeared publicly on the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) website: the author thanks Andrew Plunkett for his communication of that valuable primary source in 2002, which was later published in: Kingsbury, D., Power Politics and the Indonesian Military, RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, pp. 99—101.68 For references indicating recent intrigues depicting the pair as surrenders or defectors, see:Banjarmasin Post, ‘Warga Tangkap “Kelly Kwalik”’, 26 January 2005. Online: <http://www.indomedi a.com/bpost/012005/26/nusantara/nusa3.htm> (accessed August 2005), andSPMNews, ‘Yosep Makonama Menyerah: Karena Sadar atau karena ada Konflik Internal?’, 17 February 2005. Online: <http://www.melanesianews.org/spm/publish/article_363.shtml> (accessed April 2006). Intrigue over the Mapenduma case survived into an early 2005 ‘surrender’, where the


It was no mere speculative digression to recall these events as case studies into TNI counter-insurgency PSYOPS: Colonel Joy Sihotang’s official functions were most closely relevant to the conduct of each deception operation, first as the field-deployed Covert Warfare Maleo Chief and later as the KODAM Trikora Assistant for Operations. Reports of both kidnapping incidents spread the impression of serious OPM disunity (‘factionalism’), as though Titus Murib opportunistically misrepresented himself as Kelly Kwalik. Tenuous anecdotal detail, rumor and some unclear photographs gave the story credibility among local and foreign journalists and other observers. Indonesians and foreigners alike repeated the impressions of permanent OPM internecine strife and callous opportunism as apparent in the double-deception of the perpetrator/s’ account: there was little other information in either case, while thorough, third-party investigation would likely only further endanger the hostages. Nonetheless, KODAM Chief Nurdin Zainal himself later flatly contradicted those divisive intrigues when stating that Kelly and Titus ran a joint command in the successful OPM raid on Wamena’s KODIM 1702 armory.69

Where paid and/or coerced proxies kidnapped foreign journalists, aid workers, researchers, etc., a layer of plausible deniability protected the TNI’s public image. Veteran KOPASSUS militia sponsor and Trikora Chief Mahidin Simbolon could compound the deception to put neutral third parties on the defensive, even feigning magnanimity and fairness towards the OPM. According to Mahidin, the two Belgian journalists in 2001 had not been kidnapped at all but had voluntarily joined up with an OPM band, then falsified a letter addressed to then President Gus Dur, complete with a simple, bombastic extortion demand for West Papuan independence.70 Although these PSYOPS activities were generally obvious when considered in hindsight, they had high counterinsurgency value at the time. Their resulting wide cast of suspicion and confusion: harmed morale among OPM guerrillas and their supporters; endangered them through lures of false contacts posed by planted agents; disturbed or even severed their crucial, mutually sustaining links, and; seriously discredited West Papuan resistance in outside perceptions, while depicting the TNI as a necessary, stabilizing guardian. In other words: disruption, destabilization and, most sought of all, entrapment of genuine dissidents, sympathizers and guerrillas, in politically motivated publicity favorable to Indonesia’s military and police.

West Papua PSYOPS deception appeared to shift emphasis from 2003, showing less direct effort at discrediting OPM leaders, instead providing cover for expanded recruitment and infiltration involving TNI—POLRI agents and other proxies. Intensified surveillance from compulsory civilian siskamling sentry and

mysterious Menase Telenggeng formally ‘turned in’ to POLRI as that earlier kidnapping’s “Kelly Kwalik”. The oddity of that ‘surrender’, including its congenial non-TNI handling, more plausibly depicted a withdrawal by a demoralized and scared ‘fake OPM’ band pressed into going on record. See:Cenderawasih Pos, ‘Mereka Terlibat Kasus Mapnduma - Kemarin, Giliran Kapolda Besuk 7 Tersangka TPN/OPM’, 5 April 2003. Online: <http://www.melanesianews.org/spm/publish/article_228.shtml> (accessed July 2006).69 Tempointeraktif.com, ‘TNI Kerahkan Dua Kompi untuk Kejar Penyerang Kodim Jayawijaya’, 5 April 2003. Online: <http://www.tempointeraktif.com/hg/nasional/2003/04/05/brk,20030405-07,id.html> (accessed July 2006).70 Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ), “Philippe Simon, documentary filmmaker IMPRISONED. Johan van Den Eynde, documentary filmmaker IMPRISONED”, 7 June 2001,Detikcom, ‘Pembebasan Sandera Belgia (3): Batal, Karena Larangan Agum’, 27 August 2001. Online: <http://www.detik.com/peristiwa/2001/08/27/2001827-120437.shtml> (accessed July 2006), andChristian Science Monitor, ‘Violence, a US mining giant, and Papua politics’, 3 September 2002. Online: <http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0903/p01s04-woap.html> (accessed July 2006). The author thanks the ANU’s Chris Ballard for his critical feedback where an earlier draft of this paper showed face-value acceptance of ‘genuine OPM kidnapping’ in other cases.


‘night watch’ (jaga malam) duties provided TNI—POLRI commanders greater coercive means to detain and co-opt assessed guerrilla relatives and other close supporters spotted in apparent courier or supply tasks from populated areas. From that point, staged and rumored ‘separatist surrenders’ aimed to later increase the rate of genuine surrenders and the chance to compel and/or entice full defection, or ‘turning’ of guerrillas into cooperative proxies for special operations. Such shadowy activity was never explicit, but its indications stood out among more routine accounts. From the northern coast’s Sarmi Regency, TNI Information Centre (Puspen TNI) composed a triumphal early 2006 claimed surrender / defection by 198 guerrillas. Half a year earlier, local resistance sources identified Daniel Buriyan (also “Buriam”) as a previous, more isolated case of a TNI-claimed ‘surrendered separatist’: OPM Combat Area Command II Chief Hans Yoweni described Daniel as member of a ‘fake OPM’ (OPM gadungan) with earlier paramilitary status as an army territorial auxiliary.71

Even less clear than the Daniel Buriyan—Sarmi case was the TNI’s claimed defection by southern Merauke area OPM chief Yosep Makonama, whose very existence was in doubt after his own earlier complaints about concentrated efforts against his life by paid assassins.72 The Makonama case suggested the potentially fictitious extremes in such counterintelligence activity, whereby an actually assassinated target could ‘live on’ as an agent’s cover-name where deemed useful to infiltration or manipulation of resistance sympathizers normally removed from the very limited, cautious and discrete OPM networks. Like Colonel Sihotang’s new command, that subtly different PSYOPS technique, or approach, appeared limited to the Merauke area.

