Just over a decade ago, Indonesians took to the streets to protest. Now they can make themselves heard without even leaving home.
A Facebook group supporting two senior officials from the anti-corruption agency, who many people think have been framed, has attracted almost half a million members in just four days.
This digital people power may well be one reason why on Monday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono launched a probe into the case.
It’s the second time Facebook has played such an important role in a public debate in Indonesia. Earlier this year, thousands “rallied” online in support of a woman who had been charged with defamation for complaining about her treatment in hospital.
Indonesia is the world’s seventh-biggest user of the social networking site, according to Inside Facebook, and 8.23 million of its 8.52 million Facebook addicts joined up in the last year. The new information minister, Tifatul Sembiring, is a daily user of microblogging site Twitter, and says he wants to use it to seek policy ideas.
After decades of authoritarian rule, Indonesia is now a flourishing democracy yet many individuals still feel frustration that their voices and opinions are seldom heeded by politicians. So will online social networking sites contribute to Indonesia’s political future or is this just a passing fad?
Photo: Jihad book collection in Jakarta Sept.21, 2009. REUTERS/Supr
A half-century ago, Washington worried about Southeast Asian nations falling like dominoes to an international communist movement backed by Maoist China, and became bogged down in the Vietnam War.
Noordin Top, believed to be the mastermind behind most of the suicide bombings in Indonesia — including the July 17 attacks on two luxury Jakarta hotels — pronounced himself to be al Qaeda’s franchise in Southeast Asia.
Top and his allies in Jemaah Islamiah (JI) aimed to create an Islamic caliphate across Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand and Southern Philippines. Even before the 9/11 suicide airliner attacks, they were trying to spark an Islamic revolution with ambitious plots and attacks.
Their young foot soldiers dreamed these pro-Western nations (which had banded together to form ASEAN under the U.S. military umbrella at the height of the Vietnam War in 1967) might fall like dominoes to the righteousness of an Islamic jihad. Their martyrdom to the cause would given them a blissful reward in Heaven.
But just as Communism was not the monolith it was feared to be in the 1960s — China and the Soviet Union had split for one thing — so too has the Southeast Asian jihadist movement failed to cohere into a singular movement.
Vietnam, it turned out, was fighting what it believed to be a war of national liberation, and was (still is) historically suspicious of China. Al Qaeda’s jihad in Southeast Asia has stumbled over similar misconceptions.
JI’s former military commander, Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin or “Hambali”, tried to pull together various insurgencies in the region under an al Qaeda umbrella before he was captured in Thailand in 2003. He even helped sponsor an “al Qaeda summit” with bin Laden’s lieutenants in Kuala Lumpur in 2000.
He failed mostly because the groups had different agendas and a fragmented leadership. The ideology that animates the movements — Islam — also prevents it from incorporating as well. The religion does not have hierarchies. People can have different views. The jihadist groups don’t do politburos.
Reuters has taken a look at these issues — including for investors in the region — in a package of stories. Click on the headlines below to read more about Southeast Asia Islamic insurgencies.
It takes India weeks to complete an election and it never passes without flashes of violence.
But the much younger democracy of Indonesia voted calmly for their president on Wednesday and got the voting over in five hours with a good indication of the result — a second term for the reformist ex-general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono — out just a couple of hours later.
“Faster, Better,” was the racy campaign slogan of Jusuf Kalla, one of Yudhoyono’s challengers. He trailed in a distant
third, but his rally cry somehow seems fitting for the country’s remarkable journey since the chaotic coda of President Suharto’s authoritarian rule a decade ago.
And yet if you talk to many Indonesians, they’ll tell you that the whole campaign, which kicked off in January and encompassed parliamentary elections before Wednesday’s vote, has been one long bore.
The series of televised debates by the presidential and vice presidential candidates were so polite and deferential, so Javanese really, that it was hard at times to believe that here were three teams actually competing against each other. Perhaps it’s unfair to mention it on his victory day, but Yudhoyono himself has been known to send listener’s off to sleep with his speeches.
