The Indonesian Army from Revolusi to Reformasi Volume 1: The Struggle for Independence and the Sukarno Era

By Joseph H. Daves

From the Indonesian Republic’s onset, there has been some form of military participation in political life – the more significant and interesting aspect of the Indonesian Army’s distinctive history. Volume 1 in this three-volume set covers the Army’s revolutionary roots, its fighting doctrine, and provides accounts of major operations – the independence struggle, consolidation of the Republic, military campaigns against CIA-backed regional separatists in Sumatra and Sulawesi during the late-1950s, the “liberation’ of West Irian and the “Confrontation” with Malaysia. The story starts during the late-colonial period and spans the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, the struggle for independence, the chaotic parliamentary democracy period during the 1950s, Sukarno’s autocratic Guided Democracy and the Army’s increasingly bitter contest for power with the Indonesian Communist Party – setting the stage for the final bloody confrontation and General Soeharto’s New Order – the subject of Volume 2. Written in a journalistic style, these three volumes provide readers fresh insights into Indonesian culture and help them understand why soldiers of the Indonesian Army have behaved the way they do – often in ways, from a western perspective, that must be considered less-than-honorable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph H. Daves
• Release date: Dec 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311513083

Joseph H. Daves

Colonel Joseph H. Daves was U.S. Defense and Army Attaché to Indonesia from November 1998 to June 2003. He arrived in Jakarta six months after President Soeharto’s resignation and served as the senior U.S. military representative in Indonesia during the August 1999 East Timor consultation, the ensuing “scorched earth” campaign by Indonesian security forces, the nearly four-year sectarian civil war in Maluku, the August 2002 ambush deaths of American citizens in Papua, the October 12, 2002 terrorist bombings in Bali that resulted in the deaths of more than 200 persons, and the bloody separatist insurgency in Aceh. As principal advisor to the American Ambassador and Country Team, he was actively engaged with Indonesia’s top military and civilian leaders and travelled extensively throughout the archipelago.

Book preview

THE INDONESIAN ARMY

from Revolusi to Reformasi

Volume 1

The Struggle for Independence

and the Sukarno Era

Joseph H. Daves

Copyright 2013 Joseph H. Daves

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1492930938

ISBN-13: 978-1492930938

DEDICATION

For my Father, Huber H. Daves, Jan 20, 1917 - Dec 12, 2003,

A Sergeant in the Army Air Corps serving in the China-Burma-India Theater with Chennault's Flying Tigers

Table of Contents

Preface

Foreword

Introduction

1 Colonial Roots and the Second World War

2 A Self-Created Army

3 The First Dutch Police Action

4 The Madiun Mutiny

5 Total People's Defense

6 The Early Rebellions

7 The October 17 Affair

8 The Dissident Colonels

9 A War between Friends

10 The North Sulawesi Campaign

11 The Fighting Ends

12 Guided Democracy

13 The Liberation of West Irian

14 Confrontation

15 Riding the Wave of the Revolution

About the Author

Abbreviations and Glossary

Bibliography

End Notes

Preface

And all this destructive repression of any activity that could be called spontaneous has been carried out by a military gang, which, though crippled by ignorance and rotted by corruption, has assumed the authority and pretended to the virtues of Plato's Guardians. [1]

The Indonesian Army was deeply involved in politics for four decades, from the beginning of the Guided Democracy period in 1958 to the end of the New Order in 1998. During that period doctrines were devised, polished and perfected to legitimate the Army's political role. From an idealistic start, viewing the Army as an equal partner with other elements of Indonesian society, to the ruthless employment of the Army as a tool of the government (aparat pemerintah) to preserve the absolute hegemony of the Soeharto regime, it is very much a Greek tragedy. The Army was to be the defender, not the oppressor of the people. It was to move among the people, as Mao said, like the fish in the water. Ultimately such idealism gave way to the baser instincts of greed, arrogance and the lust for power, although the generals continued to delude themselves that they were still part of a people's army, that they were really no different from their harshly persecuted civilian brethren. Thus, over the decades, human frailty triumphed over the bright hopes and expectations of a newly liberated nation in which the Army played the central heroic role.

Brian May's reference to the guardians of Plato's Republic seems especially appropriate. The warriors were the Guardians of Plato's ideal state. They were to live in poverty, share their limited possessions and foreswear all human desires. But Plato's romantic conception of a class of warrior-philosophers who would act as the noble guardians for the ancient Greek Republic was fundamentally flawed. It violated the laws of human nature. In much the same way, the idealistic notion of the Indonesian Army as the savior and altruistic protector of the Indonesian Republic has proven equally defective. As is so often the case, there is a vast difference between concept and practice. The honorable goal is corroded as human nature surrenders to the attractions of gold, power and prestige. Just as Plato postulated, the guardians of the Indonesian Republic became the tormentors of their own people and hastened the decay of their beloved State.

Let us note among the guardians those who in their whole life show the greatest eagerness to do what is for the good of their country, and the greatest repugnance to do what is against her interests. ... And they will have to be watched at every age, in order that we may see whether they preserve their resolution, and never, under the influence either of force or enchantment, forget or cast off their sense of duty to the State. - their provisions should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and courage; they should agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year and no more; and they will go to mess and live together like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will tell them that they have from God; the diviner metal is within them, and they have therefore no need of the dross which is current among men, and ought not to pollute the divine by any such earthly admixture; for that commoner metal has been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the same roof with them, or wear them, or drink from them. And this will be their salvation, and they will be the saviors of the State. But should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their own, they will become good housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants instead of allies of the other citizens; hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, they will pass their whole life in much greater terror of internal than of external enemies, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State, will be at hand. [2]

Foreword

I served as the United States Defense and Army Attaché to Indonesia from November 1998 through June 2003. From my perspective, feet firmly planted on democratic soil, member of an army that prides itself on being apolitical and solidly subordinate to elected leaders, the Indonesian military tradition was alien to most of my experience. During my nearly five years in Jakarta, I travelled extensively throughout the archipelago, met, interviewed and socialized with government, military and police officials from the highest levels in the capital to the lowest and most remote in the provinces. I came away from the assignment with what I felt was a keen insight into the national culture and, more specifically, the Indonesian Army's unique culture.

By the time I left Jakarta, I had pieces of the puzzle. I had heard the anecdotes. It was not until I started work on this book in late-2004 that I realized how much I did not know. The research and writing has been a journey of discovery. I have drawn extensively on the body of books, articles and studies about the Indonesian Armed Forces in preparing this manuscript. That research enabled me to knit the story together. I set out to tell the story of the Indonesian Army; the work evolved into what has become a fairly comprehensive history. I don't profess to be an expert on Indonesian culture or history, and I apologize in advance for any generalizations, over-simplifications or errors I have committed in this work. As the traditional Indonesian salutation goes, please forgive my mistakes and indiscretions (mohon maaf lahir batin).