The temporal and situational confluence in new forces, plans, restructure and key appointments all suggested a deliberate and extraordinary campaign with much wider and bigger objectives than previous West Papua counterinsurgency operations. Additional factors prominent in reports from 2003—5 were an emphasis on professionally specialized intelligence and special forces background in key positions, the anomalous new Merauke command, internal population surveillance and coercion, beside indications of various related PSYOPS techniques. These developments aimed not only to comprehensively destabilize, demoralize and marginalize the West Papuan resistance as a regional threat to the Republic of Indonesia’s Unitary State (NKRI, Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia); the militarized Indonesian State and its traditionally aggressive guardian in the TNI sought also to attain, opportunistically, any institutional advantage from its new priority mission. Although most indicators were crystal clear about West Papua’s new priority, many questions were unanswered about Sihotang’s strange Merauke command. In pursuing those questions, the TNI—state leadership priority and intensified effort on West Papua located their more recent activities to a higher, strategic- and diplomatic-level campaign.

71 Translation (unidentified author) from Jayapura Pos: ‘No longer a part of the OPM for some time but was afraid to report’, 26 May 2005. Online: <http://www.kabar-irian.com/pipermail/kabar-irian/2005-M ay/000656.html> (accessed July 2006), andSPMNews, ‘Daniel Buriyan Adalah Bukan [sic] Anggota TPN/OPM Mabes Pantai Timur Tetapi Anggota Masyarakat Biasa yang Selama ini Menjadi Mata-Mata TNI/POLRI di Wilayah Kabupaten Sarmi’, 2 June 2005. Online: <http://www.melanesianews.org/spm/publish/printer_700.shtml> (acc-essed May 2006).72 cf fn 68 - SPMNews, ‘Yosep Makonama Menyerah...?’, 17 February 2005, op cit.


The Merauke case: operations & perceptionsThe Merauke area, covered by KOREM 174—KODIM 1707 and POLRI’s Merauke Precinct, was not exceptional by the standard measures of TNI—POLRI counter-insurgency from 2003 to the time of writing. Infantry battalions made border patrols and routine support to the territorial apparatus in the interior, before rotating after year-long deployments from outside KODAMs. Local territorial infantry indicated a steady increase over years past when Merauke was long home to C Company, 751 Battalion (HQ Jayapura): the new 755 Battalion began to establish on Merauke town’s edge in part of the vast Wasur National Park (see Map 3, p. 33). Some reports specified troops in wanton shootings of civilians – most frequently cited was a case involving West Kalimantan’s 643 Battalion; other reports of varied detail described sexual assaults against indigenous female civilians. The area’s main repressive activity was characteristic of intensified counterinsurgency throughout West Papua i.e., the post-2003 activation of compulsory civilian sentry duty under militia cadres. Unofficial TNI—POLRI economic activity in the area appeared to continue much as before in logging- and fisheries-related sectors, though some public relations effort from 2003 pointed to internal POLRI corruption investigations and fewer (mostly non-army) TNI cases. In the latter sense, publicity from that time began to depict the army as a protector of forestry, where separate West Papua-wide operations strove for public perceptions of a more regulated local timber industry.

Merauke, however integral to routine TNI—POLRI operations against OPM guerrillas, was nonetheless a contrast to activity in the other PNG-border areas. The more mountainous OPM heartland eastward from Paniai reported many more combat incidents and atrocity cases. The most prominent examples of the OPM’s central highland area’s warfare were in 2003: an overwhelming assault on a Military Sub-District (KORAMIL) and occupation of a local township and airstrip in the centre, and the lower-scale but equally significant and successful Wamena area armory raid. Also exceeding Merauke were cases in the adjoining north coast area to Jayapura, recorded many more recorded cases of arbitrary detention, interrogation, killings, and combat surrounding the activist hotbed of Papua Province’s harbor capital. Recent demonstrations, reprisals and OPM raids in the Jayapura area from late 2005 were another contrast with the Merauke at the opposite, southern coastal lowlands.73

Apart from the March 2004 announcement to create the new KOREM 174, mid-2004 saw the earliest indication of unusual, exceptional activity in the Merauke region. From that time, several reports consolidated impressions of a Merauke-based, TNI-led PSYOPS campaign to provoke and deceive local OPM resistance sympathizers into revealing their anti-Jakarta sympathies. The tactic was subtle in that the actual OPM support base, much less OPM members and leadership, could not be feasibly lured by the methods applied. Rather than better-known PSYOPS targeting OPM leadership, for example, the apparent campaign had a more gradual and modest aim i.e., to excite enough popular dissent against outlandish official statements so that local ‘fellow traveller’ dissidents could be identified and cultivated for later manipulation. Such intrigue, almost defining a combination of counterintelligence work with PSYOPS deception as a case study, was the only plausible explanation for the immoderate but clearly deliberate public statements by senior Merauke-based TNI—POLRI officers from that time.

The first aspect of the extraordinary official approach would easily categorize within the Indonesian State’s mnemonic acronym ‘SARA’, denoting social divisions

73 For a usefully succinct, referenced summary of those events (and earlier background), see:Chauvel, R., ‘Australia, Indonesia & the Papuan crises’, 27 April 2006 (Austral Policy Forum 06-14A).


along categories defined as “ethnic-tribal, class, racial and religious” (suku, antar-golongan, ras, agama). Local indigenous catholics protested after Merauke’s KODIM and Precinct chiefs held repeated official and unofficial meetings with the newly appointed non-indigenous (possibly ethnic Javanese or Chinese) Bishop Nico Adisaputra and a select group of non-indigenous members of the laity. Instead of any accommodating measures for the offended West Papuan laity, authorities inflamed the situation by alleging protesters to be separatists, provocateurs and racists. Even the state-owned RRI broadcast the inflammatory allegations,74 all but confirming a deliberately sanctioned approach by the TNI—POLRI chiefs from their coordination meetings with other government agencies (MUSPIDA), if not also with select local religious leaders. There was no reported resolution to that ensuing discontent when, over a year later, chief of the new KOREM 174 Colonel Joy Sihotang publicized a claim that Bishop Adisaputra aided his TNI mission via fruitful cooperation, crediting his formation’s success to support by community leaders including the Bishop.75

Contrary to the attention on other contemporary events in West Papua, from violent Jayapura and Timika protest and repression to sporadic, yet more intensely violent guerrilla warfare and reprisal in the highlands, developments in the Merauke area confirmed its greater, unusual predominance of PSYOPS and related counter-intelligence activity during the period. A resistance source seemed uncannily accurate when linking the new (then pending) Merauke-based KOREM 174 with local TNI claims to have turned OPM commander ‘Yoseph Makonama’. Whether genuine, or another identity groomed for a future covert role posing as the OPM commander, the subject ‘defector’ was kept under close, but apparently comfortable TNI—POLRI watch. Makonama was reportedly targeted several months earlier by missions which pointed to other, indigenous ‘SARA’ intrigue enlisting agents from the area’s Marind people.76 Like the new KOREM 174 formation, the Makonama defection did not seem the typical ‘surrender’ case where Indonesian nationalist publicity could advertise a responsible, repentant ex-guerrilla seeking a normal life.

