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SOUTHEAST ASIA AFTER 9/11:

REGIONAL TRENDS AND U.S. INTERESTS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EAST ASIA

AND THE PACIFIC

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

DECEMBER 12, 2001

Serial No. 107–61

Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international

( —relations

(II)

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa

DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ELTON GALLEGLY, California

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina

DANA ROHRABACHER, California

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California

PETER T. KING, New York

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio

AMO HOUGHTON, New York

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina

JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado

RON PAUL, Texas

NICK SMITH, Michigan

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

ERIC CANTOR, Virginia

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

BRIAN D. KERNS, Indiana

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TOM LANTOS, California

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio

CYNTHIA A. MCKINNEY, Georgia

EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama

BRAD SHERMAN, California

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida

JIM DAVIS, Florida

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

BARBARA LEE, California

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York

JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada

GRACE NAPOLITANO, California

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California

DIANE E. WATSON, California

THOMAS E. MOONEY, SR., Staff Director/General Counsel

ROBERT R. KING, Democratic Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EAST ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa, Chairman

DANA ROHRABACHER, California

BRIAN D. KERNS, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

ENI F. H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio

JIM DAVIS, Florida

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

DIANE E. WATSON, California

JAMES W. MCCORMICK, Subcommittee Staff Director

ENERE LEVI, Democratic Professional Staff Member

DOUGLAS ANDERSON, Professional Staff Member & Counsel

TIERNEN MILLER, Staff Associate

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

WITNESSES

Donald K. Emmerson, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Asia/Pacific Research Center,

Stanford University ............................................................................................. 5

Robert Hefner, Ph.D., Institute for Religion and World Affairs, Boston University ......................................................................................................................... 12

Angel M. Rabasa, Ph.D., Senior Policy Analyst, The RAND Corporation .......... 18

Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington Director, Asia Division, Human Rights

Watch .................................................................................................................... 26

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

The Honorable James A. Leach, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Iowa, and Chairman, Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific: Prepared statement ................................................................................................... 2

The Honorable Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, a Representative in Congress from

American Samoa: Prepared statement ............................................................... 3

Donald K. Emmerson: Prepared statement ........................................................... 7

Robert Hefner: Prepared statement ....................................................................... 16

Angel M. Rabasa: Prepared statement .................................................................. 22

Mike Jendrzejczyk: Prepared statement ................................................................ 30

APPENDIX

The Honorable Earl Blumenauer, a Representative in Congress from the

State of Oregon: Prepared statement ................................................................. 55

(1)

SOUTHEAST ASIA AFTER 9/11: REGIONAL

TRENDS AND U.S. INTERESTS

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2001

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EAST ASIA AND THE PACIFIC,

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m. in Room

2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. James A. Leach [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

Mr. LEACH. The Committee will come to order. And I would like

to warmly welcome our distinguished panel, several of whom have

flown from locations near and far. I understand this will be the

first appearance by several of you, and we look forward to your insights.

We also welcome Mr. Jendrzejczyk, who has been here on a number of occasions. We are very appreciative for you returning.

Last month the Subcommittee reviewed the impact of the war on

terrorism and other key developments in Northeast Asia. Today’s

hearing will review developments in Southeast Asia after the

events of September 11. The United States has a number of important interests in the region. While the region may lack the intrinsic

strategic significance of Northeast Asia in some regards, the U.S.

nevertheless has a wide range of economic, political and security

interests in the southern part of Asia. And there is a broad consensus that it is in America’s long-term interest to promote a community of prosperous Southeast Asian nations that is growing economically, open to free trade investment, politically stable as well

as accountable to the peace of the people and hopefully in a circumstance of peace.

In this regard, we are awfully appreciative of the support of the

ASEAN with regard to the issue of terrorism and the issues of Afghanistan and al-Qaeda. And I would just like to stress as Chairman of the Subcommittee, and I am sure with the complete support

of my dear colleague and Ranking Member, that the United States

has no beef against Islam or Islamic nations, but only against those

who would employ terrorism and who would use religion as an instrument of hate.

In any regard, we look forward to all of your testimony. And at

this point, let me ask, Mr. Faleomavaega, if you have any opening

comments.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Leach follows:]

2

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JAMES A. LEACH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF IOWA, AND CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EAST

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

I would like to warmly welcome our distinguished panel of witnesses, several of

whom have flown in from locations near and far to be with us today. I understand

that this will be the first appearance by several of our witnesses before the Subcommittee, and we look forward to their insights. We also welcome back Mr.

Jendrzejczyk, who is well-known to Members of this Subcommittee and whose expertise we have all come to rely upon. I should also explain that our planned use

of the main hearing has been preempted by preparations for the Committee’s an- nual Christmas party, necessitating our move to this somewhat more cozy venue.

Last month the Subcommittee reviewed the impact of the war on terrorism and

other key developments on the dynamic Northeast Asian region. Today’s hearing

will review developments in Southeast Asia after the events of September 11, as

well as assess important regional trends and their potential impact on U.S. national

interests.

The U.S. has a number of important interests in Southeast Asia, the area comprising Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Indochina (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) and

the insular republics of Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

While the region may lack the intrinsic strategic significance of Northeast Asia, the

U.S. nevertheless has a wide range of economic, political and security interests in

the area that demand the attention of policymakers. There is a broad consensus

that it is in America’s long-term interests to promote a community of prosperous

Southeast Asian nations that is growing economically and open to free trade and

investment, politically stable as well as accountable to the people, at peace within

the region and able to effectively contribute to regional security, and committed to

the cooperative solution of global problems—most prominently, eradicating international terrorism.

In this regard, America is deeply appreciative for the forthcoming position taken

by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) against terrorism, and for

the offer by several ASEAN countries to assist in peacekeeping and reconstruction

in Afghanistan. It cannot be stressed too strongly that the current military operation in Afghanistan is aimed against terrorism and not Islam, and that its main

targets are the Al-Qaeda terrorist network and its Taliban supporters. We respect

Islam and Islamic nations. The only brief we hold is against parties that manipulate

hatred and employ tactics of terror.

In any regard, we look forward to your perspectives on priority American concerns

in Southeast Asia, such as ensuring that the region does not become sanctuary for

terrorist networks, the fate of Indonesia’s democratic transition, the cohesiveness of

ASEAN, prospects for cooperative approaches to transnational challenges like piracy

and human trafficking, and advancing peace and prosperity through open markets,

democratic governance, and respect for human rights.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for

calling this hearing this morning. Also I would like to welcome our

witnesses, who shall share their experience and expertise concerning this important region in the world.

Since the September 11 terrorist attack on the United States, the

campaign to eradicate international terrorism in Afghanistan has

made remarkable and rapid progress. Some have thus advocated

that our Nation should expand and enlarge its counterterroism

focus to encompass other countries and regions in the world. In November our Committee examined Northeast Asia and the post-9/11

developments in U.S. relations with China, Japan, Korea and Russia. Today we are examining the developments in another vital region in the world, and that is Southeast Asia, whose nations impact the strategic and economic interests of our country. I do want

to thank our friends for being here this morning.

Mr. Chairman, in an interview last month with the Far Eastern

Economic Review, our U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul

Wolfowitz was specifically asked whether Southeast Asia would become a focus of the campaign against terrorists. Secretary

Wolfowitz responded, and I quote,

3

‘‘Going after al-Qaeda in Indonesia is not something that

should wait until after al-Qaeda has been uprooted from Afghanistan. I do think that getting them in Afghanistan will

make it much harder for them to operate elsewhere and easier

to pursue elsewhere. It is difficult because these guys have figured out that Southeast Asia, even before democracy took hold,

was an easier place to operate for them than the pretty repressive regimes in the Middle East.’’

Mr. Chairman, Secretary Wolfowitz’s comments are understandable given that well over 200 million Muslims reside in Southeast

Asia. Indonesia alone, the world’s largest Islamic nation, has approximately 190 million followers of Islam. Malaysia and Brunei

also have Muslim majorities, while Thailand, Singapore and the

Philippines have significant Islamic populations.

I might also note that in Indonesia, our country has well over

$20 billion in investments and also has the largest gold mining operation operated by American and Australian mining companies.

Also we have a tremendous presence there as far as the oil industry is concerned, with Exxon and Mobil in Aceh.

It is extremely important to note that the vast majority of Southeast Asian Muslims are moderate, which shields the region from

extremism. However, I am concerned by the number of militant Islamic fundamentalist groups that exist in Southeast Asia, such as

the Laskar Jihad in Indonesia and Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines,

both of which allegedly have ties to Osama bin Laden and the alQaeda network. This has led some analysts to project that Southeast Asia constitutes another front in the war against terrorism.

I am also concerned with the state-sanctioned forms of terrorism

in Southeast Asia. Recently the case of Indonesia was examined by

the United Nations Committee Against Torture, which met in November of this year in Geneva. The U.N. Committee Against Torture reported Indonesia was awash with charges of torture and severe mistreatment of its civilians by the police, the army, and paramilitary groups linked to the authorities. According to the U.N.

Committee, a climate of impunity regarding torture exists in Indonesia. In the year 2001 alone, this state-sanctioned terrorism has

resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and disappearances in

Aceh, West Papua and the Moluccas.

Mr. Chairman, as we review the implication of international terrorism in Southeast Asia, it is also important that we not neglect

the human rights abuses and atrocities that are being committed

daily by governments in that region. I look forward to hearing from

our witnesses this morning. And again, thank you for allowing me

to say a few words.

Mr. LEACH. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Faleomavaega follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, A

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM AMERICAN SAMOA

Thank you, Mr. Chairman:

Since the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, the campaign

to eradicate international terrorism in Afghanistan has made remarkable and rapid

progress. Some have thus advocated that our nation should expand and enlarge its

counter-terrorism focus to encompass other countries and regions of the world.

4

In November, our committee examined Northeast Asia and post-9/11 developments in U.S. relations with China, Japan, Korea and Russia. Today, we examine

developments in another vital region of the world, Southeast Asia, whose nations

impact the strategic and economic interests of the United States. I commend you,

Mr. Chairman, for calling this important and timely hearing, and I join you in extending a warm welcome to our panel of distinguished witnesses.

Mr. Chairman, in an interview last month with the Far Eastern Economic Review, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was specifically asked

whether Southeast Asia would become a focus of the campaign against terrorists.

Secretary Wolfowitz responded, and I quote, ‘‘Going after Al Qaeda in Indonesia

is not something that should wait until after Al Qaeda has been uprooted from Afghanistan. I do think that getting them in Afghanistan will make it much harder

for them to operate elsewhere and easier to pursue elsewhere. It’s difficult, because

these guys have figured out that Southeast Asia, even before democracy took hold,

was an easier place to operate for them than the pretty repressive regimes in the

Middle East.’’

Mr. Chairman, Secretary Wolfowitz’s comments are understandable, given that

well over 200 million Muslims reside in Southeast Asia, with Indonesia alone, the

world’s largest Islamic nation, having approximately 190 million followers of Islam.

Malaysia and Brunei also have Muslim majorities, while Thailand, Singapore and

the Philippines have significant Islamic populations.

It is extremely important to note, however, that the vast, vast majority of Southeast Asia’s Muslims are moderate, which shields the region from extremism.

Nonetheless, I am troubled by the number of militant Islamic fundamentalist

groups that exist in Southeast Asia—such as Laskar Jihad in Indonesia and Abu

Sayyaf in the Philippines, both of which allegedly have ties to Osama bin Laden and

the Al Qaeda network. This has led some analysts to project that Southeast Asia

constitutes another front in the war against terrorism.

Mr. Chairman, I am also concerned with state-sanctioned forms of terrorism in

Southeast Asia. Recently, the case of Indonesia was examined by the United Nations Committee against Torture, which met in Geneva on November 16–23, 2001.

The U.N. Committee against Torture reported that Indonesia was awash with

charges of torture and severe mistreatment of its civilians by the police, army and

paramilitary groups linked to the authorities. According to the U.N. committee, a

climate of impunity regarding torture exists in Indonesia. In the year 2001 alone,

this state-sanctioned terrorism has resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and disappearances in Aceh, West Papua and the Moluccas.

Mr. Chairman, as we review the implications of international terrorism on Southeast Asia, it is also important that we not neglect the human rights abuses and

atrocities that are being committed daily by governments in the region.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to make these brief comments and

I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses.

Mr. LEACH. Let me just briefly introduce the witnesses. Dr. Donald Emmerson is a Professor and Senior Fellow at Stanford. He is

a graduate of Yale and Princeton.

Dr. Robert Hefner is Research Fellow at the Institute for Religion and World Affairs at Boston University.

Dr. Angel Rabasa is a Senior Policy Analyst at RAND Corporation and the co-author of Indonesia’s Transformation and the Stability of Southeast Asia. And I thank you for these two publications. You have been busy. We appreciate that.

And Mr. Mike Jendrzejczyk, who is the Washington Director for

Human Rights Watch Asia and a frequent contributor to the editorial pages of a number of publications. You are very welcome.

We just did have a vote put on, and so what I would like to do

is begin, Dr. Emmerson, with your testimony, and at the end we

may recess for the vote.

Dr. Emmerson, please.

5

STATEMENT OF DONALD K. EMMERSON, Ph.D., SENIOR FELLOW, ASIA/PACIFIC RESEARCH CENTER, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Mr. EMMERSON. Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be

here. I would like to begin, with your permission, in a somewhat

contrarian mode. I think it is helpful, maybe because I come from

the edge of the continent, from California, to remind Americans inside the Beltway that the way we see the world here and the concerns that consume us, specifically the concerns that date from the

11th of September, do not necessarily animate the entire human

race. The first point to be made with regard to Southeast Asia, I

believe, is not how much has changed, but how little. The 12th of

September in Southeast Asia was pretty much like the 10th of September had been.

There was one very important thing that had changed, and that

was thinking here in this country and the priorities of this country.

So if you look at the sequence of events that began on the 11th of

September not from the standpoint of American policymakers or

Members of Congress, but rather from the standpoint of people in

Southeast Asia, it looks very different. First of all, it looks like a

Rorschach into which various groups, versus interests, various governments can read their own agendas. It is an opportunity in the

post-Cold War period, when no one else can claim superpower status, to attract the attention of the Americans by somehow linking

one’s own domestic concerns in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia or Malaysia to what appear to be these overriding priorities

coming from Washington.

There is a fascinating parallel between the moment we are living

in now and the beginning of the Cold War. Indeed, some have said

this is a second Cold War; that terrorism has replaced communism

as the primary preoccupation of American foreign policy for

months, years, maybe decades to come. We remember during the

first Cold War how the ‘‘Free World,’’ to dust off that phrase, if I

may, included some folks, like Salazar in Portugal or Suharto in

Indonesia, who were not exactly paragons of freedom.

The issue for American foreign policy is quite similar today; that

is, to what extent are we going to sacrifice or focus on democracy,

on freedom, on individual liberties for the sake of security? It is an

issue that we face domestically in the United States in the debate

over whether we should have military tribunals, and it is an issue

that we face in our foreign policy as we look to Indonesia, for example, and try to decide to what extent we are going to back-burner

concerns about accountability for human rights violations for the

sake of enlisting the Indonesian Government in a global campaign

against terror.

I thought I would share with you, to illustrate this point, an intriguing proposal that comes from an Indonesian colleague of mine.

I was hooked up the night before last through a video conference

arrangement to a number of Indonesians in Jakarta. Here is Rizal

Mallarangeng, who has written speeches for President Megawati,

expressing his personal view, although he says he has tried to convince people in the government of its utility. He says,

6

‘‘We should ask the U.S. for some kind of Marshall Plan. After

all, this is precisely the right time. [Notice the Marshall Plan

also takes us right to the beginning of the Cold War.] ‘‘Putting it another way, we should do what South Korea and

Taiwan both did. Because of their strategic position during the

Cold War, they both received lots of help, not only military assistance, but also economic help. If the U.S. really thinks that

Indonesia is going to play an important role, then let us make

it clear that we demand a quid pro quo. This is international

politics after all, and it is in our national interest to be a friend

of the West. We have millions of people who are living in poverty, and we have an economic crisis. So why don’t we ask for

help in return for our loyalty and our partnership?’’

Now, I don’t wish to suggest that this particular view is uniform

across Southeast Asia. There are others, and Malaysians in particular, in conversations with me recently, who have expressed a

very different perspective. They are worried that whether you are

with us or against us Americans in the war against terrorism is

going to become a monomaniacal litmus test; that all else will be

shoved aside as Americans pursue this single-minded policy.

Let me just make a couple of comments that stem from this effort to reorient the way we look at world history since the 11th of

September. If we are going to widen the focus of military operations as has been suggested, whether it is Iraq or Somalia, one

hopes not Indonesia, it seems to me we also should widen some

other foci; for example, the focus on the punitive aspect alone as

opposed to the explanatory economic, political and social contexts

that help us to understand. Forgive me, I am an academic. This is

my occupational self-interest: to understand the circumstances in

which terror can occur. Here, it seems to me, we are grossly lagging, and until we close that gap, that gap of knowledge, it seems

to me we will continue to lose the war of public opinion, or at least

to risk losing that war in Muslim populations around the world, including Southeast Asia.

We should also want to widen the focus, it seems to me, to understand the diversity of responses to the 11th of September—I

have illustrated that already—and we want to make sure that we

do not implicitly assume that terror can only occur against the

state, that there is no such thing as state terrorism. Mr.

Faleomavaega illustrated this in the comments he made in the beginning. State terrorism is a serious problem in a number of parts

of the world.

Am I convinced that Southeast Asia is about to or should become

the next front in the war on terror? No. My colleagues may have

different views. I am not persuaded, despite historical evidence of

contacts between Abu Sayyaf, for example, in the southern Philippines and al-Qaeda, I am not persuaded that the present circumstance is transnationally part of some kind of global network

in which Southeast Asia is a major focus and, therefore, requires

a major military response on the part of the United States. If we

go through the groups that are both self-advertised as assertively

Islamic and at the same time engaged in violence, typically the explanation is local, not transnational. This is not an effort to recreate the Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire. This is not the implemenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
7

1 If majority rule is essential to democracy, then defending human rights against abrogation

by anyone, including a majority, is necessarily anti-democratic. That is one reason why, in the

United States, the National Endowment for Democracy and the American Civil Liberties Union

have such different agendas. In Thailand, human rights activists are well aware that their new

prime minister’s electoral majority has not guaranteed his commitment to protecting civil liberties. If anything, the size of that democratic mandate has had the opposite effect: emboldening

the new leader to act more like the CEO of a large corporation than the guardian of citizen

rights. I allude to this problem further below. 2Whether or not 2001 does turn out to have inaugurated Cold War II—a prolonged global

struggle against terror—will depend in large measure on (a) the occurrence, nature, and scale

of further attacks on Americans or their allies, e.g., over the Christmas holidays; (b) the credibility of evidence that further attacks are being planned; and (c) American actions to widen the

Continued

tation of the strange rhetoric of Osama bin Laden. There are local

reasons for these events that I won’t go into because I daresay my

colleagues will be addressing that subject.

Let me just end on this note. I think we have a range of opportunities in Southeast Asia not to be a prisoner of our preoccupations,

but to use the current circumstance as an opportunity on our part

to engage Southeast Asians with regard to their own problems and

their own concerns in addition to ours.

One very specific point. If there is going to be a blue helmet force

in Kabul, it is entirely possible that there will be Malaysian and

Indonesian members of that force. This is a direct gesture on the

part of these countries that clearly will be appreciated by the

United States, which obviously does not wish to look as if it is engaged in a war against Muslim countries. And although Rizal’s

suggestion may sound a bit crass to American ears, it is entirely

reasonable to anticipate that relations between the United States

and Indonesia would accordingly become more cordial. My only

caution is that at a time when security is so prominent, we should

not abandon our own interest as Americans, given our own history,

background and culture, in democracy and human rights.

Mr. LEACH. Thank you very much, Dr. Emmerson.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Emmerson follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DONALD K. EMMERSON, PH.D., SENIOR FELLOW, ASIA/

PACIFIC RESEARCH CENTER, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

The timing of this hearing is doubly symbolic. It is being held only a day after

the three-month anniversary of the most deadly attack ever committed by foreigners

on American soil. But it is also taking place merely two days after the observation

of World Human Rights Day. The coincidence frames the question that I would like

to make the centerpiece of these brief remarks:

What balance should be struck between security (e.g., destroying terrorist

groups) and democracy (e.g., defending human rights) as America policy priorities in Southeast Asia?