Maybe “boring” is good, a sign that democracy isn’t a novelty anymore — just a fact of Indonesian life.
Still, there were moments during the election campaign when things got a little bit edgier in this predominantly Muslim country, where religion is increasingly a sensitive subject.
There were snide remarks about whether the wife of Yudhoyono’s running mate, Boediono, was a Catholic (she is Muslim), and whether the wives of Yudhoyono and Boediono ought to wear a headscarf, like the wives of their opponents.
And while Wednesday’s vote was an illustration of how much Indonesia has changed in the 11 years since Suharto’s ignominious exit, there were many reminders of that less glorious past.
Yudhoyono’s rivals, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Kalla, picked Suharto-era generals with terrible human rights records — Prabowo Subianto and Wiranto — as their running mates.
Prabowo, who was married to one of Suharto’s daughters, was responsible for the kidnapping and torture of some of Megawati’s supporters in 1998. Now, the two are the best of friends and Prabowo, a rousing speaker, most likely has his eye on the 2014 election.
“I think Indonesia needs a decisive military man. SBY? He is so Obama. When he speaks, he sounds exactly like Obama!,” said Lilik S. Wardi, a housewife in Surabaya after she had cast her vote. “So I chose Prabowo. I didn’t want a president who copies Obama’s style.”
It started with "assalaamu alaykum" and ended with "may God's peace be upon you." Inbetween, President Barack Obama dotted his speech to the Muslim world with Islamic terms and references meant to resonate with his audience. The real substance in the speech were his policy statements and his call for a "new beginning" in U.S. relations with Muslims, as outlined in our trunk news story. But the new tone was also important and it struck a chord with many Muslims who heard the speech, as our Middle East Special Correspondent Alistair Lyon found. Not all, of course -- you can find positive and negative reactions here.
(Photo: Iraqi in Baghdad watches Obama's speech, 4 June 2009/Mohammed Ameen)
Among Obama's Islamic touches were four references to the Koran (which he always called the Holy Koran), his approving mention of the scientific, mathematical and philosophical achievements of the medieval Islamic world and his citing of multi-faith life in Andalusia. These are standard elements that many Islam experts -- Muslims and non-Muslims -- mention in speeches at learned conferences, but it's not often that you hear an American president talking about them.
Two religious references particularly caught my attention because they weren't the usual conference circuit clichés. One was his comment about being in "the region where (Islam) was first revealed" -- a choice of past participle showing respect for the religion.
The other came when he said Jerusalem should be "a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer." The Sura al-Isra is the Koran chapter about Mohammad's Night Journey to heaven, which tradition says started in Jerusalem on what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews the Temple Mount. It was an interesting way to cite Islamic tradition to say Jerusalem should be "a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together." The interjection "peace be upon them" had both an Islamic tone and an interfaith touch.
(Photo: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip watch Obama's speech, 4 June 2009/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)
Obama also gave the American Muslim population estimate -- 7 million -- that prompted him to tell a French interviewer earlier this week that the U.S. could be considered "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." He didn't repeat that phrase in his speech, however, possibly because the figures don't back it up. Figures for Muslim populations are dodgy because many countries don't keep such data. Recent estimates of the U.S. Muslim population range from 1.8 to 7-8 million, so he's taken about the highest figures around. If those figures are correct, the U.S. would still only rank only about 30th on the list of countries with the largest Muslim populations. That's way down on this Wikipedia list, with Azerbaijan and Burkina Faso. That's nowhere near the really big Muslim populations like the top three Indonesia (195 million), Pakistan (160 million) and India (140 million). Maybe that's why his speechwriters backed off the "one of the largest" claim.
The end of the speech also had an interesting twist. Obama reached for one of the quotes from the Koran that Muslims cite most frequently when they call for tolerance among peoples: "The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."
(Photo: Egyptians in cafe watch Obama's speech, 4 June 2009/Asmaa Waguih)
But he followed it up with quotes from the other two Abrahamic religions: "The Talmud tells us: 'The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.' The Holy Bible tells us, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God'."