Further abnormal PSYOPS arose just after Joy Sihotang officially took charge of Merauke’s new, odd KOREM 174. Resistance sources themselves seemed baffled by the new provocation, drawing no conclusions beyond the simplest and worst expectations of intensified violent TNI—POLRI repression. Staff from KODIM 1707 and Merauke Police Precinct’s Intelligence & Security (Intelkam) disseminated ‘news’ of an impending East Timor—INTERFET-style deployment to usher in West Papuan independence.77 The territorial apparatus continued such bizarre disinformation six months later farther away in the area’s Boven Digoel interior.78 The otherwise bombastic effort would be regarded a cynical TNI—POLRI joke at the expense of West Papua’s resistance, except when considered within the local context of

74 WPNews, ‘Teror Terhadap Kaum Katolik Papua Maroke’, 24 June 2004. Online: <http://www.papua independent.com/kabar/publish/article_903.shtml> (accessed April 2006).75 Infopapua.com, ‘Danrem: Keberhasilan Kami Tidak Lepas dari Dukungan Masyarakat’, 3 October 2005. Online: <http://www.infopapua.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid= 3261&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0> (accessed April 2006).76 cf fn 68 & 72 - SPMNews, ‘Yosep Makonama Menyerah...?’, 17 February 2005, op cit., andcf fn 62 - Puspen TNI, ‘Tahun 2006, Pertahanan Negara...?’, 3 January 2006, op cit. Another Puspen TNI release made the incorrect passing reference locating the Makonama defection to Manokwari:cf fn 16 & 62 - Puspen TNI, ‘198 Mantan Separatis...’, 6 February 2006, op cit.77 SPMNews, ‘Di Merauke, TNI/POLRI Bilang Pasukan Asing Sudah Tiba di Jayapura untuk Amankan Kemerdekaan Papua Barat Tanggal 15 Agustus 2005’, 25 July 2005. Online: <http://www.melanesiane ws.org/spm/publish/article_817.shtml> (accessed May 2006).78 SPMNews, ‘Tentang Papua Merdeka, Para Penjilat Pantat Penajajah Tipu Rakyat Papua Boven Digoel’, 12 January 2006. Online: <http://www.melanesianews.org/spm/publish/article_1621.shtml> (accessed June 2006).


topography, ethnic division, and poor civilian communications exacerbated by a pervasive fear of military, police and covert counterintelligence surveillance through eavesdropping and infiltration. Like the blatant SARA provocation of indigenous catholics in the Merauke Diocese, the deliberate ‘INTERFET news’ PSYOPS tactic was no desperate naïve attempt to snare OPM leaders, rank-and-file members, or their clandestine and covert networks: that cautious, active minority - dependent upon reliable internal communication for their lives - knew far better than to respond to such tall stories. In that case, Indonesian troops in the Merauke area rather sought the easiest catches in the guerrillas’ pond i.e., the more naïve, uncritical types among the mass of indigenous resistance sympathizers, otherwise safely disconnected from genuine resistance networks which had very little safe means of countering the TNI—POLRI ruse. But after exciting enough nearby questioning and speculative talk, the forces’ agents could make their approaches to sympathizers as part of a covert ‘fake OPM—activist’ (OPM—aktivis gadungan) recruitment drive.

Another incident from the Merauke area added impressions of that area’s exceptional situation in the period. Cenderawasih Pos reported that local fishermen had discovered an adult female corpse in the direction of the Arafura Sea’s Indonesia—Australia maritime boundary, or some 80 nautical miles from Merauke. The local precinct chief said his HQ was ready to facilitate a visit by Australian forensic staff still in Bali for investigations into the second major terrorist bombing there: the body was to be disinterred in Merauke (it was claimed that burial was made after transfer to Merauke’s hospital) and examined with DNA testing to determine whether the woman was an Australian citizen. The unusual report gave further description of the corpse (height, estimated age, clothing, and a distinguishing wrist tattoo), but mentioned no possible cause of death, or even any autopsy.79 Such news would normally attract scrutiny for any possibly sinister background to the woman’s death and her probable Australian origin (Indonesian sources would hardly mistake one of their own citizens in such assessment). In West Papua and Merauke from 2005 however, the incident should have attracted serious attention in light of KODAM XVII’s apparently heightened internal security, and senior TNI statements months later alleging foreign espionage via non-government organizations in West Papua.

Later Merauke-related events took much greater, international public attention. Forty three West Papuan asylum seekers made a voyage from Merauke to the Australian mainland at Cape York, displaying a prominent pro-independence banner replete with OPM ‘Morning Star’ (Bintang Kejora) flag. Their departure area seemed oddly close to concentrations of TNI—POLRI HQ, troops and other facilities, including the Merauke Naval Base. On the other hand, security by Indonesia’s PNG border had reportedly intensified,80 probably due to the presence of a near-established and over-strength 755 Territorial Infantry Battalion available as a local cadre for border surveillance and interception patrols. Upon close examination of the area up until that time, the voyage from Merauke indicated a deliberate manipulation by TNI PSYOPS veterans, buffered by proxy agents for strict deniability – both to OPM resistance circles and to those at the destination: Australian citizens and their government.81 79 Cenderawasih Pos, ‘Tim Labfor Australia Akan Ambil DNA’, 31 October 2005.80 Louise Byrne of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) relayed West Papuan explanations that the Indonesia—PNG border, long-renowned as a porous, frequently-crossed boundary, had become harder to penetrate. See: The Torres News, ‘West Papuan asylum seekers on Cape York’, 18 January 2006 (Corey Bousen and Damian Baker). Online: <http://www.torresnews.com.au/index.php?option=co m_content&task=view&id=72&Itemid=1> (accessed January 2006).81 Beside discussion about the firm indications of associated covert PSYOPS, this study’s assessment is in no way meant to contradict or diminish the 43 West Papuan asylum seekers’ claims for visa status.

1. June 2004, September 2005Religionist intrigue especially around appointment of local bishop

2. September 2004OPM’s Yosep Makonama claims assassination attempts by Merauke Regent Gebze’s paid agents

3. 5 February 2005Reported defection by OPM’s Yosep Makonama to Merauke Regent’s residence

4. 1 June 2005Official appointment of KOREM 174 Chief (DANREM) Colonel Kitaran Joy Sihotang

5. 25 July 2005 (Merauke), early January 2006 (Boven Digoel)Reported PSYOP tactic: ‘news’ by KODIM 1707 & Merauke Police Precinct Intelligence& Security branch (Intelkam) claiming planned INTERFET-style entry to Papua

6. October 2005Possible murder. Report claiming discovery of corpse near Indonesia--Australia sea boundary; for Merauke disinterrment & DNA test for identification of possible Australian citizenship

7. 13-17 January 2006Voyage from Merauke by 43 West Papuan asylum seekers

8. 1 February 2006Report citing Merauke Regency Government: evacuation of 500+ nearby coastal civilians to Merauke's TNI & regency government facilities; storm damage and locals' ‘fear of tsunami’

9. 4-5 April 2006President SBY celebrates harvest time with Merauke community & apparatus

Map 3 Mixed events & perceptions: the Merauke area, 2004–6

A r a f u r aS e a


PNG

AUSTRALIA

Merauke

Janie Ck

Weam

Sota

174

1707

km1000 200

Oct 03

Nov 04

Jan 06V512

VI643

VI631

VI623

XVII755( )+

-TaipurBanintel

2004-6

Jun 05

?