There is, of course, more to U.S. foreign policy than security and democracy.

Other aims include economic prosperity and environmental sustainability-Southeast

Asia’s and ours. Nor are democracy and human rights the same.1 Nevertheless, in

the wake of 11 September, the issue must be faced, not only as we debate how much

of our own freedom we are willing to sacrifice for our own security, but also as Congress and the administration decide whether, and how much, seeking the cooperation of a foreign government in efforts to eradicate international terror should take

priority over criticizing it for violating, or failing to protect, the rights of its own

people.

This choice affects—bedevils?—American relations with Egypt, Saudi Arabia,

Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China, Indonesia, and Malaysia, among other countries. Just

as in the ‘‘Free World’’ during Cold War I the United States embraced anti-communist despots from Salazar to Suharto, so in Cold War II, if that’s what we’re now in, one can imagine a similarly pragmatic, anti-terrorist compatibility between ‘‘Enduring Freedom’’ and injuring freedom.2

8

present campaign beyond Al Qaeda to include, e.g., the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. If the

incidence or evidence of additional attacks are likely to increase international support for an

American-led campaign against terror, however, widening the war to include Iraq could have

the reverse effect, especially in Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. As

for the analogy with Cold War I, unlike the Sino-Soviet focus of that conflict, Al Qaeda is not

a state and is not now, to my knowledge, backed by any state. 3The New York Times 2002 Almanac, p. 487. 4 Almanac, pp. 584 and 640. More Muslims live in Indonesia than in any other country. 5 ‘‘Joint Statement between George W. Bush and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on the 50th Anniversary of the U.S.-Philippine Alliance’’ [‘‘JS50’’], Office of the [White House] Press Secretary

[OPS], 20 November 2001. 6 ‘‘Join Statement between the United States of America and the Republic of the Philippines,’’

OPS, [White House], 20 November 2001 [‘‘conveyed . . . networks’’]; ‘‘JS50’’ [‘‘a robust . . . century’’]. The italics are mine.

I mention specific countries because an effective (as opposed to consistent) balance

of priorities between security and democracy can only be worked out case by case.

The centrality of a given state to the campaign against Al Qaeda and other antiAmerican terrorist networks that have ‘‘global reach’’ will greatly and necessarily

affect our willingness to play down or even suspend official criticism of that state’s record on free elections and civil rights. So will the extent and indispensability of

what that state does to help in this effort. In these respects, it is no coincidence

that Pakistan should have enjoyed the most rapid and far-reaching turnaround in

its relations with the United States of any country in the world since 11 September,

notwithstanding the undemocratic character of the Islamabad regime.

If centrality and indispensability were matters of geography alone—proximity to

Afghanistan—this this hearing would not be underway. Southeast Asia would be

considered too peripheral to the epicenter of the storm. The threat from Al Qaeda

is, however, global in two senses: its proven ability to attack Americans in the

United States; and its invocation of Islam, the religion of an estimated 1.3 billion

people in 184 countries.3

Also, states anywhere in the world can now take advantage of what America’s new preoccupation with fighting terrorists has created for them: an opportunity to

offer their support in hopes of gaining leverage and earning rewards. The Bush administration’s explicit refusal to preclude expanding its campaign beyond Al Qaeda

is a further incentive to governments, regardless of their location, to seek the benefits of such alignment. Meanwhile, and comparably, military successes against the

Taliban in Afghanistan to date have projected the image of a bandwagon increasingly worth boarding.

Not every state is equally free to sign up for this effort, however. Inside Indonesia,

Muslims and Christians account for an estimated 88 and 8 percent of the population, respectively, compared with an estimated 5 and 92 percent in the neighboring Philippines.4 Especially now that Indonesians have begun to democratize

their political system, the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri cannot

afford to ignore the views of domestic leaders and groups who identify with Islam.

Just north of Indonesia, in her own far more institutionalized democracy, Philippine

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is also constrained, but vastly less than

Megawati with regard to political Islam.

President Arroyo visited the U.S. in the latter part of November, well after the

assault against the Taliban and Al Qaeda had begun. In their joint statement, she

and President Bush ‘‘reaffirmed that U.S.-Philippine relations are based on shared

history, common values, [and] a commitment freedom and democracy,’’ and ‘‘declared that the American and Filipino people stand together in the global campaign

against terrorism.’’ 5 President Bush ‘‘conveyed his deep appreciation’’ for his counterpart’s ‘‘leadership in the fight against terror, both within the southern Philippines

and against international terrorist networks.’’ The two leaders singled out the Abu

Sayyaf Group, noting its holding of American and Filipino hostages, as evidence of

the need to maintain ‘‘a robust defense partnership into the 21st century’’—a partnership whose 50th anniversary they also celebrated.6

Indonesian President Megawati also traveled to the U.S., but her timing was more

delicate. She arrived a mere week after the attacks. Jakarta had considered postponing the trip, partly from sensitivity to American grief and preoccupation, but

also because of hesitancy in some Muslim quarters inside Indonesia. In the end, the

American side decided it wanted to proceed, knowing the public relations value of

early and visible support by the ruler of the world’s largest Muslim population, and

the Indonesians agreed.

Megawati’s visit went well. In Washington, she ‘‘condemned the [hijackers’] barbaric and indiscriminate acts against innocent civilians’’; ‘‘pledged solidarity with

the United States in this hour of grief’’; and promised ‘‘to cooperate with the interVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
9

7 ‘‘Joint Statement between the United States of American and the Republic of Indonesia’’

[‘‘JSUSARI’’], OPS, 19 September 2001 [‘‘condemned . . . civilians’’]; ‘‘JSUSARI on Terrorism

and Religious Tolerance,’’ OPS, same day [‘‘pledged . . . grief’’]; ‘‘JSUSARI’’ [‘‘to cooperate . . .

terrorism.’’] 8 Email message, 10 December 2001.

national community in combatting terrorism.’’ 7 Back in Jakarta, however, these expressions of rapport were undercut by her own vice-president, who leads Indonesia’s

main Muslim party, when he was quoted as portraying the 11 September attacks

as a response to American ‘‘sins.’’ And when she herself returned home she felt

obliged to reaccent her own views for domestic (Muslim) consumption: to dissent

from the American willingness to use of force and to regret the civilian casualties

that, however unintentionally, resulted from it.

President Suharto would have lacked such qualms. In the heyday of his authoritarian New Order, when political Islam was something to be repressed not

propitiated. In this sense, he would have been a more ‘‘reliable’’ partner of a security-focused American foreign policy toward Indonesia.

But ‘‘reliable’’ needs quote marks for a reason. The reason has to do with the domestic legitimacy of foreign commitment. Immediately helpful though an autocrat’s

cooperation on security may be, it is not derived from an underlying and ongoing

sequence of public choice, political mandate, and legal accountability.

In tangible terms—access granted, funds provided or blocked, information obtained and shared—democracy-based cooperation is not intrinsically superior to cooperation that has been decided by fiat alone. But just as the appeal of Al Qaeda’s

jihad is rooted in conditions, issues, and resentments up and down the ‘‘Muslim

street’’—in the diverse settings in which Muslims diversely believe and behave—so

must long-term success in uprooting such terror take those conditions, issues, and

resentments into account.

Populist demagoguery aside, despotic states do not take their streets into account,

except to quell them when they erupt. Opposition may be coopted through economic

growth, or reduced by steps to resolve social conflicts or attenuate social ills. In the

absence of such mitigating factors, however, an anti-terrorist state that denies outlets for the peaceful expression of dissent tends to stoke with domestic repression

the very phenomenon that its international cooperation would overcome.

Time and again since 11 September, in conversation with moderate Indonesian

and Malaysian Muslims, I have heard versions of the same request to the United

States: Do not let your interest in encouraging political and economic reform fall victim to your interest in defeating international terrorism.

Nor is this opinion limited to Muslim Southeast Asians. A Thai colleague, for example, recently expressed concern

that the US emphasis on the terrorist and the security questions, as a result

of post 9/11, will mean that the US will neglect to support the efforts of political

reform in Thailand and other countries in the region. There is also a concern

that the military in these countries will be pampered at the expense of the civilian budget.8

The remark seems especially germane on the eve of the visit to Washington of

another Southeast Asian head of government, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin

Shinawatra. Thailand is a parliamentary democracy. Last January Thai voters delivered an unprecedented majority to the new government. Arguably in part because

he feels insulated by such support, Prime Minister Thaksin has allowed the pace

of reform to slow. He has been accused of trying to curb dissent as well.

The United States should not hector foreign governments, or appear to be trying

to micromanage their domestic politics. Thai politicians in particular are likely to

bridle at such attempts. Nor does democracy come in a one-size-fits-all format. Yet

corruption in Southeast Asia, including Thailand, is necessarily a transnational concern if host governments wish to attract foreign investment. There is no reason why

American policies toward Southeast Asian states cannot incorporate both resistance

to terror and support for reform.

The balance between these two priorities will be driven in part, of course, by the

absence or presence of evidence that local elements are linked to transnational terrorists. Before rushing to conclusions about the prospect of Southeast Asia becoming

a ‘‘second front’’ for the war on terror, it may be helpful to distinguish three very

different possible kinds of linkage: biographical, attitudinal, and organizational.

Given the variety of nationalities represented among the mujahidin who were recruited with American support to resist the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and

the decade-long duration of that conflict (1979–1989), it is not surprising that MusVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
10

lims in Southeast Asia should include individuals with Afghan experience. But

present activity cannot simply be inferred from past experience.

Nor does the existence of sympathy for Osama bin Laden among some Muslims

in Southeast Asia necessarily imply willingness to imitate him by attacking Americans there. In Indonesia, despite isolated instances of Muslim hotheads threatening

to ‘‘sweep’’ Americans out of local hotels, none to my knowledge was ever actually

found and evicted. Similarly, so far as I know, the shouts of demonstrators outside

the American Embassy in Jakarta were not matched by acts of physical violence

against American citizens. Instead, in time, the demonstrators themselves were

curbed or faded away—to the point that the State Department felt confident enough

of local security to rescind, effective on 25 November 2001, its earlier willingness

to let nonessential U.S. Embassy personnel and their families leave Indonesia.

Americans who will never forget the horror of 11 September may find it hard to

understand that in a number of Muslim societies, including Indonesia, one can purchase t-shirts imprinted with pictures of Osama bin Laden. But buying and wearing

one hardly turns one into a suicide bomber, any more than wearing blue jeans and

drinking Coca Cola makes one a democrat, or than covering her hair should be

taken as a sign that a Muslim woman hates America. As for the seller’s motivation,

an Indonesian friend of mine recently walked up to one and asked him why, alongside the bin Laden shirts on display, there were none with the face of George W.

Bush. ‘‘Hey,’’ the vendor immediately replied, ‘‘just give me his picture, and I’ll

make the shirt!’’

Another matter entirely are organizational connections to the Al Qaeda network.

And here the evidence as I understand it, while not entirely absent, is not compelling. In the Philippines, for example, the record of contacts and cooperation between

Islamist terrorism and what we now call Al Qaeda appears to have been more substantial a decade or so ago than it was in the period just prior to 11 September.

We should be careful not to assume Islamist—religious—intent whenever a group

of young men in Southeast Asia is reported to have commited violence while shouting ‘‘Allahu Akbar!’’ The Sulu archipelago in the southwestern extremity of the Philippine archipelago has for centuries been a frontier zone of endemic lawlessness—

its seas and coves plied by pirates and smugglers more interested in turning a profit

than entering paradise, notwithstanding the also long-standing proximity and grievances of the Philippines’ Muslim minority on Mindanao.

As for the Islamic Defenders Front, a tiny group of bullies in Indonesia known

for intimidating the owners of karaoke bars and other ‘‘sinful’’ establishments, they

cannot be understood except in relation to corruption in the police. By muscling in

on the owners of such enterprises, the Front made its victims want to pay the police

for protection. From this revenue, the police were in turn glad to channel a portion

to the Front to continue the intimidation. And so the racket went—thugs and cops

cooperating to make and exploit a market based on fear. In this context, the adjective ‘‘Islamic’’ in the Front’s name reflected public relations more than it projected

piety.

The Laskar Jihad is different. Its mission was, and still is, to defend Muslims

against Christians, originally in Maluku and more recently in Sulawesi as well. But

its proven ability to raise the death toll in both places is not, so far as I know, consequentially connected to Al Qaeda. Rather it must be located, first, in the woeful

record of communal violence inside Indonesia since Suharto’s fall; second, in the circulation of horrific rumors and images of anti-Muslim violence through the no

longer fettered media; third, in the weakness of the post-Suharto state in the face

of challenges by nonstate actors; and fourth (and by no means least), the patronage

of certain Muslim military officers whose influence can be traced back to Suharto’s

own willingness, in the latter years of his presidency, to authorize and even sponsor

certain Muslim leaders and organizations and their sometimes assertively Islamic

discourse.

Meanwhile, at the extreme western end of the Indonesian archipelago, the secessionist Aceh Freedom Movement (GAM), although it operates in a society that takes

pride in its Islamic identity and history, has not entertained a radical vision of

Islam of the sort that we have come to associate with the Taliban. GAM’s purpose

is to obtain independence for the Acehnese nation, not to pursue bin Laden’s project

of creating a new global caliphate, i.e., a transnational Muslim nation to replace the

once-great Ottoman empire.

Finally, in Malaysia, the All-Malaysia Islamic Party continues to operate within

a parliamentary-democratic frame, contesting elections rather than fomenting insurrection. Nor can one be sure that Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s crackdown

against his Muslim opponents reflects their potential for violence more than his appetite for control.

11

9 Rizal Mallarangeng, ‘‘The Future of Indonesia Depends on Our Friendship with the West,’’

interview, Van Zorge Report, undated.

Seen, then, in their unique and differing local contexts, one must seriously doubt

if not dismiss Al Qaeda as a reason for the existence and activities of these various

groups. Nor have I found convincing evidence that they are capable of, or even interested in, acquiring ‘‘global reach’’ in the sense of threatening the United States, despite the continued captivity of two American missionaries at the hands of Abu

Sayyaf.

On both of these counts, therefore, I see no present reason to open a second,

Southeast Asian front in the war on terror. Nor should the presence of a few American advisers in the Philippines be construed as the first step in such a direction,

at least not without a significant escalation in the scope of terrorist activity there.

If Southeast Asia is not about to erupt in anti-American jihad, however, there are

serious concerns worth keeping in mind:

First, we should be sensitive to the possible incremental drifting of Indonesian

and Malaysian opinion toward greater sympathy with Islamist positions. These societies and their histories differ markedly from our own identity and experience here

in America. It is vital in this context that American public diplomacy be reinvigorated and reoriented toward the future. Three months since the event, it is no

longer enough to remind foreigners of how heinous it was, as if that evil were in

and of itself monstrous enough to justify a possibly endless Cold War II against terror wherever it might rear its ugly head.

Second, we must realize that what happened on 11 September did not, in fact,

change everything everywhere. Certainly it led to dramatic changes in American attitudes and policies. But for Southeast Asians, the world on 12 September was pretty much as it had been two days before, or two months before. What had changed

for them was not their own, local reality, but the position and priorities of the

United States.

Third, we should be aware of the ways in which Southeast Asians have reacted

to our new focus on fighting terrorism. Among these reactions, two have been particularly common in my recent conversations and correspondence with Indonesian

and Malaysian colleagues and politicians. In these differing responses, one can see

the shift in American thinking construed alternatively as an opportunity or as a distortion.

An Indonesian analyst, Rizal Mallarangeng, who has written speeches for

Megawati, makes the case for taking advantage of the opportunity created by America’s new preoccupation:

My personal view—and I have tried to convince some colleagues in the government of this—is that we should ask the US for some kind of Marshall Plan.

After all, this is precisely the right time. Putting it another way, we should do

what South Korea and Taiwan both did; because of their strategic position during the Cold War, they both received lots of help, not only military assistance

but also economic help. If the US really thinks that Indonesia is going to play

an important role because of our strategic, social and cultural importance, then

let’s make it clear that we demand a quid pro quo. This is international politics

after all, and it’s in our national interest is to be a friend of the West. We have

millions of people who are living in poverty and we have an economic crisis. So,

why don’t we ask for help in return for our loyalty and our partnership? 9

To American eyes, Rizal’s suggestion may appear somewhat blatant or unrealistic,

but it is entirely understandable. If this is going to be Cold War II for us, we can

hardly expect other countries not to respond in this way. Pakistan has set the example, and it has already been followed by the packages of help extended to Presidents

Megawati and Arroyo on their recent visits.

With regard to Indonesia, of course, we have our own quid pro quo when it comes

to military assistance. It would, in my judgment, be unwise if our long-standing desire (shared by many Indonesians) for progress on human rights in Indonesia, including the priority on making the Indonesian military legally accountable for past

abuses, were sacrificed to our new desire for cooperation in the war against terror.

In private email conversation, an influential analyst in Malaysia who is in many

respects sympathetic to American aims has interpreted 11 September very differently, by worrying that it will become a distorting ‘‘litmus’’ test for countries

around the world—distorting in the sense that the problems faced by Malaysia (and,

for that matter, Indonesia) extend far beyond the purview of a narrow, security-first

focus on chasing down terrorists.

And that leads me to this final point:

12

In the abstract, security and democracy are compatible. In practice, however, the

United States will have to work out, country by country, an appropriate mix of policies meant to promote these values. Pakistani-style compromises may be necessary

on the borders of Aghanistan. In Southeast Asia, however, the United States faces

a greater range of choices between these two priorites.

Mr. LEACH. I think rather than interrupt your testimony, we

should recess subject to the vote, and this will probably be a 15

minute recess.

[Recess.]

Mr. CHABOT. [Presiding.] We apologize for any inconvenience, but

the Majority Leader Mr. Armey announced officially that he is retiring at the end of next year—the end of his term, and so all Members went over to hear the news and his speech, and I imagine the

Chairman is still making his way back. And I apologize for any inconvenience to the panel or any of the folks here today.

The first witness has already testified. We will continue on with

Dr. Hefner at this time. And I guess the Chairman has already requested that the witnesses, if possible, limit their testimony to 5

minutes, and then the Committee Members will follow up with

questions.

So, Dr. Hefner.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT HEFNER, Ph.D., INSTITUTE FOR

RELIGION AND WORLD AFFAIRS, BOSTON UNIVERSITY

Mr. HEFNER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and Committee

Members. I thought I was going to speak 10 minutes up until 15

seconds ago.

Mr. CHABOT. With unanimous consent, we will make that 10

minutes then if there is no objection.

Mr. HEFNER. I work on Muslim politics in Southeast Asia generally with a particular focus on Malaysia and Indonesia, but this

morning I am going to talk primarily about the largest majority

Muslim country in the world and certainly in Southeast Asia, and

that is Indonesia. In evaluating the situation of Muslims in Indonesia after September 11, we have to distinguish the reaction of ordinary Muslims from the intrigues of rival Muslim elites.

In the days following September 11, many ordinary Muslims expressed heartfelt condolences to me and other Americans concerning the victims of the violence. By contrast, when the United

States initiated its air campaign against al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, hard-line Muslims leaders demanded that Indonesians boycott American-owned businesses and that the government suspend

diplomatic relations with the U.S. Islamist hard-liners also linked

to groups battling Christians in eastern Indonesia, about whom I

will have more to say (and perhaps we can chat more after my testimony), hard-liners who are currently battling Christians in eastern Indonesia also threatened to use their paramilitaries to sweep

local hotels in Java and Sumatra in search of American and British

tourists.

Despite these threats, and despite the pro-Taliban reporting in

once-proud Islamic newspapers like Republika, no sweepings occurred, and the number of demonstrators outside the American

Embassy never exceeded more than a couple of thousand, a mere

pittance really in a country of 210 million people. Equally important, leaders of the two largest Islamic organizations, the

13

Nahdlatul Ulama and the Muhammadiyah, which together have

some 50 million associates, repudiated all calls for radical action.