(The author lived in Indonesia from 1992-1995 and 2000-2005, with various assignments in between)
It was not that long ago that Indonesia was lurching from crisis to crisis, even drawing some (misplaced) predictions it could go the way of the former Yugoslavia and break apart. These days it rarely makes the front page. It has a steady president in Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, probably the freest press in Southeast Asia and political violence appears to be a thing of the past. The last major bomb attack blamed on Islamic militants was in 2005.
It’s worth recalling how bad things were in Indonesia as this country of 226 million people prepares to vote in parliamentary elections on Thursday, which will set the stage for the more important presidential poll in July. The parliamentary election will be the third time voters in the world’s most populous Muslim nation have elected their representatives at a national level since the downfall of former autocrat Suharto in 1998. As the Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial on April 8, Indonesia
shows that democracy and Islam aren’t mutually exclusive.
All this progress seemed so unlikely early in 1998 when the country’s economy was in freefall. It’s hard to imagine a currency losing 85 percent of its value, but that’s what happened to the rupiah when the Asian financial crisis savaged Indonesia. I remember stunned Indonesian colleagues in the Reuters Jakarta bureau, their hands on their head, as the rupiah crashed to a low of 17,000 to the U.S. dollar. Months before, one U.S. dollar bought 2,500 rupiah. Food prices soared and the “wong cilik”, or little people, rebelled. Food riots hit markets. Protests escalated. Students demanded democratic change. Then Suharto — under pressure from the International Monetary Fund — hiked fuel prices on May 4, 1998. A week later, violence exploded, killing 1,200 people in Jakarta. Suharto was forced out a few days later.
After three decades of authoritarian rule that combined rapid economic growth with political repression and breathtaking corruption, Suharto’s “New Order” government had collapsed. It was replaced by a vacuum. Communal animosity that had simmered for years in the eastern Moluccas, an idyllic group of islands evenly split between Muslims and Christians, erupted. Thousands
were killed. President Abdurrahman Wahid, an affable moderate Muslim cleric with a penchant for cracking jokes, was toppled in 2001 in an impeachment vote, effectively for incompetence.
International perceptions of Indonesia, already pretty grim, got worse in 2002 when Islamic militants bombed two nightclubs in Bali, killing 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. As I stepped over debris the following morning, bits of flesh still under twisted metal, all I could think of was why? Why Bali? Why this beautiful island? The answer was obvious of course — kill holidaymakers enjoying themselves on one of the world’s most famous islands and you will get the world’s attention.
And then came the Asian tsunami. A massive undersea earthquake of 9.15 magnitude unleashed giant waves that smashed into the Indonesian province of Aceh in December 2004, killing around 170,000 people. The toll was unbelievable. Bodies lay rotting for weeks. I still remember Adnan Ibrahim, who had spent days searching refugee camps in the local capital Banda Aceh for his son, Syawaluddin, 17. “The boy is very smart. He is good with computers,” said Ibrahim, before breaking into sobs. I am sure he never found him.
Beside elections of that year — which brought Yudhoyono to power — the tsunami was a turning point for Indonesia. In the early days after the disaster, Yudhoyono decided to allow foreign militaries and aid workers to descend on Aceh to help with rescue and recovery efforts. He had opened the door to a province that until then was virtually sealed off to foreigners, scene of a vicious conflict between the Indonesian military and separatist rebels that had killed 15,000 people over the past 30 years. The tsunami was a catalyst for a peace deal between the government and the rebels in 2005. It confounded sceptics who predicted it would never last. Former rebels will even run for local office in the elections on Thursday.
Few thought Indonesia would make such strides and be where it is today. Democracy is well entrenched — “taken root and flourished” — in the words of the Economist in its April 2 edition. Sure there are problems. It’s a huge, unwieldy place to govern. Corruption is still a major problem and the country’s infrastructure needs an overhaul. And it is still poor. But compared to a little over 10 years ago, Indonesia has done pretty well. It has a huge civil society. Think of any issue and there will be an NGO in there fighting for justice and accountability. Indonesians are a people of great warmth, humour and openness. They deserve the international praise that now comes their way.