1

2

45

7

8

9

3


INDONESIA

SARAKAT

?

?6


Harvest time: Pak Ogah Arafuru & phoney infowar82

After public, official requests first seen in February 2006, President SBY visited Merauke in early April to join harvest celebrations.83 Certainly Merauke gave historical resonance in Indonesian nationalism: nearby Boven Digoel was a site of imprisonment for anti-colonial dissidents during the Dutch regime’s later period, mythologically including a term of exile there by first president Soekarno.84 Merauke, with Aceh’s Sabang Island, colloquially defined the longitudinal span of state sovereignty in the slogan: ‘from Sabang to Merauke’. But apart from the area’s Indonesian nationalist symbolism, other more compelling sentiments, resentments and, above all, expansionist military planning, made Merauke in 2005—6 most significant for Jakarta’s national leadership elite, from the emotionally patriotic, nationalist stalwarts to the cynical pragmatists alike. The unusual recent incidents in the Merauke area, Colonel Sihotang’s odd command and mission there, with associated TNI consolidation of political power and expansion plans, all pointed towards a sophisticated Indonesian strategic-level PSYOPS campaign: in other words, covert and clandestine use of ‘diplomacy as war by other means’.

Diplomatic coercion was the most plausible explanation for West Papua’s unusual recent military and security-related events, their timing, and broader Indonesian military context. The dynamic most immediately favorable to such Indonesian diplomacy was the Australian Government’s own manipulation of certain ‘SARA’ divisions i.e., the ethno-religious bias, especially where coalition government leaders and conservative Christian lobbies curiously allied with self-styled ‘culture warriors’ (often less overt) claiming to defend a western liberalist inheritance. Australian SARA politics made the grant of visas to 43 (Christian) West Papuans almost a fait accompli, despite an initial single, token rejection on spurious legalistic grounds. From that precedent, any repeat of earlier Muslim asylum seekers’ mass and indefinite incarceration (or worse, of mass drowning in scandalous circumstances) would invite intense international and domestic outrage at state hypocrisy. A lost sense of political credibility and moral authority was one sure prospect, in an ironical twist echoing an earlier hypothesis by columnist Philip Adams, foreseeing potential political quandary for Australia’s coalition government if confronted by Christian asylum-seekers from Indonesia.85 Other risk was lost Australian diplomatic credibility due to conspicuous, practical endorsement to the political claims of West Papuan resistance while making formal pledges of support to Indonesian sovereignty.

But the main risk for the Australian Government was to its domestic political standing due to the challenge any new voyages posed to its rhetorical nationalistic boasts about ‘border protection’, especially since the 2001 federal election. The most compelling dangers to the Australian side were to the ruling Canberra elite’s wider corporate party interests and implicit, individual self interest, in electoral security built on manipulated voter perceptions. That elite secured its ‘border protection’ credentials by frequently invoking and exaggerating spirits of national mythology to advertise:

82 Originating from a militia-style, stand-over siskamling ne’er-do-well character in the 1980s Si Unyil children’s TV series, Pak Ogah was a colloquial name for extortionists in street-level opportunism, especially infamous in peak-hour Jakarta. Arafuru is the Indonesian-Malay name for the Arafura (Sea).83 Kompas, ‘Presiden Panen Raya di Merauke’, 4 April 2006. Online: <http://www.kompas.com/utama/ news/0604/04/133934.htm> (accessed June 2006), andKompas, ‘Presiden Dialog dengan Masyarakat Merauke’, 5 April 2006. Online: <http://www.kompas.c om/utama/news/0604/05/091659.htm> (accessed June 2006).84 The author thanks Chris Ballard for his correction on the issue of ‘Soekarno’s Boven Digoel exile’. 85 The Weekend Australian, ‘A nice line in bigotry’, 21 December 2001. Adams’ comment used the case of hypothetical inter-religious strife in Aceh, with its actually tiny Christian population. However, his point was prophetic about Australian SARA-based political dynamics.


close identification with the military; related jingoistic Anzac cliché; near-compulsory flag worship, and; oblique vilification of ethno-religious ‘others’. An imposing facade of patriotic pride, vigilance and prejudice lent its builders an aura of political strength; removal of its ‘border protection’ base by repeated practical demonstration of failure and religious prejudice would cause the larger edifice to collapse. That prospect posed profound, longer-term risks for the leadership’s reputation and nationalist self-justification: it could even cause a wider national (and non-partisan) morale crisis.

Almost immediately after the Merauke—Cape York voyage, reports from Indonesia prodded Australian Government perceptions in precisely that direction of self-interested panic. By some contrast, mainstream Australian public perceptions held the January voyage by 43 asylum seekers to Cape York peninsula as exceptional, with other, smaller isolated cases reported to the August close of parliamentary debate over a new migration bill. But Australia’s diplomatic and intelligence apparatus would be left in little doubt about Indonesian messages of an impending widespread source of new seaborne arrivals. Further such unusual events in the Merauke area were depicted shortly after the attention-grabbing voyage of the 43. Sinar Harapan claimed from official sources that authorities had evacuated 505 West Papuans from a coastal township in Merauke District, citing storms, tidal turbulence and strange local rumors of an impending tsunami danger. According to the report, Merauke’s air force base, KOREM 174 HQ and Interior Ministry properties sheltered the half-thousand evacuees (see Map 3, p. 35).86 That odd report seemed to tally with other sources reaching Australia, as Melbourne’s The Age reported in the next month that some 500 West Papuans planned a similar exodus pending the results of the group of 43’s applications for Australian political asylum.87