On the basis of examples like these, I believe we can conclude

that sentiment among mainstream Muslims after September 11 remains consistent with the remarks of President Megawati

Sukarnoputri, who offered soft words of consolation to the victims

of the attacks in the U.S.—even while expressing reservations

about the American campaign in the alliance campaign in Afghanistan.

There is also, however, a stronger anti-American countercurrent

at work in some circles in the United States. In late September, the

government-sponsored Council of Islamic Scholars, the MUI, issued

an official declaration stating that if the United States attacked Afghanistan, all Muslims everywhere would be obliged to join in a

jihad against the United States. The MUI declaration was one of

the harshest statements of support for the Taliban heard from any

state-supported religious body in the Muslim world, a rather startling fact. Certainly it is not surprising and nothing new to hear

that Muslims might take issue with some United States policies,

most notably in the Middle East. Rather than reflecting broad public sentiment, however, extremist statements like the one I just described calling for jihad against the U.S. have more to do with the

bitter struggle now unfolding, a domestic struggle, between moderates and hard-liners for the hearts and minds of the Indonesian

Muslim community. Having succeeded in ousting the former President Abdurrahaman Wahid in August 2001, hard-line Islamists are

now pressing forward, attempting to place the government of

Megawati Sukarnoputri on the defensive.

How do things get this way? Just very briefly, let me back up

and provide some background. As I have noted in other fora, in its

final years the New Order, that is the Suharto regime (1966 to

1998), was not the monolith that many policymakers and U.S. academics had long imagined. From 1990 on, the ruling party and the

military were plagued by bitter factional disputes between those

eager to play the Islamist card and those people, also mostly Muslim, inclined to support some variant of secular nationalist politics

or multiconfessional, multireligious politics. Suharto himself took

advantage of this rivalry playing the so-called green or Islamist

generals off against the red or nationalist generals. From 1994 on,

however, Suharto tendered to favor the Islamists, providing funding and tactical support to small but militant Islamist organizations. He did so because he saw in them the possibility of allies

against the democracy movement, a democracy movement whom he

described as pro-Christian, pro-American and anti-Islamic.

The turn to ultraconservative Islam also impacted the ruling

party, Golkar. Although for most of its history, Golkar had been a

big tent, which included Christians, secular nationalists and nominal as well as pious Muslims, from 1994 on, President Suharto

awarded control of the party’s powerful Strategy Bureau, which is

really a kind of dirty tricks think tank, to hard-liners tied to an

Islamist faction in the Armed Forces.

In collaboration with this small faction of Islamist commanders,

the Strategy Bureau crafted many of the fiercely anti-Christian,

anti-Chinese and anti-American propaganda tracts issued during

14

the final months of the Suharto regime. Booklets like The Conspiracy to Overthrow Suharro described an evil international conspiracy in which the United States, the Vatican, Israel’s Mossad

and nominal Muslims and Chinese Indonesians, most of whom are

Christian, engineered the 1997–1998 financial crisis so as to drive

Suharto from power. Why? Because he is a Muslim. The book was

funded, incidentally, by one of Suharto’s sons. The book ended by

calling for enemies of Islam to be driven from Indonesia once and

for all, singling out the Chinese as especially deserving of such

drastic treatment.

This tract was distributed to ultraconservative Islamist groups

just weeks prior to the riots of May 13, 14, 1998, when thousands

of Chinese shops were destroyed, and some 100,000 Chinese were

forced to flee the country.

After Suharto’s fall in May 1998, it looked for a while to many

of us, including myself, as if hard-line Islamists in the Armed

Forces and bureaucracy (who are a minority, I emphasize again),

had been discredited once and for all. However, recent events show

that over the past year these groups have staged a remarkable

comeback. It is no coincidence, for example, that the principal architect of the September statement from the Council of Islamic

Scholars (or MUI) was also the man who directed Golkar’s Strategy

Bureau during the years Suharto pursued his alliance with hardline Islamists. He is the same fellow. The same man spearheaded

Islamist opposition to former President Wahid, removed in August

of 2001. More recently he has lent his quiet but systematic support

to hard-line groups calling for jihad against Christians in eastern

Indonesia. This man and his associates are skillfully exploiting the

issue of American involvement in Afghanistan to advance their political careers and ratchet up pressure on the Megawati government as well as secular nationalists, Christians, and others.

The primary threat in Indonesia then is not extremism in public

in a kind of general sense, least of all in the Muslim community

as a whole, which is decidedly moderate, but the efforts of a small

but well placed and influential faction in the political and Islamic

elite to hijack the political process and the Muslim community.

With this general observation in mind, let me end my testimony

today with a few comments on something that I think should be

of concern to all of us; that is, the violence in the eastern Indonesian territories of Maluku and Poso in Central Sulawesi. Over

the past years, an estimated 6,000 people, that is the official estimate—unofficial estimates range up as high 18,000—Christians

and Muslims have died in this interreligious conflict in these three

provinces.

I must emphasize from the beginning—this is very important—

that neither the Muslim nor Christian side in these awful conflicts

has had a monopoly on the use of horrific violence. In fact, in both

of the two main provinces where violence is occurring, Christians

were involved in some of the earliest incidents of violence, including mass killings of refugee women and children.

Nonetheless it is clear that tensions in both of these regions have

been greatly exacerbated recently by the arrival of well-armed and

well-funded Islamic paramilitaries from outside the region, primarily from Java and Sumatra. The largest of these groups is

15

known as the jihad militia, or Laskar Jihad. This organization has

its roots in the conservative Islamist movement founded in central

Java in the early 1990s by a young and a very charismatic Arab

Indonesian, Jafar Umar Thalib. Having studied in Pakistan and

fought alongside the mujahidin in Afghanistan, Jafar returned to

Indonesia in early 1990s. Today is reported to have ties to the

Islamist wing of the Armed Forces as well as to associates of

former President Suharto. Those ties are much more important

than any international contacts he might have.

It is equally true, however, that other factions in the military

wing of the government, probably majority factions, are deeply

troubled by Jafar’s activities. The Laskar Jihad asserts that the

U.S. and Israel are coordinating an international campaign to destroy Islam in general, and in Indonesia in particular, because it

is a majority Muslim society. At least on this point of ideology, the

Laskar Jihad’s ideology does bear a striking resemblance to Osama

bin Laden’s movement. In recent years some members of the

Laskar Jihad have had contacts with bin Laden. A few dozen Arab

fighters are reported to have travelled to Maluku and Poso—not

very many, but a few dozen—to aid in the battle against Christians, the most recent sighting having been reported by the BBC

just a couple of weeks ago, the end of November.

However, we would do well, I emphasize this, Mr. Chairman, to

distinguish the Laskar Jihad from bin Laden and al-Qaeda, whatever there may have been in terms of occasional contacts.

In recent weeks as the United States has mounted its campaign

in Afghanistan. The Laskar Jihad leadership has taken pains to

distance itself from bin Laden. Laskar Jihad press releases describe bin Laden as a Kharijite, which basically means a deviationist rebel, religiously deviationist rebel.

Whatever the extent of earlier contacts, the Laskar Jihad depends primarily on domestic intra-Indonesian support for its survival. In light of this dependency, and in light of elite sponsors’

wariness of risking the ire of the U.S., it is not surprising that the

Laskar Jihad leadership now takes pains to repudiate bin Laden.

A year ago they did not.

More generally, I believe we can conclude that the primary influences on Indonesia’s religious violence are domestic, not international. They are related above all to the continuing erosion of

state authority, the growing reliance of local groupings that would

include Christians as well as Muslims on paramilitary violence,

and a fierce struggle between moderates and hard-liners for the

heart and soul of the Muslim community.

I jump ahead to my conclusions. The majority of Indonesian Muslims are moderate. Many support democracy and look with sympathy to the West. Over the past year, however, the moderates

have been skillfully outmaneuvered by Islamist hard-liners.

Nonetheless, despite the disarray in their leadership, a clear majority among Muslims opposes the Jihad violence in Maluku and

Poso, is uneasy with the strident nature of recent anti-Americanism, and yearns for a politics that is moderate and inclusive.

All this means that the U.S. campaign against al-Qaeda will continue to have a serious impact on Indonesia’s Muslim community.

16

But the impact need not be fatally destabilizing. Indeed, I don’t

think it will be.

Much depends, however, on the efforts of Megawati and the

mainstream Muslim leadership and on whether moderate elements

in the Armed Forces can be urged to pull the country back from

its current political and economic abyss.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hefner follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ROBERT HEFNER, PH.D., INSTITUTE FOR RELIGION AND

WORLD AFFAIRS, BOSTON UNIVERSITY

In evaluating the situation of Muslims in Indonesia after the September attacks

on the United States, we have to distinguish the reaction of ordinary Muslims from

intrigues among rival Muslim elites. In the days following September 11, many

Muslims expressed heartfelt condolences for the American victims of the violence.

By contrast, when the United States initiated its air campaign against al-Qaida

bases in Afghanistan, hardline Muslims demanded that Indonesians boycott American-owned businesses and that the government suspend diplomatic relations with

the U.S. Islamist hardliners linked to groups battling Christians in eastern Indonesia (about whom I’ll have more to say later) threatened to use their paramilitaries

to ‘‘sweep’’ local hotels in search of American and British visitors. Despite these

threats, and despite, I might add, the pro-Taliban reporting in once-proud Islamic

newspapers like Republika (a newspaper linked to supporters of former President

Habibie), no sweepings occurred, and the number of demonstrators outside the

American embassy never exceeded more than a few thousand—a pittance in this

country of 210 million. Equally important, leaders of the two largest Islamic organizations, the Nahdlatul Ulama and the Muhammadiyah, which have some 50 million

followers, repudiated calls for radical action.

On the basis of examples like these, I believe we can conclude that sentiment

among mainstream Muslims remains consistent with the remarks of President

Megawati Sukarnoputri, who offered soft words of consolation to the victims of the

September attacks when she visited the U.S. However, there is an anti-American

countercurrent to the mainstream Muslim view. Traces of this sentiment were apparent in the comments of Vice President, Hamzah Haz, shortly after the attack.

Leader of a large Islamic party that advocates the implementation of Islamic law,

Mr. Hamzah qualified his expression of condolences with the observation that the

violence might help the United States ‘‘expiate its sins,’’ presumably in the Middle

East. Similarly, in late September, the government-sponsored Council of Indonesian

Islamic Scholars (MUI, Majelis Ulama Indonesia) issued an official declaration stating that, if the United States attacked Afghanistan, all Muslims were obliged to join

the jihad against the U.S. The MUI declaration was one of the harshest statements

of support for the Taliban heard from any state-supported religious body in the

Muslim world.

Certainly it is not surprising that Muslims might take issue with some U.S. policies, most notably in the Middle East. Rather than reflecting broad public sentiment, however, extremist statements like those calling for jihad against the U.S.

have more to do with a bitter struggle now unfolding between moderates and

hardliners for the hearts and minds of the Muslim community. Having succeeded

in ousting the former president Abdurrahman Wahid in August 2001, hardline

Islamists are now pressing forward, attempting to place the government of

Megawati Sukarnoputri on the defensive.

How did things get to be this way? As I noted two years ago, in its final years

the New Order was not the Soehartoist monolith that many American policy makers

and academics had long imagined. From 1990 on, the ruling party and the military

were plagued by bitter factional divides between those eager to play the Islamist

card and those (also mostly Muslim) inclined to support secular nationalist policies.

Soeharto himself took advantage of this rivalry, playing the so-called green or

Islamist generals off against the red or secular nationalist generals. From 1994 on,

Soeharto tended to favor the Islamists, providing funding and tactical support to

small but militant Islamist organizations. Soeharto looked to the hardliners for help

in attacking the democracy movement, which he and they attempted to portray as

anti-Islamic.

The turn to ultraconservative Islam also impacted the ruling party, Golkar. Although for most of its history Golkar had been a big tent which included Christians,

secular nationalists, and nominal as well as pious Muslims, from 1994 on President

17

Soeharto awarded control of the party’s powerful ‘‘strategy bureau’’ (Litbang Golkar)

to hardliners tied to an Islamist faction in the armed forces. In collaboration with

the Islamist military, the strategy bureau crafted many of the fiercely anti-Chinese,

anti-Christian, and anti-American propaganda tracts issued during the last months

of Soeharto rule. Booklets like the Conspiracy to Overthrow Soeharto described an

evil conspiracy in which the U.S., the Vatican, Israel’s Mossad, abangan Javanese

(i.e. nominal Muslims), and Chinese Indonesians engineered the 1997–1998 financial crisis so as to drive Soeharto from power. The book ended by calling for enemies

of Islam to be driven from Indonesia once and for all, singling out the Chinese as

especially deserving of such drastic treatment. This tract was distributed to conservative Islamist groups just weeks prior to the riots of May 13–14, 1998, when thousands of Chinese shops were destroyed, and some one hundred thousand Chinese

fled the country.

After Soeharto’s fall in May 1998, it looked for a while as if hardline Islamists

in the armed forces and bureaucracy had been discredited once and for all. However,

recent events show that over the past year these groups have staged a remarkable

come back. It is no coincidence, for example, that the principle architect of the September statement from the Council of Islamic Scholars (MUI) calling for jihad

against the United States was also the man who directed Golkar’s Strategy Bureau

during the years Soeharto pursued his alliance with hardline Islamists. This same

man spearheaded Islamist opposition to former President Wahid; more recently, he

has lent his support to hardline groups calling for jihad against Christians in

Maluku and Sulawesi. This man and his associates are skillfully exploiting the issue

of American involvement in Afghanistan to advance their political careers and

ratchet up pressure on the Megawati government.

The primary threat in Indonesia, then, is not extremism in the public as a whole

but the efforts of a small but influential faction in the political elite to hijack the

political process and the Muslim community. With this general observation in mind,

let me end my testimony today with a few comments on the violence in the eastern

Indonesian territories of Maluku and Poso, Central Sulawesi. Over the past three

years, an estimated 6000 people have died in Muslim-Christian violence in these

provinces.

I must emphasize from the beginning that neither the Muslim nor Christian side

in these awful conflicts has had a monopoly on the use of horrific violence. In fact,

in both provinces Christians were involved in some of the earliest incidents of violence, including mass killings of refugee women and children. Nonetheless, it is

clear that tensions in both of these regions have been exacerbated by the arrival

of well armed and well-funded Islamic paramilitaries from Java and Sumatra. The

largest of these groups is known as the ‘‘jihad militia’’ or Laskar Jihad. This organization has its roots in a conservative Islamist movement founded in central Java

in the early 1990s by a young and charismatic Arab-Indonesian, Jafar Umar Thalib.

Having studied in Pakistan and fought alongside the mujahidin in Afghanistan,

Jafar returned to Indonesia in the early 1990s. Today he is reported to have ties

to the Islamist wing of the armed forces, as well as associates of former President

Soeharto. It is equally true, however, that other factions in the military and government oppose Jafar’s activities.

The Laskar Jihad asserts that the U.S. and Israel are coordinating an international campaign to destroy Muslims in general and Indonesia in particular. On

this point, at least, the Laskar Jihad’s ideology bears a strong resemblance to that

of Osama bin Laden. In recent years some members of the Laskar Jihad have had

contacts with bin Laden, and a few dozen Arab fighters are reported to have traveled to Maluku and Poso to aid in the battle against Christians, the most recent

having been sighted last month by BBC reporters.

However, we would do well to distinguish the Laskar Jihad from bin Laden and

al Qaida. In recent weeks, as the United States has mounted its campaign in Afghanistan, the Laskar Jihad leadership has taken pains to distance itself from bin

Laden. Laskar Jihad press releases describe bin Laden as a ‘‘Kharijite’’ or a religiously deviant rebel. Whatever the extent of its earlier contacts, the Laskar Jihad

depends primarily on domestic support for its survival. In light of this dependency,

and in light of elite sponsors’ wariness of risking the ire of the U.S., it is not surprising that the Laskar leadership has taken pains to repudiate bin Laden More

generally, I believe we can conclude that the primary influences on Indonesia’s religious violence are domestic, not international. They are related above all to the continuing erosion of state authority, the growing reliance of local groupings (Christian

as well as Muslim) on paramilitary violence, and a fierce struggle between moderates and hardliners for the heart and soul of the Muslim community.

Let me end with four summary points. First, elite politics in Indonesia was bitterly factionalized by the end of the Soeharto era. Taking their cues from Soeharto

18

himself, some among the political elite turned to hardline Islamists as a foil against

the democratic opposition and against those calling for investigations of the military.

Second, this factionalism carried over into the post-Soeharto period. Hardline

Islamists in the military and Golkar at first seemed discredited by their earlier collaboration with Soeharto. However, the international outcry against the September

1999 violence in East Timor and anxieties about calls for human rights investigations led some old regime associates to grow alarmed at Indonesia’s reform process.

The result was that they renewed their tactical alliance with hardline Islamists. The

resulting flow of funds to jihad groups has exacerbated the violence in eastern Indonesia considerably.

Third, with Wahid removed in August 2001, and with public support for Megawati

Sukarnoputri slipping, hardline Islamic groups had decided to mobilize against

Megawati Sukarnoputri even before the events of September 11, 2001. The American campaign in Afghanistan provided the hardliners with additional ammunition

against moderate Muslims and secular nationalists.

Fourth and finally, however, the contest for the hearts and minds of Indonesian

Muslims is far from over. The majority of Indonesian Muslims are moderate; many

support democracy and look with sympathy to the West. Over the past year, however, the moderates have been skillfully outmaneuvered by Islamist hardliners.

Nonetheless, despite the disarray in their leadership, a clear majority among Muslims opposes the jihadi violence in the Maluku, is uneasy with strident anti-Americanism, and yearns for a politics that is moderate and inclusive.

All this means that the US campaign against al-Qaida will continue to have a serious impact on Indonesia’s Muslim community. But the impact need not be fatally

destabilizing. Much depends on the efforts of Megawati and the mainstream Muslim

leadership, and on whether moderate elements in the armed forces can be urged to

pull the country back from the current political and economic abyss.

Mr. LEACH. Thank you very much, Dr. Hefner. Dr. Rabasa.

STATEMENT OF ANGEL M. RABASA, Ph.D., SENIOR POLICY

ANALYST, THE RAND CORPORATION

Mr. RABASA. Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to testify.

The subject of my presentation is the changes in the security environment and threats to stability and to the United States’ interests

not only in Indonesia, but in Southeast Asia at large. This is a very

large subject, and I asked the staff before the hearing if I could

speak for longer than 10 minutes, but I will keep it to less than

that.

Mr. LEACH. If I could interrupt for a second. All of your statements will be fully in the record. Without objection, that is ordered.

But we would like to keep it around 10 minutes.

Mr. RABASA. I will keep it as short as possible, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.

First, I would like to commend this Committee for holding this

hearing on Southeast Asian security as a service to the nation.

Southeast Asia is a region of enormous strategic importance that

has not received the level of attention that it deserves. I will skip

over the reasons why this is so. The straits and sea lanes of communication in the region are critical to commerce. 50 percent of the

world’s shipping transits these sea lanes and straits.

From a military standpoint, they are critical to the movement of

U.S. forces from the Southwest Pacific to the Middle East and beyond.

Threats to the security of the region and to United States’ interests fall into three main categories: First, conventional military

threats; second, threats of international terrorists and radical networks; and, third, international threats to the stability of Southeast Asian nations.

19

In the conventional military arena, the primary area of concern

is China’s emergence as a major regional power, linked to China’s

exorbitant claims in the South China Sea. Beijing’s quest for improved power-projection capabilities, assertiveness in pressing its

maritime and territorial claims in the South China Sea, and track

record of using military power to enforce its claims have stirred apprehension in Southeast Asia about China’s intentions.

Much of this concern reflects an underlying, if sometimes

unspoken, fear that China’s assertiveness will increase as its power

grows. As a result, many of the nations in Southeast Asia rely on

the United States to guarantee regional stability and security and

to balance China’s rising power. I say more about that in my statement.

The threats of international terrorist networks and threats to

international stability are distinct, but related. First, I would like

to give some context. As you know, Southeast Asia is a region with

one of the largest concentrations of Muslims in the world, over 200

million in Indonesia alone. They are a majority in Malaysia and

Brunei and significant minorities in the Philippines and Thailand.