This is a complex narrative, spanning a period of over six decades and involving hundreds of historical figures; it is a tale full of twists and turns, conspiracies, betrayals and intrigues of which Machiavelli himself would be proud; in many ways, it is a story stranger than fiction. I have tried to keep it simple, minimizing the use of the obscure acronyms of which Indonesians are so fond. I have annotated the book with ample footnotes and a measure of redundancy, which I hope readers will forgive in the interest of clarity. An important theme is the interconnectivity between historical figures and events, how much the formative experiences during the struggle for independence, the early rebellions, and the ruthless suppression of dissent from leftist or right wing Islamic extremism during the early years of the Indonesian Republic, have resonated in the events of more recent years.

I have tried to maintain a neutral voice, sticking to the facts and concentrating on the cultural and historical framework upon which this drama has played out. Certainly, the Indonesian Army has been associated with many excesses, incidents of brutality and injustice (so too has Indonesian society). My purpose is not to defend, to rationalize or to make excuses for the Army as an institution or for the behavior by members of that army. Nor, as has been the tendency in recent years, is my intent to arbitrarily condemn the abuses for which the Indonesian Army has been responsible - but to help the reader understand the complex cultural and historical forces at work during the six decades since the Army has gone from revolusi to reformasi.

Why, you may ask, write about the Indonesian Army and not the Indonesian Armed Forces? It is because the Army has always been Indonesia's dominant armed service, despite the fact Indonesia is a vast archipelago and fundamentally littoral-maritime nation. It is the Army that has been deeply involved in politics, contributed many of the nation's top national leaders and committed the majority of human rights abuses. Within Indonesia, the Army, military and Armed Forces are basically interchangeable terms. The most accurate translation of Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI), the official designation for the Armed Forces, is Indonesian National Army. In accordance with that common understanding, I generally treat the words, army and military as one and the same.

The other services, the Air Force and Navy (with its embedded marine force), are small, poorly equipped and historically have lacked the Army's political clout. Soeharto marginalized the sister services and the police as retribution for their presumed involvement in the failed leftist putsch and the murder of key army leaders on October 1, 1965. That date marked a turning point in modern Indonesian history, with the rout of the largest Communist Party outside the Sino-Soviet Bloc, the toppling of the father of the independent Republic, Sukarno, and the ascension to power of General Soeharto and his authoritarian New Order regime. Navy and Air Force officers were sidelined throughout the New Order's three decades. Consequently, those smaller services had only limited involvement in the excesses that took place, the brutal repression and regime maintenance activities the Army and, to a lesser extent, the police were involved in.

These three volumes expose the complex military-cultural-sociological dynamic that has been unique to Indonesia for the past sixty years. Within the broader historic context, the reader will find anecdotes and stories about the people and events that are part of this fascinating story. In short, I hope to help the reader understand why soldiers of the present day Indonesian Army have behaved the way they do - often in ways, from a western perspective, that must be considered less-than-honorable. I do not offer policy prescriptions. Of course, the United States and other western nations figure significantly in this history and for the past half-century there has been an active ongoing debate within the U.S. Government about what our policy should be toward the Indonesian Armed Forces. That has resulted in frequent strategy shifts and short-sighted policies. It seems patience and consistency are not typical virtues of our often fickle, shove-and-shout democratic system. The American policy dilemma toward Indonesia is a recurring theme throughout the text. I am convinced we must be engaged to influence behavior. One of the painful lessons we have learned in Iraq and Afghanistan is that cultural change is a difficult and long-term process. The same is certainly true for Indonesia.

Joseph H. Daves

Atlanta, Georgia

December 2013

Introduction

An army is always a copy of the society it serves - with the difference, that it gives social relations a concentrated character, carrying both their positive and negative features to an extreme.

Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution

Indonesia is an artificial creation - not really a country, but a loosely stitched collection of ethnic groups - and notoriously difficult to govern. From the start, Indonesian military and political leaders have been obsessed with the need to preserve national unity and integrity. That is an apparent function of the expanse and diversity of the Indonesian archipelago - a 5,000-kilometer sweep of tropical sea caressing the shores of more than 13,000 islands where over 200 million people reside and communicate in some thirty plus languages and dialects - a region that was never truly united before the Dutch arrived. Colonial rule was not benevolent. Dutch administrators limited educational opportunities for the natives, created a system of plantations built on ruthless slave labor, and employed a divide-and-rule strategy designed to exploit historic rivalries and the diversity of their East Indies empire. Although most Indonesians are at least nominally Muslim, large but sparsely-populated outlying areas of the archipelago are non-Muslim.

Despite the gradual emergence of a Javacentric nationalist conscience in the early-twentieth-century and the adoption of a unifying national language (a variant of Malay known as Bahasa Indonesia), unrest, disorder, rebellion and violence have threatened the unity of the sovereign Indonesian state almost continuously since its inception. One might say Indonesia has been afflicted by a state of intermittent civil war since the Second World War. The modern Indonesian Army is the product of that tumultuous history, one that is little known and inadequately documented in the West.

On top of an entrepot culture that evolved across the Indonesian archipelago for thousands of years, and several hundred of years of colonial subjugation, more recent experiences have shaped Indonesian military culture. They include the brutal Japanese occupation during the Second World War, the post-war struggle for independence against the Dutch, early battles against communists on the left and armed Islamic bandits on the right, recurring rebellions on the outer islands, conflict with the Dutch over West Papua and the Confrontation with the new British Commonwealth state of Malaysia during the early-1960s, Sukarno's autocratic Guided Democracy experiment, disastrous economic policies and drift toward communism preceding the assassination of top army leaders by a group of dissident officers on October 1, 1965, the ensuing massacre of hundreds of thousands of peasants and suspected communists, Soeharto's rise to power and his unbridled use of the military to suppress all dissent and bolster his own authoritarian regime, and the ruthless pacification campaigns against separatist movements on East Timor, Aceh and Papua.

From the Republic's onset, there has been some form of military participation in Indonesian political life. Military leaders tend to denigrate comparisons to Latin American military juntas. After all, Indonesia's army has been deeply involved in civilian roles from the start. It was revolutionary Army Commander (Panglima Besar) Sudirman who became the symbol for the Army's independence and autonomy. Despite being seriously ill with tuberculosis, Sudirman went into the jungle to lead his men in a guerilla campaign against the Dutch - at a time when Indonesia's popular civilian leaders (Sukarno and Hatta) had surrendered without a fight (at least in the view of army leaders) and abrogated their promise to lead the country in a guerilla war against their colonial masters.