From the same time shortly after the Cape York voyage, but farther to Merauke’s west on Bali’s neighboring Lombok Island, came another mooted plan to seek asylum from persecution. This time the reported intention involved members of the ‘latter-day’ Ahmadiyah Islamic sect, denounced as heretics by many influential Indonesian Muslims. An Ahmadiyah exodus would supposedly flee Lombok and elsewhere in eastern Indonesia to seek Australian sanctuary, though Jakarta’s Foreign Ministry presented itself as an official counter to such plans. But in that February the nationalist, state-affiliated Indonesian Muslim Clerics Council (MUI) backed the Ahmadiyah wish for asylum.88 In the same period, West Papuans also reportedly planned to seek asylum directly at Australia’s Jakarta Embassy. Meanwhile, Jakarta’s normally anti-communist press made an uncharacteristically favorable report of Cuba’s Fidel Castro in Media Indonesia, celebrating the anniversary of his Bay of Pigs victory.89 One Australian letter-writer made the Merauke case’s more explicit and pertinent ‘Cuba connection’ in Melbourne’s Herald—Sun, alluding to Castro’s success decades earlier when evicting criminals and dissidents to the mainland USA.86 Sinar Harapan, ‘Antisipasi Tsunami Ratusan Warga Merauke Diungsikan’, 2 February 2006. Online: <http://www.sinarharapan.co.id/berita/0602/02/sh02.html> (accessed April 2006).87 The Age, ‘Jakarta Retaliates, and More to Flee’, 25 March 2006.88 As if confirming the issue’s domestic political sensitivity, most Australian and other English language sources seemed very late reporting the Ahmadiyah wish for Australian asylum. See for example:Tempo Interaktif, ‘“Anggota Ahmadiyah Tak Bisa Mencari Suaka Politik”’, 5 February 2006. Online: <http://www.tempointeraktif.com/hg/nasional/2006/02/05/brk,20060205-73470,id.html> (accessed April 2006),Jawa Pos, ‘Ahmadiyah Rencanakan Minta Suaka Politik ke Negara Lain’, 6 February 2006,Suara NTB, ‘MUI Sambut Baik Rencana Ahmadiyah Lakukan Suaka Politik’, 7 February 2006. Online:<http://www.suarantb.com/2006/02/07/wilayah/Mataram/xdetil5.htm> (accessed May 2006), andRadio Australia, “Muslim group appeals for Australian support”, 28 July 2006. Online: <http://www. abc.net.au/ra/asiapac/programs/s1698957.htm> (accessed August 2006)..89 Media Indonesia, ‘Castro Tetap Menantang dan Tidak Gentar Hadapi AS’, 20 April 2006.


Executives of Jakarta’s defence and civil government had their main window of opportunity during this critical time, when bilateral negotiation over security issues aimed at a restored Australia—Indonesia defence treaty. Amid the several mooted sources of migrant waves, Indonesian defence leaders and diplomats held the trumps for costly TNI expansion: the conveniently projected upgrade for a Merauke Primary Naval Base appeared as a symbolic tender in this sense, offering one means for countering a migrant ‘threat’; both nations’ navies had already increased maritime patrols in that area after the Merauke-sourced voyage across the Arafura boundary.90 Negotiations with Australia to restore a security treaty would yield very discrete, if not secret, results. The previous 1995 pact under Prime Minister Keating was shielded from public scrutiny: Keating’s successor was unlikely to veer from that precedent by proffering transparency with negotiation terms this time. Official Australian defence matters were probably the easiest, traditional path to state secrecy over various issues bearing only indirect or even no risk to ‘national security’.

Thus did Jakarta’s networks of counterinsurgency veterans appear to devise the most compelling circumstances for a restored security treaty with Australia, but one best suited to their own interests and plans. For a military HQ, the Australian Government’s ‘border protection’ and opportunistic mining of that unconscious ‘SARA well’ presented a ‘centre of gravity’ i.e., a critical unifying element or dynamic giving the target its driving purpose, justification and/or energy.91 The foreign military could present a looming challenge to Australian Government policy, its public boasts, and electoral future, by sending impressions of many more unauthorized migrants ready to arrive in boats to discredit the ‘border protection’ success and its implicit claims of domestic security. By contrast with the TNI’s near-silence or bland statements on the issue, Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry (DEPLU) played ‘bad cop’ in diplomatic brinkmanship, issuing vehement, formal protests and recalling its ambassador from Canberra. A delegation from the national People’s Representative Council (DPR) added its weight to the diplomatic and psychological pressure of moralistic protest, consolidating public impressions that the West Papuans’ January voyage was somehow quite beyond Merauke security forces’ knowledge or powers of interdiction. Jakarta’s campaign was a holistic, intermeshed or integrated military-civil operation (operasi terpadu): a term used for Aceh counterinsurgency from 2003, but now more obviously on a national and international scale. The diplomatic posturing revealed the campaign’s confident and aggressive quality, because these other representations went beyond a security treaty’s discrete bargaining over TNI costs in maritime patrols, base construction, procurement, etc. Diplomacy followed through, aiming to seal the practical victory by exerting influence on the Australian Government’s migration policy and the adverse implications on Australian sovereignty by a newly proposed, but regressive, Migration Act.

The proposed act in mid-2006 was largely a sideshow to the main contest centred on ‘mutual cooperation’ in bilateral defence agreements, especially in the area of discretionary budget expenses. The bill had domestic importance however, especially due to its implicit ability to seal off much of the electoral danger from future seaborne migrant influx from Indonesia. In that sense, its submission was not part of a genuine effort: opposition and dissident parliamentarians could not possibly consent to rescinding amendments achieved the year before. Some avowedly

90 It would be interesting to discover whether the planned Merauke naval base upgrade was a false proposal, especially among the expansion plans for other sites with greater strategic justification.91 For definition and some relevant sources on the term’s broader, multi-level application in counter-insurgency, and conventional and information warfare:cf fn 1 - Davies, Indonesia’s War... op cit., p. 42, 242 fn26.


‘Christian’ politicians too – many mute if not not compliant on incarceration of Mid- East and South Asian Muslims - now suddenly realized their conscientious objection since the West Papuan exodus. The Migration Act proposal, submitted in the bad faith of reasonable foreknowledge of its rejection, was a process of political cauterization for a major diplomatic wound. Until that time of its formulation and parliamentary process though, the coercive political danger from unauthorized migration would have achieved its strategic aim: an Indonesian military victory surpassing many others in that nation’s history. The TNI success was not one that allowed more explicit celebration, because it was attained on a field of diplomatically unspeakable duplicity.

Jakarta’s campaign was at least part-driven by perceptions of past Australian Government duplicity and opportunism. Whatever the protests and diplomatic posturing, threatened commercial boycott for Australian goods, canine-inspired newspaper cartoons, black-listing, and other symbolism arising from the fast Australian grant of temporary protection visas to 42 West Papuans, the phoney war across the Arafura arose from more base material concerns. The return of a bilateral security treaty was to restore formal mechanisms Jakarta repealed in consternation over (belated) Australian efforts in mobilizing an international force to supervise and enforce East Timor’s 1999 transfer from Indonesia to the UN before formal independent East Timorese sovereignty. Indonesia’s leadership perceived a cynical Australian betrayal over its loss of rights to East Timor’s offshore fossil fuel reserves, division of which had been agreed after lengthy and costly negotiation. In that same period, another example of Jakarta’s major financial loss to Australia appeared in the flight of Hendra Rahardja to Australia after misappropriating state reserves to the value of billions in US dollars. Hendra lived in Australia (variously Sydney, Melbourne or Perth, according to press reports) until reported dead in early 2003 amid one of the greatest money-laundering cases in world history, and unsuccessful Indonesian attempts at extradition after his conviction in absentia.