This is important because many of the terrorist and militant

groups are associated with radical Islamic ideologies, as the previous speakers have indicated. They represent a small minority of

Muslims, but they have the potential to influence a larger substratum of the Muslim population. And, in fact, the strategy of

some of these groups is precisely to radicalize and capture a larger

share of mainstream Muslim public opinion in order to increase

their power and influence and destabilize secular and moderate

governments in the region. The deterioration of economic and social

conditions after the economic crisis and the associated political upheaval in Indonesia produced an environment favorable to the activity of terrorists, radical groups, and separatists.

There are active Muslim separatist movements in southern Thailand and the southern Philippines as well as in the Indonesian

province of Aceh. For the most part, the separatists do not recognize the legitimacy of the nation states that exercise sovereignty

over the areas that they claim, and they seek the establishment of

independent and exclusive Islamic entities. Some of the most extreme groups see their efforts as part of an international struggle

between Islam and the West.

There are also, in Indonesia and Malaysia, both Muslim majority

states, radical groups that seek not to separate from the nation

state, but to reorganize the state in accordance with Islamic principles. These radical groups have linkages with each other and

with analogous groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle

East.

There is evidence of the existence of al-Qaeda cells in Indonesia,

the Philippines, and possibly Malaysia. Documents from a trial in

Spain of eight alleged al-Qaeda members indicated that one of the

suspects had been trained at a camp run by al-Qaeda in Indonesia.

I personally believe that this refers to an al-Qaeda cell within a

Laskar Jihad camp.

There is also evidence of links between al-Qaeda and radical Islamic movements in Southeast Asia, including Abu Sayyaf in the

Philippines, Malaysian radicals, and militant Indonesian Islamic

20

organizations. These groups are a direct threat to Americans. Abu

Sayyaf has kidnapped and killed Americans. Some of the Indonesian groups have carried out what they call sweepings; that is,

they entered hotels and businesses looking for Americans to expel

from Indonesia. The Indonesian authorities have characterized

these activities as terrorism.

These groups do not operate in a vacuum. They operate in a political environment that has been profoundly affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11th and by the United States’ response.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia was the first

leader of a major Islamic country to visit Washington after September 11th. She told President Bush at the time that Indonesia

was ready to cooperate with the United States and other civilized

countries in the struggle against terrorism. However, support for

the war on terrorism as it manifested itself in military operations

in Afghanistan became a controversial political issue in Indonesia

that extreme organizations sought to exploit, and in fact some of

the articles in the Indonesian press indicated that the target of

these demonstrations and disturbances was not the United States,

but that it was Megawati.

The success of the United States-led campaign without largescale civilian casualties appears to have dampened the Muslim

backlash, and to some degree weakened extremists, as seems to

have been the case in countries like Pakistan and Egypt as well.

This turn of events should make it easier for the Indonesian government to take a more active part in the war on terrorism.

Nevertheless, the threats to stability in Indonesia have by no

means been dispelled. There is a long way to go before Indonesia

consolidates a stable democratic order. Given the magnitude of the

stakes, the United States needs to put in place realistic long-term

programs to support democratic consolidation and stability in Indonesia.

In my statement, I elaborate on the effects of September 11th on

Malaysia and the Philippines and on the constructive role of Singapore in regional security.

In the interest of time, I will move directly to an analysis of our

security interests and a recommended U.S. approach. The starting

point for this analysis is that September 11th changed in a fundamental way the U.S. calculus of interests.

With the United States vitally concerned about not having its

war on terrorism viewed as an anti-Islamic crusade, the support of

moderate Muslim-majority states, such as Indonesia, is crucially

important. At the same time, it is equally important, as I mentioned before, to be aware that the ultimate goal of many of these

terrorist and radical groups is the destabilization of these governments.

Their terrorism is a means to an end and not an end in itself.

Therefore, our actions should be framed by a strategy of strengthening regional security structures and promoting stability and

democratic consolidation in states at risk.

Specifically, we should do the following:

First, as we recommended in the RAND report on Asian security

released earlier this year, we should deepen and widen our bilatVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
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eral alliances and partnerships to allow the creation of a comprehensive security network in the Asia Pacific region. This

multilateralization of our defense and security arrangements in

Asia could serve as a complement rather than as a substitute for

our bilateral security treaties, and it could ultimately include the

United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, Singapore,

the Philippines, and Thailand.

Initially, the United States should encourage these countries,

who are key friends and allies in the region, to improve the interoperability of their armed forces so they can respond to regional

crises as coalitions. Intelligence sharing which, according to a

statement by the U.S. Commander in Chief, Pacific Command, is

at an unprecedented level after September 11th, is an indispensable component of any comprehensive strategy.

Second, we need to promote the cohesion, stability and territorial

integrity of Indonesia and other Southeast Asian states. Economic

reconstruction is critical to political stability. The United States

and other allied countries should help to rebuild the economies of

the ASEAN countries.

Indonesia’s democratic evolution since the fall of Suharto has

opened a window of opportunity for closer military-to-military relations. There has been progress under this Administration in

strengthening ties at senior levels through high-level visits, conferences, and seminars. However, because of restrictions on international military education and training (IMET), funds for Indonesia since 1992, there has been a lost decade in which few Indonesian military officers were exposed to American methods and values. So there is a need for expeditious movement and normalization of military-to-military relations, including restoration of IMET

for Indonesia.

Third, we need to restore a robust security assistance program

to allies in the region, especially the Philippines, a front-line state

in the war on terrorism. Beyond counterterrorism assistance, we

should provide urgently needed air defense and Naval patrol assets

to the Philippines to help Manila reestablish deterrence vis-a-vis

China and to give a further impetus to the revitalization of the

United States-Philippine defense relationship. The 92.3 million dollars in military assistance promised during the visit of President

Macapagal-Arroyo last month is a step in the direction of redressing the shortfalls in Philippine capabilities.

Fourth, we should expand and diversify our access and support

arrangements in Southeast Asia in order to be able to respond on

an effective and timely basis to unexpected contingencies. After all,

6 months ago, who would have thought that our Armed Forces

would be required to plan and execute a military campaign in Afghanistan?

In conclusion, the international situation after September 11th

confronts the United States with a complex challenge. The immediate task is to fight the terrorist organizations associated in a

loose international network with those responsible for the September 11th attacks. But beyond that, what is needed in Southeast

Asia is a comprehensive strategy to strengthen the ability of our

regional friends and allies to counter threats to our security and

stability and to act together against common security challenges

22

and to enhance the ability of our own military forces to respond to

regional contingencies through improved access and support arrangements.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rabasa follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ANGEL M. RABASA, PH.D., SENIOR POLICY ANALYST, THE

RAND CORPORATION

Mr. Chairman:

Thank you for inviting me to testify. As a Senior Policy Analyst with the RAND

Corporation, I have been working for the last three years on Southeast Asian security issues as part of RAND’s Project AIR FORCE, a project sponsored by the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations, United States Air Force, and by

the Commander, Pacific Air Forces. This statement is based on a variety of sources,

including this research.

As an American and at a time when our country is confronting a great challenge,

I am pleased that, by testifying before this Subcommittee, I can share our findings

with you and make a contribution, however small, to the great national task that

we have before us. This Subcommittee is doing a service to the nation by holding

these hearings on Southeast Asia after September 11. With a population of 500 million and vast natural resources, Southeast Asia is an area of enormous strategic importance that has not always received the level of attention that it deserves. It is

the crossroads between the concentration of industrial, technological and military

power in Northeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. A high

proportion of the trade of Japan, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Australia, including much of their oil imports, transit the straits and sea lanes of communication

of Southeast Asia. From a military standpoint, these straits and sea-lanes of communication are critical to the movement of U.S. forces from the Southwest Pacific

to the Indian Ocean, the Middle East and beyond.

Threats to the security and stability of Southeast Asia and to U.S. security interests in the region fall into three categories:

• Conventional military threats

• Threat of international terrorist and radical networks; and

• Internal threats to the stability of Southeast Asian nations

CONVENTIONAL MILITARY THREATS

In the conventional military arena, the primary area of concern is China’s emer- gence as a major regional power, linked to China’s exorbitant claims in the South

China Sea. Beijing’s quest for improved power projection capabilities, assertiveness

in pressing its maritime and territorial claims in the South China Sea, and track

record of using military power to enforce its claims have stirred apprehension in

Southeast Asia about China’s intentions. Much of this concern reflects an underlying, if sometimes unspoken, fear that China’s assertiveness will increase as its

power grows. As a result, many of the nations in Southeast Asia rely on the United

States to guarantee regional stability and security and balance China’s growing

power.

Although the prospects appear remote that China will mount a major conventional attack in the South China Sea in the foreseeable future, the possibility cannot

be ruled out that hostilities could break out between China and one of the Southeast

Asian states as the result of an incident that spins out of control, or that conflict

could be triggered by energy exploration or exploitation activities. It is also conceivable that armed conflict could extend to the South China Sea as the result of a confrontation between China and the United States over Taiwan.

Having outlined these potential sources of conflict, it is important to point out

that there are countervailing factors that might inhibit aggressive Chinese behavior.

China at the present has a strong stake in maintaining good relations with its

neighbors and with the United States and a stable environment in the Asia-Pacific

region. From this perspective, any disruption in the patterns of international trade

and investment in Asia could seriously damage China’s ability to sustain high rates

of economic growth, which are key to its emergence as a major power and to the

preservation of domestic political stability.

For the present, we can anticipate that the Chinese will continue their step-bystep tactics and ambiguous use of force in the South China Sea to increase their

presence in disputed areas. The Chinese have been adept at camouflaging their political-military operations in ostensibly innocuous garb—for instance, the construcVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
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1One of the suspected September 11 hijackers, identified as Khalid al-Midhar, appeared in

a Malaysian surveillance videotape made last year showing him meeting in Kuala Lumpur with

a non-Malaysian suspect in the October 12 bombing of the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen. Ramzi

Yousef, convicted ringleader of the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, plotted in

Manila to blow up eleven jumbo jets en route to the United States, while one of the men convicted of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya was a student in the Philippines when

he was recruited into the bin Laden organization. After the September 11 attacks, Philippine

officials stated that four of the 19 suspected hijackers—Ahmed Fayez, Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed

Alghamdi, and Abdulaziz al-Omari—may have visited the Philippines and that their names appeared on immigration records. 2 According to court documents in Spain where eight alleged terrorists have been jailed pending trial, one of the eight jailed men, Luis Jose Gallant Gonzalez, known as Yusuf Gallant, received military training at an Indonesian Al Qaida camp in July. An individual named

Parlindungan Siregar, aka Parlin, was named as his contact. Parlin reportedly works in the

structure of the Laskar Jihad organization. When Gallant Gonzalez was arrested at his Madrid

home last week, police found guns, ammunition, knives, a bulletproof vest, forged identification

documents, travel documents to Indonesia and pictures apparently taken at the Indonesian

camp. In the United States, authorities arrested an Indonesian named Agus Budiman, who is

suspected of assisting one of the hijackers involved in the September 11 attacks.

tion of so-called ‘‘fishermen’s shelters’’ on Mischief reef, which is claimed by the

Philippines. Nevertheless, China’s intentions, ambitions, and operating style could

change over time. As China’s power grows, other determinants of Chinese behavior,

including the desire for regional hegemony, could lead to a more aggressive challenge to the regional status quo.

Aside from disputes involving China, there are also outstanding territorial disputes and tensions among Southeast Asian countries. The Philippines, Vietnam, and

Malaysia have overlapping claims in the South China Sea. Malaysia has boundary

disputes with Indonesia in Borneo, as well as a longstanding dispute with the Philippines over ownership of the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah. Thailand’s primary

security concern is the border tensions with Burma which, according to Thai analysts, have the potential to escalate into armed conflict. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been remarkably successful since its inception in

keeping these disputes from developing into conflicts. While ASEAN was weakened

by the economic crisis and the political crisis in Indonesia, historically the keystone

of ASEAN, the tendency since September 11 has been increased security cooperation

among its members against the common threat of terrorism and subversion.

THREATS OF INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST AND RADICAL NETWORKS

These threats and internal threats to stability are distinct, but related. First, I

would like to give some context. Southeast Asia is a region with one of the largest

concentration of Muslims in the world, over 200 million in Indonesia alone. Muslims

are also a majority in Malaysia and significant minorities in southern Thailand and

the southern Philippines. This is important because many of the terrorists and militant groups are associated with radical Islamic ideologies. They represent a small

minority of Muslims, but they have the potential to influence a larger substratum

of the Muslim population. In fact, the strategy of some of these groups is precisely

to radicalize and capture a larger share of mainstream Muslim public opinion in

order to increase their power and influence and destabilize secular and moderate

governments in the region.

The deterioration of economic and social conditions after the economic crisis and

the associated political upheaval in Indonesia produced an environment favorable to

the activities of terrorists, radical groups, and separatists. There are active Muslim

separatist movements in southern Thailand and the southern Philippines, as well

as in the Indonesian province of Aceh. For the most part, the separatists do not recognize the legitimacy of the nation-states that exercise sovereignty in the areas that

they claim and they seek the establishment of independent and exclusive Islamic

entities. Some of the most extreme groups see their efforts as part of an international struggle between Islam and the West.

There are also in Indonesia and Malaysia, both Muslim majority states, radical

groups that seek not to separate from the nation-state, but to reorganize the state

in accordance with Islamic principles. These radical groups have linkages with each

other, and with analogous groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.

There is evidence of the existence of Al Qaida cells in Indonesia, the Philippines,

and possibly Malaysia.1 Documents from a trial in Spain of eight alleged Al Qaida

members indicated that one of the suspects had been trained at a camp run by Al

Qaida in Indonesia.2 There also evidence of links between Al Qaida and radical Islamic movements in Southeast Asia, including Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, MaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
24

3The Indonesian security forces reportedly foiled four terrorist attacks in Jakarta in recent

months, including planned bomb attacks on the U.S. Embassy, the American Club, and the

Hotel Indonesia. In August 2001, four Malaysians were arrested for the bombing of a Catholic

church, a Protestant church, and the Atrium Plaza shopping mall in central Jakarta. A group

of Malaysian terrorists reportedly joined the jihad forces in the Moluccas, while others moved

on to Jakarta. Indonesian police authorities suggested that the groups were involved in Osama

bin Laden’s international network.

laysian radicals, and several militant Indonesian Islamic organizations.3 The two

most active of the radical Indonesian Islamic groups are Laskar Jihad and the Defenders of Islam Front. Laskar Jihad has been waging a jihad or holy war against

Christians in the Moluccas since 1999. The Front is active on the island of Java.

The membership of both groups includes veterans of the war in Afghanistan and

militants trained in camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

These groups are, of course, a direct threat to Americans. Abu Sayyaf has kidnapped and killed Americans. Some of the Indonesian radical groups have carried

out what they call ‘‘sweepings,’’ that is, they entered hotels and businesses looking

for Americans to expel from Indonesia. The Indonesian authorities have characterized these activities as terrorism.

INTERNAL THREATS TO STABILITY

Now, these groups do not operate in a vacuum. They operate in a political environment that has been profoundly affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11

and by the United States’ response to these attacks. I will focus my discussion on

Indonesia, a country which because of its size and geopolitical weight, is the key

to regional security and which is now in the process of a fragile experiment with

democracy.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri was the first leader of a major Muslim country

to visit Washington after the September 11 attacks. She told President Bush that

Indonesia was ready to cooperate with the United States and other civilized countries in the struggle against terrorism. However, support for the war on terrorism

as it manifested itself in military operations in Afghanistan became a controversial

political issue in Indonesia which extremist organizations sought to exploit. The vast

majority of Indonesian Muslims have a moderate approach to religion and do not

support the violent tactics of extremists, but many opposed U.S. military actions,

including some of the mainstream Muslim organizations. The fear of many moderate

Indonesians is that extremist Islamic organizations could end up setting the agenda

for the debate on U.S. aims in Afghanistan and the broader issue of the relationship

between the West and Islam.

The success of the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan, without large-scale civilian

casualties, appears to have dampened the Muslim backlash and to some degree

weakened the extremists—as seems to have been the case as well in Egypt and

Pakistan. This turn of events should make it easier for the Indonesian government

to take a more active part in the war on terrorism. Nevertheless, the threats to Indonesia’s stability have by no means dissipated. There is long way to go before Indonesia consolidates a stable democratic order. Given the magnitude of the stakes, the

United States needs to put in place a realistic long-term program to support democratic consolidation and stability in Indonesia. I’ll come back to this at the end of

this presentation.

With Muslim ethnic Malays constituting 60 percent of the population, Malaysia

is very sensitive to religious politics. The political system in place over the past thirty years, a multi-ethnic coalition dominated by Prime Minister Mahathir’s United

Malay National Organization (UMNO), is under pressure as the result of

generational change and political divisions within UMNO, which manifested themselves in the downfall and imprisonment of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar

Ibrahim. In recent elections, the main Islamic opposition party, the Islamic Party

of Malaysia (PAS), has made significant inroads into traditional UMNO strongholds—in fact, Mahathir is only kept in power by the votes of the non-Malay parties.

The aftermath of September 11 placed additional strains on the Malaysian political system. The Islamic Party of Malaysia or PAS, declared a jihad against the

United States and authorized its members to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. The government interpreted the PAS’ jihad as a way of scoring political points

with Muslims. The government positioned itself in general opposition to terrorism,

but also opposing the military option in Afghanistan. Although the PAS does not

advocate violence, the government contends that it has been infiltrated by Muslim

extremists. In the aftermath of September 11, the authorities identified a Malaysian

Mujahedeen group and detained 12 members, including the son of PAS chief Nik

Abdul Aziz Nik Mat. The Malaysians also detained the Philippine Muslim rebel Nur

25

Misuari, who fled to the Malaysian state of Sabah last month after the Philippine

army put down a rebellion by his forces in Mindanao.

In the Philippines, a predominantly Christian country, the government is not exposed to the same politico-religious pressures as its counterparts in Indonesia and

Malaysia, but as noted above, Manila faces a persistent Muslim insurgency and a

serious terrorist threat. So it is not surprising that President Macapagal-Arroyo

came out strongly in support of the war on terrorism. Her government allowed U.S.

forces to overfly Philippine airspace and use airfields as transit points in support

of Operation Enduring Freedom. The United States, in turn, is providing anti-terrorism training and advice.

Before proceeding to a discussion of the United States approach to Southeast

Asian security, a word about Singapore—figuratively and literally an island of stability in an unstable region. Singapore does not have a defense treaty with the

United States, but it has a strong coincidence of interests, including maintenance

of freedom of navigation and regional stability. The United States and Singapore cooperated closely in dealing with the consequences of the regional economic crisis and

the political crisis in Indonesia. Singapore provides the United States with access

to its military facilities and contributes significantly to burden sharing. We would

expect Singapore to continue to be one of the key anchors of the U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia as the war on terrorism evolves into its next phase.

AN INTEGRATED U.S. APPROACH TO REGIONAL SECURITY

A starting point for the analysis of U.S. security interests in Southeast Asia today

is that the September 11 terrorist attacks changed in a fundamental way the calculus of U.S. interests. With the United States vitally concerned about not having

its war on terrorism viewed as an anti-Islamic crusade, the support of moderate

Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia is crucially important. At the same

time, it is equally important to be aware that the ultimate goal of many of these

terrorist and radical groups is the destabilization of these governments. Their terrorism is a means to an end and not an end in itself. Therefore our actions should

be framed by a strategy of strengthening security structures in the region and promoting stability and processes of democratic consolidation in states at risk.

Specifically, we should do the following:

First, as we recommended in a RAND report on Asian security released earlier

this year, we should deepen and widen our bilateral security alliances and partnerships to allow for the creation of a comprehensive security network in the Asia-Pacific region. This multilateralization of our defense and security arrangements in

Asia could serve as a complement rather than as a substitute for our existing bilateral alliances, and it could ultimately include the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand.

Initially, the United States should encourage these countries, our key friends and

allies in the Asia-Pacific region, to improve the inter-operability of their armed

forces so that they can respond to regional crises as coalitions. Intelligence sharing

which, according to a statement by the Commander-in-Chief Pacific Command, is

at an unprecedented level after September 11, is an indispensable component of any

comprehensive strategy.

