Tipos de participación

On 20 September 2001, nine days after the attacks on New York and Washington, on 11 September 2001, US President Bush delivered an address to a Joint Session of Congress, and the American People, at the United States Capitol in Washington. He stated that the U.S. was:

…a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.

Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated…We will direct every resource at our command-every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war- to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.

Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.218

Following so briefly after US President Clinton threatened to melt down the Indonesian economy, if the Indonesian Government failed to allow an international peacekeeping force into East Timor in late September 1999, the intent behind President Bush’s words, and the ability to deliver on them, would not have been lost on the Indonesian Government. This softened the ground for improved AFP-INP relationships.

As discussed earlier, Australian governance evolved from an entirely different historical and cultural base from the majority of its neighbours in the region. It is difficult to think of an example, where such differences exist between neighbours, than those which exist between the Commonwealth of Australia and the Republic of Indonesia. There is no common language, culture, history, or ethnicity. There has been on occasion, a fractious diplomatic relationship, influenced largely by politics, and a degree of mutual distrust and misunderstanding. A series of events in which police to police relationships, based on mutual respect, and a shared responsibility to cooperate, in the face of a growing Islamist threat in the region, played a significant role in improving the government to government relationship, through the police.

Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim majority country, with an island chain extending from Aceh, which has a sea border with the Indian Nicobar and Andaman Islands, to Papua New Guinea, with which it shares a land border. Indonesia also has a land border with the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo, and common archipelagic concerns with the southern Philippines. It is the most populous country in South East Asia, and controls the sea-

218 _{President George, W. Bush, 2001, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People,}

September 20, 2001. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920- 8.html

lanes, through which the bulk of Australian trade and commerce transits, to markets deeper into Asia, and through which much of Australia’s imports, including oil, travel. Indonesia is a founding member of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), formed in 1967, as a bulwark to the southern expansion of communism at the height of the Cold War. It is a highly influential, and strategically placed nation, which links Asia to the Pacific.

The health of the Australian-Indonesian relationship is of very high significance to Australian interests. As discussed in the section relating to East Timor, there has been strong bi-partisan political support for this relationship, as well as support by those in academic and senior levels of the public sector, referred to colloquially as the ‘Jakarta Lobby’. Despite some political differences both permanent and short-term, the AFP has managed to establish, nurture, and maintain, a close and effective working relationship, with its Indonesian counterpart organisation, the Indonesian National Police (INP). The result has been to the betterment of each other’s respective communities, and to the broader improvement of government to government relations generally. This relationship is a good example of cooperation in the face of common threats.

The relationship between the AFP and INP

The Indonesian National Police (INP) is sometimes referred to as the Police of the Republic of Indonesia (POLRI). The AFP and INP have a formal relationship which pre-dates the events in East Timor in 1999. On 5 August 1997, the AFP and INP, signed a Memorandum of Understanding, concerning law enforcement issues of mutual concern. At this signing an address by INP National Police Chief General Dibyo Widodo stated prophetically: ‘…we have to be prepared to anticipate the type of crime that is likely to happen or else we’ll be left behind to do too little too late.’219

At that time, Indonesian President Suharto, was still in power, and the police were still part of the Indonesian military. Although the police had operated as an autonomous agency in the immediate post-independence period in 1945, they were integrated into the military during the 1960s. As a result, the capacity of the national police suffered as a result of its militarisation, where its responsibilities were limited to lower level crime and providing support to military-led internal security operations.220

The Suharto years featured an authoritarian approach, and when he stepped down in 1998, there were calls for democratisation and security sector reform, including reform of the police, by

219 _{AFP (1997). Platypus Magazine No. 57, 1997, p. 5.}

220 _{Connery, D. Sambhi, N. and McKenzie, M. (2014) A return on investment: The future of police}

cooperation between Australia and Indonesia. Australian Strategic Policy Institute, p. 2.

https://www.aspi.org.au/report/return-investment-future-police-cooperation-between-australia-and- indonesia

separating it from its military structure. POLRI was formally separated from the military in April 1999, just before UNAMET deployed, which goes some way to explain some of the security issues experienced by the UNAMET mission in East Timor in 1999. The Indonesian Police lacked capacity and experience, and were simply outgunned by the Indonesian military and their militia proxies. The 2002 bombings in Bali, created an environment in which close cooperation between police, from all over the world, including Australia, despite their different cultural backgrounds, worked effectively in the pursuit of justice. This was a glimpse into the future potential for international police cooperation, where there is more which unites police than divides them.

UNAMET, INTERFET and the connection with global Jihad: 1999–2002

The previous chapter outlined the relationship difficulties created by the involvement of the UN in East Timor in 1999 in which significant numbers of AFP were engaged. One of the resulting global aspects of this intervention, particularly the Australian-led military intervention INTERFET, was the listing of Australia by Osama bin Laden, the leader of the emerging Islamic jihadist organisation al Qaeda, as a legitimate target. On 3 November 2001 the Qatar-based media network Al-Jazeera, broadcast a statement by bin Laden, which specifically identified Australians as ‘crusaders’. The British Broadcasting Corporation quoted him as follows:

Let us examine the stand of the West and the United Nations in the developments in Indonesia when they moved to divide the largest country in the Islamic world in terms of population. This criminal, Kofi Annan, was speaking publicly and putting pressure on the Indonesian government, telling it: You have 24 hours to divide and separate East Timor from Indonesia.