In that fiscal context, Indonesia’s projected military build-up was to impose an unusually severe long-term cost on the state’s existing defence budget and separately sourced TNI finances, at a time when international donors demanded more regulation in that sector through budgetary control by Indonesia’s civilian-led Defence Department. But opportunity presented itself to Jakarta’s leadership in several potentially safe and lucrative channels. The Australian Government had pledged much aid after the tsunami and earthquake devastation of Aceh and Nias; that money was to be cleared for release at Canberra’s discretion, avowedly to ensure no Indonesian misappropriation. Another possible source was the Australian Wheat Board which, besides contentious dealings with proxy businesses of Iraq’s former Saddam Hussein regime, had also reportedly made anti-competitive payments to Indonesian bodies. A possibly greater opportunity was the bilateral security treaty itself: secrecy provisions of national security could impose draconian restrictions on public scrutiny over any financial transactions the treaty deemed essential for ‘regional stability’. After all, defence forces on both sides of the Arafura were notorious for large, mysterious expenses and mark-ups, whether explained as mismanagement, project cost over-runs, or simply left as public-sector accounting holes. It could seem misleading, and politically naïve, to focus on the indirectly related Australian parliamentary debates on border protection bills, revised coastline status in unauthorized migration, and bureaucratic ‘offshore processing’ for asylum seekers. Although those aspects reflected some Indonesian diplomatic pressures, the real effects would likely be far more substantial, though discrete, with no such implicit promotion of liberal-democratic formalities and their advertisement of participation and openness.


Cognitive dissonance & a different military cultureThat TNI planners could conceive and execute such a strategy would cause some Australian perceptions ‘cognitive dissonance’ i.e., responses of delayed decision, stress and even more panic due to reality’s blunt contradiction of preconceived understanding or assumptions about Indonesians and their military. On that more personal level for many Australians, especially those in the leadership elite, the case’s facts together indicated conclusions in many ways unthinkable. Due to the Indonesian security forces’ major reliance on self-funding via non-military business activity, many western circles disregarded the TNI as a credible military force. TNI—POLRI budgeting was unconventional by many standards, but that situation brought assumptions in widespread, conventional critique of the TNI in particular, which was often assumed to be deficient or incompetent in its core military fields of training, organization, and operational methods and techniques i.e., the basic definitions of ‘military professionalism’. Energy spent in non-military business would certainly distract TNI members, but it would also encourage an unusually higher mercenary-style business acumen. Like keen entrepreneur-opportunists, networks of astute and experienced Indonesian military executives could sense opportunities for their own enterprises. Complex TNI-based networks of intelligence and special operations, meshed with nominally civilian departments, needed no solitary, brilliant mind to achieve their aims. Serving officers and civilianized veteran-colleagues could (and mostly did) act collectively in institutional blocs. As in any state, such machinery could also seem reptilian: the predatory business-minded Indonesian type was perhaps like the locally iconic komodo dragon, which could smell open wounds of other komodos’ prey from several kilometres, in a kind of mutually supporting network.

Just as most specific detail was unavailable for this study, severe source limitations hampered reconstruction of TNI command and staff processes in this case. Nonetheless, reasonable timeline-based assumptions may be useful for subsequent study, or for alternative assessment. Based on this study’s detail however, TNI HQ probably conceived the campaign no later than early 2004. From that national—strategic level, conduct likely defined lower-level operations into four phases: first establishing covert links and proxies in resistance and religious circles; secondly cultivating further-removed proxies of resistance sympathizers and religious dissidents; execution of the Merauke ‘exodus’ operation, with particular attention to internal security, and; lastly, follow-up involving all-of-government and state-affiliated national bodies to reinforce the actions’ coercive political-diplomatic pressure in the international arena of perception-management. The likely earliest phase assessed here probably ended by April 2005, with preparations confirmed in order to schedule appointments of key command and staff for the campaign’s crucial West Papua operations. An apparent circumstantial lead was the early 2005 LEMHANAS (National Defence Institute) Internal Strategic Studies Course, where some senior officers could liaise in advance, at least on an initially discrete and informal basis, to ensure smooth coordination and no serious personality or other clashes. Coinciding with his appointment as KODAM XVII Trikora Chief of Staff, Brigadier-General Sudarmaidy Subandi was a course student visiting Lampung, site of Colonel Sihotang’s post as KODAM II base regiment chief. Another course visitor was then LEMHANAS instructor and possibly the man appointed months later as KOREM 174’s Chief of Staff: Major Totok Surono, likely due for promotion-on-posting (to lieutenant-colonel) as KOREM 174 Chief of Staff.92

92 Such detail is not meant as conclusive, but as an indicator of informal senior TNI ‘networking’. See:POLDA Lampung Public Relations, ‘Kunjungan Rombongan Peserta SSDN KSA XIII LEMHANAS di POLDA Lampung Tgl 27 April 2005’. Online: <http://www.lampung.polri.go.id/External_ActualInf


Both by real actions and (at least) purported action in publicity, Jakarta’s leadership showed a canny ability to penetrate the Australian Government’s ‘decision cycle’93 i.e., to attain favorable results by predicting Australian Government responses around unauthorized migrants, their religious affiliation, and the potential for a larger, ongoing exodus to Australian territory. In light of Indonesia’s far-reaching and expensive military restructure, procurement, and expansion, it was likely that those recent events would bring enormous cost to Australia. The Australian Government had all but ‘locked in’ to such policy to appease major constituencies: ‘SARA’ prejudices played a part there too, as many Indonesians knew, about an area of political manipulation Indonesia’s military knew better than most. If viewed as a sophisticated psychological operation in a wider ‘infowar’ campaign publicly expressed in diplomacy, the most significant strategic Indonesian result achieved from the 43 West Papuans’ voyage from Merauke was destabilization of a large Australian target via a profound effect of ‘cognitive dissonance’, both in the Australian Government itself and its constituents.94 Retired Australian army officer and diplomat Bruce Haigh identified the same likelihood of calculated Indonesian – and TNI - manipulation of Australian policy over informal migration, although Haigh did not cover the specific complexities around the West Papua military situation.95

Like the TNI’s steadily achieved restoration of more numerous KODAM formations as announced from April 1999, the military presence in West Papua was set to substantially increase in accordance with its own plans. Indonesia’s apparent diplomatic victory from Merauke probably gave the TNI yet greater scope for expansion. Therefore, the Merauke case’s most enduring irony could be that Australia helped Indonesian military expansion not in the historically common areas of Southeast Asian strategic contest and sovereignty dispute, but rather in that part of Indonesia closest to the land mass of Australia itself.