Second, we need to promote the cohesion, stability and territorial integrity of Indonesia and other Southeast Asian states. Economic reconstruction is critical to political stability. The United States and other allied countries should help to rebuild

the economies of ASEAN countries by encouraging freer trade and investment and

economic reform.

Indonesia’s democratic evolution since the fall of Suharto has opened a window

of opportunity for closer military-to-military ties with the Indonesian armed forces.

There has been progress in this administration to strengthen ties at senior levels

through high-level visits, conferences, and seminars. However, because of restrictions on International Military Education and Training (IMET) funds for Indonesia

since 1992 there has been a ‘‘lost decade’’ in which few Indonesian military officers

were exposed to American methods and values. So there is a need for expeditious

movement on normalization of military-to-military relations, including restoration of

IMET funding for Indonesia.

Third, we need to restore a robust security assistance program to allies in the region, especially the Philippines, a front-line state in the war on terrorism. Beyond

counter-terrorism assistance, we should provide urgently needed air defense and

naval patrol assets to the Philippines to help Manila reestablish deterrence vis-avis China and give a further impetus to the revitalization of the United States-Philippine defense relationship. The $92.3 million in military assistance promised durVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
26

ing the visit of President Macapagal-Arroyo last month is a step in the direction of

redressing the shortfalls of the Philippine armed forces.

Fourth, we should expand and diversify our access and support arrangements in

Southeast Asia in order to be able to respond on an effective and timely basis to

unexpected contingencies. After all, six months ago, who would have thought that

our armed forces would be confronted with the need to plan and execute a military

campaign in Afghanistan?

In conclusion, the international situation after September 11 confronts the United

States with a complex challenge. The immediate task is to fight the terrorist organizations associated in a loose international network with those responsible for the

September 11 attacks. But beyond that, what is needed in Southeast Asia is a comprehensive strategy to strengthen the ability of our regional friends and allies to

counter threats to their security and stability and to act together against common

security challenges, and to enhance the ability of our forces to respond to regional

contingencies through improved access and support arrangements.

Thank you very much.

Mr. LEACH. Thank you, Dr. Rabasa.

Mr. Jendrzejczyk.

STATEMENT OF MIKE JENDRZEJCZYK, WASHINGTON

DIRECTOR, ASIA DIVISION, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. Thank you.

Mr. LEACH. Welcome again.

Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to

testify today. I will contain my remarks to 10 minutes.

The entire Asia region suffered a political earthquake in the

aftermath of the September 11th attacks, and all countries in the

region, including in Southeast Asia, condemn the attacks.

But some governments found, in the antiterrorism efforts, reasons to justify existing repression internally. I think what we have

seen, and others on this panel have testified to, is a real enthusiasm for the antiterrorist campaign most evident in the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and South Korea.

However, some, especially in Indonesia, have found the political

costs domestically to being to closely involved in this campaign.

However, the September 11th events also eclipsed some important

ongoing developments that continue since September 11th that

have a major impact, I think, on Southeast Asia’s continued economic, social and political development as well as its ability to handle some of the problems that others have described here that

sometimes result in domestically inspired terrorism.

One was clearly the fragility of democratic transitions in a number of countries in the region, and some of the dilemmas posed by

countries that are only partially democratized.

Another is abuses under internal security laws, and we have

seen an increase of this in Malaysia, and I should say a new

antiterrorist law is now being drafted in Indonesia that will be presented to the Parliament later this month. Indonesian human

rights activists and the Human Rights Commission have already

expressed concerns that this law could wipe out some key protections contained in the Indonesian Constitution.

We have also seen attacks on human rights defenders and NGOs

involved in defending human rights throughout the region, large

numbers of internally displaced and refugees and much larger

numbers even than we are seeing in Afghanistan, and of course an

attempt, sometimes not very effective, by international agencies to

deal with these problems and the dislocation that they create.

27

I want to spend most of my time commenting on the U.S. role

in this climate and environment in Southeast Asia and make a few

recommendations, both region-wide and country-specific, including

on a few countries that haven’t really been mentioned yet this

morning.

I think the Bush Administration is trying to balance its immediate priority on pressing Southeast Asian governments to cooperate on antiterrorism initiatives while trying to maintain a focus on

a longer term set of objectives, including stabilizing newly democratic governments and helping to restart economies in the region,

which of course are continuing to nose-dive since September 11.

In this context, I believe that the objective of promoting human

rights, good governance, and the rule of law is in fact more essential than ever. The World Bank published an analysis on the impact of September 11th in East Asia last month. And they said,

and here I quote,

‘‘Governance and institutional reform efforts are increasingly

important for economic and social advances in the region. Over

time, governments and political institutions are becoming reshaped to meet the demands of civil society for greater participation and political accountability.

‘‘In countries in the region that are predominately Muslim or

have large Muslin minorities, the quality of governance institutions will be tested as governments contribute to the global

campaign against terrorism while maintaining the rule of law

and domestic stability.’’

And I think the panel has summarized, in fact, that challenge very

well.

We believe that U.S. policy throughout Southeast Asia should

continue to press for fundamental judicial and legal reforms, in Indonesia, in Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere, as crucial to effectively fighting corruption and to promoting sustainable growth.

I think throughout the region the Administration, with strong

support from Congress, should continue to support an active program of civil society growth and activity, including human rights

NGOs and others, including groups trying to assist those displaced

by a number of the civil conflicts that others on the panel have

mentioned here this morning.

There is no question that some of the conflicts in Indonesia that

have been alluded to have roots in a wide variety of factors. One

is sectarian violence, such as the violence we are seeing now in

Sulawesi between Christians and Muslims. Just last week the coordinating minister for security, Bambang Yudhoyono, said that

five new battalions of police and military would be sent into

Sulawesi to try to stabilize the situation. But I must say there is

a great deal of skepticism on the part of those we talked with on

the ground that this will in fact correct the situation.

What is needed is a more energetic effort, as has been recommended by the Administration and by the Commission on International Religious Freedom, to cut off arms and to cut off money

going to groups like Laskar Jihad. I should say, if you look on the

Laskar Jihad Web site, and they do have an English language site,

for weeks they have been saying, ‘‘we will be sending people to

28

Sulawesi,’’ so this was not a surprise, certainly to the Indonesian

government that was clearly aware that this was going to happen,

as it did in the Moluccas a year and a half ago.

I disagree, however, with my colleague from RAND about the importance of maintaining stress and pressure for greater accountability by the Indonesian armed forces as a part of any effort by

the Megawati administration to conduct real reform of TNI, the

armed forces. I think in fact such accountability is more important

than ever for the success of her efforts.

I hope in fact that the House and Senate will maintain the kinds

of rather modest restrictions on IMET for military officials and for

FMS contained now in the draft fiscal year 2002 foreign operations

bill. In fact, I hope the House will accede to the human rights conditions contained in the Senate language which may be acted on

in the next few weeks. This doesn’t mean that the U.S. shouldn’t

be actively involved in promoting police training, police reform, and

again fundamental judicial and legal reform. But I think the only

way we are going to get transparency in the TNI budget and some

level of accountability that Megawati has yet to pursue is to maintain this important, though rather limited leverage contained in

the foreign operations legislation.

I wanted to mention, though briefly, three other countries in the

region that don’t have a major role in the antiterrorist coalition. In

fact, in talking with officials from Vietnam a couple of weeks ago,

they are quite concerned that they will suddenly fall off the American agenda because they don’t have the kind of overall strategic

importance as say Indonesia or even Malaysia. One is Vietnam.

There is a very high level delegation from Vietnam in Washington

this week led by the Deputy Prime Minister, who met with Mr.

Armitage at the State Department and Condoleezza Rice at the

NSC. This follows the decision by the Vietnamese National Assembly to ratify the bilateral trade agreement as well as the donor conference convened by the World Bank that just took place in Hanoi

last week.

I think it is important for the donors to continue to press Vietnam, not only to honor its commitments under the BTA, but also

if they are going to effectively fight, for example, corruption, which

is a huge problem, to promote greater transparency, and accountability in the Vietnamese legal system and judicial system. I think

the U.S. should be providing help in that effort through bilateral

assistance or multilateral assistance through the UNDP or the

World Bank. But I also think that we have to maintain basic pressure on the government of Vietnam to take certain minimal steps

to honor their commitments to respect civil and political rights. We

are greatly concerned, as I know many in this body are, about the

unrest in the Central Highlands last February, where a number of

Montagnards rebelled, and were put down rather brutally by the

police. At least 24 have been put on trial as the so-called ringleaders of this unrest. And I have to say this had to do with both

issues of ancestral lands being confiscated as well as religious repression, mainly of Protestants, Montagnard Protestants in that region.

I think at a minimum the U.S., with its other donor allies,

should be urging Vietnam to invite the UN Working Group on ArVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
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bitrary Detention to visit Vietnam and to visit the Central Highlands. The U.S. former Ambassador, Pete Peterson, was able to

visit a few of the districts this past July where this unrest occurred, but for the most part the region is pretty well sealed off,

both to diplomats and to journalists, domestic and foreign.

We also think it is very important to maintain our longstanding

relationship with NGOs in Cambodia, trying to democratize Cambodia since the elections there in 1993. Next February, finally, the

government has committed itself to commune level elections. These

are crucial, because this is grass roots democracy, And if there is

going to be any chance for such democracy to thrive in Cambodia,

it has to take place in an atmosphere in which there is no intimidation or political violence at the commune level.

Unfortunately, a number of members of the Sam Rainsy Party,

thus far the only effective opposition, have already been killed or

threatened in the run-up to these elections. We certainly hope the

Administration and Congress will send observers to Cambodia, and

that the Administration and Members of Congress will speak out

strongly if there is violence leading up to the elections, and most

importantly after the elections.

On the question of the Khmer Rouge tribunal, looking at the possibility of a similar tribunal for war crimes committed in Afghanistan, I think it is crucial that the United Nations maintain strictly

that international standards of fairness and the due process have

to be abided by if the U.N. is to play any role in any so-called joint

tribunal that is composed of both Cambodian and U.N.-appointed

prosecutors and judges. This could become a model for what may

ultimately be created for the crimes that have been committed

against the people of Afghanistan.

Now, thus far Kofi Annan has been very clear to say that the

U.N. will not take part in any charade. I certainly hope the Administration will do the same, that it will not contribute funds or judicial expertise to any tribunal conducted only by the Cambodian

government that doesn’t meet basic International standards.

And finally, I wanted to comment just briefly about Burma. As

you know, Burma has been in the news the last few days because

the Nobel laureates just met in Oslo, and one of the most distinguished laureates, Aung San Suu Kyi was unable to be there, still

under house arrest.

Fortunately, there is a slim glimmer of hope, I would say in the

last year, that there may be a way out of the current impasse.

Former Malaysian Ambassador Razali has visited Burma six times,

most recently just a few weeks ago to try to facilitate a dialogue

between Aung San Suu Kyi and Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt

of the ruling military junta, and there have been some confidencebuilding measures taken.

About 200 political prisoners have been released. Some NLD

township offices are beginning to reopen, but Razali is a long way

from getting to where he wants to be, and we certainly heard this

from Suu Kyi, and that it is getting the Burmese government to

begin a process of transition to a basic civilian government and respect for basic human rights.

And in this context, I think the U.S. Government with strong bipartisan support from Congress is playing a critical role. One, supVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
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porting the existing sanctions against Burma that were imposed

after 1988. And I would just add the one caveat. If, however, this

dialogue leads to something substantial, I think Congress should be

flexible. And I would be happy to talk to you in the discussion part

of this hearing about positive gestures the U.S. might be willing to

make in response to significantly positive steps by the Burmese

government.

Secondly, the ILO, the International Labor Organization, Commission of Inquiry on Forced Labor had more impact than I think

any of us expected, and the U.S. should obviously continue to support that process as it continues.

And, thirdly, I think it is important that we look creatively for

ways to provide humanitarian assistance to more than 40 million

Burmese who are suffering the enormously devastating consequences of a decline in social, health and economic conditions, as

the military pours more resources into expanding the military rather than providing for the basic needs of their people. And as you

know the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Southeast Asia is out of control,

perhaps nowhere as badly out of control as in Burma. And I think

if there are ways to provide funding through NGOs and U.N. agencies, we should take advantage of them.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jendrzejczyk follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MIKE JENDRZEJCZYK, WASHINGTON DIRECTOR, ASIA

DIVISION, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

The entire Asian region suffered a political earthquake in the aftermath of the

September 11 attacks on the United States. Afghanistan was the epicenter, but the

aftershocks threw domestic politics and international relations into upheaval.

All countries in the region condemned the September 11 attacks. But some governments found, in measures to counteract terrorism, new justifications for longstanding repression. Real enthusiasm for the anti-terrorism campaign was most evident in the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and South Korea. However, by November, some Southeast Asian leaders were finding that a pro-U.S. position had political

costs at home.

Indonesian and Malaysian leaders found that support from important domestic

constituencies could be jeopardized if they seemed to be unconditionally supportive

of the U.S. bombing of a fellow Muslim-majority nation. By November, Indonesian

President Megawati was pleading with President Bush to end the bombing before

Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, began.

The popular reactions across the region were if anything more important, given

the increasing importance of civil society in most Asian countries. In general, there

were widespread expressions of sympathy both for victims of the September 11 attacks as well as for Afghan civilians. Large demonstrations against the U.S. airstrikes erupted in October in Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere. In some cases,

these protests reflected the successful portrayal by conservative Muslims of the U.S.

effort as an attack on Islam, but they also expressed a broader discomfort within

civil society about the perceived disproportionate use of power by the U.S. in a devastated country.

FRAGILE DEMOCRATIC TRANSITIONS:

The September 11 attacks eclipsed many of the human rights issues that had

dominated the first nine months of the year. One of these was the fragility of democratic transitions in the region and of some of the dilemmas posed by partial democratization in the absence of strong political institutions—or in the presence of strong

militaries. Fair elections produced disastrous leaders in Southeast Asia: Joseph

Estrada, a corrupt ex-movie star, ousted from the Philippines presidency in January

by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Abdurrahman Wahid, a nearly blind cleric, ousted

from the Indonesian presidency in July. Estrada remained highly popular among

the country’s poor, and his ouster after military-backed protests from the elite and

middle class in Manila was semi-legal at best. The question arose, which was the

31

greater danger to Philippine democracy, a shady president with underworld connections who systematically looted the national treasury but who was nevertheless the

choice of the people, or his less than constitutional ouster?

In Thailand the dilemma was similar but less stark. In January, the Thai Rak

Thai party, led by Thaksin Shinawatra, won a majority of parliamentary seats in

the national election, making Thaksin prime minister. But ten days before the vote,

Thaksin, a telecommunications tycoon, was indicted by the National Counter-Corruption Committee (NCCC) on charges of failing to fully declare his financial assets

as required by law when he held a previous government post. If the Constitutional

Court upheld the indictment, banning Thaksin from public office for five years, the

Thai political system could have been thrown into serious crisis. If it did not, despite

apparently strong evidence of unrevealed wealth, the independence of the Court and

Thailand’s battle against high-level graft and corruption would be undermined. The

Court voted eight to seven not to uphold the indictment, to the disappointment of

political reformers, and the relief of many who feared that democracy would be poorly served by a prolonged period of uncertainty and instability.

President Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesia’s great hope for furthering democratization, proved to be entirely unsuited for the job. He listened to no one, ignored

major crises, and in the end tried unsuccessfully to use the military against the parliament that was trying to impeach him on corruption grounds. But the alternative

was either a return to former President Soeharto’s party, Golkar, or support for

Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose party had the most seats in the Indonesian parliament and who had extensive army backing. On human rights issues,

the choice came down to one of incompetence versus lack of political will. Which was

worse, a president who could not make the justice system work or one who would

not even try? Much of the human rights and reformist community preferred the

former, but when that same inability and lack of inattention to political and economic problems began to lead to a nostalgia in some circles for authoritarianism,

Indonesia’s democratic experiment was in trouble.

In Cambodia, targeted political assassinations, while few in number, continued to

discourage many grassroots candidates from running in Cambodia’s long-delayed

commune elections, scheduled for early 2002. Southeast Asia continued to be

wracked by outbreaks of war and ethnic and communal strife, producing widespread

human rights violations and massive new populations of refugees and the displaced.

As all eyes were focused on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, it was also

worth remembering the 850,000 to one million displaced in Indonesia and some

600,000 to one million in Burma. In most cases, access to humanitarian aid and protection for the displaced was difficult, either because of government obstruction or

security concerns.

Refugee populations were also large, with an estimated 200,000 Burmese in Thailand; and in West Timor, an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 East Timorese remained

after the forcible expulsions of 1999, although the rate of voluntary return picked

up sharply after the peaceful elections in East Timor in August.

Beginning in February, more than 1,000 ethnic highlanders from Vietnam, known

collectively as Montagnards, fled to Cambodia after Vietnamese police crushed public protests over land-grabbing and controls on freedom of religion. Cambodia agreed

to provide temporary asylum to the Montagnards at two UNHCR sites, but Cambodian officials violated the principle of non-refoulement several times during the

year when they forcibly returned groups of Montagnards back to Vietnam, where

many were arrested and beaten.

Meanwhile, Vietnam did little to address the grievances that sparked unrest in

the Central Highlands last February. At least twenty-four people were put on trial

as of November on charges of disrupting security and given prison sentences of up

to twelve years. The area where the protests erupted was put off limits to media

and diplomats, except for a government-sponsored press tour in March and a limited

visit by the U.S. ambassador in July.

INTERNAL SECURITY LAWS

Even before September 11, internal security legislation was being widely abused

in many Asian countries. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir made increasing

use of the draconian Internal Security Act to arrest members of the political opposition. On November 30, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said that

Malaysia might amend its security laws to deal with ‘‘modern day terrorism,’’ provoking warnings that this could lead to even further repression of political dissent.

In mid-September, Badawi took advantage of the September 11 attacks to praise

Malaysia’s Internal Security Act (ISA), which has been used to imprison pro-democracy activists, students, and alleged Muslim extremists as well as supporters of

32

jailed former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. The ISA allows for indefinite

detention without trial and arrest without a warrant by anyone a police officer has

‘‘reason to believe’’ has acted or is likely to act ‘‘in any manner prejudicial to the

security of Malaysia.’’ The Malaysian bar association, Malaysian NGOs, and the

U.S. State Department have criticized the use of the ISA and urged its repeal. (It

would be highly useful if President Bush were to follow up his meeting with Prime

Minister Mahathir at the Shanghai APEC summit by reiterating this concern.)

In Indonesia, laws once used to detain critics of former President Soeharto made

an unwelcome comeback. In Aceh, Jakarta, and Papua, peaceful critics of government policies were put on trial for allegedly ‘‘spreading hatred’’ toward government

officials, a vaguely defined colonial-era offense frequently used by Soeharto against

perceived political enemies. On November 20, 2000, for example, activist Muhammad Nazar was arrested for having hung banners at a campus rally criticizing the

military and calling for a referendum on the political future of Aceh. He was convicted of ‘‘spreading hatred’’ in March 2001, sentenced to ten months, and, with

credit for time served, was released in October 2001.

HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS

Human rights activists in Southeast Asia play a high-profile international role,

and in some cases, pay a high price for doing so. At least eight human rights defenders in the region were killed between November 2000 and November 2001, six

of them from Aceh, Indonesia. Many more faced intimidation or arrest.

Long established regional organizations such as Forum Asia and the Asian Commission on Human Rights campaigned actively for Asian ratification of the treaty

establishing an International Criminal Court and for the repeal of the Internal Security Act in Malaysia. They also worked with other groups in the region to promote

better protection of human rights defenders. The Asian Migrant Centre based in

Hong Kong had a campaign in seven Asian countries for the ratification of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and

Members of Their Families. The Asia Monitor Resource Centre took a leading role

in documenting labor practices and implementation of corporate codes of conduct

throughout East and Southeast Asia. The Bangkok-based South East Asia Press Alliance (SEAPA) was an effective advocate for journalists in the region, helping raise

the profile of the beleaguered malaysiakini.com, an electronic news service that the

Malaysian government shut down; assist the new East Timorese journalists association get started; and protest threats against the daily newspaper in Banda Aceh by

rebels unhappy with the paper’s content.

