The Prime Minister said a true thing today, that the Australian people will take some time to absorb what happened in Bali in the early hours of October 13, our time.
For the families still looking, we cry with and for them. For those who are injured and those who saw their pain, we hold them and hope they will one day again sleep an innocent sleep.
There is no meaning yet. We don’t yet know for sure what happened. We don’t know who did this. We don’t know why. Shock needs to be deeply felt before we’ll know how we want to respond. Time needs to pass. Our casualties need to be identified and grieved for.
There are close links between us and Bali. We go there to surf. Many of us have businesses in Bali and live there. I was in Byron Bay on holidays when someone rang with the news. In this morning’s local paper, The Northern Star, Byron Bay resident Sai Frame, 25, described the horror. He and his grandparents were at Kuta Beach to celebrate the opening of a friend’s shop, across the road from the Sari club.
“I was at the Sari club a few days ago. You couldn’t get a higher concentration of young tourists anywhere in Bali,” Sai said. “It’s so hard to believe. Bali has always been considered the safest place in Indonesia. Noone thought this would ever happen. Much of the wealth of Bali is in Kuta Beach, and most of it is dependent on the tourist industry.”
Beautiful Bali is finished for us. We won’t want to go where we’re not welcome.
I know little about Bali, and whether we’ve respected and nurtured the place we love to visit or colonised it with our wants. A friend in Byron Bay said Australians had taken Bali over, business wise, and that acquaintances with businesses in Bali were considering coming home before this horror. They sensed resentment, and felt a growing unease.
Maybe part of it is the lack of services for locals. A completely inadequate hospital, for instance, so graphically exposed in the aftermath of the horror. Some people – foreigners like us, elite big-city Indonesians – make their fortunes. Have residents lost their place, their power to define it? Did the big money fail to give enough back to the people who belong there, whose home it is? Have Muslim extremists destroyed the vibe of Hindu Bali to force us out?
Will we now swing behind war with Iraq or pull out and focus on our home? The Pacific. South East Asia. East Timor, especially, where we’re protecting a baby, Christian democracy. The places where we have duties and responsibilities and, in the end, where our self interest lies. I don’t know.
The image staying with me is in this morning’s Northern Star. Cartoonist Rod Emmerson drew the Grim Reaper clutching a surfboard called ‘Terrorism’. From the skull, the words “…And I’ve been to Bali too.”
Two Americans, Catherine Rondeau and Joe “Doc” Kralich, wrote to Webdiary today with condolences. International relations academic Scott Burchill sent in his first take on possible ramifications. To end, a piece shivering with prescience by the Herald’s Indonesian correspondent Matthew Moore, published on Saturday.
***
Catherine Rondeau in Fairfield, CT USA
Dear Friends,
As an American, I could find no other appropriate way to address you and I hope this letter will make it to those for whom it is intended. Words have yet to be developed which can express the pain you are experiencing in Australia today. My heart breaks for you as it does all humans who are so brutally victimized by others who would have us believe they too are humans.
My heart aches for each and every one of you who have seen your world destroyed so senselessly. I lost a loved one in a fire and can relate somewhat, but in her case it was an accident. The fact that this was no accident makes your loss something I cannot begin to fathom.
I believe that the heavens weep for us all, children who destroy each other in the name of God. The only thing thought that kept me sane at the time of my loss was that Karen was in a safe, loving, and peaceful place and that we would be together again in time. l know this holds little consolation for you today. Know that there are literally millions around the world who are with you in this moment. You are in our thoughts, our hearts, and our prayers. I wish you love,
***
Joe “Doc” Kralich, US Army (Ret.) in Pueblo, Colorado
Dear Margo Kingston,
As a “Yank” I am again devastated and enraged that terror has crawled again from some dark place targeting those who could not fight back.
Bali is about the most obscure place I can think of from my home in southern Colorado. Australians are now facing anguish and loss, days of searching for missing loved ones, a constant blitz of news that will go on, and on. American officials have been shouting for months that Indonesia was a safe harbor for al-Qaeda, and now some smug little people are again rejoicing while it is Australia who grieves.
My personal perspective on Australia dates from my years in Vietnam and the comradeship I had with many Aussies. I know the Aussie spirit will prevail and that her people will all join together, but things will never be the same.
The bombing Saturday was on the second anniversary of the al-Qaeda linked attack against USS Cole. Our President Bush said on “9-11” that this would be a long war. Be assured that many of us “Yanks” are with each of you this day and send what prayer and comfort we can to Australia Fair.
Vaya Con Dios, Mi Amigos
***
Scott Burchill, Lecturer in International Relations, Deakin University, Victoria
The latest chapter in Bali’s violent modern history may re-write both the Australia-Indonesia relationship and the Howard Government’s response to Washington prospective war against Iraq.
Australia-Indonesia relations
In the short term the key question is whether Jakarta will allow either US or Australian investigators to help identify the perpetrators of the bombings. Jakarta is notoriously sensitive about this and will be under considerable domestic pressure not to “undermine Indonesia’s sovereignty and dignity” by allowing either the FBI or the AFP in.
Without such assistance there must be considerable doubt that the perpetrators will be found or that anyone actually responsible for the attacks would face a fair trial. Megawati has been unwilling and/or unable to crack down on indigenous Islamic militant groups such as Laksar Jihad and Jemaah Islamiyah. She will be under enormous domestic pressure not to even now, and equally strong external pressure from Washington and Canberra to do so.
The identification of the perpetrators may not easily explain their motives. Australian and US actions in East Timor, Afghanistan and Palestine are all causes of resentment within Indonesia’s Muslim communities. They would also be aware that despite promising to do so, Canberra has not consulted with Jakarta over its policies towards Iraq.
