The Kopassus Dilemma: Should Australia Re-engage?

ustralian governments of both political persuasions have been embroiled in controversies over military cooperation with Indonesia since bilateral defence relations first began to gather steam under the Keating Labor government in the early 1990s. Prime Minister Paul Keating and Foreign Minister Gareth Evans were enthusiastic proponents of building strong ties with Indonesia, a policy which was extended to the military sphere with the establishment of two high level committees to coordinate and develop defence cooperation in 1994 (Ball and Kerr, 1996:70). These committees were later incorporated into an expanded defence agreement by the newly elected Howard Government in 1996, leading to the establishment of five working groups covering logistics, science and technology, communications, interoperability, education, training and exchanges (Walters, 1996:3). But engagement with the Indonesian Special Forces (Komando Pasukan Khusus — Kopassus) has been especially contentious because of the well documented involvement of this elite Army unit in human rights abuses and some of the more egregious excesses of the Soeharto regime. It was a special forces unit under the command of Captain Yunus Yosfiah (later a minister in the Habibie government) that murdered five Western journalists at Balibo, East Timor in November 1975 (Ball and McDonald, 2000:100-13), while dozens of Islamic activists were killed in an ostensible government crack down on criminals at Tanjung Priok, a decade later (Schwarz, 1994:181; Vatikiotis, 1993:128); and Pathoni, 2002:13). Special forces ‘black ninja’ have also regularly terrorised rural communities throughout the archipelago for political and pecuniary reasons in a perversion of their national security role. Concerns about the utility and morality of developing links with Kopassus were temporarily put to rest when bilateral defence cooperation was suspended in the wake of Indonesia’s ignominious withdrawal from East Timor in 1999. But the Bali bombing in October, 2002 and the heightened security focus on terrorism in Australia have stimulated calls for a resumption of ties with Kopassus as the principal agency in Indonesia vested with responsibility for counter terrorism. For example, Defence Minister Robert Hill cautiously endorsed renewed ties, subject to the significant qualification that Australia would only deal with Kopassus’s counter terrorist unit (Martin, 2002:5). Opponents have rejected the idea, however, primarily on human rights grounds, but also because Kopassus is believed to have given aid and succour to the very terrorist groups it is supposed to be fighting. In December 2002, for example, Shadow Minister for Foreign