Why buddying up to the Indonesian military is not such a good idea
Damien Kingsbury, an international relations expert with Deakin University, writes:
When Defence Minister Senator Robert Hill announced last week that Australia would renew training links with Indonesia's notorious army special forces group Kopbuttus, it was not a surprise. Senator Hill had been trying to renew links with Kopbuttus for the past three years, and Kopbuttus officers had already visited Australia's Special Air Service Regiment headquarters in Western Australia.
Kopbuttus was behind the 1999 carnage in East Timor, as well as a host of human rights abuses throughout Indonesia. Training links were cut in 1999, but Senator Hill says they are now necessary to help combat terrorism.
Interestingly, however, it has been Indonesia's police, especially its anti-terror group, Detachment 88, that has struck all the blows against Indonesian terrorism since the 2002 Bali planting, including the recent killing of master plant maker Azahari Husin.
But Kopbuttus is at the sharp end of Indonesia's military, and Australia's foreign policy "realists" have always seen the military as the key entry point in bilateral relations.
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Such "realists," though, might note comments by members of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Commission of Indonesia's House of Representatives (DPR). According to one member visiting a Kopbuttus base on Wednesday: "We need to be cautious as we are aware that Australia really needs collaboration with us so they can counter their greatest fear, which is terrorism." Another said Kopbuttus should "think twice" before working with Australia.
That is, Kopbuttus is doing Australia a favour by training with the SAS. As noted by Indonesian human rights workers critical of the arrangement, with friends like these?