If Washington ramps up considerable pressure on Jakarta to clamp down on domestic Islamic militants, and Jakarta resists, the Howard Government faces a nightmare scenario: siding with its traditional Western ally on this issue could poison Australia-Indonesia relations for many years.
Despite all of Canberra’s emphasis on intelligence dossiers (from the UN, US and UK) allegedly proving Iraq’s development of weapons of mass destruction, Mr Downer has withheld Australian intelligence which would convict senior Indonesian military officers and their militia proxies of heinous crimes committed in East Timor in 1999.
He has even sought to (unsuccessfully) prosecute Australian officials for allegedly leaking this intelligence to the media. One consequence of withholding this intelligence (from both Jakarta’s prosecuting authorities and the UN human rights commissioner) is that no prosecutions of these individuals is likely in the Indonesian legal system. Only an independent UN tribunal holds any hope for justice now. Mr Downer must now be wondering whether protecting these individuals from conviction was worth the moral cost to Australia’s reputation.
Indonesia is not a failed state but in many ways it is failing. It is struggling for systemic legitimacy and economic viability. It desperately needs the confidence of the foreign investment community.
These attacks will be devastating for the Balinese economy specifically and Indonesia’s economic recovery more generally. They may also be used by Megawati’s political opponents to discredit her, regardless of how she responds to them.
The bombings are another reminder of the extent to which Australia’s regional engagement has taken a back seat to the US alliance. Adventures in Afghanistan and possibly Iraq do nothing but damage to our neighborhood relationships and remind the region just how thin our commitments to their part of the world actually are.
Iraq
The Bali bombings are a dramatic reminder of the region’s instability and Indonesia’s fragile political and social legitimacy. Will Mr Howard be prepared to commit Australian forces to a war in Iraq on the other side of the world when Australians face actual threats to their safety much closer to home?
Howard will be watching public opinion carefully. If he sees an opening to conflate this attack with the wider war on terror and the need to attack Iraq, he will take it. There are already some hints of this in his initial comments about “no-one should think we are invulnerable to terrorist attacks”.
But if public opinion sees the Bali attacks as a completely separate issue to Iraq, he will be under even more pressure to abandon meaningful support to President Bush. Last week Howard was already playing down the size of any Australian contribution to a war on Iraq by talking about regional instability and the possibility that Australian peacekeepers may be needed in the region some time soon.
Howard is already playing down the fact that Australia is more at risk because of Canberra’s closeness to Washington, but he cannot avoid the fact that our participation in the ‘war against terror’ gave us a profile we didn’t previously have in the Arab and Islamic worlds.
There is going to be guilt by association, in the same way that Australia’s hosting of so called ‘joint facilities’ such as Pine Gap was the only reason the Soviet Union ever took any notice of us.
***
Jittery US poised to pull staff from Jakarta embassy
By Matthew Moore, 12/10/2002
The United States may withdraw non-essential staff from its embassy in Indonesia because of increasing concerns about the security of its citizens, well-placed sources say.
The US embassy has finally convinced Indonesian authorities that al-Qaeda has a foothold in the country, but it has grown increasingly edgy about security forces’ responses to recent attacks.
The first was a bomb explosion 20 metres from a US embassy house in Jakarta three weeks ago that police initially said was a bungled terrorist attack on the house. They have since revised their public version and now say it was to force a debt repayment from a nearby house an incident unrelated to the US.
But as a cache of guns and explosives was found in the bombers’s houses, the US embassy has rejected the unlikely police version and is convinced its property was the target.
Yesterday The Asian Wall Street Journal reported that US officials had uncovered evidence that the September 23 attack on their embassy house was ordered by an Islamic cleric called Abu Bakar Bashir, who has been accused of heading Jemaah Islamiyah, a group with suspected links to al-Qaeda, and of planning a bombing attack on the embassy about September 11.
Although Indonesia has been under pressure to arrest Abu Bakar, it has refused to do so, saying it has no evidence linking him with the terrorist activities the US and Singapore say he is involved in.
On Thursday Abu Bakar held a media conference in Jakarta warning of the repercussions of arresting him.
“I defend Islam. Now it is up to the Indonesian Government, police and people to also defend Islam, or to choose to defend America … I am not afraid of arrest. But if they do so without following the law, I will use all my power to fight it. I have lots of Muslim brothers, and they can help me.”
He has denied involvement in terrorist activities and in the explosion near the US house.
Another incident concerning the US was the shooting in August of 15 people, mainly US citizens, at the Freeport mine in Papua, which left three people dead, including two US school teachers.
Four FBI officers were in Papua for several days this week talking to Papua’s police chief, I Made Pastika, who is in charge of the operation and interviewing the one known witness. This is the second visit by the FBI to Papua since the shooting, which increasingly points to an ambush by members of the Indonesian Army.
General Pastika said his officers had repeatedly interviewed a Papuan known as Decky Murib, who has identified from photographs members of a group of 10 Kopassus special forces members who he says were involved in the attack.
Murib, who says he travelled with the attackers to a place several hundred metres from the ambush site, has also named a Javanese man, Captain Markus, as the Kopassus commander of the soldiers who used automatic weapons to shoot the teachers in two Freeport Land Cruisers.
Although the police have tracked Markus down, General Pastika says he does not want to interview him because he only believes half of what Murib tells him.
Any finding of Indonesian military involvement in the shootings, even by rogue elements, could have serious ramifications on attempts by the US to restore military ties with Indonesia.