o/attachments/LEMHANAS.doc> (accessed April 2006).93 Commonly understood by the famous acronym ‘OODA: observe, orientate, decide, act’. For record, explanation and discussion of the now-standard military doctrinal concept, especially applicable to collective cognitive processes of command and staff, including those used in information warfare, see: “John R. Boyd – OTS Military Leader” (resource with documents and discussion). Online: <http://www .au.af.mil/au/aul/school/ots/boyd.htm> (accessed July 2006).94 Recalling past meetings with TNI officers in Australia, an ISG participant questioned whether the TNI had the sophistication to predict Australian responses in this case. In fact, recent Australian ‘border protection’ policy and action was rarely missed in Indonesian journalism, while their underlying origins appeared with profound, almost iconic prominence in Australian history as the White Australia policy, ‘yellow peril’ xenophobia, and fears of Russian invasion at the time of the Crimean War. The latter was unintentionally memorialized by cannon at Queenscliff, Victoria, where many TNI officers took courses at the Victorian-era fort-cum-command and staff college. At least as widely known, or fresher in public consciousness, was the coalition government’s reliance on such historically profound phobia to excite wide constituent support underpinning a decade of electoral success.Ratih Hardjono’s well-known book White Tribe of Asia is a striking example of thorough and detailed Indonesian discussion of historical Australian immigration policy and race issues, all the more remarkable because it was “specially written for Indonesian beginner readers interested in Australia”, while published and widely marketed as a mainstream text in metropolitan Indonesia. See:Hardjono, R., Suku putihnya Asia: perjalanan Australia mencari jati dirinya, Gramedia Pustaka Utama, Jakarta, 1992, p. xi, 12—180. However, the subject of Australian race relations and ethnic identities permeates the entire text, including its treatment of defence issues. Another prominent example of the mainstream Indonesian access to such detailed Australian issues was the translated work of Australian writers, but also prominently available in Indonesian bookshops:Chauvel, R. (ed), Budaya dan Politik Australia, Yayasan Obor Indonesia, Jakarta, 1992. 95 The Canberra Times, ‘Why trying to appease Indonesia doesn’t work’, 29 June 2006. Online: <http:// canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=your say&subclass=general&story_id=490822&category= Opinion&m=6&y=2006> (accessed July 2006). A previous article by Haigh rather focused on the more widely accepted assumption of an exclusively West Papuan resistance-driven voyage.


Appendix I Identified key TNI territorial leadership, West Papua 2002—6

‘>’ - continued posting by previous appointee‘?’ - unidentified / doubtful continuation by previous appointee‘NA’ – not applicable to force structure during the periodN.B. - Appointment ‘stagger’ in practice i.e., juxtaposition in columns not always reflecting matched terms of officers’ postings

>2002 2006

Chief KODAM XVII Trikora

Major-General Mahidin Simbolon

Major-General Nurdin Zainal

Major-General George Toisutta

Major-General Zamroni

KASDAM (Chief of Staff)

Brigadier-General Nurdin Zainal

Brigadier-General Getson T. Manurung

Brigadier-General Sudarmaidy Subandi

Brigadier-General Hotma Marbun*

Asinteldam (Asst for Intelligence)

Colonel F. X. Mardjono

Colonel Winston P. Simanjuntak

Colonel Kaharuddin Wahab

Colonel Basuki

Dandeninteldam (Chief Int Det)

Lieutenant-Colonel Daru Cahyono

Lieutenant-Colonel Viktor Tobing ?

Chief KOREM 171 Colonel Mangasa R. Saragih

Colonel Halasan Simanjuntak

Colonel Christian Zebua >

KASREM 171 (Chief of Staff)

Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Ginting ? Lieutenant-Colonel

Triyono SurachmajiLieutenant-Colonel M. Muriadi

Chief KODIM 1703 Lieutenant-Colonel Triyono Surachmaji

Lieutenant-Colonel Brylon R. Sianturi

Lieutenant-Colonel Bambang Murtiyoso >

Chief KODIM 1704 Lieutenant-Colonel Bachtiar

Lieutenant-Colonel Yusmana

Lieutenant-Colonel Didied Pramudito >

Chief KODIM 1706 Lieutenant-Colonel Nyoto Suparjo

Lieutenant-Colonel Ranto Parulian Silaban

Lieutenant-Colonel Ali Bargo >

Chief KODIM 1710 Lieutenant-Colonel Jamaluddin

Lieutenant-Colonel Togap F. Gultom

Lieutenant-Colonel Himsa Siburian

Lieutenant-Colonel Gustav Irianto K.

Chief KOREM 172 Colonel Bambang Sumarno

Colonel Agus Mulyadi

Colonel Asis Wanto >

KASREM 172 Lieutenant-Colonel Dwi Yatmo Wahardjo > Lieutenant-Colonel

Seno Purbo Hardoyo >Chief KODIM 1701 Lieutenant-Colonel

Seno Purbo HardoyoLieutenant-Colonel Daru Cahyono

Lieutenant-Colonel Viktor Tobing >

Chief KODIM 1702 Lieutenant-Colonel Masrumsyah

Lieutenant-Colonel Gustav Irianto K

Lieutenant-Colonel Sardjono >

Chief KODIM 1707 Lieutenant-Colonel F. X. Bangun Pratiknyo

Lieutenant-Colonel Paulus Herpomo T.

[see under 'Chief KOREM 174' below]

NA

Chief KOREM 173 Colonel Soehardi P. D.

Colonel Tri Usadi Setyoko

Colonel Ervi Tri Assunu >

KASREM 173 Lieutenant-Colonel Suryatikno > Lieutenant-Colonel

MasrumsyahLieutenant-Colonel Djuwondo

Chief KODIM 1705 Lieutenant-Colonel Adi Widjaja

Lieutenant-Colonel Totok Suruno

Lieutenant-Colonel Didiet Pramudito

Lieutenant-Colonel Sumaidi

Chief KODIM 1708 Lieutenant-Colonel Harri Partono > Lieutenant-Colonel

MarsudiLieutenant-Colonel Dwiman F.

Chief KODIM 1709 ? Lieutenant-Colonel Yunadi ?

Chief KOREM 174 NA NA Colonel Kitaran Joy Sihotang >

KASREM 174 NA NA Lieutenant-Colonel Totok Surono >

Chief KODIM 1707 NA [see under 'Chief KOREM 172' above]

NA Lieutenant-Colonel Paulus Herpomo T.

Lieutenant-Colonel Didi Suswandi

* Replaced by Brigadier-General Geerhan Lantara (see Figure 6, p. 27)


Appendix II Identified POLRI territorial chiefs, West Papua 2002—6‘>’ - continued posting by previous appointee‘?’ - unidentified / doubtful continuation by previous appointee‘NA’ – not applicable to force structure during the periodN.B. - Appointment ‘stagger’ in practice i.e., juxtaposition in columns not always reflecting matched terms of officers’ postings

>late 2002 2006

Chief POLDA Papua

Inspector-General Budi Utomo

Inspector-General Timbul Silaen

Inspector-General Dody Sumantyawan

Inspector-General Tommy T. Yacobus

Deputy Chief POLDA Papua

Brigadier-General H. Raziman Tarigan

Brigadier-General Tommy T. Yacobus

Brigadier-General F. X. Purwoko

Brigadier-General Max Aer

Chief Jayapura Munic. Precinct

NA Dep. Ch. Comm. Moh. Son Ani

Dep. Ch. Comm. Paulus Waterpauw

Dep. Ch. Comm. Taufik Pribadi

Chief Jayapura Precinct

Dep. Ch. Comm. Daud Sihombing

Dep. Ch. Comm. Totok Kasmiarto

Dep. Ch. Comm. Robert Djoenso

Dep. Ch. Comm. Yacob Kalembang

Keerom NA NA Comm. Robert Kennedy >

Sarmi NA NA Comm. Kornelis Good Help Mansnembra

>

Jayawijaya Dep. Ch. Comm. D. Suripatty

Dep. Ch. Comm. Irianto

Dep. Ch. Comm. Agung Makbul

Dep. Ch. Comm. Robert Djoenso

Merauke Dep. Ch. Comm. Yoh. Agus Mulyono

Dep. Ch. Comm. Hendrian Muntanzar > Dep. Ch. Comm.

