Indonesia's Civil War
CROZIER, BRIAN
THE END OF 'GUIDED DEMOCRACY'? Indonesia's Civil War By Brian Crozier The Violent Events of the past few weeks in Indonesia, though still obscure in some respects, do suggest certain clear...
...Subandrio, the Foreign Minister, and five Communists obscure enough to deflect suspicion...
...Some 1,500 Communists were reported arrested over the week end of October 9-10...
...The three key slogan words of guided democracy are Nasakom, Brian Crozier, a British journalist, is the author of Morning After: A Study of Independence...
...The topranking Army officers have been firmly anti-Communist since 1948, when they crushed a pki uprising against the young Indonesian republic...
...The outside observer must arm himself with a glossary if he is to grasp the inner meaning of current Indonesian politics...
...Nevertheless, the PKI immediately supported the coup, and on October 2, the party's newspaper, Haria...
...the official Antara News Agency, which according to Army spokesmen had come under control of the New China News Agency, was allowed to resume its output only after a suspension during which its Communist elements were purged...
...The main reason for this might have been his realization that Nasakom —as a base for his guided democracy—was slipping away with the opening breach between the Army and the PKI...
...On China's side, this alliance was supposedly based on support for Sukarno's "revolutionary" regime, but in reality it rested on the willingness of the PKI to support China in the ideological dispute between the Chinese and Soviet Communist parties...
...Another probability is the collapse of the revolutionary Jakarta-Peking axis as a focus for the discontent of the world's dispossessed peoples...
...Rak]at, gave Colonel Untung's Revolutionary Council its full blessing...
...There was always an ambiguity in the relationship: While China gave lip-service to Indonesia's "confrontation" with Malaysia, it was the Soviet Union that provided the weapons which enabled the Indonesian Armed Forces to keep up their pressure against Malaysia...
...But there is a hollow sound to such words now that Nasakom and Nefo have lost their meaning...
...In September, according to reports reaching Singapore from Jakarta, the Chinese doctor—on instructions from Peking—reported to the pki that in his opinion Sukarno could not live much longer...
...Did Colonel Untung act on his own, or was he working with the PKI...
...Untung and his compatriots were taken into captivity...
...One is the probable collapse of President Sukarno's experiment in "guided democracy," based on slogan words and on the precarious balance maintained by the chief of state between the Armed Forces and the powerful Indonesian Communist party (pki...
...Loyal troops and non-Communist civilian bands have been pitted against the Communists...
...His men had murdered the two daughters of the Defens Minister, General Abdul Haris Nasution,—Indonesia's most famous soldier and the man who crushed the Communists in 1948—but they only wounded the General himself...
...Nasakom consists of the first three syllables, in Indonesian, of "nationalism,' "religion'' and ''Communism" — supposedly the three main political forces in the country...
...Then came the attempted coup of September 30, when Colonel Un tung's followers kidnapped the Army Chief of Staff, General Ach mad Jani and five other officers, whose bodies were later discovered in an unused well...
...One of Nasution's colleagues, General Suharto, immediately undertook to crush the rebels...
...Nasakom, in fact, made Communism respectable...
...When Sukarno exonerated the Air Force for complicity in the plot, General Suharto declared, "It is impossible that there is no connection with this affair among elements of the Air Force.'' Meanwhile, the past month of fierce, spreading civil strife—martial law was declared in Jakarta on October 2, and a "state of war" in the Communist stronghold of Central Java on October 28—has left its own answers to Sukarno's pleas...
...This question cannot yet be answered with absolute certainty...
...Central Intelligence Agency...
...Whatever happens next, politics can never be the same in guided Indonesia...
...The plan is understood to have provided for the rapid recruiting and training of volunteers for the proposed People's Militia, and of instructions to local groups of the PKI throughout Indonesia to penetrate HANSIP, the Indonesian civil defense organization...
...The whole point of Nasakom was really to cloud the differences between the traditionally anti-Communist Army and the Islamic parties on the one hand, and the anti-religious pki on the other...
...The gap in this plan was clearly the lack of arms...