The fact that Sudirman died of tuberculosis in January 1950 at the age of thirty-four, after suffering and struggling stoically for years under his burden, lends weight to his near-mythic role in Indonesian military history. Sudirman's significance and symbolism to the Army is evident by the presence even today of his statue or portrait in virtually every army headquarters from Jakarta to the most remote army district commands. So, it is the Army's revolutionary experience that provides the foundation and model (from the Army perspective, but also a view shared by many ordinary Indonesians) for Indonesian civil-military relations. The basic idea that the military as a corporate entity is a legitimate political actor has never changed. Substantively, the army leaders have always defined their role by reference to its self-creation, to Sudirman's example, and to what they imagine the 1948-49 military government to have been like. [3]

General Sudirman was Javanese and intuitively understood the Javanese concepts of power, harmony and self-sacrifice. He valued fighting spirit (semangat) over professionalism and became hopelessly enmeshed in domestic politics. Despite his faults, Sudirman placed national interests above personal gain. He altruistically fought to defend the best interests of his men. He was a benevolent father figure (bapak) for the newborn Army. While the Army's reputation was severely tarnished by revelations about widespread abuses during the New Order, the military's political role continues to hold considerable potency within a society where it has been the norm for more than sixty years - thanks in large part to Sudirman's pioneering role.

After Sudirman's premature death, General Abdul Haris Nasution picked up the reigns. Nasution was also a dedicated nationalist, but less of a father figure. He was more autocratic and less idealistic than Sudirman. Military leaders after Nasution, most notably Soeharto (of whom Nasution would later became a strident critic), were progressively more pragmatic, ruthless and repressive in pursuing the goals of national unity, integrity, stability and development. Despite changes in leadership over time, the twin goals of national unity and integrity (persatuan dan kesatuan) remained sacrosanct within the military, providing justification for whatever means (no matter how ruthless) necessary to preserve the Republic. Under Soeharto, those objectives became inextricably intertwined with the national creed, Pancasila, and the original 1945 Constitution, providing for a system of government wherein the President held unquestioned power.

In the New Order's latter years, preserving the State's unity and integrity became equivalent to protecting the increasingly corrupt Soeharto regime. The Army was the principal instrument for regime preservation. Even today, army leaders are fond of quoting Mao's axiom - the fish cannot swim without the water, just as the Army cannot operate without the support of the people. That truism was corrupted during the New Order. Instead of a people's savior, in many cases the Army became the tormentor of its own citizenry.

Like Americans, Indonesians fought and shed blood for their independence. Many Indonesians, especially in the military, are proud of their revolutionary heritage. Indeed, more than six decades since independence, military leaders continue to extol their revolutionary roots and nurture their self image as saviors of the nation. They view the Army as the institution that struggled on after civilian leaders capitulated to the Dutch, saved the country from anarchy during the rebellions of the 1950s, liberated Dutch New Guinea in the early-1960s, purged the communists in the mid-1960s and in more recent years stood firm against former President Abdurrahman Wahid's unlawful orders (before he was dismissed in August 2001).

That courageous Army self-image borrows from earlier conquests - the ancient Javanese Mahapahit kingdom and the historical rebellions by Prince Diponegoro and others against the Dutch. Those highly romanticized episodes are celebrated during an abundance of national holidays and military anniversaries, replete with pomp, ceremony and flash-bang demonstrations by well-rehearsed units. But there is a large gap between the Army's self-image and the views of some in the international community who have described the Indonesian military as a mafia organization, guilty of extensive human rights excesses, deeply involved in politics and operating independently of democratically-elected civilian leaders. In truth, training, discipline and operational skills have never been strong points for the Indonesian military. The Army does not have a distinguished combat history. The protagonists in the struggle for independence are the closest thing the Army can claim to real military heroes - and, despite the valiant guerilla struggle against the Dutch, independence came more as a result of international diplomacy than from victory on the battlefield.

These three volumes cover the Army's fighting doctrine (mostly derived from the guerilla struggle during the Revolution) and provide accounts of major operations - the independence struggle, consolidation of the Republic, military campaigns against CIA-backed regional separatists in Sumatra and Sulawesi during the late-1950s, the liberation of West Irian, the Confrontation with Malaysia, the invasion of tiny East Timor, along with the progression of domestic counterinsurgency operations against various separatist and rebel groups. Those recurring episodes of conflict, mostly at the archipelago's peripheries, vividly illustrate the problematic difference, depending on one's cultural perspective, in the terms freedom fighter, rebel and terrorist.

Readers will find a greater part of the story is about the Indonesian Army's social-political role, the so-called Dual Function (Dwifungsi). That is the more significant and interesting aspect of the Indonesian Army's unique historical experience and doctrine. Under public pressure, the Armed Forces dropped the Dual Function doctrine in April 2000. Concurrently, military political involvement was scaled back, especially in day-to-day administrative activities. The Army still wields substantial political clout. Many officers argue Dual Function doctrine and the Army's unique territorial structure remain valid, and that past problems during the New Order were solely due to incorrect implementation. Such rationalizations smack of recidivism. In fact, much like communism, the Indonesian Army's Dual Function doctrine and its territorial system - based as it was on a romantic image of the Army's heroic revolutionary struggle against the Dutch - were doomed from the start. You can't deny the coarser aspects of human nature - and Indonesian military culture parallels Indonesian culture at large. Ideological and ethical values in both cultures are weak, while patronage, corruption and opportunism tend to predominate. The longer the edifice of the New Order stood, the more rotten and corrupt its foundation became.

Today, more than fifteen years after Soeharto's fall, Indonesia has come full circle. Following years of instability, communal conflict, political and economic malaise, public views toward the military have significantly improved. Another army general, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was elected president in free and democratic polls. As the son-in-law of another famous army general, Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, the Javanese Yudhoyono has deep army roots. But he is a graduate from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and had a reputation as a reformer long before he took office. Despite a series of terrorist attacks and natural disasters (considered bad omens for many superstitious Indonesians), the national economic and security situation has improved. Military reform proceeds at a slow but steady pace. Recidivists and hard-liners have been retired or sidelined while the current generation of military leaders is more professional, more disciplined and less politically involved than at any time in the Indonesian Army's history. The government has increased military pay and the defense budget - and launched a long overdue modernization program to replace the military's outdated and worn out systems, especially in the Air Force and Navy.