Otherwise, we will be forced to send in military forces to separate it by force. The crusader Australian forces were on Indonesian shores, and in fact they landed to separate East Timor, which is part of the Islamic world. Therefore, we should view events not as separate links, but as links in a long series of conspiracies, a war of annihilation in the true sense of the word.221

The fact that he was factually incorrect, mattered little to those in Indonesia, who were eager to hear his message. He was incorrect in stating that East Timor was Islamic, when in fact, as has been discussed, it was a predominantly Catholic province, which was one of primary drivers behind its desire for independence from Muslim dominated Indonesia. He was also incorrect in stating that it was the UN Secretary General who directed Indonesia to separate itself from East Timor. In fact the dynamics were far more complex than this simple statement, but this was the message received by those in Indonesia, who were radicalising and who were not interested in the polemics of nuanced arguments. In October 2002, a network of these radicalised individuals

221 _{BBC (2001) Bin Laden rails against Crusaders and UN (3 November 2001)}

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/1636782.stm

set large bombs on the largely Hindu island of Bali, where western tourists, including Australians, holiday in large numbers.

Three explosions occurred on 12 October 2002, detonated by Islamic extremists known as Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). The bombs killed 202 people including 88 Australians. The response from Australia was immediate, and included significant numbers of AFP members. This was aided by the fact that a relationship had already developed between AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty and General Dai Bachtiar, the Chief of the Indonesian National Police Chief from 2001 to 2005. This relationship had been developed by effective liaison work by the AFP Liaison Officer in Jakarta immediately following the East Timor intervention. In this capacity, he managed to overcome some of the political static, and natural reluctance to engage, and arranged a meeting between the two police chiefs, which developed into an enduring friendship.

The personal relationship between Commissioner Keelty and Indonesian National Police representatives was long-standing, in particular the relationship with the INP commander in charge of the Bali bombing investigation, who had attended an AFP Management of Serious Crime (MOSC) course in Canberra in 1993. As McFarlane stated:

The benefit of solid professional and personal friendships formed during the MOSC programs was clearly demonstrated in the aftermath of the first Bali bombing in 2002. The Indonesian police commander in charge of that investigation, Inspector General Drs I Madi Pastika, was a graduate of MOSC-5 in 1993, at which time one of his closest colleagues was Mick Keelty.222

This is an example of effective police diplomacy at the senior level, which originated at the middle management level. In a reflection of the true nature of the combined efforts of AFP, INP and many others, the response to the Bali bombing in 2002 was named Operation Alliance. The AFP deployed specialist teams of investigators, intelligence analysts, bomb experts, post-blast analysts, search and rescue, forensic specialists, Disaster Victim Identification specialists, crime scene analysts and many others within a very short timeframe. They developed their own relationships, both professional and personal.

Islamic extremism in Indonesia

Due to its enormous diversity, both geographic and cultural, the Republic of Indonesia has experienced a number of separatist insurgencies, seeking greater autonomy, or even complete separation from the Jakarta-centred government, East Timor being arguably the most prominent example. Others include, Aceh and Irian Jaya at opposite ends of the Indonesian archipelago, with entirely different dynamics. These have been predominantly geographic in nature, as remote and discrete areas sought to move away from central control from Jakarta. Although not unknown in

222 _{McFarlane, J. (2007). The Thin Blue Line: The Strategic Role of the Australian Federal Police.}

Security Challenges Volume 3 Number 3 (August 2007).

the post-1945 period, internal terrorism, based on ideology or religion, was not widely experienced. The post-Suharto era, where the authoritarian approach to internal security was effectively used to suppressed such activity, was relaxed, witnessed an increase in internal, ideologically-based, primarily Islamic, violence, as attacks and bombings against shopping centres and churches were perpetrated as expressions of anti-Christian and, later anti-Western sentiment.223

The Australian Government National Security website states that the most notorious Islamic jihadist group in Indonesia is a Salafist group known as Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which is inspired by the same ideology as al Qaeda. JI was formed in Malaysia on 1 January 1993, by radical Islamist clerics Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, and regards regional governments as illegitimate, including the Indonesian Government. It seeks to revive and install a ‘pure’ form of Islam, in an Islamic Caliphate, governed by the tenets of Sharia (Islamic law), across the region by force. This region includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, southern Thailand and the southern Philippines, namely the original members of ASEAN.

