Challenges and reform of the State Intelligence Agency Beni Sukadis  ;   A national security analyst at the Indonesian Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies (LESPERSSI) based in Jakarta; He was the recipient of a fellowship at the National Security Policymaking Institute in Massachusetts, US in 2013

JAKARTA POST, 22 September 2014

                                                                                                                       

                                                      

President-elect Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is now busy drafting the Cabinet line-up for his upcoming administration in October. These days almost everyone talks about candidates for portfolios such as the foreign, defense and home ministries etc. But few are discussing the possible candidates for the chief of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN). Of course what is more important is the issue of the reform of the agency itself, and also how the public can rely on its intelligence in facing extremists, most lately the Islamic State movement and other threats to national security. Have we seen progress in the intelligence agency after three years of the 2011 Intelligence Law? BIN has transformed its structure from five deputies in five departments into seven deputies. There is as yet not enough evidence as to whether its performance is much better than the old one. There are three strategies for the reorganization of intelligence according to the expert Fred Schreier. He wrote in 2010 that these were streamlining for better effectiveness and efficacy, reorganizing to be a more responsive institution and redefining its function and responsibility. The agency seems to be focused on the second and third strategies. For example, Deputy 5 on covert action and propaganda was dissolved and replaced by Deputy 3 on counter intelligence. Thus, streamlining is not BIN’s priority, as BIN representatives (BINDA) in almost all 34 provinces have been established. Another issue is whether these local BIN representatives are competent enough as intelligence officers. BIN now aims to recruit more operatives in facing local, national and global challenges. The range of new recruits annually is between 40 and 60 personnel. Their minimum academic qualification is an undergraduate degree. From the institutional point of view the number of recruits is quite modest, but the real question is whether they are capable of dealing with the complexity of new threats from non-state actors such as through cyber attacks and hybrid warfare. On the other side, there has been good training and education for new intelligence officers. The State Intelligence Institute (STIN) belonging to BIN is used as a recruiting pool for the best people in the country to become intelligence officers. This Institute is one source for recruiting intelligence officers. This is very much welcome progress. Yet there has been little progress on the issue of transparency and accountability most notably since the murder of leading human-rights activist, Munir S. Thalib, who the court said was killed by a BIN “agent” ten years ago. Although an accomplice was sentenced to prison and a BIN deputy was exonerated in court, the mastermind behind the murder is still unknown. Some people are skeptical that the case will ever be resolved in the future. The outgoing administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is not ready to commit itself to prosecuting the real mastermind. The culture of secrecy within the intelligence agency is very deep and there is little commitment from the current government to resolving it. The Intelligence Law stipulates that the legislature has the authority of oversight over BIN, apart from other agencies. But the House subcommittee for intelligence has not been established yet. As a consequence, the oversight is now performed by Commission I which is not sufficient for supervising BIN’s performance and accountability. The performance of BIN, said one retired intelligence officer, could be scored as “adequate”, in other words, neither good nor bad — meaning that BIN has not done much to improve its performance. The Intelligence Law as a legal framework for overseeing the agency is not being implemented consequently by the House of Representatives. Therefore, it will likely depend very much on the leadership of the new president to speed up reform of this particular “untouchable” security actor and place the right man in the right job. ●