I have drawn extensively from two basic references for biographic data on Indonesian military leaders. The first is Harsja W. Bachtiar's 1988 book, Siapa Dia? Perwira Tinggi Tentara Nasional Indonesia Angkatan Darat (TNI-AD) (Who's Who? Senior Officers in the Indonesian Army). [4] The other is Mengenal Pimpinan ABRI, 1945-1990 (Getting to Know ABRI Leaders, 1945-1990), published by the Indonesian Armed Forces Center for History and Tradition in 1990. [5] This is a large format, 1,264-page compilation of organizational history, staff directories and command diagrams, all in chronological order, along with biographical details for flag-rank officers from each of the services and police between 1945 and 1990. While not classified, this hefty four-kilogram reference volume is an internal document not available to the public. Two more invaluable references are the official Indonesian Army history (Sejarah TNI-AD, 1945-1973) [6] published by the Indonesian Army History Office in 1979 and the five-volume history of the Indonesian Armed Forces (Sejarah TNI) [7] published by the Indonesian Armed Forces Center for History and Tradition in 2000.

A brief note on spellings and usage: there are no consistent rules regarding Indonesian spellings. After independence, many of the old Dutch spellings with dj and oe (Djakarta and Soekarno) were changed to the more modern j and u (Jakarta and Sukarno), although not all persons adopted the modern usage. To complicate matters, Sukarno preferred the modern spelling of his name, Sukarno, but continued to sign his name in the Dutch style, Soekarno, while Soeharto favored the older Dutch spelling of his name (although both variations were commonly used). From old Dutch to modern Indonesian, the Celebes became Sulawesi, Indonesian Borneo became Kalimantan, the Moluccas became Maluku and the Lesser Sundas became Nusa Tenggara; West New Guinea became West Papua, and then Irian Jaya in 1973, and finally simply Indonesian Papua; Batavia became Jakarta, Jogjakarta became Yogyakarta, Makassar became Unjung Pandang and then Makassar once again.

For simplicity, I have tried whenever possible to use the modern Indonesian spellings for places and cities. As for the names of persons, I have endeavored to use the spelling preferred by the individual, or the most common spelling. Many Indonesians have just one name. Indonesian and other non-English words are italicized throughout the text. In most cases, I have provided an expansion for abbreviations in both Indonesian and English - and have furnished a glossary of the more commonly used abbreviations and terms in the back of each book. I have converted Indonesian rupiah figures into U.S. dollars ($) and have used actual exchange rates wherever possible, so that 1965 rupiah figures are converted into 1965 dollar figures, etc. The $ symbol represents U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted.

Indonesian culture is complex and seemingly mysterious to many observers. In Indonesia, it seems, something is always hidden. It is a country where conspiracy theories circulate freely, making it difficult to separate rumor from fact. Sometimes history has been rewritten and the truth concealed to the extent that many Indonesians do not understand their own history and frequently seem as confused by events as outsiders. It is especially difficult to write authoritatively about recent events, since many players are still alive and active, and, hence, reluctant to speak openly. Because of that, in places I have used confidential interviews to protect those willing to speak frankly.

As an adjunct to these introductory remarks, I offer three explanatory notes regarding traditions of brutality, the Army Territorial System and Javanese culture - background information that should help an unfamiliar reader better understand the story that follows.

Traditions of Brutality

Despite the popular impression, Soeharto held no monopoly on brutality and violence as political tools. Excesses occurred throughout the colonial period, during the turbulent transition period after the Dutch defeat in 1942, again following the Japanese surrender in 1945, during the struggle for independence, and during the entire six-decade history of the modern Indonesian state, most notoriously during the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of thousands of suspected communists during 1965-1966. Violence erupted from smoldering resentment toward the rich, the privileged and those who had collaborated with the Dutch and the Japanese. Some might describe those excesses as a manifestation of old fashioned oriental despotism. Such violent proclivities also have been explained by the cultural tendency to withhold emotion until an uncontrollable explosion of violence occurs, commonly referred to as "mata gelap (incensed, literally dark eyes) or the Malay word amuk" which has been adopted in English usage meaning to go berserk, to be out of control in a fit of frenzied rage.

At any rate, respect for human rights remains a recent concept in Indonesia. It was common when discussing excesses that occurred in East Timor, Papua and Aceh to hear older army officers say things like Oh, that was before human rights as if those principles were alien to Indonesian culture until forced upon the country by the international community. They argued that Indonesia, as a poor developing country, simply could not afford to uphold western standards of human rights and accountability, correctly pointing out the atrocities American settlers perpetrated against Native Americans, traditions of slavery and our own Civil War.

Many Indonesians (and outsiders alike) have the impression Indonesian soldiers were more honorable and benevolent during the struggle for independence, a myth cultivated by the Army's own romanticized commentary on the period. The truth is that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fighters were killed during the Revolution as a result of internal clashes between rival units, Muslim and leftist militias, regular and irregular troops. Revolutionary guerillas sometimes killed their officers. Incidents of mob violence and atrocities were commonplace. In various locations, hundreds were killed, often brutally, during the so-called social revolution that followed Japan's surrender. West Java Siliwangi Division and paramilitary Police Mobile Brigade troops brutally exterminated dozens of communist and leftist political leaders and military officers following the September 1948 Madiun rebellion.

One might expect the post-revolutionary Army to be better trained, more disciplined and therefore more civilized than the long-suppressed youth who fought in the Revolution. But, today Indonesia's Armed Forces do not seem much better prepared for military operations than in the past. The performance of the military, especially Territorial Army units, in quelling communal violence and regional conflict during the chaos that followed Soeharto's fall was well short of expected standards. Far too frequently, territorial forces took sides in local conflicts, rather than act to prevent violence. Units dispatched to conflict areas were expected to fend for themselves, placing an added burden on locals as soldiers (and policemen) stole chickens and collected tolls on the roads for their own subsistence. At an institutional level, there is still a tendency to emphasize esprit (or semangat) over proper training, leadership and professional military science.

Worse, there was little reason for the military to quickly end conflicts in East Timor, Papua and Aceh because of the profit opportunities offered through hiring out of security forces to protect local businesses, smuggling, timber theft, extortion, and even growing and trafficking of illegal drugs. At minimum, evidence suggests elements within the security forces deliberately fueled regional conflicts (and that institutional leadership at least condoned such behavior) to undermine political leaders and to justify the continuation (and possible expansion) of army territorial forces, the foundation of military political and economic power - although suggestions of an institutional military conspiracy are controversial and difficult to prove.

To be fair, the Indonesian Army has been at war for most of its sixty-year history, perhaps not total war against foreign enemies, but forced to deal with rebellion, separatism, communal conflict and often used as a tool of the government to brutally suppress dissent. Those counterinsurgency and internal security missions, pitting soldiers against fellow countrymen, are among the most difficult and corrosive - and (together with the Dutch and Japanese colonial experiences) have perpetuated the culture of brutality in the Army. Within that pressure cooker of domestic turbulence, a military culture developed in which ruthlessness came to be a leadership quality that was admired, in which rape, torture, cruelty and summary execution, at times, were accepted as legitimate methods of warfare.