WirawibawaMappi / Asmat NA NA NA ? / ?Mimika Dep. Ch. Comm.

Rudi JuliantoroDep. Ch. Comm. Paulus Waterpauw

Dep. Ch. Comm. Dedy Djunaedy

Dep. Ch. Comm. Jantje J. Tuilan

Nabire Dep. Ch. Comm. Hendrian Muntanzar ? Dep. Ch. Comm.

Moh. Son AniDep. Ch. Comm. Wagiyo Raharjo

Paniai Dep. Ch. Comm. Moh. Son Ani

Dep. Ch. Comm. Taufik Pribadi

Dep. Ch. Comm. Antonius Dance >

Puncak Jaya NA NA Comm. Hans Eduard Somnaikubun >

Biak Numfor Dep. Ch. Comm. Robinsar Damanik

Dep. Ch. Comm. Fachrudin

Dep. Ch. Comm. Wirawibawa

Dep. Ch. Comm. Nelson Panjaitan

Yapen Waropen Dep. Ch. Comm. Fachrudin

Dep. Ch. Comm. Nelson Panjaitan > Dep. Ch. Comm.

I Made JuliadiSupiori NA NA Comm.

Pasero >Manokwari Dep. Ch. Comm.

Bambang Budi Santoso

Dep. Ch. Comm. Johannes Prapto Wirahadi

Dep. Ch. Comm. Dedi Kusnadi

Dep. Ch. Comm. Petrus Wayne

Teluk Bintuni NA NA Comm. Piet Renmaur

Comm. G. Aris Purba

Fakfak Dep. Ch. Comm. Totok Kasmiarto

Dep. Ch. Comm. Syahroni

Dep. Ch. Comm. Petrus Wayne ?

Kaimana NA NA Dep. Ch. Comm. Matius D. Fakhiri >

Sorong Munic. Precinct

NA NA Dep. Ch. Comm. Taufik Pribadi

Dep. Ch. Comm. Borent

Sorong Dep. Ch. Comm. Faisal Abdoel Nasser > Dep. Ch. Comm.

Ahmat JuriDep. Ch. Comm. I Made D. Giri

Sorong Selatan NA NA Comm. Wempy Batlayeri >


Appendix III Estimated Indonesian force strengths, West Papua 2006

Formation / command / service

Composition by sub-category / subordinate elements

Troop totals

KODAM XVII HQ, Armd, Engr, Mil Pol, Sigs & Tpt elms 900KOREM HQ KOREM 171—3 & 174 cadre 1,000KODIM—KORAMIL KODIMs 1701—1710 & sub-formations 3,200+Terr inf bns (organic) 751—6 inf bns (over-strength) 4,800+Other increase to organic KODAM elms

armd cav det raised to bn; new inf bde formation 300

Satgasbanintel KOPASSUS cadre & KOSTRAD taipur elms 400Inf bns (non-organic) KOSTRAD & terr inf bns 1,500Naval bases Primary Naval Base V (Jayapura), Biak, Sorong,

Timika, Manokwari Depot, upgraded Merauke interim Primary Naval Base, inc. based marines

400+

Air & air defence bases Jayapura, Biak, Timika, Merauke 300+Sub-Total TNI 12,800+POLDA Papua-Irian Jaya HQ & support staff 300POLRES—POLSEK POLRES & sub-formations regency—district levels 8,500+BRIMOBDA Papua 3 X organic POLDA BRIMOB dets 1,300BRIMOB (non-organic) BRIMOB coy elms from DEOPS & other POLDA 1,000Sub-Total POLRI 11,100+SECURITY FORCES TOTAL 23,900+

NotesArmy territorial (KODAM XVII): Increases in infantry battalions (‘organic’ KODAM XVII) reflect an officially announced program for the new battalions from early 2004 up to the end of this year. Therefore, battalions are undergoing probably the second-last expansion phase at the time of writing, as the latest component companies settle in to their respective posts. As seen with Aceh and other prioritized border/insurgency areas, the TNI was even more discrete about expansions to pre-existing territorial infantry battalions (751, 752 and 753), but several Indonesian references on that aspect, and its more practical implications for command, control and planning, would all confirm its proximate inclusion in the expansion. It is unconfirmed whether that part of the expansion was concurrent with the phased ‘steps’ for the newly raised battalions, or was instead set for a separate, later series of postings.KOSTRAD: The 3rd KOSTRAD Infantry Division (Divif 3) was not planned to add 15,000 troops to West Papua, but approximately 10,000 at Sorong and Jayapura, with a smaller number for divisional HQ and other assets; one of that planned division’s ‘organic’ brigades was allocated to Gorontalo Province, northern Sulawesi, for which preparations already began by May 2006.Navy (inc. Marine Corps): The planned Merauke Primary Naval Base was intended as part of a fleet upgrade program commencing 2006. More tentative proposals existed for a 3rd Amphibious Force (Pasmar 3, possibly by 2024) at Sorong which would, if realized beside KOSTRAD additions, make for a total extra 15,000 West Papua-based troops, while Sorong-based fleet command would add 5,000 more (planned for 2008). As corps and navy chiefs themselves explained, Marines’ proposals hinged on funding availability. However, that hurdle could have been overcome via concessions from donor states, particularly Australia following its West Papua asylum-seeker controversy and bilateral security agreement.Police (POLRI): Research from early 2003 showed a serious deficiency in the author’s 2001 SDSC paper’s estimate for POLRI numbers in West Papua. POLRI sources (Online: <www.spers.polri.go.id.s atker>, accessed from 2002—early 2004) recorded a progressive increase from 8,300—9,100 (allotted or ‘establishment’ strength of 10,000, possibly reached or exceeded since the creation of post-2004 precincts). Those figures counted BRIMOB troops ‘organic’ to POLDA Irja/Papua, while 300+ civil servants were deducted. The increase, and part of the 2001 paper’s under-estimation, are explained by the increased police territorial numbers since 2001. The official POLRI personnel branch source was blocked from public access since early 2004, probably by setting permissions for internal IP addresses.BRIMOB (POLRI): Locally based BRIMOB units (‘organic’ POLDA) changed their designation from ‘battalions’ to the more accurate ‘detachments’ (note the resulting 2001 paper’s probable over-estimation). BRIMOB companies deployed from outside (‘non-organic’ POLDA Papua) have been more discrete in reporting, though still continuing that pattern especially since being freed up from the heavy Aceh commitment (notwithstanding their own considerable combat and tsunami losses there).

Documents

Military Expansion of West Papua