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Indonesia’s
counterterrorism debate has taken an interesting turn lately as it examines
the compliance (or noncompliance) of the police counterterrorist unit
Densus 88 in the “fight against terrorism”.
The media reported that Densus 88 killed five suspected terrorists in the
scarcely developed island of Sumbawa in West Nusa Tenggara as they were
said to be resisting arrest with bombs strapped on their bodies. The
following day, the head of the National Counterterrorism Body (BNPT) Ansyaad
Mbai definitively stated that a network called Mujahidin Indonesia Timur
was operating in Poso, Makassar and Bima, and that they trained in Poso and
Bima.
Another report told how the people in Poso were terrorized by the state’s
counterterrorism effort and came all the way to Jakarta to report their
case to the National Commission on Human Rights and Nahdlatul Ulama. Muslim
political leaders seem to be keen to take this allegation of human rights
abuse as evidence of the targeting of Islam in counterterrorism policy and
the issue soon demands evaluation and, if necessary, the dissolution of
Densus 88.
As we set our gaze on Poso and environs, we cannot help but remember that
Muslim-Christian violence waned in Maluku between 1999 and 2004.
These conflicts would never have resulted in thousands of lost lives had
the security forces acted decisively to stop them before they got out of
hand.
Indonesians discussing these conflicts often use the word “omission”,
implying the ambivalence of security forces towards civilian violence.
The breakdown of regulatory order in Maluku’s security forces, the military
and the police, was one of the factors in the violence as it was the
security forces who were doing most of the killing. As the security forces
became unreliable, civilians on both sides took illegitimate security
measures by forming militias, attacking their neighbors and burning their
homes to the ground.
Violence never completely dissipated after the reconciliation that followed
up to February 2002 with the signing of the Malino agreement. It was a
ceremonial reconciliation that revealed no truth: nobody admitted that they
or anybody else was responsible for the violence. Officers have since been
transferred, dishonorably discharged and sanctioned, but illegitimate ways
of seeking security are already embedded in the collective memories of both
security officers and power holders.
With this historical baggage in mind we are now looking at new violence in
Poso. But unlike 1999-2002, violence in Poso is now talked about within the
framework of “terrorism”, a discourse that results from a decade of
securitization of terrorism and normalization of counterterrorism.
In May 2012, the Indonesian Police announced that Central Sulawesi was a
bomb and firearm making center and training area for terrorists. With
Surakarta and Papua, Central Sulawesi frequently appears as a
counterterrorism site. The discovery of bombs, explosives, and guns are
often showcased in police press conferences, complemented by some kind of
historiography of the perpetrators as graduates of an Islamic boarding
school, having spent life in the southern Philippines or been involved in
the conflicts in Central Sulawesi.
Questions of how bomb materials and guns get into the hands of certain individuals,
or how a militant training camp operates relatively freely in Sulawesi seem
to fade in the background of kill-or-capture operations on some unknown
individuals we can only assume are terrorists.
Questions about crime prevention, clean and transparent criminal justice,
stringent border patrols — in other words normal duties of security forces
— seem to have become less popular than issues labeled as “terrorism”.
Instead, the exceptional measures of arresting without charge, torture
during interrogation, killing of suspects are normalized or, at best,
treated as mere misconduct of certain unscrupulous minorities.
For the past decade the Indonesian terrorism debate has become increasingly
difficult for ordinary civilians to evaluate. This was reflected in
Ansyaad’s opinion that disillusioned terrorism researchers are no different
from terrorists, acting as if they were lawyers of the terrorists.
The “lawyers of the terrorists” and the “terrorists” seem to be in the same
basket, and researchers who question government policy are “disillusioned”.
The public already have a very low degree of confidence in the state, and
declarations like this only lower that opinion.
This is why we must welcome the new development of demands for a publicly
moderated evaluation of counterterrorism. Densus 88 is critical to
preventing violence. It is the best equipped unit the Indonesian police
have and probably the best in terms of its capability to investigate
criminals, given the speed with which it pursues suspects. Indeed, bringing
up all the units in the police to the level of professionalism of Densus 88
is worth pursuing so that other crimes in society can be prevented as
promptly and as decisively as that of terrorism.
More than an instrument of counterterrorism, Densus 88 is a symbol of
exceptionalism. It is a temporary remedial substitute for problems that
should be handled through everyday crime prevention practices.
Terrorists are real, but the threat of terrorism is as much a product of
labeling as it is an objective reality. The current thinking by some
Indonesian leading figures, that human rights compliance in
counterterrorism is vital, should be kept alive. Then we will have a chance
to reconsider the “exceptionality” of terrorism. ●
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