The Rohingyas, a Muslim minority fleeing oppression and hardship in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar, have been called one of the most persecuted people on earth. But they have seldom hit the headlines -- until recently, that is. More than 500 Rohingyas are feared to have drowned since early December after being towed out to sea by the Thai military and abandoned in rickety boats. The army has admitted cutting them loose, but said they had food and water and denied sabotaging the engines of the boats.
(Photo: Rohingyas in immigration area in soutwestern Thailand, 31 Jan 2009/Sukree Sukplang)
The Rohingyas are becoming a headache for Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia where they have washed up. Indonesian authorities this week rescued 198 Rohingya boat people off the coast of Aceh, after three weeks at sea. Buddhist Thailand and mostly Muslim Indonesia call them economic migrants looking for work at a time when countries in the region, like everywhere else, are in an economic downturn. But human rights groups such as Amnesty International are calling on governments in the region to provide assistance to the Rohingyas and let the UNHCR have access to them.
Myanmar's generals have a shabby enough record with their Buddhist majority. The brutal suppression of monk-led protests that killed at least 31 people in September 2007 and the continued detention of opposition icon and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi bear witness to that. But their treatment of ethnic minorities, including the Muslim Rohingyas and the Christian Chin people in the mountainous Northwest -- where insurgents have been fighting for autonomy -- have been especially brutal. They are not oppressed because of their faith alone, but their faith and ethnicity make them targets. The military government does not recognise them as one of the country's 130-odd ethnic minorities. They are forbidden from marrying or traveling without permission and have no legal right to own land.
(Photo: Thai policeman with Rohingyas at immigration area in southwest Thailand, 31 Jan 2009/Sukree Sukplang)
Most Rohingyas come from Rakhine State, also known as Arakan State, in northwest Myanmar, abutting the border with Bangladesh. Their roots go back at least to 1821, when Britain annexed the region as a province of British India and brought in large numbers of Bengali-speaking Muslim labourers. When Burma won independence from Britain in 1948, the Bengali-speaking Muslim population near the border exceeded that of the Buddhists, leading to secessionist tensions. This translated into harassment following the 1962 coup that has led to nearly five decades of military rule by the ethnic Burman majority. Thousands fled to Bangladesh to escape a 1978 military census of the Rohingyas called "Operation Dragon."
Refugees typically leave Rakhaine state for Bangladesh first before taking off in their flimsy fishing boats to find a new life elsewhere in Southeast Asia. On a recent Reuters visit to a Bangladeshi refugee camp, our correspondent Nizam Ahmed heard harrowing tales of being rape, torture and slave labour. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says 200,000 Rohingyas now live a perilous, stateless existence in Bangladesh. As a result, thousands have fled to try to start new lives, chancing their luck in rickety wooden boats they hope will get them to Malaysia, home to 14,300 official Rohingya refugees and maybe half as many again unregistered ones.
(Photo: Rohingya refugees prepare lunch at a naval base in Indonesia's Sabang Island, 30 Jan 2009/Tarmizy Harva)
To Myanmar's generals, the Rohingyas are a suspect lot who support local insurgencies that threaten the unity of the country. To Myanmar's neighbours, they are fresh wave of boat people in Asia's endless migrations impelled by destitution. To human rights and religious groups, they are persecuted minorities. As for the desperate and stateless Rohingyas who sail off in flimsy boats hoping to wash up on a friendly shore, they just need somewhere to call home.
President-elect Barack Obama has been getting a lot of advice these days on how to deal with Muslims and Islam. He invited it by saying during his campaign that he either wanted to convene a conference with leaders of Muslim countries or deliver a major speech in a Muslim country"to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular”. But where? when? why? how? Early this month, I chimed in with a pitch for a speech in Turkey or Indonesia. Some quite interesting comments have come in since then.
