Indonesia's Fragmented Revolution

...Some top NU leaders no doubt are loyal to Sukarno, but many other Moslems, especially those in Muhammadijah, dislike him more intensely than ever...

...In interviews with student leaders, junior Army officers and others, I found their most serious concern was how Indonesia should express itself as a nation, free and independent from what they regard as the extremes of either American or Chinese influence...

...We are looking for our identity," he said...

...Now the country, in the midst of the worst economic crisis in its 20-year history, faces the prospect of more civil war...

...The tropical sun beats blistering rays on sluggish noonday crowds, and black market money-changers whine pleadingly, "Have dollars, have dollars...

...Some observers attributed General Nasution's reaction to the hope that students, Moslems and members of the outlawed Socialist party of Indonesia would mount enough opposition to force the President to change his mind...

...If Nasution had had his way, Indonesia would probably be seeking closer relations with the Soviet Union, which has pumped more than a billion dollars worth of military and economic aid into the country in the past decade...

...Most Indonesians still profess to believe in Sukarno's favorite concepts of Nasakom-nationalism, religion and communism-and pantjasila-the five principles of social justice, humanitarianism, nationalism, belief in God, and people's sovereignty...

...First he said the students were merely "acting foolishly" in rioting against the new Cabinet, then he banned the Action Command and formed a single National Union of Indonesian Students...

...The Bung still holds the most power, as the finesse with which he executed last month's Cabinet reshuffle illustrates...

...There is, for instance, the anti-Communist view that it is possible to preserve the "kom" in Nasakom without a Communist party as such...

...We must always be on guard," he said when I denied that these were my intentions...

...It is a revolution of the anti-Communist near-Left against the entrenched far-Left, supported by the President...

...His integrity and humility have endeared him to many officers and students, but are not exactly the best qualities for successfully confronting the President...

...I noted that part of Indonesia's problem is that many of its people are too easy-going (office hours begin at eight or nine and end at noon or one) and suggested the students spend less time demonstrating and more time studying...

...and Sukarno cagily maneuvers with discontented military officers, sycophantic religious leaders and those Communist sympathizers who have managed to cling to their positions and their lives since the abortive coup...

...While urging strong ties with the Soviet Union, Nasution might also have pressed for resuming trade with Singapore, which has initiated relations with Moscow since last summer's break with Malaysia...

...He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't...

...Then he told me what he really thought was the answer to Indonesia's national desires...

...Indeed, former Masjumi elements have always accused the NU of political opportunism and criticized its leadership for not realizing "the danger of Communist treachery...

...But many object strongly to the motives behind that decision-to distract the command from the pursuit of Communists and reduce its power as a military-controlled shadow cabinet...

...More than a year ago, the Soviet Union began adopting an aloof approach as a result of Indonesia's ties with China...

...That question is also pertinent in the case of the millions of Moslems who allied with the Army against the Communists last autumn...

...Dropping General Nasution, perhaps the most powerful voice for formally outlawing the Communist party, was only the most obvious of several irritants...

...We will continue marching on until the end of time, holding high the banner of the Indonesian revolution...

...Donald Kirk, a new contributor, was one of the last American correspondents expelled from Jakarta...

...Pravda has criticized the recent campaign against the Communists, but diplomats believe the Soviet Union would aid an anti-Communist Indonesia so long as it was also antiChinese and not pro-Western...

...But if the reaction to Sukarno's decision revealed his fallen popularity, it also exposed the basic disunity of the opposition...

...But it is highly uncertain just how deeply this stroke will cut into the countryside, where the NU, although influential among the peasantry, functions under local leaders far removed from party policy-making in Jakarta...

...The differences arise in interpreting these principles...

...Except for agreement on that point, however, the anti-Communists often are at a loss in their search for a definite formula for national success...

...On the grounds of the palace itself, maroon-bereted soldiers click their heels sharply, and Cabinet ministers, cool in airconditioned limousines and clean white uniforms, come and go...

...Meanwhile, he would not act rashly for fear his opponents would say the Communists were right in charging a military plot was imminent in late September...

...The banner has never been so tattered...

...We must find it first if we are to realize our destiny as a nation...

...For months, as Air Force commander, he had permitted Communist youth, both men and women, to drill secretly at the base...

...A gentle, soft-spoken man, Nasution lives in relative modesty, surrounded by wealthy neighbors who have devoted much of their lives to plundering the Indonesian treasury for their own political and private purposes...

...He said he knew Cosmas personally and called him a "self-seeking opportunist...