National human rights commissions in the region had their ups and downs.

SUHAKAM in Malaysia took a stronger position than many expected in criticizing

government abuses against demonstrators and Internal Security Act arrests;

Komnas HAM in Indonesia came more and more under the control of obstructionists

anxious to prevent serious human rights investigations.

U.S POLICY IN THE REGION:

The Bush administration has tried to balance its immediate priority on pressing

Southeast Asian governments to cooperate on anti-terrorism initiatives, while also

focusing on longer-term objectives such as stabilizing newly democratic governments

and helping to restart stalled economies.

In this context, we strongly believe that the need to promote human rights, good

governance, and the rule of law is more essential than ever.

The World Bank published an analysis of the impact of September 11 on East

Asia and concluded, ‘‘Governance and institutional reform efforts are increasingly

important for economic and social advance in the region . . . Over time, governments and political institutions are also becoming reshaped to meet the demands

of civil society for greater participation and political accountability . . . In countries

of the region that are predominantly Muslim or have large Muslim minorities, the

quality of governance institutions will be tested as governments contribute to the

global campaign against terrorism, while maintaining the rule of law and domestic

stability.’’

We believe that U.S. policy should continue to press for fundamental judicial and

legal reforms—in Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere—as crucial to effectively fighting corruption and to promoting sustainable growth.

Throughout the region, we urge the administration, with support from the Congress, to maintain a vigorous program of support for civil society including NGO’s

and human rights defenders, as well as groups trying to assist refugees and internally displaced populations hit by civil conflicts. We have seen how pro-active embassy staff on the ground can make a major impact.

33

SOME COUNTRY-SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS:

Indonesia:

The recent upsurge of violence between Christians and Muslims in Sulawesi has

added urgency to the need to disarm and cut off funding for armed groups in the

region, including the extremist Laskar Jihad militia, previously involved in attacks

on Christians in the Moluccas that contributed to the prolonged conflict there. Last

week, Minister Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono announced that Jakarta is sending five

battalions of police and soldiers to Sulawesi, but local leaders and aid workers are

skeptical they can disarm both sides. We agree with the recommendations of the

Commission on International Religious Freedom, which on December 5 called on

Secretary Powell to press Indonesian authorities to bring under control rogue elements of the Indonesian security forces that support militia groups like Laskar

Jihad, to protect civilians in Sulawesi, and to ensure that the perpetrators responsible for the killings of both Muslims and Christians are brought to justice.

The U.S. should continue to support those in Indonesia calling for accountability

of security forces for past and current human rights abuses as essential to any effective TNI reform effort, or to creating a climate in which grievances in Aceh or West

Papua can be addressed. We support the Leahy human rights conditions on IMET

for the Indonesia military and for Foreign Military Sales (FMS), as updated in the

pending FY 2002 foreign operations appropriations bill, and urge House and Senate

conferees to adopt the Senate language in the final measure.

It is also extremely useful for members of this Committee and others in Congress

to express their support for President Megawati’s efforts to promote stability, democratization and economic progress, while also urging her to take action on key

human rights cases. One such case is the recent death of Theys Eluay, chairman

of the Papuan Presidium Council, who was abducted and killed on November 10.

During her visit to Washington in September, President Megawati told President

Bush and members of Congress that she would pay attention to the concerns of people in West Papua and Aceh which fuel support for separatist and autonomy movements. Only an impartial, truly independent investigation of Mr. Eluay’s death can

reduce the level of local suspicion and mistrust of government authorities.

Vietnam:

This week, a high-level delegation from Vietnam, led by Deputy Prime Minister

Nguyen Tan Dung, will be visiting Washington, New York and San Francisco. The

delegation is coming immediately following the annual donor consultative conference

in Hanoi (December 7–8), convened by the World Bank, and the decision last month

by Vietnam’s National Assembly to ratify the bilateral trade agreement. Representatives of a number of companies are expected to be on the delegation.

We believe that Vietnam’s donors should press for significant progress in human

rights and the rule of law to accompany Vietnam’s commitments to economic reforms. The U.S. should also offer assistance, on a bilateral basis or through the

World Bank or U.N. Development Program as well as private programs, to help reform the country’s criminal, press and security laws—not just its commercial laws.

Specific steps to improve human rights would include: an invitation to the U.N.

Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to visit Vietnam again (they visited in 1994),

with unrestricted access to the Central Highlands; the unconditional release of all

persons held for the peaceful expression of their religious and political views including dozens of political dissidents, indigenous Montagnards, Buddhists, Catholics and

Protestant Church leaders under house arrest or imprisoned; repeal of Administrative Detention Directive 31/CP which authorizes detention without trial for two

years; and the easing of restrictions on the media and the internet.

Cambodia:

Over the past year, political violence has increased with the approach of the local

elections, scheduled for February 2002, in Cambodia’s 1,600 communes, or subdistricts. Existing commune chiefs, mostly appointed by the ruling Cambodian People’s

Party (CPP), are to be replaced with popularly elected commune councils. The Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, an NGO coalition, documented eighty-two

cases of political threats and violence since the beginning of the year, most of them

directed at the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP).

We hope the administration will support independent election monitoring, by

Cambodian and international NGOs, and speak out strongly—at the embassy level

and in Washington—if political violence continues or escalates in advance of or after

the elections. Members of this Committee might consider visiting Cambodia in the

pre- or post-election period.

34

We also urge the U.S. to take a cautious, wait-and-see attitude towards the attempt to establish a so-called ‘‘mixed tribunal’’ to put on trial former members of

the Khmer Rouge. The legislation sent to the Cambodian National Assembly in January 2001 differed markedly from what had been agreed on with the U.N., most notably deleting a provision that prior amnesties would not be a bar to prosecution.

The U.S. should withhold any political or financial support, or contribution of

judges or prosecutors, for a joint tribunal until and unless the concerns expressed

by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan have been adequately addressed. Cambodia’s judicial system remains weak and far from independent, with numerous court decisions influenced by corruption or apparent political influence. A tribunal for Khmer

Rouge leaders conducted according to international standards could help set a positive example, but the international community should not support a flawed tribunal

in which Cambodian government officials directly or indirectly shape the outcome

of the proceedings.

Burma:

There were signs this year of a political thaw and, for the first time in years,

hopes that the government might lift some of its stifling repression of civil and political rights. But thus far, progress had been limited to some political prisoner releases and easing of pressures on some opposition politicians in Rangoon. There has

been no sign of fundamental changes in law or policy, and grave human rights violations remain unaddressed. Conditions in ethnic minority areas remain particularly

grim.

Following his visit to Rangoon in January, the U.N. Secretary General’s Special

Representative for Burma, Razali Ismail revealed that Lieutenant General Khin

Nyunt and Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), had been engaged in talks since October 2000. Since then, the military government has taken certain ‘‘confidence building’’ measures, releasing approximately 200 political prisoners and allowing some NLD offices to gradually reopen. At least 1,600 political prisoners remain behind bars, including 19 elected

MP’s, and Aung San Suu Kyi is still under house arrest. The U.N. Special

Rapporteur for Burma, Paulo Pinheiro, in his report to the General Assembly last

month, noted that ‘‘progress is fragile . . . one would hope that the confidence building would be followed by bolder moves’’ by the Burmese government.

We urge the administration, with strong bipartisan backing from Congress, to

keep in place existing sanctions against the Burmese government while remaining

flexible in order to respond to any significant positive developments; to support the

International Labor Organization’s efforts to end all forced labor and establish a

monitoring presence inside Burma; and to use U.S. influence with Japan, the European Union, members of ASEAN, Australia and others to encourage them to maintain pressure for fundamental, basic human rights improvements and compliance

with the recommendations of the U.N. General Assembly and U.N. Commission on

Human Rights. We support humanitarian assistance given through NGOs and U.N.

agencies, especially aid targeted for internally displaced and those suffering from

HIV/AIDS.

Mr. LEACH. Well, thank you very much.

Let me say to the panel I have a large number of questions, and

maybe because of this I am going to go last.

Let me begin with Mr. Faleomavaega.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Emmerson, you had indicated earlier the conflict between

democratic right in a democracy and security, and that there

should be some sense of compatibility. Especially with the events

now occurring in Indonesia and its form of democracy, how stable

do you think Indonesia’s democracy is at this point in time?

Mr. EMMERSON. Well, it certainly is not institutionalized. Consider the range, the sheer variety and range and complexity of the

problems that it faces. We haven’t really talked much about the

economic side, which is disastrous at the moment, 110 percent of

GDP is what the public debt amounts to. I could go on.

The challenges are far greater than the capacity of these new institutions to respond to them. But I don’t worry about the Vice

President, who heads a large Islamic political party, somehow stagVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
35

ing a parliamentary coup against the President, I also don’t worry

about a military coup at the moment.

I worry rather about the erosion of the government’s credibility

because of its inability to respond to those problems.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Now, economically the situation in Indonesia has gotten worse since Megawati took office. Do you sense

her administration has provided stability by making every effort

for economic recovery in that country?

Mr. EMMERSON. I wish I could be more optimistic than I am. The

one bit of good news, I suppose, is that if you compare the GDP

growth rates around the region, Indonesia actually looks pretty

good, maybe 3.5 percent. But that strikes me as a dead cat bounce

and actually tells us more about the rest of the region, including

Singapore, which of course has had a disastrous economic shrinkage in its GDP, than it does about the health of the Indonesian

economy.

If we take a look at progress on things like privatization, there

has been very little, if any, such progress, on moving the properties

through the IBRA system, which is attempt to try to finally get

onto the market these failed holdings that are still hung over from

the Asian financial crisis. There has been very little progress in

that regard. We were optimistic that the so-called ‘‘dream team’’ that Megawati had appointed, including some very talented economists, including the former Indonesian Ambassador to the United

States, would somehow make a difference, but the team seems to

be dreaming. There is a very slight sense in Jakarta, it seems to

me, that these problems are being addressed adequately.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Please, I want the other members of the

panel to respond if they think that they can.

I was in East Timor a couple of months ago for the elections. The

concern was expressed by Australia and others that the balkanization of Indonesia is about to take place because of atrocities, like

what happened in East Timor. This is understandable when you

consider the fact that some 200,000 East Timorese were tortured

and murdered by the Indonesian military, in addition to some

100,000 West Papua New Guineans who were also murdered and

tortured by the military. I am curious, Dr. Rabasa, since RAND

seems to be pro-military. Am a correct in this?

Mr. RABASA. Sir, I would disagree. As a departing point in our

analysis, the requirements for security and stability in the region,

include democratization in Indonesia. By the way, I do believe and

I think that is reflected in our work, that the stability of the entire

region will hinge on whether the process of democratization that is

going on in Indonesia today is successful or not.

When our work is viewed as pro-military, I think that that might

reflect a view that we have that the Indonesian military, despite

its many faults and problems, is a key institution in Indonesia.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. We trained them for the past 30 or 40 years.

Mr. RABASA. We have not. We have suspended the IMET since

1992. They are not Boy Scouts. No question about it. But whether

we like them or not, whether we approve or disapprove of their behavior, they will have a decisive impact on the future of Indonesia.

And the future of Indonesia will, in turn, influence very vital

American interests. So I think it would be in our interest to try to

36

shape and influence the behavior, the thinking, of the Indonesian

military in a way that they will evolve in a way compatible with

our values. And I do not believe that cutting them off, saying they

cannot come here for education and training is a constructive way

of achieving this goal.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. I will wait for another round.

Mr. LEACH. I think in defense of Mr. Rabasa, he came from the

Department of State. And RAND has sent the former Chairman to

be Secretary of Defense.

Mr. Chabot.

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would be interested to know from any of the panel members

that might be interested in responding, I believe that a lot of terrorist groups around the country, and we talked principally about

Islamic extremists in various countries, whether Philippines, Indonesia or you name it in this part of the world or anywhere else in

the world for that matter, but since we are concentrating on this,

let me focus here.

I don’t think—I think they really viewed the United States as

not wanting or not having the will to go out there and actually deal

with people that probably needed to be dealt with long ago. My

guess is that with respect to how the war has been carried out in

Afghanistan it is probably got some people’s attention that they

may very well be next on the list. And we are not dealing with Somalia or Sudan here. So let’s talk about the region of the world

that we are discussing today.

Do you—what do you think, relative to a message that may be

received, whether it is by the folks in the Philippines, who are now

still holding two Americans, or whomever? I mean, do you believe

that the United States has more credibility, and what would you

recommend relative to encouraging the governments—there to be

more stability and less Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in

that region of the world?

Perhaps, Doctor, if you might want to start off. But I would be

happy to hear from anybody.

Mr. RABASA. Yes. I would like to also defer to some of my colleagues who have more expertise on the radical Islamic movements. And I believe Dr. Hefner has some views on that and how

they changed after September 11th from embracing Osama bin

Laden to trying to distance themselves.

My sense is that the success so far of the campaign in Afghanistan, the fact that we were able to bring about the dissolution of

the Taliban government, that Osama bin Laden and his cohorts are

fugitives, that this was accomplished without the massive civilian

casualties that were predicted by critics of the United States, has

enhanced significantly our credibility in the region.

And I am impressed by the fact that the large demonstrations

that were taking place in Jakarta in front of the American Embassy after we began our military operations in Afghanistan have

really gone down and that we do not see that level of intensity.

And I think that this is reflective of the fact that because of the

success of our operation in Afghanistan we are being taken much

more seriously by radicals and extremists in the region, that if

things had gone badly, if we had been unable to make progress

37

against the Taliban as it seemed in the 2 or 3 weeks that followed

the beginning of our operations, that we would still be seeing much

more massive opposition.

So success breeds success, and this I think is very important, because as Shakespeare mentioned, there is a tide in the affairs of

men that if taken at the flood leads on to fortune. We have an opportunity here. There is a momentum that has built up that we can

utilize to cooperate with regional governments against these radical and extremist movements in Southeast Asia. We are doing that

in some ways with the government of the Philippines. I think that

our security cooperation with the government of Macapagal-Arroyo

against Abu Sayyaf—which is a very bad group of people—is good.

It shows that we are on the side of the good guys.

I think we could replicate this with regard to other extremist

movements in Southeast Asia.

Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. If I could just add briefly two points. Just one

note of caution, I think many Muslims in Indonesia of all kinds will

be looking to see if the U.S. is as intense and committed to helping

to reconstruct Afghanistan as it has been in conducting a war

there. There was a lot of discontent, some of it expressed in demonstrations, much of it in other channels, about the level of force

used in Afghanistan against a poor, decimated population.

And I think one way the U.S. can make it absolutely clear that

its objectives have not been to punish the people of Afghanistan for

what has been done by the Taliban and al-Qaeda is to make sure

that the commitment Secretary Powell and others have made for

a vigorous reconstruction effort, that that actually takes place, and

that there is more funding provided even than has been suggested

in legislation and in public statements thus far.

One thing I wanted to add, though, is again to raise a question

about something that was stated by a couple of panelists, and that

is the extent of Laskar Jihad’s connections with al-Qaeda. It actually isn’t that clear. I mean, in the Senate when the new U.S. Ambassador for Indonesia, Skip Boyce, was confirmed, he was asked

this question for the record, and he was rather ambivalent in his

answer, because I think at that point the intelligence was not there

to support, without qualification, that there are clear and direct

links.

More interestingly this week, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta distributed a pamphlet listing 45 countries in which al-Qaeda is

thought to be active, and Indonesia was not included. That may

have been done for other public relations reasons that may not reflect the intelligence that is there at the moment, but I would just

throw in that note of caution.

Mr. HEFNER. Two points very quickly, starting with your question first, Mr. Chabot. There has been a noticeable impact from the

U.S. actions in Afghanistan on the hard line Islamist groups in Malaysia and Indonesia. Keep in mind that the demonstrations outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta were always smaller than they

were in Malaysia. The reason for that had to do with the nature

of the organization sponsoring them. The demonstrations in Malaysia were sponsored by the main opposition party, and the main opposition party, PAS, was attempting to use the issue of Afghanistan to discredit and corner Mahathir.

38

I think in the case of Malaysia the relative success of the American campaign will have a noticeably negative impact on PAS’s

ability to present itself as a responsible and moderate Islamic

party. They, in short, have been discredited, as have their characterization of the U.S. campaign.

In Indonesia, the situation is a little more complex. As I said, the

demonstrations were always smaller, but I don’t think that was because of significant differences of sentiment in the Muslim community over the issue of Afghanistan. In fact, I think the fact that the

demonstrations outside the embassy in Jakarta were led by groups

that were perceived by the Indonesian Muslim public as relatively

extremist actually contributed to their not attracting a lot of people. People didn’t want to go out and demonstrate for fear of being

identified with the FPI, the Islamic Defenders Front, or the Laskar

Jihad.

Finally on this issue, it has been interesting to see that the

Laskar Jihad has distanced itself very vigorously from Osama bin

Laden in the last few weeks. It did not do so a year ago. It had

contacts, certainly personal contacts with Osama bin Laden. Jafar

Umar Thalib knows Osama bin Laden, and acknowledges that publically. According to the comments of some Indonesians, there may

have been some coordination between the Laskar Jihad and alQaeda, but it has been limited to certain actions, certain very specific actions.

Most importantly, I think the fact that this American campaign,

if you will, encouraged Laskar Jihad to distance itself from Osama

bin Laden speaks not just to the success of the American campaign

in general terms, but it illustrates the nature of, if you will, the

Laskar Jihad’s position in Indonesian. Even if the Laskar Jihad

has ties to al-Qaeda those ties are not nearly so significant as the

ties between the Laskar Jihad and major figures in the Indonesian

political and military elite, particularly military retirees.

In another context I could describe in greater detail the way in

which key business figures linked to President Suharto have since

early 2000 provided extensive funds to the Laskar Jihad, far more

significant than anything that we think is coming in from outside

of Indonesia. So the effort—I end here—the reaction of the Laskar

Jihad to distance itself from Osama bin Laden doesn’t just reflect,

if you will, the success of the U.S. campaign. It also reflects the realization on the part of that leadership that their identification

with al-Qaeda risks, if you will, delegitimating them their position

in the constellation that is a very factionalized constellation, of the

Indonesian political and military elite.

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Emmerson.

Mr. EMMERSON. A couple of really quick points here. It seems to

me that there are two ways of approaching this general phenomena

that has been raised by the question. One is in a narrow manner

focusing on security in the literal sense; that is to say, a military

response.

And the other way is to focus on it contextually, understanding

that the phenomena that we might loosely organize under the rubric of Islamist terror, in fact have deep and complex local domestic

roots in each of these countries, roots that are unique.

39

I am a partisan of the second approach, not of the first. This is

not to ignore security, but to approach it contextually. One example

that intrigues me from current American policy is the assistance

program that USAID has launched for Mindanao, which I think is

perhaps a model for what one might look at in other parts of

Southeast Asia, depending upon how things develop in the future.

This particular model is multivariant, it is not simply a military response.

It is true that we have advisers in the southern Philippines who

are trying to help the Manila government handle its problem with

Abu Sayyaf. But in the larger context, there is no single explanation. It is not fair to say that poverty is the cause of terrorism.

Osama bin Laden, as far as I know, is not exactly poor—he may

be poorer now than he was before, but he didn’t sort of work his

way up from the streets.

At the same time, when you have young Muslim men who have

no chance for improving their lives, who have no jobs, then clearly

the economy is something that simply cannot be forgotten in this

focus on security.

We haven’t talked a lot about the economy. But with regard to

Indonesia, for example, steps to assist economic reform in that

country, greater transparency and so forth, it seems to me will

have an indirect beneficial effect on the possibilities of destabilization that terror represents.

The police are critical. Let me talk briefly about IMET. Should

the United States reopen IMET with Indonesia? Unlike Mike, I am

perhaps less worried about cultivating bad guys through IMET, especially if IMET is intended to focus on how a military adapts to

a civilian democratic regime. Nevertheless, if we get into that kind

of a controversial fight now, it seems to me it sends the wrong signal to Indonesia.