(Photo: Obama image in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)
Two French academics, Islam expert Olivier Roy and political scientist Justin Vaisse argued in a New York Times op-ed piece on Sunday that Obama's premise of trying to reconcile the West and Islam is flawed:
Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that “Islam” and “the West” are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between “civilizations” or “cultures” concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden’s narrative.
Instead, Mr. Obama, the first “post-racial” president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the United States and become a “post-civilizational” president. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like.
Also on Sunday, the Istanbul newspaper Sunday's Zaman ran a piece by sociologistDogu Ergil who spelled out what he thought "moderate Muslims" expected of Obama.
(Photo: Blue Mosque in Istanbul, 9 Dec 2008/Tan Shung Sin)
Moderate or non-ideological Muslims expect Mr. Obama to support democratic trends in their countries, but not to push them from above using ruling elites that will never adopt a democratic agenda but rather will simply play for time, making only cosmetic changes. This will, in turn, further reinforce the power of autocratic regimes that are threatened by genuine democracy.
Muslim moderates look at religion as a cultural affair, wanting to render it autonomous of politics so that it will be protected from political power and in the same way, preventing it from seeking political power. So they want the Obama administration to press their governments to enact reforms that will pave the way to democratic politics and legal changes that will allow for more individual freedoms. They do not want a hypocritical stance from an America which advocates democracy but supports the most authoritarian regimes in the Arab world for the sake of oil deals and other strategic ends. The Bush administration set a very bad example of paying lip service to democracy, which, in fact, worked as a vehicle to blackmail Arab regimes and served America's strategic interests.
Michael Fullilove at the Brookings Institution made a pitch for an Obama speech in Indonesia in the New York Times while several Moroccan blogs have been running a campaign (including a petition with a long list of reasons) to have him speak there.Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an exiled Egyptian sociologist and human rights who is a visiting professor at Harvard and Indiana universities, made the case for Indonesia or Turkey in the Washington Post.
Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador in the United States and Britain, has a long list of suggestions for a reformed U.S. policy towards the Muslim world in the Harvard International Review. The list is fairly extensive, although it would have been even more informative if it had included suggestions for what should change in the Muslim world.
(Photo: Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, 21 Dec 2007/Mohsin Raza)
How Obama manages issues in the Muslim world will determine the success or failure of his foreign policy...
In the Muslim world ... perceptions have been shaped by decades of uneven handed policies and by US double standards that placed the security of Israel and the need for cheap oil above considerations of international law and justice for the Palestinians. In essence, Muslims regard US policies as responsible for the trust gap between the United States and the Islamic world. In the West, opinions concerning the cause for the gap with the Muslim world are more mixed. The most common view attributes this rift in relations not only to US policies but also to factors internal to the Muslim world-- to the weakness and contradictions in those societies and particularly to the democratic deficit, which allows radicals to build support for their cause. This, in fact, inspires the idea that the United States should lead efforts to restructure the Muslim world. Irrespective of the reality, both perspectives urge the need to review and recast US foreign policy.
My vote for the most interesting argument goes to Roy and Vaisse, who ask the basic question of what role religion actually plays in the big issues facing Obama.
The truth is, Islam explains very little. There are as many bloody conflicts outside of regions where Islam has a role as inside them. There are more Muslims living under democracies than autocracies. There is no less or no more economic development in Muslim countries than in their equivalent non-Muslim neighbors. And, more important, there exist as many varieties of Muslims as there are adherents of other religions. This is why Mr. Obama should not give credence to the existence of an Islam that could supposedly be represented by its “leaders”.
(Photo: Olivier Roy, 4 Dec 2007/Charles Platiau)
Who are these leaders that President Obama would convene anyway? If he picks heads of state, he will effectively concede Osama bin Laden’s point that Islam is a political reality. If he picks clerics, he will put himself in the awkward position of implicitly representing Christianity — or maybe secularism. In any case, he would meet only self-appointed representatives, most of them probably coming from the Arab world, where a minority of Muslims live.