...Contrary to the hopes of British and American officials, as well as many Indonesians, General Nasution failed to provide so much as token resistance...

...We are in the midst of a great revolution," he shouts on Radio Indonesia after firing his popular, antiCommunist defense minister, General Abdul Haris Nasution...

...Young Indonesians, whatever their political point of view, are obsessed with the search for "national identity...

...Mischiefmaker from Peking," they shouted, and "Subandrio, the pig" and "Peking's dog...

...Pretty secretaries, many of them former mistresses of President Sukarno, lazily type or manicure their nails, and the President himself talks of Indonesia's "Leftist revolution...

...The real effect of Chalid's appointment on the Moslems, who comprise 90 per cent of Indonesia's 105 million people, has been to polarize religious forces opposing and supporting the Bung...

...Most of them espouse Socialism to greater or lesser degrees, although not with the fervor of President Sukarno and his allies, who want to nationalize private companies and favor public ones at a rate that many think is too fast for the country's failing economic health...

...Despite the state of the economy and the outspoken objections of students, the President has not awakened from his dreams of Indonesia's future...

...The almost paranoiac search for national identity is responsible for some of the extremes of Indonesian foreign policy and, in turn, for the current revulsion against the close ties with China that have characterized that policy for most of Indonesia's recent history...

...We are hunting for our own system-our national identity...

...A number of old Masjumi leaders belong to Muhammadijah, an Islamic community organization that has built schools and mosques and engaged in social welfare projects throughout Indonesia...

...Bung (for brother) Karno, once the spokesman for the nation's divergent religious, political and ethnic elements, has alienated millions of his countrymen by insisting on returning to the status quo ante coup...

...Virtually no Indonesian in a responsible position, however, would advocate abandoning confrontation against Malaysia, regarded as the illegitimate offspring of Western imperialism...

...He merely secluded himself in his home in Menteng, Jakarta's well-to-do residential area, and issued a statement urging the people to support the President...

...And most antiCommunists prefer a foreign policy of non-alignment, but in a proSoviet pattern...

...We need to find our own way of life...

...What do you think we should do," Cosmas Bartubara, president of the Action Command of Indonesian Students, asked me one morning after leading some 30,000 students in a wild demonstration outside the President's palace in Bogor...

...While most of the latter are anti-Communist, Sukarno has succeeded in charming enough to his side, at least for the moment, to forestall a military revolt in his own backyard...

...The antipathy toward the President has seldom been more clear than during the riots and demonstrations outside the palace after he reshuffled his Cabinet...

...And few Indonesians, including General Suharto, the antiCommunist, pro-Nasution Army minister, would publicly dispute the President's decision to rename the Supreme Operations Command as the Crush Malaysia Command...

...The vision of the "great revolution" has faded in Indonesia, where the once-powerful Communist party tried to seize control last fall and 100,000 persons were reportedly killed in weeks of fratricidal strife...

...The President rarely sees the squalor of his people as he careens down Djalen Thamrin, a modern four-lane thoroughfare, in his 1965 Cadillac, preceded by a squad of soldiers on a weapons carrier and a platoon of siren-wailing motorcycles...

...For the Soviet Union, the results would have been ideal-increased influence over the Straits of Malacca connecting the Indian with the Pacific Oceans and a powerful threat to both American and Chinese strength in Asia...

...We are determined to crush the forces of neo-colonialism, colonialism and imperialism...

...Only those who can prevent the sun rising in the East can prevent the Indonesian revolution from achieving the goals the people want," he declares at a rally in Bandung while replacing Nasution and others with ministers more favorably disposed toward the Communist party at home and People's China abroad...

...Indonesia's anti-Communists, in reality, are hardly "Right-wing reactionaries," as the Chinese press would have its readers believe...

...Sukarno's appointment of Idham Chalid, the chairman of the powerful Nahdatul Ulama (Moslem Scholars party), as fourth deputy prime minister, was a skillful stroke, aimed, of course, at splitting his Moslem opposition...

...The military establishment in Jakarta is divided among officers who would fight against Sukarno (if someone else started the fight) and others who believe the Bung still holds the key to Indonesia's future...

...The lieutenant, who had studied in the United States and spoke fluent English, refused to believe me when I told him that Cosmas had expressed almost exactly the same thoughts...

...But that doesn't answer such questions as whether we should completely socialize or have a mixed economy," he said through an interpreter...

...This is Jakarta, not a Jakarta that no one knows, that exists only in the imaginations of spoiled tourists, but a view of the Indonesian capital several hundred yards from the Presidential palace...