It is not a problem unique to the Indonesian Army. Even the United States military has grappled with the corrosive effects of combat on its soldiers, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers and their families also know, viscerally, that war is corrupting, even a justifiable or inevitable war. Eventually combat does bad things to good soldiers. Not that it makes them capable of atrocity - the overwhelming majority today are too balanced, too professional, too well led for that ... war is corrosive of decency and nobility; it tarnishes the spirit. [8]

The Territorial Army and Business Entanglement

In principle, the Indonesian Army's territorial guerilla warfare doctrine and organization seems well-suited to Indonesia's unique geography and limited ability to mount a conventional defense. Territorial doctrine, or the Total People's Defense System, recognizes the Army does not have enough soldiers to adequately defend the Indonesian State, comprising thousands of islands. The territorial system is an extension of the guerilla-military government from the independence struggle, with overlapping functions for civil administration, internal security duties and external defense. Well over half the Army's strength is in the territorial forces, comprising twelve regional commands, dozens of military area commands, hundreds of district and subdistrict commands, and thousands of village noncommissioned officers (babinsa) at the lowest level. Former Armed Forces Commander General Benny Moerdani once commented that, through the territorial system, even junior officers could function as viceroys in the archipelago's remote corners. [9]

The territorial structure is effectively a parallel government, with its roots in Colonel Nasution's 1945-1949 revolutionary military administration. Through its territorial structure, the Army maintains military units in every province, district and subdistrict throughout Indonesia, which provides it with the means to influence political developments at every level of government. The territorial structure was the principal vehicle for the military's political involvement during the more than three decades of Soeharto's New Order. Most military officers will readily acknowledge the Army's backing of the state party, Golkar, during that period was a blatant misuse of power. All military personnel and commands are now prohibited from involvement with political parties - and the record during the 1999, 2004 and 2009 national elections was good. There is no expectation the Army will return to the New Order practice of actively backing political parties. But territorial forces are also expected to provide early warning of trouble and the record of territorial forces in preventing and halting violence in the post-Soeharto period has been appalling.

Problems with Army territorial forces are well documented. Units are chronically under-strength, under-equipped and neglected. Soldiers and some officers spend years in the same territorial organization and location, providing opportunity to develop partisan sentiments and vested interests. The territorial structure provides a convenient outlet for the unhealthy practice of farming out older Army Strategic Reserve (Kostrad) and Special Forces (Kopassus) soldiers (usually to their home areas) as they approach retirement age. The biggest problem is that territorial units are expected to be self-financing, another tradition with roots in the Revolution.

The Army was expected to take care of itself, while the government directed scarce government resources to higher priority needs. As a consequence, the Army has traditionally maintained a large measure of independence and autonomy from the government. Most regional commands and some area commands traditionally had their own business holdings until recent reforms. Commanders understood they had to raise funds to support their units by whatever means possible. Under such circumstances, even ethical commanders often looked upon the involvement by subordinates in illegal activities as a necessary evil. Territorial members fended for themselves and, therefore, tended to take advantage of all opportunities to make money. Greed was a key factor. The prolonged economic crisis following the New Order resulted in even greater involvement by territorial forces in illicit and outright criminal activities. The modest contributions of army civic action and community development programs generally have been outweighed by the structural corruption, illicit activities, intimidation and extortion.

The involvement by the security forces in business activities detracts from professionalism and readiness, and brings along the baggage of associated corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN). Even today, a substantial part of military revenues are off-budget. Almost nobody in the services or the police lives off his or her meager salary. Various methods of obtaining outside income (both legitimate and criminal) have been tolerated for decades - including involvement in smuggling, protection rackets, illegal logging, hiring out of military equipment and troops, gambling, drugs, prostitution and extortion - you name it, Indonesian security forces have been involved, most often via the Army's nationwide territorial structure. Since military pay is inadequate, most military members focus great energy and effort on ways to augment their salary, rather than on professional duties. In 2005, a retired two-star general's military pension amounted to a mere Rupiah 1,500,000 per month, less than $200. Because of the low pay and pension benefits, it is common for military officers to expect a lucrative retirement post after leaving service.

Official budget shortfalls were easily bridged during the heyday of the Soeharto era through the extensive system of military perks and patronage. President Soeharto depended on the security forces to protect his regime and, in turn, was generous in sharing the wealth. Senior officers had opportunities to enrich themselves while maintaining decent living conditions and benefits for their men. It was commonplace for commanders to pass out envelopes of cash to their troops, and most security force members received an extra month's pay during the annual Ramadan (Lebaran) or Christmas holidays. Those customs persist, but the troop handouts are less frequent and less generous today, while many senior officers privately despair their inability to reap the perks and privilege that were customary under the Soeharto regime.

Throughout the New Order, state-run enterprises and the extensive system of military cooperatives and foundations (yayasan), holding companies for varied and diverse business holdings, timber and mineral concessions, provided much of the lucre that kept the security forces happy. Today, however, the state industries have been cleaned up and most of the military foundations are insolvent, victim to the economic crisis, incompetent management, uncontrolled greed and outright plunder. Many military businesses lose money on paper and the foundations barely produce enough revenues to pay a meager Lebaran bonus to the troops. The official military budget has been significantly increased in recent years but pay is still too low and operational allocation inadequate to eliminate the need for off-budget funds.

Javanese Culture

With less than one-tenth of the archipelago's land mass, Java supports more than half of Indonesia's population - 125 million people on 1.38 million square kilometers. An area about the size of Greece or New York State, it is among the most densely populated places in the world, on average with over 800 inhabitants per square kilometer. While others, most notably the Sundanese of West Java, inhabit the island, the Javanese are Indonesia's largest and dominant ethnic group - in the government, bureaucracy, military and politics. Javanese culture is layered with veneers of Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist and animist influences brought to the island over a period of centuries. Animistic, Buddhist and Hindu beliefs were already deeply rooted in Java by the time Islam arrived in the mid-sixteenth-century. Under the weight of these sometimes conflicting influences, the Javanese developed a highly refined and sophisticated culture, in many ways one that was attractive to outsiders. But the elaborate social rituals and indirect style of the Javanese often clashed with the more pragmatic and open customs of minorities around the archipelago.

Traditional Javanese values are vastly different from prevailing western cultural mores - it can be argued that some elements are essentially anti-democratic - and explain why Americans and other westerners often find themselves bewildered by Indonesian culture. With globalization and exposure to modern western culture, Javanese superstition and adherence to occult beliefs has declined among the educated class, including military officers. Despite the forces of modernization, many senior officials and military officers retain a degree of faith in mysticism, fatalism, predetermination and a greater order or harmony in the world. Indonesian minorities tend to have a love-hate relationship with the Javanese. After the Revolution, many outer islanders suggested Javanese colonialism had replaced Dutch colonialism. Since Java is the cultural, educational, economic, social and political center of Indonesia and, hence, a magnet for minorities from around the country, most Indonesians, especially military officers and civil servants, are influenced at least to some extent by Javanese culture.

