Indonesia hired well-connected firms to restore U.S. funding cut off after 1991 massacre
By Andreas Harsono
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
A long string of human rights abuses had put Indonesia in a deep hole with the United States, but then the September 11 terrorists struck. Suddenly the hole got shallower.
No country has more Muslims than Indonesia, and it is the world’s fourth most populous country after China, India and the United States, with almost twice as many people as Japan. So in the emerging post-9/11 world of Islamist terrorism, Indonesia’s importance to the U.S. suddenly increased.
The island nation had inaugurated a new president just months before the 9/11 attacks and, by chance, the White House had issued an invitation for her to visit on September 19. As it turned out, the new president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, was one of the first state visitors to the White House after the terrorists struck — and the timing couldn’t have been more propitious.
For President Bush, it was an occasion to make friendly overtures to a huge nation that could be a crucial ally in dealing with terrorists.
For President Megawati, it was an opportunity to advance a public relations campaign so relentless that private sources politically connected to the Indonesian government spent more than $1 million to hire a team of Washington lobbyists led by Bob Dole, the former Senate Republican leader and 1996 presidential nominee. Indonesia’s lobbying goals included the resumption of controversial military aid that had been cut off after its troops massacred more than 100 demonstrators in East Timor in 1991.
The relentlessness paid off:
• In the three years after the 9/11 attacks, Indonesian forces benefited from training in counterterrorism techniques and skills worth more than $5 million under the Pentagon’s new post-9/11 Regional Defense Counterterrorism Fellowship Program (CTFP) — even though for much of that time other similar U.S. military assistance was embargoed because of Indonesia’s human rights record. An analysis of foreign military training and assistance conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) found that Indonesia received more CTFP training than any other country — twice as much as the second-place nation, the Philippines.
• In February 2005 U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared the Indonesian military sufficiently reformed to warrant resumption of aid under the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, despite skepticism from Congress and human rights organizations about the extent of reform.
• In November 2005, just over four years after Megawati visited the White House, the last restriction on U.S. military aid was lifted. The State Department announced that aid would resume under the Foreign Military Financing program (FMF) with the goals of modernizing Indonesia’s military and supporting U.S.-Indonesia counterterrorism cooperation. The program provides funds for foreign militaries’ purchases of U.S. military goods, services and training.
• In March 2006 Rice visited Jakarta and announced that the U.S. would increase military cooperation and boost the training budget. “A reformed and effective Indonesian military is in the interest of everyone in this region, because threats to our common security have not disappeared,” she said. “We look for continued progress toward greater accountability and complete reform.”
Indonesia was out of its hole, and U.S. military aid was flowing again. Around the time of the FMF announcement, according to lobbying records, the country ended its relationship with Richard L. Collins & Co., which had succeeded Dole’s team as one of Indonesia’s primary lobbyists in Washington. But questions remain over who exactly paid for the lobbying.
President’s supporters steered contract to Dole
Indonesia spreads over five major islands and more than 17,000 smaller ones in archipelagoes between Malaysia and Singapore. It stretches almost to Australia and across such exotic locations as Bali, Borneo, Java, New Guinea and Sumatra as well as the ancient Spice Islands (now called the Moluccas), where nutmeg originated. Its government is struggling to establish itself as a democracy after the brutal and corrupt 32-year dictatorship of Suharto, who, like many Javanese, uses only one name. During Suharto’s reign, the military was reported to have killed as many as 3 million Communists and other dissidents on the outer islands; estimates of Suharto’s reportedly embezzled fortune start at $15 billion.
The nation’s politics in the decade since Suharto stepped down in 1998 have been tangled and shadowy, with almost continuous insurgencies on the country’s different islands and the military still playing a powerful role in politics. So perhaps it is little wonder that Indonesia’s three Washington lobbying contracts were signed, successively and respectively, by a politically connected Indonesian businessman, a man claiming to be authorized to sign on behalf of a foundation started by a former president who is a moderate Muslim cleric, and the government’s intelligence agency.
Indonesia held its first direct presidential election in 2004, and international monitors declared it well run. In it, Megawati — the daughter of Sukarno, Indonesia’s first president after independence following World War II — was defeated by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a retired three-star general who had been her chief security minister and ran as a reformer. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) records on file with the Department of Justice in Washington show that the lobbying contract with Dole’s firm, Alston & Bird, was terminated immediately after Yudhoyono was inaugurated. [Read full story]