They have a police. The police has been separated from the military. It is at least ostensibly under civilian control. Now unfortunately the police is also corrupt, in some ways as corrupt as the

military, and also capable of engaging in very brutal behavior. But

it does seem to me that we should take this opportunity to try to

channel assistance to the police; otherwise the Indonesians can

look at us and say, look, on the one hand you condemn us for violating human rights, on the other hand you refuse to help us to try

to improve the human rights situation. It seems to me the police

deserve a major focus.

And one final point having to do with our own voice. We know

that at the end of the Cold War people looked at USIA and said,

who needs it? Basically it was collapsed into the State Department.

We closed the consulate in Medan, as if we didn’t need a consulate

in Medan, which happens to be right near, and a window into,

Aceh. It seems to me now it is vital that we reinvigorate American

public diplomacy.

Depending on what happens to the campaign against al-Qaeda,

there could be a lot that we will be interested in trying to explain

to the Muslim world next year and the year after. I think we

should get ready for that process by reopening channels of communication, not just between governments, but with the peoples of

these parts of the world.

40

Mr. LEACH. Thank you very much.

Mr. Blumenauer.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am sympathetic, Doctor, to your reference about the reinvigoration of some of our other elements. That is the question that I

would like to pose to the panel. I have been struck in the course

of our planning for the post Taliban era, the victory that appears

to be within our grasp if we don’t have it already, and the notion

of what we are going to do to learn from past experience where we

have been fighting people who have been given billions of dollars

from the United States, and we sort of walked, at least prematurely.

I am concerned that in the vast sweep of this part of the world,

where there are hundreds of millions of people, the projections are

that we are going to be looking at a massive population increase.

This will occur in particularly the urbanized core areas that are

disorganized environmentally and throughout, the infrastructure— not just in areas that we bombed, but in city after city. These problems are contributing to a breeding ground for discontent, political

instability, economic problems and human misery.

We have had the Secretary of State before us raising the notion

that the aid that we provided for the urban and environmental

problems of these countries was the equivalent of four cruise missiles, impacting tens of millions.

This is in Karachi to Cairo, Manila and Jakarta. I am curious

if you have brief observations about what this Subcommittee, this

Committee, this Congress, should be doing to try to focus on efforts

to help improve the quality of life, and protect the environment in

ways that aren’t going to end up in somebody’s Swiss bank account.

We need to help in ways that are very, very hard to misinterpret

when we are helping them get clean water, deal with sewage, deal

with some of the most fundamental environmental and infrastructure issues.

Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. I would just add one very brief comment. It

is a real important issue that you have raised. I know in the case

of Indonesia, when President Megawati was here, she met with the

President of the World Bank, Jim Wolfenson and asked the bank

to greatly accelerate its level of funding, I think now committed to

450 million this year, and asked them to double it to a billion dollars.

And the answer from the Bank, from my understanding, was we

will give you the money when you have the capacity to use it in

the ways that it is designed to be used. Until we see greater success in rooting out corruption, reforming the key agencies and ministries that are involved in disseminating and appropriating these

funds and, more importantly, until you bring about fundamental

reforms in your legal and judicial system we are not going to throw

money in that may or may not result in the kinds of long-term reforms and poverty reduction that everyone in Indonesia wants to

see.

I think that was exactly the right message. It is not, we are

going to cut you off. I think half a billion dollars is a major commitment, one of the largest the Bank is making to any country, not

just in Southeast Asia but in the world, but also to link that very

41

directly with a much more vigorous message to the Megawati administration to begin to deliver on some of the key promises that

she had made and that we have seen very little traction on, as Don

Emmerson and others on this panel have mentioned. I think that

is exactly the right approach.

Mr. RABASA. Congressman, I think you raise a fundamental

question: how do we deal not only with the manifestations of terrorism, but with the sources of terrorism? And I believe that you

are right that to prevent this condition from developing, you have

to have a delivery of jobs, services, and environmental protection

to people. But before you have that, you have to have a functioning

state, and I believe that one of the breeding grounds of terrorism

is failed states.

Where do you find terrorism? In Afghanistan, a failed state. In

Somalia. In parts of Colombia, which in some ways is a failing

state. So the issue of the sources of terrorism, as you mentioned,

is a very complex issue.

But before we can deal with these things that you mentioned, I

think we have to help states function and consolidate their control

in a way that they can deliver those services. And one of the things

that concerns me about Indonesia, in fact the key problem that we

have there, is that Indonesia could become balkanized. And if Indonesia fails as a state, if it becomes like Afghanistan or Yugoslavia,

then you could have a multitude of chaotic entities—— Mr. BLUMENAUER. Doctor, my point is, we need to deal with helping people in these areas to have clean water, for example, to eliminate some of the 51⁄2 million deaths caused each year by waterborne diseases. The United States has a role here. Doesn’t that sort

of transcend some of the problems that we are talking about in a

way that people can actually relate to and that allows us to move

past some of this, and not be at impasse?

Does our aid to troubled cities from Karachi to Cairo to Manila

have to wait?

Mr. RABASA. No, you can do it at the same time. However, if you

have a state that is not able to deliver services, international aid

is limited in what it can do given the amounts of aid that we actually deliver. It really doesn’t make that much of a dent in conditions in these countries. Southeast Asia before 1997 used to be a

region of the world that was growing at the highest rates that any

part of the world had experienced in a long time. If we can foster

economic growth, if we can help to get their economies going, if we

can help to restart the type of economic growth that they experienced before 1997, I think that will do much more.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. If there were brief comments from the other

two speakers about this approach, I would like to hear them.

Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. I was just going to say, to add to what I said

earlier, that one of the other things I failed to mention is the Bank

is also trying to target assistance to the regions of Indonesia where

a lot of the civil conflict is happening to ensure the money is used

there on the ground at the grass roots level rather than absorbed

by these government bureaucracies in Jakarta.

Mr. EMMERSON. I am glad you said that, because it is important

to keep in mind that in Indonesia, with the decentralization of

power to the regions, it is no longer a satisfactory defense to say

42

that the central institutions are weak and therefore we cannot provide any assistance at all. It is entirely conceivable that at the level

of particular cities one can bring together, for example, users of

water in associations that can put pressure on public authorities to

improve the delivery of clean water, just to give you one example.

It is important, therefore, to get away from the idea that we have

to put in money at the top of the system and hope that it trickles

down.

There are a number of organizations, I think of the Asia Foundation for example, which derive a fair proportion of its budget from

American public money, which operate in this local and decentralized way. There are nongovernmental organizations in Indonesia,

many of them extremely active on environmental questions, and

they have counterparts in the Philippines, in Thailand, in Malaysia

that can be the recipients of assistance directly with some sense of

monitoring how the funds are spent.

And then there is a structural answer to your question that may

be particularly controversial for Congress, which has just adopted

what used to be called ‘‘Fast Track’’ by one vote, if I am not mistaken—we will see what happens in the Senate. At the risk of triggering disagreement on the part of some in the room, let me suggest that if the United States were to make it easier for Indonesians to export textiles to this country, that would have a dramatic effect on employment of precisely the kind that you are interested in.

Mr. HEFNER. I really have nothing to add.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your courtesy. I

would like at some point to pursue with you and the Committee

some specific recommendations we can make that would make a

difference on the ground that don’t get caught up in some of these

issues. Notwithstanding the World Bank initiative, we have fallen

short, I think in terms of what we have done in recent years in this

Congress, and this might be an opportunity to make some corrections. And I appreciate your courtesy.

Mr. LEACH. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Smith.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to ask two

questions. One would be on Vietnam and the second one would be

on Indonesia, IMET, JCET and the issue of funding.

Mr. LEACH. We have gone a little longer on some of the speakers

and you will be entitled.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, let me just focus for a moment on Vietnam. The bilateral trade agreement has been passed by the House and the Senate. The Vietnamese Assembly has passed it as well, and I would

just note they immediately issued a statement that there should be

no linkage to human rights and specifically singled out legislation

that I was a prime sponsor of, the Vietnam Human Rights Act that

passed 410 to 1 on September 6th. The language in that bill is as

clear and as doable and as modest when you talk about civil behavior as it can get. It also contains a waiver for the President, a twopart waiver, that is in the best interest of the United States, which

is wide open. And secondly, it would advance the very purposes

that we are promoting here, and that is human rights in Vietnam.

43

Mr. Jendrzejczyk, in your statement you mentioned that Vietnam’s donor should press for significant progress in human rights.

And as you pointed out, it was just a consultative conference of donors in Hanoi on December 7 and 8. And it has been my experience, and I would ask you to address it, that very often when donors meet human rights are not very high on the agenda, especially

when it gets into specifics, Father Lee and Dick Qwon Do and others, who there may be an asterisk or some bullet points that are

read by someone somewhere, but there is no real linkage and no

real penalty if all of the above are ignored with impunity.

Our bill is being held up in the Senate. My hope is that we can

get that moved. The Vietnamese have said—and again this just

freezes our foreign aid, nonhumanitarian foreign aid at fiscal 2001

levels. So there won’t be any more than that. It is as modest as it

gets. And the Vietnamese are having a fit over that particular bill.

They want unrestricted trade with the United States with no linkage to human rights.

We also call for the ending of the jamming of Radio Free Asia.

If that isn’t an unfriendly act, I don’t know what is. And we want

to help the nongovernmental organizations that are committed to

nonviolence in Vietnam with grants and aid and that kind of thing,

who want to bring about religious freedom and human rights in

that country. It seems to me that the Vietnamese have a case of

a severe bad attitude. The Deputy Foreign Minister is here right

now. Hopefully he is getting a strong message from the Administration. But talk from all of us can be very cheap if we don’t back

it up with legislation.

Donors, do they raise this in a way that says, look, you are not

getting the millions as promised or as advertised unless certain criteria are met. And we are a significant donor as a government. We

do it through NGOs. But governments like the United States, really we are the lead. So if you could—— Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. Just two answers to your questions. On the

donor meeting, it is interesting the Vietnamese media in the last

3 days have been attacking Human Rights Watch for asking the

donors just to bring up human rights. We were attacked again yesterday. And of course your bill, as you know, has become a target

for contempt by Vietnamese officials.

So I think both of us kind of made the claim. As to what happened at the donor meeting, I am not sure. Governance was on the

agenda. We saw the agenda in advance. We know that the European Union and the U.S. did make some references to anti-corruption initiatives, the rule of law and the need for respect for human

rights. I think this came primarily from the European Union. As

of yesterday I haven’t seen the statement delivered by the U.S.

Delegation. But I know at past donor meetings human rights have

been raised repeatedly by a number of countries, and I think it has

made an impact.

Mr. SMITH. And the Montagnards, and the cordoning off, as you

pointed out, seems to be a high level group to go there. But you

know—— Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. To be honest, I don’t know.

Mr. SMITH. Well, how you measure it then if you say we are

doing fine?

44

Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. Exactly. And I don’t know to the extent that

it is raised with that level of specificity. I am not aware of any linkage made, however, by any donors. So in any case that is a very

brief response to your question. I certainly agree that continuing to

press for fundamental human rights improvements should be part

of the overall agenda for the entire international community if it

is also seriously interested in economic reform and sustainable

growth.

There are a handful of international NGOs operating in Vietnam.

Some of them are doing very good work. And you are right, the

U.S. should be assisting them. But as I suggested in my statement,

I wouldn’t also rule out some assistance for serious rule of law, judicial reform assistance going to others beyond NGOs if they address not just commercial law, but security laws, the press law,

which has been tightened up most recently, and other major aspects of Vietnamese law that are not in compliance with its international human rights commitments. I think we should be

proactive in that.

Mr. SMITH. The language of this legislation permits that funding

if it were to advance the human rights. You know, what concerns

me is the money we are talking about and the penalties would be

automatic and probably severe if we are talking about intellectual

property rights infringement. But when it comes to torture or holding people who because of their faith or their religious practice is

contrary to the government, the full weight of the government’s

boot comes done upon their throat. And that is the deep concern

that many of us have. Our hope is that the Senate will take this

up and Senator Kerry from Massachusetts and others will lift their

hold on this legislation. It does human rights an incredible disservice, in my view, to hold this up.

And any others who would like to respond to that, please do.

Mr. EMMERSON. I think that it is unfortunate for both the proponents of a market-based economic set of transactions that will

promote prosperity and for the proponents of human rights to create situations in which these two appear to be contradictory. It

seems to me that on the one hand advocates of human rights are

going to be uncomfortable if, because they insist on what the Vietnamese are unwilling to provide, the United States does not respond to the kinds of problems that Mr. Blumenauer was mentioning in terms of clean water and reducing poverty, and educational opportunity, because there is a moral onus associated with

Human Rights Watch or with Congress.

Conversely, on the other side, if we open up the doors, and corporations go in and take advantage of forced labor, then obviously

there is a moral onus there.

So my point is simply this, apart from what the text of the legislation says, the critical question is what are you willing to create

in the way of an order of priorities? For example, how important

is it to get Radio Free Asia into Vietnam? If that is your most important priority, I suspect the Vietnamese are not going to budge.

If on the other hand there are other priorities that have to do, for

example, with marginal improvements, in the ability of labor to organize freely, that at least will move the situation forward, then it

is a trade-off.

45

Now this blunts, I know, the moral fervor of the cause of human

rights. But it seems to me we should not sacrifice effectiveness just

for the feeling of satisfaction.

Mr. SMITH. There is none of that here. There are specific benchmarks named in the bill, substantial progress in the release of political prisoners. We are not even saying every single political prisoner on our list, but that would be the hope, but substantial

progress at a time when people are being rounded up in some

cases, particularly Montagnard people. It seems to me that they

are going in the wrong direction and their insistence publicly and

privately and their obstinacy would suggest to me that there is an

extreme hard line of demarkation between human rights and—I

mean they want an absolute severing of the two. And I would

argue very strongly that the two do go hand and hand and add

that our language says this is our foreign aid. We are not talking

about humanitarian refugee assistance or humanitarian assistance

of any kind. We are talking about nonhumanitarian foreign aid.

And again the President could waive even that if he thought a rule

of law program would advance the cause of human rights.

So it is a very calibrated response, and even that has brought on

the ire of the Hanoi government and unfortunately their friends on

the Senate to block this bill which passed 410 to 1. And I find that

very, very disturbing.

If I do have time—otherwise I will come back.

Mr. LEACH. Why don’t we go to Mr. Royce and then come back.

Mr. ROYCE. One of the questions I was going to bring up is that

we talked about economic growth here. It seems to me that in these

societies and maybe in our society, we don’t understand exactly

what the changes are that need to be made. Hernando De Soto in

his best selling book, The Mystery of Capital, why it succeeds in

the West and has failed everywhere else, lays out with respect to

Indonesia sort of a template of what they didn’t do, what they don’t

understand needs to be done in order to create the ability for title

to be passed on property and to borrow against title and basically

get an economy moving.

And I guess one of my questions is what can we do to make certain that it is worked like De Soto’s work, which is not resisted in

the way—I mean he is not a U.S. economist. He is a Third World

economist, but he is acceptable in Indonesia and elsewhere. How

do we get that information out there?

And then the second question then goes to the U.S. policies. Our

policies are not being understood there. We tried various approaches, Radio Free Asia. I had a bill to expand that. Radio Free

Afghanistan is something to try to talk to the Pashtuns. How do

we reach Malaysia and Indonesia so they understand our policies

and don’t react negatively? Is it more cultural exchanges? Is it people to people exchanges? Is it radio, where we attempt to develop

or craft a certain message? And I would like your thoughts on that.

Mr. HEFNER. If I could—actually both questions touch on a similar problem, Mr. Royce, and I am going to answer in a very focused

way. I suspect some of the other speakers will present more general or comprehensive answers. But I think in both cases the failure of many Indonesians and many Southeast Asians, and Vietnamese included, to understand how you grow an economy as well

46

as the difficulty of communicating across cultures with Muslims

and some other people, both of them I think could be addressed

through a renewed commitment to educational exchange.

In another incarnation, 15 years ago, when I was working in Indonesia, I was associated and indeed I am still associated with a

place called the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, and

one of the things that I was interested in in Malaysia and Indonesia, as they were at that point experiencing unprecedented rates

of growth, one of the things I was interested in was whether those

rates of growth were being accompanied by a true transformation

in the understanding of how economies work, how the global economy works and how domestic economy works. And the thing that

was so striking to me as I was doing this research in both countries

was, first of all, the Malays had a much better sense of things. And

I have to say that a shorthand answer as to why this was so is that

there was a demonstration effect from the Chinese Malaysian community that was both profound and welcomed. It was one good

quality of ethnic relations in Malaysia that Malays would listen to

and learn from Chinese.

In the case of Indonesia this wasn’t the case, and I think in fact,

if anything, there was a legacy of bad economic thinking that

wasn’t just found in the populace and among, you know, sort of

radical idealists on the left and on the right, but instead it was

widespread even in circles among the elite. Many scholars have

noted that one of the great failings of the Suharto regime is that

he never provided a forum in which market-oriented economists

could build a constituency and disseminate their ideas. Why? Because those ideas came with baggage. It isn’t just markets. Markets require legal institutions, and Suharto felt threatened by the

larger baggage that free markets require.

Mr. ROYCE. Rule of law.

Mr. HEFNER. I end just by saying, Mr. Royce, that there is a job

to be done very specifically targeting programs of international

education, not simply of the types of things we have done in the

past, which are very good. Our educational programs in Indonesia

have had a profound impact, perhaps unrecognized but very, very

significant achievement of our foreign policy. But one area that

does need to be additionally targeted is economic education of the

political and religious elite, specifically the Muslim elite.

Mr. ROYCE. That was done in Poland, Czech Republic, and so

forth, and it proved successful.

Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. I would just add that a key problem, and the

road maps that exist for this kind of reform, the problem is the political will to implement them. And one obstacle is the role of the

army in the Indonesian economy and in key sectors of the economy

and an interest that the military has that it is anxious to protect,

and that is going to be a difficult knot to cut.

Mr. RABASA. I would say that you are absolutely right that there

are these differences and that Indonesia today lacks legal institutions. If you look at Singapore, Singapore markets work fine. There

is very little corruption in Singapore as far as I know and an American company can go and do business as long as it is within the

legal framework of Singapore. They do not have to make payoffs to

people. This is lacking in Indonesia. In Indonesia, there is no bankVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
47

ruptcy law. This is why many insolvent companies have not been

sold out to investors and put back into the economy. Contract law

is unenforceable, and the judges are bribed. So the resumption of

economic growth will require, in some way, the rebuilding of these

institutions.

With regard to the Indonesian army and business, I have a chapter on this in my forthcoming book. I would only say that their

businesses are as bankrupt as the others.

Mr. ROYCE. In closing, let me just say, The Mystery of Capital,

I would recommend it because it has in it a strategy for getting the

populace behind the reforms, you see, and thus challenging the institutions that exist there today, and it proved very successful in

Peru. And he was the economic advisor in Mexico for President

Fox, and again it proved successful.

So thank you very much.

Mr. LEACH. Mr. Smith?

Mr. SMITH. If I could, on Indonesia it would appear that Dr.

Rabasa, you and Dr. Hefner have very different views on funding

and/or resuming funding regarding IMET. Because of restrictions

on IMET since 1992, there has been a lost decade. And Dr. Hefner,

you point out that while—if the hard line Islamics and the armed

force and bureaucracy have been discredited once and for all, however recent events show that over the past year these groups have

staged a remarkable comeback.

For a number of years, the International Operations and Human

Rights Committee, which I chaired, held a series of hearings on the

problem of policing and military corruption in Indonesia. And matter of fact, Joseph Reece, who was here earlier, who was general

counsel and staff director, and I went over there. And it was like

2 days after President Habibi assumed the leadership of the country with the fall of Suharto. But we had been very concerned and

the hearings focused on—I may have been stomped but JCET

wasn’t. So we had another program in place and we were training

Kopasus people, Kopasus personnel in sniper warfare, and at least

we heard anecdotally—we never got as good as information that we

would like—that during the riots there was a lot of urban guerilla

warfare type tactics used. I asked the previous Administration time

and time again who did we train and what was the outcome, who

were they, where did they go? Were they ever indicted? We know

that General Prabowo was indicted, who headed up Kopasus. We

know that Secretary.