Key military schools and headquarters are based on Java. Almost all officers, regardless of ethnicity or home of record, spend much of their career on Java, starting with the intense indoctrination that takes place at the National Military Academy in Magelang, Central Java. Consequently, they are thoroughly exposed to and influenced by Javanese culture. Even though ethnic, religious and clan loyalties remain strong, many non-Javanese officers marry Javanese women simply because, as eligible young bachelors, they spend their primary courtship years on the island of Java.

By virtue of numbers, Javanese officers have always dominated the Indonesian Army officer corps and the senior ranks, although many minority officers have reached the top levels of military leadership. The Dutch employed members of the traditional Javanese priyayi aristocratic class in administrative positions throughout the archipelago. That Javanese upper class (along with the outer island Christian minorities) enjoyed better education opportunities under the Dutch. Members of the Dutch-educated, Dutch speaking Javanese aristocratic class who had held responsible positions in society before entering the Army had a natural advantage and perpetuated the colonial class-based social system. Hence, Javanese (the majority of whom were tolerant abangan or kejawen Muslims) made up 70-80 percent of the officer corps in the revolutionary army. Although the government has made an effort to recruit more non-Javanese cadets, today more than half of the officer candidates at the Military Academy continue to come from the Javanese ethnic group.

Wayang is the traditional Javanese all-night shadow play based on the Indian Hindu Mahabharata and Ramayana epics - dramas portraying the essential struggle of good against evil. The dalang (puppet master) is the expert story teller who manipulates the carved leather figures behind the screen and brings the shadows to life. There is often a parallel between real life and the shadow play, as the principal actors in Indonesian society - political figures, military officers, businessmen and society elites - interact in complex and hidden ways. In real life, it is often difficult to know who the real dalang is and what is really going on behind the screen. The term dalang is often used in the negative context of a plot or conspiracy.

Sukarno and Soeharto both used wayang figures to express their identities. Exposed to wayang tales from a young age, Sukarno often associated himself with Bima, one of the principal characters of the Mahabarata epic. During the colonial period, he wrote articles for the daily Oetoasan Hindia (Indies Messenger) under the pen name, Bima. Bima is the most popular of five brothers in the royal Pandawa clan. He is honest, bold, courageous and willing to confront the gods in the struggle against the evil Kurawas, who he and his brothers ultimately exterminate. As Bima, it was relatively easy for Sukarno to draw the parallel between the sinister forces of Neo-Colonialism, Colonialism and Imperialism (Nekolim) and the evil Kurawas of the Mahabarata.

Soeharto identified with Semar, another popular and powerful character from the wayang pantheon. The beloved clown Semar appears as a grotesque figure, short, fat and ugly. But he is actually a just and powerful god disguised as a dwarf and humble servant, sent to earth to help the Pandawas fight evil. Just as Sukarno used wayang imagery to discredit his opponents, Soeharto's self-portrayal of Semar fighting the evil forces of Sukarno and the Indonesian Communist Party did not require elaboration for most Indonesians.

At risk of over-generalization, I list below some of the more commonly recognized attributes of Javanese culture:

— Messianic expectations; the invention of an eleventh-century Javanese ruler's prophetic vision, the concept of a Ratu Adil (Just King) provides the Javanese with the belief in a predetermined future, a fatalistic universe, the general acceptance that things will get worse before they get better, that the world will descend into chaos before the Just King rises from obscurity to restore harmony to the world, to deliver the people into an era of peace, stability and abundance. That cultural construct presents a significant divergence from the typically rational and linear view of the world in the West - and is not particularly conducive to concepts like management by objective, strategic long range planning, transparency, accountability and acceptance of responsibility. It helps explain why military leaders and others have sometimes stoically endured the nation's dire political and economic circumstances while perhaps, at least subconsciously, waiting for the Just King to reveal himself at the proper moment.

— Patrimonialism or bapakisme; hierarchical deference; emphasis on status rather than achievement or merit; stress on pomp and ceremony, splendid parades, grand appearances, spectacular wedding receptions, with little concern for costs; use of pretentious titles (a few of President Sukarno's many labels included Supreme Commander, Great Leader of the Revolution, Mandatory of the MPRS, and President for Life). [10]

— A feudal patronage system wherein the ruler, businessman, politician or boss generously spreads his largesse among his subjects, clients, constituents or workers. That traditional patronage system is essentially synonymous with the KKN (Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism) phenomenon in modern day Indonesia. But, while most Indonesians denounce KKN, they condone the traditional patronage system as a normal and proper. There is no jealousy or resentment when someone benefits from this trickle down system; with patience, each will have his turn.

— Consultation and consensus; placing community interests above individual rights through emphasis on traditional village consultation (musyawarah) and consensus (mufakat), rather than the western democratic framework of compromise and majority rule. The Indonesian musyawarah-mufakat tradition is similar to the Islamic shura collaborative consensus-building process.

— A spiritual versus material orientation; no concept of absolute right or wrong; the ability to reconcile conflicting ideas without serious reservations; obsession with social harmony; abhorrence of discord; deference to authority; belief in divine rule; reliance on emotion rather than logic; combined with almost limitless patience, tolerance and adaptability; educational emphasis on indoctrination while discouraging critical thinking - resulting in an often emotional, rather than logical response to events. This has allowed many Indonesians, including senior military officers, to embrace wild conspiracy theories without much critical examination.

— Elements of mysticism, the occult and fatalism; those elements and beliefs in such concepts as the Ratu Adil (Just King) myth influences behavior. Despite the forces of globalization and modernization, superstition and belief in spirits remains widespread among the Javanese masses. "For many Javanese peasants, the spiritual world is richly populated with deities who inhabit people, things, and places, and who are ever ready to cause misfortune. Believers seek to protect themselves against these harmful spirits by making offerings, enlisting the aid of a dukun (shaman), or through spiritual acts of self-control and right thinking." [10]

— Avoidance of argument and openly expressed anger, often resulting in a disconnect between words and actions. Indonesians are apt to tell people what they want to hear in order to avoid confrontation. Lying is not considered wrong; it is part of the face saving ritual and is simply considered good manners. Shame or embarrassing feelings (malu) are considered unpleasant and to be avoided. That dynamic creates frequent misunderstandings, not only with non-Indonesians, but with more direct and forthright outer island residents. Perpetuating the idea that Javanese cannot be trusted, it has fueled the chronic separatist movements in the archipelago's periphery and hampered government conflict resolution efforts.

— The importance of personal relationships over rules or precedent. Personal relationships are built through shared social activities, like golf or karaoke. With them, difficult tasks are accomplished with ease. Without them, the simplest task can become hopelessly obstructed by bureaucratic red tape. Common complaints about doing business in Indonesia are the uneven playing field and lack of transparency.