...He did not receive visitors and, to all outward appearances, was not even in close touch with the leaders of demonstrations opposing his removal from office...

...Like many Indonesians, he somewhat distrusted me as an American and did not hide his suspicion that I had talked to Cosmas for "another purpose"-perhaps to glean useful information for the Central Intelligence Agency or, worse yet, to collaborate in the sinister "imperialist plot" that Sukarno insisted was supporting the student demonstrations...

...It must be truly Indonesian...

...The enmity between the anti- and proSukarno students subsequently mushroomed to the point where serious fighting broke out near the university, where students on both sides are said to be armed...

...His hands were tied," was the common cliche to describe Nasution's position...

...The important question, though, is whether the new defense ministers...

...Equally insulting, from the anti-Communists' point of view, was the appointment of Air Vice-Marshal Omar Dani as minister for aircraft industry...

...This approach, well to the left of center by Western standards, is also not good enough for Sukarno, who is determined to collaborate with China on a Conference of New Emerging Forces from which Russia might even be excluded...

...The Russians have almost completely stopped work on several large aid projects, including a steel mill 70 miles from the capital...

...It was then that antiSukarno students first engaged in minor scuffles-several street fights, a stabbing or two-with members of pro-Sukarno groups...

...Chalid's appointment, moreover, has further angered those who once belonged to the Masjumi party, banned by Sukarno in 1960 partly as a result of its connections with the "Colonel's Revolt...

...Indonesia, for its part, might have profited economically and also have found an effective diplomatic counter-balance to both China and the West...

...Although he still can spellbind an audience with his oratory, he has lost the unstinting devotion accorded him, at least publicly, by students and generals, Moslems and Catholics, rich and poor...

...If Sukarno turned against the West and toward Peking out of distrust for imperialism, the anti-Communists have turned against China for similar reasons...

...Beside the street, in a wide open sewer, naked boys noisily wash themselves while an old man defecates about 20 feet upstream...

...Sukarno's native charm and talent for political infighting has been least successful among the thousands of university students who have rallied behind the Action Command of Indonesian Students since the coup...

...Cosmas, whose father works two-and-a-half acres of land in North Sumatra with the aid of a couple of bullocks and a wooden plough, admitted there might be some validity in the idea...

...We want a system that is different from other nations...

...Major General Haji Sarbini, can win and hold the loyalty of the commanding generals in the provinces-the same generals who obeyed Nasution's wishes and defied Sukarno after the coup by formally banning the Communist party in most areas...

...Although Sukarno is believed to favor Muhammadijah religiously and socially, he has generally found the NU far more pliable to his will and has long supported it politically...

...Then, according to this theory, Nasution would return to power, perhaps even wrest the Presidency, on a wave of popular support...

...Dani, who had held the position before the coup, had gone to the Netherlands after the bodies of six Army generals murdered by Communist terrorists were found at Halim Air Base...

...Sukarno actually had threatened to form a National Union of Indonesian Students in January, as a result of the Action Command's many demonstrations against spiralling inflation...

...Former members of Masjumi, the strongest Moslem organization prior to 1960, tend to look down on the NU as a collection of largely uncultured, uneducated farmers who adhere to antiquated notions of Islam...

...A Leftist revolution, indeed, goes on in Indonesia, but not quite the one that Sukarno pictures in his speeches...

...The question is how long he can last out before a new leader emerges who is capable of uniting the opposition against him...

...Going somewhat further into the general's background, however, observers also pointed out that he has ignored other likely opportunities to oppose Sukarno, notably during the "Colonel's Revolt" of the late 1950s...

...They are convinced, despite all the Bung's efforts to maintain cordial relations with Peking, that China supported the coup in order to impose its own system and draw Indonesia irrevocably into its orbit...

...The students also took up the chant against Foreign Minister Subandrio, who forged Jakarta's alliance with China before the coup...

...I am the Great Leader of the Revolution, I am the Supreme Commander," he likes to say, but the crowd beside the road hardly bothers to look at the fleeting visage of their leader, en route to his other palace in Bogor, 30 miles to the south...

...Dani, the murderer" and "Hang Dani" were two of the more common taunts repeated during the student turmoil of the past few weeks...

...Finally, after members of the Action Command of Indonesian High School Students began demonstrating in sympathy with their older brothers, he suspended all classes at the University of Indonesia...

...A couple of days later, I met a lieutenant in the Tjakrabirawa Regiment, the highly trained Army unit that guards the President and has fired in recent weeks on Action Command students who tried to storm the palace...