Cohen—I will never forget the picture in the Washington Post

watching some Kopasus warrior putting scorpions on himself to

show how tough he was. You know, this is the same guy who will

take somebody in the back, as we heard from Pia Salutra Lanong,

one of our witnesses who had been beaten in a military installation, blindfolded by what we believe were Kopasus personnel. I am

very worried about resuming anything that even looks like collaboration with that kind of—President Megawati is certainly, I think,

a good person, but how much control does she have? I remember

meeting with our attache in our embassy, Joseph Banai, who asked

him a series of questions about the training, the methodology, the

keeping of records, and we only got redacted copies when we asked

for who it was that we trained. And he said the human rights

48

groups have looked at our program and they think it is fine. I said

name one human rights group. There was not a single one that he

could offer up.

I say all this because past is sometimes prologue. We get real

meaning military people, military attaches working on these programs in a country, and while they may talk human rights and the

others may put on airs of hearing that message, we may have a

situation like we have had so many times before where we train

up a military and it becomes repressive, committed to torture.

So I am concerned about that. The JCET program was under

most people’s radar screen in terms of Congress and we couldn’t

get the information. I found it amazing. Some of the journalists

tried to track it down and couldn’t find out. It was like this secret

program, and we still don’t know to this day whether or not people

who we trained were human rights violators.

Dr. Hefner.

Mr. HEFNER. There is a question of means and ends here that

is very, very difficult to evaluate. Your ends is some sort of increase in effective governance in Indonesia and a governance that

is based on the rule of law and simple civil decencies. And let us

not even talk about full democratization, but just simple decencies.

How one gets there is something on which I think people of good

faith can disagree. My description of what I feel lies behind some

of the interreligious violence, and the reason that it could drag on

as it has for more than 3 years was really intended not to specify

one particular sort of policy as regards our military programs or relations with the Indonesian military.

But let me back up just a bit and emphasize that it was designed

to underscore that there is a very severe problem of governance in

Indonesia right now. And the question is where do we get leverage?

Where does anybody get leverage? And I think on this point people

can disagree. The problem of governance is not unique to the military. We are seeing that contrary to much of our optimism about

the capacity for civil societies, once they are let free, to redeem

themselves and correct and moderate governance is fading. Civil

societies can themselves be sources of incivility. And what we are

seeing right now is that problems of governance in Indonesia are

being complicated by the rise of these radically uncivil groups. And

again, I emphasize we should not just identify Muslims as the culprits here or the extremist Muslims. There are killers from the

Christian community as well.

The question then is how do we get some kind of leverage, some

kind of control. And there, I think—I am not commenting on IMET

specifically here, but I think some measure of dialogue with the political elite in its general sense, political elite that includes the

military, needs to be reopened.

Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. I am not opposed to such dialogue if it happens in a multilateral way, but I share your concerns, Mr. Smith,

about doing it at senior levels now through IMET and other such

programs. But I have to say the existing legislation, and you know

this very well, doesn’t prevent in fact the Pentagon and other agencies from engaging in a whole range of other activities with the Indonesian military, many of which have been underway even during

the last few years. We have suggested for several years that the

49

GAO do a comprehensive study of every IMET graduate in Indonesia since the 1950s, when the program started. That is one way

to find out is it really having any impact. I doubt it, only because

the anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that without an end to

this cycle of impunity no amount of training alone is going to bring

about fundamental changes in practices or attitudes.

One small example of this is East Timor. Despite all of the international attention on East Timor, the handful of militia that were

put on trial this week were not tried by Indonesian courts, they

were tried by a U.N.-created tribunal. That only happened because

of the pressure of IMET and a lot of other similar forms of leverage, diplomatic and economic, from around the world, from Japan

and the EU as well as the U.S., but I think we have a long way

to go before that translates to the kind of fundamental reforms in

the Indonesian military. It is going to be a slow, difficult, uphill

process, no question. But I do think we need to be careful what

tools we use to try to engage in that process.

Mr. RABASA. If I have time, one quick response to this. The

Kopasus people that you mentioned that were involved in the

JCET’s exercise were particularly a bad set of apples. I would mention, however, that the Indonesian military is in the process of

transition, it is in fact in a process of profound transition in some

ways. The military has a new doctrine, a new paradigm, that at

least in theory is supposed to take out of internal security and into

external defense as with most modern militaries. This is why the

police were separated from the services, so the police could take

care of internal security. Some members of the military are committed to getting out of the territorial system that links them to

the towns and villages and is one of the sources of corruption and

human rights violations that they have engaged in. However, the

military has played, I think anyone would acknowledge, a constructive role in all of the transitions that have taken place since the

fall of Suharto.

The military is not a monolith. It is a group that after the fall

of the New Order, and after everything they were accustomed to

changed, is looking for a new model and a new way of doing business, and I think, as I mentioned before, that we have an opportunity to engage at least the best of them and try to get them to

move in the direction that we would want them to move. And they

are going to do that, not because we forced them to and not because we are applying sanctions. As they have done at every stage

of their evolution in the past, they will do it for Indonesian reasons,

do it for institutional reasons, and do it for reasons of their own.

And this is why they have done what they have done since the fall

of Suharto.

So I think because of that it is best to engage them; if we could

bring them the modern world—show them how we do business, try

to instill some of our values, I think in the long run we will be better off—they will be better off than if we isolate them.

Mr. EMMERSON. Briefly, I favor the resuscitation of E–IMET.

That is an IMET program that is focused on how this military

should function in democratic civilian circumstances. I am, however, against resumption of IMET in the standard military sense

of providing lethal equipment to an armed force that is increasingly

50

engaged in Aceh, and in Papua in what they consider to be the retention of their own national integrity. The violence in Aceh has

been appalling this year and I don’t think the United States should

associate itself with it.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you.

Mr. LEACH. If I could just spin off a little bit on this discussion

and say that I am not sure we fully understand the concept of leadership; that is, the theory of IMET in part is to go to leaders in

society, in this case military leaders, educate them and then supply

if that is appropriate. We are finding that leadership in many societies, including our own, isn’t necessarily in places that are institutional. And so historically we have had exchange programs that

have gone to other elements of society, but it is remarkable to me

that we have probably overlooked the most critical at this particular time. And that is instead of bringing military leaders over

here for high level, sophisticated training, maybe we ought to be

teaching comparative religion to Mullahs. If they are going to be

the leaders of these societies in ways that we have some doubts

about, why shouldn’t we be directly involved? And the case for

Mullah leadership is perhaps greater than the case for military

leadership training. I just throw that out. Is that a conceivable

thought or—— Mr. HEFNER. If I may, since I am a friend of the Mullahs, it is

not only conceivable, I think it would be welcomed particularly in

Indonesia, but also Malaysia. Ulama like to hold themselves a little

bit more askance, both to the government and to the West, than

in Indonesia. There is in Indonesia, as I tried to say in my paper,

a great struggle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim community

and the majority of Muslims. This is not utopian romanticism. The

majority of Indonesian Muslims are people who thirst for a country

that is participatory, inclusive, pluralistic and democratic. Finding

the practical terms—I mean the ideal is finding the practical terms

for working a multireligious society in achieving a truly inclusive

practice of citizenship is tricky. But it is something from which or

to which—it is a task to which educational programs can make an

enormous contribution because there are comparative lessons to be

learned from other countries, Western and Muslim.

Mr. LEACH. I appreciate that. What strikes me is if we did do a

targeted program I am not sure that we have a lot to add on the

study of Islam, but we could request that those that are participants, that it be a two-way street and that the emphasis should be

comparative religion with the hope that we may be learning from

them and possibly passing on certain comparative values from our

perspective.

Let me just turn in a little different way to the general nature

of circumstances, not only in Southeast Asia but in many parts of

the world, that governments are sometimes imperfect and then

there are movements within societies that are imperfect. And yet

there are peoples that are pawns and peoples that are the hearts

of societies and the future of societies. Then how does the United

States Government respond? And it strikes me we have often responded government to government in such ways that our nose is

out of joint if we don’t like a government. Our nose is out of joint

if we don’t like a movement within a society, and we then escape

51

the accountability and responsibilities to people. And one of the peculiar natures of the United States Congress is that we are the— to the degree there is one in America—we are the people’s body.

And I have often thought that our role as a Congress should be

more directed to people-to-people relations and it is up to the executive to be accountable for executive-to-executive relations. And

that therefore when in an earlier discussion someone mentioned

the problem of AIDS, well, I think whenever relations with a government or movement in society, we ought to be concerned about

disease assistance and somehow we ought to have policies that reflect that we can do that despite the government or despite the

movements within the government.

Does that make sense to you? Is that a reasonable way of looking

at the world and therefore that some of the prohibitions that we

established because of our nose being out of joint, usually for good

reason, against a government policy that we ought to have exceptions to these, for example, food and medicine? Is that a reasonable

thing?

Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. I certainly think so, Mr. Leach, and as a

human rights organization, we are very careful about in any way

cutting off humanitarian assistance. But we do want to help address some of the underlying societal problems that create the difficulties we are finding ourselves in now. But while endorsing that

approach for the long term, I do think in the short term there are

some very clear political signals that have to be sent.

For example, when the Indonesian Vice President meets with the

head of Laskar Jihad after he has just been finally indicted for

some of the violence that Laskar Jihad committed, that sends the

wrong signal not only to the United States but, more importantly,

to Christians and to Muslims in Indonesia who are watching the

signals being given at the highest level.

So I guess I would also endorse your earlier comments about

leadership, and to the extent that the U.S. can both encourage

leadership at the political level where it is now so desperately

needed in some of these problematic situations while engaging in

the more long-term efforts that you also just mentioned, I think the

two have to go hand in hand.

Mr. LEACH. You know we have a judgment call that appears to

be a philosophical debate that has never exactly been articulated

but is rather new in Washington, although there are parallels.

That is what happens when you have an imperfect government, or

let us make it a little bit different, an imperfect movement in an

imperfect society. Should the United States be actively involved in

military intervention? Are we better off, generally speaking, with

economic and cultural engagements? And obviously, it is not always an either/or and that one has to reserve kind of on an ad hoc

basis some judgments. But if you take in your own mind—and I

don’t want to relate it to a country because then you get into this

great thing about threats and counter threats and whatever, but if

you say the XYZ country and it has an activist al-Qaeda-related

movement, should U.S. armed forces go in or would that be as

deeply counterproductive an engagement as one could conceive?

And I want to raise this in the abstract XYZ country because if Afghanistan is resolved in a credible way and in a credible time peVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:49 Feb 21, 2002 Jkt 076668 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\EAP\121201\76668 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
52

riod, might there be lessons that fit the rest of the world and those

that people might think fit might not. And would any of you want

to draw your own judgments on cautions for Washington today or

encouragements for policymakers in this arena?

Let me start with you.

Mr. EMMERSON. I think it is an excellent question and it runs

against the grain, I think, of the temptation, particularly here inside the Beltway, to overgeneralize from recent events. For example, the success of the American military-led campaign in Afghanistan, if it leads to the conclusion that military responses are appropriate in the conditions that you abstractly put forward, I think

would be disastrous, absolutely disastrous. We remember what

happened when we, as it were, left the scene prematurely. And if

we do that again—I am talking about Afghanistan—and if we do

it again, the socioeconomic problems that are at least indirectly

and in complex ways related to terrorism will go untreated.

So I would resist across-the-board conclusions. We don’t want a

Vietnam syndrome. We don’t want a Somali syndrome. There is

also the Rwanda syndrome, as if we should have intervened, which

clearly in some sense morally we should have, but that doesn’t

mean we ought to generalize that case around the world either.

One must at some point get down to specifics, and the answer for

Indonesia is not going to be the same as the answer for Pakistan

or any other country.

Next year there will be a conference in Indonesia bringing

Islamologists from the United States together with counterparts in

Indonesia. There will be Ulamas present. And I hope—hopefully it

won’t end in rancor—that this kind of an experiment could well be

duplicated in other ways. There are lots of specific proposals that

one might suggest later when there is time.

Mr. LEACH. I appreciate that, and I want to go to Dr. Hefner. But

the conference in Indonesia, should that deny that we ought to be

seeking on standard USIA leadership kinds of exchanges for

Mullahs to come to this country?

Mr. EMMERSON. The conference I mentioned is an initiative undertaken by academics. It has nothing to do with the U.S. Government or U.S. policy. But I do feel that under the guise of public

diplomacy, which I think as I said should really be reinvigorated,

there is a great deal that the U.S. Government can do to promote

these kinds of exchanges.

Mr. LEACH. Dr. Hefner.

Mr. HEFNER. If I can back up a moment with a very brief comment, Mr. Chairman, about your international educational exchanges. You put the idea of comparative religious studies on the

congressional agenda. Comparative religious studies, incidentally,

in the Southeast Asian region among Muslims is actually fairly

widespread. What isn’t widespread and that which I think would

have an equally salutory effect is social science education, including

economics and democracy theory, liberal democracy theory in its

classic sense. That is not what is taught in most schools of religious

education. One sees, however, from a few religious schools in Indonesia and that the impact of social science education, targeted social science on good economic theory and democratic theory, has

been profound.

53

Secondly, on the question of the generalized ability of a kind of

Afghanistan model to country XYZ, I would hope that as we Americans and the Congress reflect on the lessons of Afghanistan, they

recognize that it—while acknowledging extraordinary courage and

accomplishment of our military, that the success also depended

upon a very peculiar groundswell of support in Afghanistan society

itself. The key to success here is that the Taliban was a fraud and

most of the Afghan public knew that, that these were oppressors,

these were people using the name of Islam and they were brutalizing the population. Therefore, there was a constituency, and a

constituency that happened to have significant military experience,

willing to move with the United States, willing to show great courage and sacrifice. I think that is a condition, not merely air power,

that must be factored into any military assessment. All this said,

one would hope as one moves to other countries one would look

precisely at these broader social, cultural educational issues that

you, Mr. Chairman, have emphasized.

Mr. RABASA. Mr. Chairman, you asked a question that people in

policy and I am sure in the Congress have been asking for many,

many years: Under what conditions should the United States employ military force? Specifically you mentioned this with regard to

the existence of an al-Qaeda cell somewhere. I will go back to my

remarks in response to Congressman Blumenauer’s question, that

in cases where there is no state to cooperate with, as in the case

of Afghanistan, if we are to eliminate the cells—and it is precisely

in these states that these organizations flourish, we do not have a

choice if we decide that it is in the national interest to eliminate

the cells but to go in ourselves, hopefully with the support of local

forces. In other states and in every case that I am aware of in

Southeast Asia there are governments in place that are willing to

pick up the fight against terrorism, and I think we can rely on

these governments with our support to do the job themselves, and

I think it will be far, far preferable to any direct involvement of

U.S. forces.

As you know, whenever we get involved in a conflict on the

ground someplace else the consequences can be unpredictable.

There is no telling what effects that type of intervention might

have. In some cases that may be precisely what the terrorists want:

to have us involved in order to build up support among the population against foreign invaders, especially from a different religion.

So I would hope that we can line up allies in the region who can

pick up the direct task of facing these groups with our support. In

some cases where state authority has disappeared, as in Afghanistan, and in the case of Somalia as well, we may not have any

choice but to do it ourselves.

Mr. JENDRZEJCZYK. As a human rights organization we don’t

take a position for or against the use of force, say, in any situation,

including XYZ. But what we do insist on of course is that international humanitarian law, the Geneva Accords, and so on, be fully

respected if and when force is applied.

Mr. LEACH. Well, thank you, and let me just conclude with Dr.

Hefner, related to the teaching of economics to religious people and

visa versa. I might say that last year, the United States Congress

moved in terms of debt relief using the biblical concept of Jubilee,

54

meaning every 50 years you wipe out debt. And by the biblical concept there was a church movement in America that created the political strength and allowed this to prevail, and so it was a very unusual phenomenon. And so you have a churchly doctrine brought

to international economics. And you are suggesting maybe economics ought to be taught. Obviously economics got intertwined in religion at one time with some Marxism, particularly in the church in

Latin America but around the world as well. But I think cross-cultural training may be appropriate. But that is a very interesting

thought, although it might border on indoctrination, but if done at

academic centers it might be a useful idea.

Let me thank you all very much. Your testimony has been very

perceptive and laid a good basis for thought at this time. Thank

you.

Meeting is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:45 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

(55)

A P P E N D I X

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE EARL BLUMENAUER, A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Faleomavaega, I appreciate your organizing

this hearing. Several of the countries we are examining today in the SE Asian region are majority Muslim, and global sensitivity to that fact is especially important

in the wake of September 11. We are also reminded to consider what we can do as

a nation to address the causes of growing poverty and social unrest that is increasingly concentrated in cities of the developing world.

Most Southeast Asian Muslims (who constitute majorities in Indonesia, Malaysia,

and Brunei) traditionally have pursued moderate forms of Islam. But with the deepening regional recession and expanding contacts with foreign jihadists, we need to

do all we can to ensure that the region does not become fertile ground for violent,

anti-Western fundamentalism. In addition to various indigenous Islamist movements, there are indications of links between al Qaeda and groups in Indonesia, the

Philippines, and perhaps elsewhere.

With 225 million inhabitants and over a million square miles of territory, Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country. The five-month-old administration of

President Megawati Sukarnoputri faces a number of continuing, critical problems,

including: a stagnant economy; massive public debts; pervasive governmental corruption; the challenges of military and police reform; and ethnic, religious, and separatist violence that has led to the internal displacement of over one million people.

President Megawati initially condemned the September 11 attacks, but now, understandably fearing a backlash among Islamic groups, she has remained equivocal,

at best, toward U.S. actions in Afghanistan. Indonesian security forces continue to

wage a brutal offensive against separatist rebels in Aceh, which has claimed the

lives of a disproportionate number of civilians. Similar unrest has plagued West

Papua and the extremist Laskar Jihad organization continues to foment extensive

violence against Christians in Maluku and Sulawesi, sometimes with the complicity

of local security forces (and with the alleged assistance of outside groups such as

al Qaeda).

I also want to briefly mention Vietnam. On November 28, the Vietnamese legislature ratified the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) that we ratified in

the U.S. Congress earlier this summer. The BTA will provide Normal Trade Relations (NTR) status to Vietnamese goods entering the U.S. market, and requires the

dismantlement of certain trade barriers within Vietnam.

The BTA is expected to hasten Vietnam’s transformation into a manufacturingand export-based economy, and could double Vietnamese exports to the U.S. within

a single year, according to World Bank estimates. It is a landmark step in the normalization of relations between the two countries and I appreciated the opportunity

to assist in its ratification.

The cities of our world are already overwhelmed by human needs and economic

instability. Today, 30 percent of urban residents throughout the world lack access

to safe drinking water; 50 per cent do not have adequate sanitation facilities.

Waterborne diseases lead directly to the deaths of 5 to 12 million people each

year. These conditions are getting worse by the day. Within the next 25 years, 2.5

billion more people will move to cities throughout the world; 95 percent of this

movement will occur in developing nations. Here, the poverty, malnutrition, and

chronic diseases of rural areas will become focused in new ‘mega-cities’ of 10–20 million people, creating an even greater strain on natural resources, human health,

educational infrastructure, economic well-being—and the stability—of these nations

and the entire world.

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This dangerous trend has not gone unnoticed. In its Outlook 2015 Report, the CIA

ranked rapid urbanization as one of its top seven security concerns. ‘‘The explosive

growth of cities in the developing countries,’’ the report concludes, ‘‘will test the capacity of governments to stimulate the investment required to generate jobs, and

provide the services, infrastructure, and social supports necessary to sustain livable

and stable environments. Cities will be sources of crime and instability as ethnic

and religious differences exacerbate the competition for ever scarcer jobs and resources.’’

In the case of Indonesia, the continuation of the decentralization movement will

begin to empower cities to solve their own problems. We do want to empower communities and give them a sense of ownership, but at the same time we do not want

to end up with a number of small fiefdoms that disallow any comprehensive and

regional planning or large-scale infrastructure projects. The cities need training but

they want the responsibility.

The US Agency for International Development is supporting Indonesia’s decentralization and I commend their work in that arena. In order to achieve success,

support needs to be provided to local governments and pressure needs to be maintained so that control is not recentralized.

Right now, we are rightfully focussed on the reconstruction of Afghanistan. In the

provision of development assistance there and elsewhere in the world, we must remain vigilant for opportunities that will allow us to lay the foundation for enabling

cities to work so that they do not become breeding grounds for desperation.

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