— A Java-centric view of the world - especially for those who have never traveled abroad - reflected in the attitude, Why should we care what other people think? Some senior officers are aware of the Army's negative international image, but choose to ignore it because it conflicts with their own self image as protectors of the nation.

— Statistical imprecision; Indonesians often regard statistics with disdain and, as a consequence, official figures frequently are inconsistent. Often the same officials cite widely varying statistics at different times or places. Such numerical ambiguity is closely connected to the venerated Indonesian concepts of musyawarah and mufakat since consultation and consensus are always easier to attain when facts, choices and outcomes are vague.

1 Colonial Roots and the Second World War

We have ruled here for 300 years using the whip and the club and we shall still be doing it in another 300 years.

Bonifacius Cornelis De Jonge, Netherlands

East Indies Governor-General, 1931-1936 [11]

Modern Indonesia is the product of colonialism. Ancient empires did exist - the seventh to eleventh-century Buddhist Sriwijaya kingdom in East Sumatra, the fourteenth and fifteenth-century Hindu-Javanese Mahapahit kingdom, and the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Central Java Mataram kingdom - but none that unified the entire archipelago. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) first established a monopoly on the spice trade in the early-seventeenth-century and the Netherlands took direct control over the East Indies from the VOC in 1800. Holland ruled its East Indies colony with an iron hand and grew wealthy by capitalizing on the archipelago's abundant resources and cheap labor. Colonial authorities exploited the native population through an often cruel forced labor system on state plantations, the notorious Cultivation System (Cultuurstelsel), imposed compulsory taxation on the population and destroyed the indigenous entrepreneur class. The Netherlands adopted a Machiavellian divide-and-rule policy that pitted one ethnic group against another and restricted the natives' opportunities for education and self-government. (The Dutch preferred the term native (inlander) over Indonesian because of the latter's nationalist connotation.)

The so-called Ethical Policy (Ethische Politiek) in the early-twentieth-century featured limited education and economic opportunities for loyal, mostly upper class subjects, and a transmigration program that moved Javanese and Balinese laborers to work on outer island plantations. The severe economic impact from the First World War in Europe caused the Netherlands to be more harsh and repressive in extracting profits from the East Indies colony. Exploitive Dutch practices, coupled with the advent of western liberal democratic and Marxist concepts, served as catalysts for emergence of a nationalist movement. The Budi Utomo (Noble Endeavor) Society, founded in May 1908 to promote Javanese culture and western educational opportunities, marked the beginning of a national awakening (kebangkitan nasional). The Sarekat Islam (Islamic League), established in 1912, was a Muslim trade group initially aimed at reducing the economic dominance of ethnic Chinese traders, but by 1918 had developed into a nationalist organization with one-half million members.

Closely affiliated with Sarekat Islam, the Muhammadiyah (Followers of Muhammad) modernist Muslim association was established in 1912 to promote Islamic culture, education, health and religious charity. Muhammadiyah provided social services and operated schools, libraries, clinics and orphanages. "From the onset, Muhammadiyah, which developed into one of Indonesia's largest Islamic organizations, was more progressive than puritanical, more modernist than fundamentalist, with a particular focus on improving the education and welfare of its members through construction of schools and hospitals." [12] Today Muhammadiyah has an estimated twenty-five million members.

The Indies Communist Association, formed in 1920 and renamed the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) four years later, claimed distinction as the first Asian communist party, predating even the Chinese Communist Party. Abortive revolts in Batavia and Banten, West Java in late-1926 and in West Sumatra in early-1927 led to a heavy-handed crackdown by colonial authorities on the PKI; it encouraged Sukarno and others nationalists to charter the Indonesian Nationalist Party (Partai Nasionalis Indonesia, PNI) in 1927. At the second annual Youth Congress held in Batavia in October 1928, youth leaders from across the archipelago adopted a Youth Pledge (Sumpah Pemuda), for the first time affirming all inhabitants in the Dutch East Indies were one people (bangsa Indonesia) with one language (Bahasa Indonesia) and one motherland (Indonesia). The youth embraced the red and white (merah-putih) Indonesian national flag and a national anthem, Indonesia Raya (Great Indonesia), both subsequently banned by the Dutch.

Colonial administrators responded to the nationalist awakening by banishing its leaders, men like Sukarno, Mohammed Hatta and Sutan Sjahrir, to remote corners of the archipelago. Others like radical nationalist Tan Malaka and Communist Party leader Musso escaped into exile. Labeled dissidents, the nationalists were sent to isolated islands in Maluku (the Moluccas), Timor and Flores - and to the miserable, disease-ridden Boven Digul concentration camps in far-off West New Guinea. Many died at Boven Digul, which provided the model for later New Order prison camps. Boven Digul, located at Tanah Merah, 300 kilometers up the Digul River from Merauke in the interior of West New Guinea, was initially established to house Indonesian Communist Party members after their failed 1926-1927 revolts. Over 1,300 communists were exiled to Boven Digul following the uprisings. The prison camp was unwalled since escape meant almost certain death in the swamps and jungle.

In May 1963, after West New Guinea was transferred to United Nations administration, President Sukarno erected a Heroes' Monument at Boven Digul to honor the seventy-nine Indonesians buried there. [13] Later, during independence negotiations with the Dutch, the banishment of Indonesian nationalist leaders to West New Guinea added weight to arguments that West Irian (as Indonesian nationalists referred to the territory) was an integral part of Indonesia despite obvious cultural and ethnic differences with the indigenous Papuan population. During the Revolution, nationalist aspirations were encapsulated in the popular slogan from Sabang to Merauke - representing the archipelago's westernmost island (Sabang in Aceh) and its easternmost settlement (the town of Merauke in West Irian).

The Colonial Army

Colonial authorities faced chronic rebellion from indigenous groups across the Indies. They did not establish dominion over Java until 1830, after suppressing a five-year messianic uprising by Prince Diponegoro in Central Java, and did not consolidate control over the entire archipelago until 1908 when armed resistance movements in Aceh, South Sulawesi (Celebes) and Bali were finally subdued.

Formally inaugurated after the Diponegoro rebellion, the Netherlands East Indies Colonial Army, or KNIL (Koninklijke Nederlands-Indisch Leger), was manned by Dutch officers and non-commissioned officers, with a combination of Dutch and locally-conscripted soldiers. Intended from the onset as an internal defense force, the Colonial Army was employed in series of pacification campaigns throughout the nineteenth and early-twentieth-centuries in Maluku, Central and West Sumatra, Aceh, Kalimantan (Borneo), South Sulawesi, Lombok and Bali. The Dutch relied on support from traditional rulers, most prominently the Mangkunegara Sultanate, the lesser Paku Alam royal court in Surakarta (commonly referred to as Solo).

