One year after the tsunami: A new peace for Indonesia, or just a shifting battleground?

(Originally published in the International Herald Tribune, January 2006)

One year after the tsunami, it is clear that the attention it brought to the previously overlooked conflict in Aceh is contributing to an end to three decades of insecurity and terror there. Both sides are disarming, and the Indonesian government has offered new political and economic freedoms to the region. The Aceh peace agreement, while still untested, inspires a new hope for peace in the Indonesian archipelago. But without closer scrutiny, there is a grave risk that peace in Aceh may spark further conflict in West Papua.

A key condition of Aceh's peace agreement, the removal of over 24,000 Indonesian military (TNI) forces from the region, is creating a spill-over affect at the other end of Indonesia. In West Papua, the military presence is expanding to accommodate these displaced forces. The situation in Aceh must not be viewed in isolation. Aceh may be moving towards peace, but 2005 saw the opposite trend in West Papua - a sudden escalation of military activity by the same force that occupied Aceh, and East Timor before that.

For over 40 years now, the world has looked the other way while West Papua (Indonesia's eastern-most province, formerly called Irian Jaya) has been ravaged by the Indonesian military in a well-documented program of repression and plunder. In 2004, a Yale University report concluded that there is a "a strong indication" of genocide against the Papuans.

Since the tsunami, the TNI has repeatedly announced plans to send another 15,000 elite fighting troops and additional special intelligence agents to West Papua, followed by more troops in future years. Their plans for 2005 also included doubling infantry battalions and creating 22 new territorial commands.

As a result, the current number of Indonesian troops in West Papua has grown to an estimated 50,000. The TNI is already a wealthy and powerful force, further augmented by police and local militias that they fund and protect. This alliance effectively increases the size and pervasiveness of the military presence in this region of 1.5 million historically peaceful people.

This rapid escalation of military activity is ostensibly to bolster security in the region, even though the vast majority of indigenous Papuans remain true to their ideal of a Land of Peace. The Free Papua Movement (OPM) has never been known to attack civilians during 42 years of oppression. Yet the OPM is called a terrorist organization. This has allowed the TNI to regain military support, withheld since the East Timor massacres, from the U.S., U.K., and Australia.

Civil society in West Papua, a coalition of 250 distinct tribes, has repeatedly asked the TNI and their militias to lay down arms and respect human rights so that conflicts can be resolved peacefully through dialogue. If Indonesia was willing to talk about peace in Aceh, why not do so now for West Papua? There are three major reasons.

First, foreign journalists and most researchers and aid workers are still banned from West Papua. Unlike Aceh after the tsunami, no one is looking. Second, peace in West Papua is not what the TNI wants. They earn millions selling security services to resource companies, and conflict is good for business.

Third, the TNI is a self-perpetuating bureaucracy like any large organization, except they operate outside the rule of law. A study released last November by the Dutch government calls the annexation of West Papua in 1969 "a sham," and explains why West Papua is so important to the TNI: "There's a lot of money available in the territory and the troops go where the money is, … the military has to find 60% of its own budget." Others estimate the military self-finances an even higher fraction of its operating budget, and West Papua is the TNI's most lucrative area of operations. This is more than greed - it's a matter of survival for the military regime.

The TNI's lifeblood revenue is generated from all kinds of businesses, both legal and illegal. Under the auspices of its own network of foundations, the TNI generates income from private security contracts, extortion, prostitution, smuggling and illegal logging.

Environmental destruction in West Papua, Asia's largest remaining expanse of untouched tropical rainforest, continues to accelerate in step with the number of troops in the province. Since 2002, West Papua has been declared by Conservation International to be the home of Asia's most prolific illegal logging industry, which threatens to wipe out the bulk of its forests by 2015.

In 2005 Yan Christian Warinussy, West Papua's only indigenous independent human rights lawyer, received the Canadian government's most prestigious human rights award, the John Humphrey Freedom Award. During his acceptance speech, he described human rights abuses "carried out with total impunity by members of Indonesia's armed forces" including "torture, rape, summary executions, arbitrary arrests, disappearances, the killing of indigenous leaders and civilians alike, the displacement of indigenous populations and confiscation of their lands."

One year after the tsunami, the Indonesian military remains a force unaccountable to even its own government. We must continue to ask if the long-standing problem of Indonesia's rampant military is on the way to a resolution, or has simply been moved elsewhere. Was the agreement in Aceh a significant precedent? If so, will West Papuans also be offered an opportunity for peaceful dialogue?

In 2005, the US Congress and Senate condemned human rights abuses in Papua, and parliamentary committees in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand also expressed concerns about injustice, crimes against humanity and military impunity. We can only hope that mounting international pressure will encourage Indonesian military reform, and lead to fruitful dialogue in West Papua and other outlying regions of Indonesia.

Tom Benedetti
Mr. Benedetti is with WestPAN (West Papua Action Network), Canada (www.westpapua.ca ). WestPAN is a network of Papuans and Canadians striving to end the injustice in West Papua and the associated destruction of unique cultures and rare ecosystems.