...In declaring martial law in Java, the Army claimed that Communist bands had massacred civilians and spread a reign of terror in which 250 people died since the crisis began on September 30-October 1. Communist casualty figures were reportedly also high...
...and Nekolim for "neo-colonialism and imperialism...
...The true basis of Nefo has been the de facto axis between Jakarta and Peking as the self-proclaimed capitals of the "new emerging forces...
...To Europeans the word has a sinister ring, recalling the brutalities of Hitler's Gestapo...
...He proclaimed a revolutionary council of 45 members, including Air Vice-Marshal Omar Dani, Commander in Chief of the Air Force, Vice-Admiral Martadinata, Commander in Chief of the Navy, Dr...
...more than 40 Islamic and political groups have called for the banning of the PKI...
...Since September 29, however, a new slogan has come into the Indonesian political vocabulary: Gestapu...
...On October 1, Colonel Untung claimed that he had acted to forestall an Army take over allegedly sponsored by the U.S...
...The PKI'S leader, D. N. Aidit, is so able and intelligent, that it seems unlikely he would have launched an ill-prepared coup d'etat...
...Sukarno was under treatment by a Chinese physician who had been sent from Peking at his request...
...The prevalence of slogan words in Sukarno's guided republic almost amounts to a new language...
...Nefo and Nekolim...
...Still, for the past year or so it has been apparent that a showdown between the Army and the pki was on its way...
...But for Indonesians themselves, the purpose of the words is to obscure meaning, to blur the distinction between political groups and individual countries, and to distract attention from the hard realities of politics and economics...
...Indonesia's Civil War By Brian Crozier The Violent Events of the past few weeks in Indonesia, though still obscure in some respects, do suggest certain clear conclusions...
...It is now known that China itself undertook to fill the gap—in other words, to do what Sukarno had declined to do by anrhng the People's Militia...
...Yet he appears to have tried, against odds, to preserve the old balances, attacking "those who instigate hatred against Communist China" and seek anti-Communist reprisals at home, while taking steps at the same time to honor the geerals slain in the attempted coup...
...The more international slogan words— Nefo and Nekolim—have also lost much of their validity...
...Escaping to safety at Bogor, 40 miles from Jakarta, he issued proclamations at first modest both in their brevity and their content...
...The pki, having gained one of its major objectives by achieving representation in Sukarno's Cabinet, had been putting increasing pressure on the President to sanction the creation of an armed People's Militia under Communist control...
...What is left of Nefo, now that China is shown to have provided the PKI with the means for overthrowing President Sukarno...
...Communist leader Aidit was said to have disappeared...
...Ac cording to well authenticated and circumstantial reports from a number of sources Chinese shipments of small arms in considerable quantities reached the local offices of the PKI in September, especially in Jog jakarta, the former national capital, and the central Java area...
...The official adoption of Nasakom, however, enabled the Communists to make inroads among the lower ranks of the Army, and even among the higher ranking officers of the Navy and Air Force...
...Harian Rakjat has been suppressed...
...Matters came to a head in August, when the President's health— long a cause of anxiety—appeared to take a turn for the worse...
...In Jakarta, Moslem mobs have burnt down PKI headquarters...
...Though Untung acted fast and brutally, his preparations were inadequate...
...But the infighting has gone too far for reconciliation, and the nowdominant anti-Communist factions in the military are frank to say so, even about their colleagues...
...The Central Committee of the party called a secret emergency meeting at which plans for accelerated action were discussed...
...These events must cast the gravest doubts on the survival of Nasakom as a meaningful concept...
...In Indonesia, too, Gestapu sounds sinister, for it means Gerakan Tigapuluh September or "Movement of September 30," and refers to the attempted coup d'etat by Lieutenant-Colonel Untung of the Palace Guard and his Communist allies...
...IN ALL THIS, Sukarno himself has played a curious and muted role...
...As for Nekolim, it is true that both Colonel Untung and the Army commanders had renewed their denunciations of "neo-colonialism" and "imperialism...
...Nefo stands for "new emerging forces...
Vol. 48 • November 1965 • No. 22