The Mangkunegara royal family remained loyal to Holland throughout the colonial period. The sultan traditionally maintained a palace guard, actually a small army known as the Mangkunegara Legion. Dutch authorities provided support and funding for the legion from the late-1700s onward. Its officers drawn mostly from the royal family, the legion had a long and distinguished record of service for the Dutch crown. It was brutally effective in pacifying rebels on Bangka Island in the early-1800s, the Prince Diponegoro uprising in Central Java during the 1820s and Acehnese insurgents in the late-1800s and early-1900s. Colonial authorities also allowed the Susuhunan Paku Alam in Surakarta to maintain its traditional guard force, which participated in the pacification operations until the force was disbanded in 1892. The record of collaboration by the Mangkunegara and Paku Alam sultanates embarrassed Indonesian nationalists, despite the fact Sukarno himself had blood ties to the royal Mangkunegara house, as did Soeharto's wife, Siti Hartinah. The prominent role of traditional guard forces in the Dutch pacification campaigns is rarely mentioned in Indonesian history texts.

Over time, Holland recruited heavily among particular ethnic groups and regions, especially in East Indonesia - Maluku, North Sulawesi and Timor - areas where Dutch missionaries had success in converting the indigenous population. Indeed Ambonese Christians from Maluku comprised more than half of all native Colonial Army troops, while Protestant Minahasa soldiers from North Sulawesi were the second largest component. The Dutch employed those predominantly Christian minorities to maintain order and suppress dissent on the economically important and culturally dominant islands of Java, Bali and Sumatra. The Ambonese, in particular, were used as mercenaries much as the British employed Gurkhas. Sometimes scornfully labeled black Dutch, the Ambonese gained a reputation for arrogance and cruelty toward fellow countrymen. The favored minorities had better educational opportunities and, consequently, literacy rates in Maluku, North Sulawesi and parts of Sumatra even today are higher than in Java and other areas.

Dutch divide-and-rule tactics reinforced ethnic rivalries and helped perpetuate the notion of white racial superiority. In the colonial period's latter years, the Dutch inducted a carefully-screened minority of native officers into the Colonial Army and police forces. Few native youth received a high school or higher-level education, mostly those from the upper classes, so it was natural that colonial administrators (and the Japanese after them) recruited principally from the privileged Javanese aristocratic priyayi class, those considered loyal to the crown, along with elites from the West Java Sundanese and affluent outer island minorities to become Colonial Army officers.

Starting after the First World War, at least two dozen Indonesians, all from aristocratic families, attended the Dutch Military Academy at Breda. While many Indonesians were eager to fight for the Netherlands during the First World War, unlike Great Britain with its large reservoir of Indian Army soldiers, the Dutch were reluctant to call upon the native population. Few Indonesians fought in Europe. The Netherlands Indies Colonial Army was always modest in size. At the outbreak of the Second World War, it had just 1,345 officers and 37,583 for-the-most-part native troops. Most officers were Dutch, European or Eurasian; there were only fifteen Indonesian company grade officers. [14] Many of the Dutch and European officers in the Colonial Army might easily be characterized as right-wing soldiers of fortune. Up until the Second World War, many belonged to the National Socialist Movement, the Dutch counterpart to the German Nazi Party. [15]

In a belated move to prepare for a Japanese invasion, Dutch authorities accelerated the induction of native volunteers, but made little effort to prepare the Colonial Army for external defense responsibilities. Indonesian youth responded enthusiastically to the Dutch call to arms; more than 100,000 young men volunteered for military training - principally in Java, Ambon and North Sulawesi - although only 6,000 were accepted, principally due to a shortage of weapons. [16] On May 15, 1940, a full twenty months before Japanese troops arrived in the Indies, the Dutch Army capitulated in the face of an overpowering five-day German blitzkrieg. England provided sanctuary for a Netherlands government-in-exile, leaving its Colonial Administration in Batavia to operate with a large degree of autonomy. Indonesians were acutely aware of Holland's defeat. In an act of solidarity, native nationalists denounced Nazi fascism and overwhelmingly pledged support for the Netherlands wartime cause. Many Indonesians again volunteered to join the fight on behalf of the Allies, but colonial administrators rejected or ignored those appeals for partnership from their native subjects.

To increase the number of native officers, during early-1940 the Dutch administration opened a Reserve Officer Corps (Corps Opleiding Reserve Officieren, CORO) training school in Bandung. Top Indonesian graduates from the nine-month CORO course were admitted to the new Royal Military Academy (Koninklijke Militaire Academie, KMA) that opened in Bandung during early-1941. The two Bandung Academy classes each had about 100 cadets; as expected, most were Dutch. Eleven Indonesians were admitted to the first class and another ten in the second, which started mid-year and ran concurrently. The new academy closed by year-end with the Japanese arrival in Southeast Asia. The Indonesian cadets were hastily commissioned as second lieutenants and most assigned to nearby Colonial Army units in West Java.

Many Bandung Cadets subsequently rose to prominent positions during the Revolution and in the post-independence army. They included Abdul Haris Nasution (later general), Tahi Bonar Simatupang (lieutenant general), Achmad Joenoes Mokoginta (lieutenant general), M.M.R. Kartakusuma (lieutenant general), Raden H. Askari (lieutenant general), Abdul Kadir (major general), Raden Suprapto (major general) and Alex Evert Kawilarang (colonel). Kawilarang was the son of retired Colonial Army Major A.H.H. Kawilarang, who died as a prisoner of war during the Japanese occupation. Following the Dutch surrender, the Japanese arrested the younger Kawilarang, Mokoginta, Abdul Kadir and Suprapto and interned them as prisoners of war in Bandung. All escaped a month later and evaded capture for the remainder of the war.

Over the years, few Chinese-Indonesians have served in the Indonesian Armed Forces and police. It has not been a matter of choice, rather the inability by ethnic Chinese to be accepted into the security forces. Among the twenty-one native Bandung Cadets, four were Chinese-Indonesians: Liem King Ien, Lim Kay Hoen, W. Tan and Tjhwa Siong Pik. The Japanese executed Tjhwa in 1944; Liem chose to join the Colonial Army after the Japanese surrender; the other two did not remain on active service. [17] Bandung cadets who died during the war and the subsequent struggle for independence included Mantiri, Rachmat Soerjo (while serving as East Java Governor), Samsudarso, Soerjosoemarno and Luntungan. Suprapto died later, during the October 1, 1965 attack on Indonesian Army leaders. Other notable Indonesian Army officers who completed CORO training but did not attend the Bandung Academy included G.P.H. Djatikusumo (later lieutenant general), Kusno Utomo Widjokerto (major general) and