It was members of JI who perpetrated the bombings in Bali in 2002 and 2005, as well as a campaign in Jakarta, with two bombings of the J.W. Marriot Hotel in 2003 and 2009, the Australian Embassy in 2004, and the Ritz-Carlton in 2009. JI has a network of about 50 religiously affiliated boarding schools (pesantren) which continually works to inculcate future generations of Indonesian youths in this extreme form of Islam ... The current membership is estimated to range between 900 and several thousand active members. Incarceration of JI members does not disincentive them, rather prisons … provide a further avenue for recruitment, as some JI members proselytise to fellow prisoners and visitors in efforts to recruit members. 224

JI remains connected to other radical Islamist organisations in the region, including Abu Sayef and the Moro Liberation front (MILF) in the southern Philippines, as well as radical organisations in the Middle East including al Qaeda. A number of JI members have travelled to Syria and Iraq under the auspices of Hilal Ahmar Society Indonesia (HASI), where they have formed affiliations with other extremist networks in the region. The seizure and siege in Malawi on Mindanao in the southern Philippines in 2017, and the resultant violence inspired by Islamic extremism, is an example of how potent this regional threat is.

The Australian Government first proscribed JI as a terrorist organisation on 27 October 2002, relisted on 1 September 2004, 26 August 2006, 9 August 2008, 22 July 2010 and 12 July 2013. It remains a proscribed organisation by the Governments of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain and the United States. JI co-founder Abu Bakar Bashir, the Indonesian Islamic cleric who

223 _{Connery and Sambhi (2014), p. 4.} 224 _{Australian National Security website.}

https://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/Listedterroristorganisations/Pages/JemaahIslamiyahJI.aspx

was charged and imprisoned for orchestrating the Bali bombings, as well as other bombings in Indonesia, directed against the Indonesian Government of Megawati Sukarnoputri. Six days after the bombings in Bali, he preached anti-western sentiments to the assembled media for the benefit of his followers in the mosque at Solo in Central Java:

We reject all of your beliefs, we reject all of your ideologies, we reject all of your teachings on social issues, economics or beliefs. Between you and us there will forever be a ravine of hate and we will be enemies until you follow God's law.225

The Bali bombing – 2002

This vitriolic hatred manifested itself with three explosions on 12 October 2002, deliberately targeting western holiday makers. The first bomb exploded at a bar called Paddy’s Bar and was estimated to have involved between 500g and 1kg of TNT, and was placed in the bar by a suspected suicide bomber. Later crime scene examination revealed pieces of metal intended as shrapnel. Shortly after the explosion at Paddy’s Bar, a much larger device was detonated in a van parked outside another bar, the Sari Club. It was estimated that there were more than 350 people in that location when the bomb went off.

The force of the blast was strong enough to register on Indonesian seismic instruments. It is estimated that this was a lower velocity, high explosive bomb with an effective weight of between 50 and 150kg. It consisted of potassium chlorate, sulphur and aluminium, was placed in a van outside the club, and was possibly remote detonated by mobile phone.226

A third bomb, estimated to involve between 500g and 1 kg of TNT, was detonated approximately 45 seconds later, close to the U.S. Consulate, about 10 km from the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar. It was believed to have been detonated remotely by mobile phone.

The bombings were reported by Federal Agent Paul McEwan, who was in Bali at the time, and immediately contacted the AFP in Canberra and reported as follows:

He described seeing burning buildings, burning motor vehicles with occupants still inside and a relatively large crater in the street outside the Sari Club. He reported chaos, with people running from the scene and emergency services attempting to extinguish fires. He also advised that Paddy’s Bar and the Sari Club were known to be frequented by Australian and other foreign tourists and that, because of the extent of the damage he could see, Australian casualties were likely to be significant.227

The AFP had renewed its focus on terrorism in the post-911 period, and was therefore in a position to provide specialist and technical assistance very rapidly upon the request from Indonesia. This

225 _{Neighbour, S. (2005). In the Shadow of Swords: On the Trail of Terrorism from Afghanistan to}

Australia. Harper Collins Publishers, Australia, p. 2.

226 _{Australian Federal Police (2002) Paradise Lost-Terror on our Doorstep, Commissioner Keelty. AFP}

Platypus Magazine No 77 December 2002.

227 _{Australian Federal Police (2002) Paradise Lost-Terror on our Doorstep Commissioner Keelty. AFP}

Platypus Magazine No 77 December 2002, p. 4.

included investigative, administrative and forensic staff to assist the Indonesian National Police. The AFP contribution was part of a DFAT–led response which also involved members from other agencies and departments such as ASIO and the Australian Protective Service.

Eventually the range of Commonwealth Government agencies and departments was to involve: Prime Minister and Cabinet, Defence, the Australian Defence Force, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Federal Police, Australian Protective Service, Immigration, Customs, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Health, Family and Community Services, Centrelink, Parliament House, Transport and regional Services, Emergency Management Australia, Treasury, Finance and AusAID. The speed of the Australian response is an example of what can be achieved if consideration has been given to contingency planning and preparation.

Within 24 hours: 20 government officials, nine DFAT and 14 AFP staff from Canberra and Jakarta on the ground in Bali. Operation headed by the Australian Embassy’s Deputy Head of Mission from Jakarta. Staff placed at Denpasar International Airport to facilitate departure of Australians and arrival of victim’s relatives.228

By the fourth day, 80 staff comprising pathologists, odontologists, radiologists, forensic experts and police were working on the case.229

These members enmeshed with the Indonesian National Police and other international police, and