Do you think Obama should launch a special initiative aimed at the Muslim world, or, as Roy and Vaisse argue, assert that "American values are universal and do not suffer any kind of double standard, and that they could be shared by atheists, Christians, Muslims and others"?
I once paid a cop 30 ringgit (about $10 then) for making an apparently illegal left-hand turn in Kuala Lumpur. Scores of drivers in front of me were also handing over their “instant fines”, discreetly enclosed within the policeman’s ticketing folder. It was days ahead of a major holiday and the cops were collecting their holiday bonus from the public.
Malaysia opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim holds a disc he says contains evidence of judge-fixing in Malaysia
I felt bad about this, of course. What I was doing was illegal, immoral and perpetuating an insidious culture that goes by many names in the East — “baksheesh” in India, “Ali Baba” (and his 40 thieves) in Malaysia, “swap” in Indonesia (means “to feed”). But the policeman pointed out I would have to take off the good part of a day to go to court and pay 10 times as much to the judge. So I rationalised: “When in Rome…”
Alas it was not the first time, nor would it be the last that I have (ahem) paid an “informal levy” to officialdom. I’ve given baksheesh to the phone company in India to get a telephone installed, and to get a driver’s license without a test (no wonder there are so many accidents in India.) I’ve paid the immigration officer at Jakarta airport to let me in with a nearly expired passport.
Many of my friends in Asia have similar tales to tell about bribing customs agents, power companies, hospitals, schools — anybody with the power to give a license or provide a service. A couple of bucks here, a couple there. Pretty soon you’re talking about real money. Daniel Kaufmann, who spearheaded the World Bank’s efforts to improve the study of governance and the rule of law estimates that $1 trillion of bribes are paid every year. A Reuters series on corruption in Asia found that perceptions of corruption in the emerging markets of Asia have not improved much over the years and have even declined in some cases. This is despite a growing revulsion among people in those countries for business as usual on the “demand” or government side, and a growing realisation from companies on the “supply side” of the bribery equation that payola is simply bad for business.
Protester holds a wanted poster for ousted Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra at a mass anti-government rally in Bangkok.
Part of the problem is mindset and a major attitude adjustment might be needed. People may be fed up with “money politics” and crony capitalism in their countries, but they still pay off people in their neighbourhoods. A U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research study on unpaid parking fines issued to diplomats in New York, home to the U.N., showed Southeast Asian nations again among the league leaders and a remarkable correlation with more conventional measures of corruption. You can take the man out of his corrupt country, but you can’t take the culture of corruption out of the man.
Anti-graft fighters model uniforms that those convicted of corruption offenses inIndonesia willbe required to wear in court and jail.
For years, Indonesia ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world. It permeates almost every level of society, reducing the country’s appeal to foreign investors, and curbing Indonesia’s potential for growth. Today, Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency, known by its acronym KPK, has won plenty of media attention with its Jame Bond-like undercover exploits against corrupt officials. The government is also trying to get at the root of the problem by sending officials and judges to “anti-corruption school.
Passers-by in Jakarta walk past a poster that reads “fight corruption.”
Some OECD countries will even let you take a tax deduction for providing “facilitation payments” to get routine services such as a phone installed. Facilitation payment? Hello, it’s called a bribe, payola, grease, ice, a backhander. It’s corruption, the dictionary definitions of which include moral perversion, depravity, debasement, not to mention rottenness. Okay, that’s a little harsh. We’re not talking about the moral equivalent of, say, paedophilia. But it’s surely a slippery slope from giving the cop some lunch money, to bribing the customs guy to look the other way on a smuggled shipment, to paying off politicians.
Ramon Navaratnam, 73, the Transparency International Malaysia President told me the battle for him started when he was a young man in the finance ministry and he came home one night from work to find a case of whisky on his doorstep from a company bidding on a government contract. “It took a lot of doing, but the company finally took the whisky away. “If I had taken that box of whisky, I can never say no later on.”
With the Rudd Labor government now in power for just over a year, it’s worth looking what at has changed in the country’s foreign policy and its security implications for the region. Is the region, particularly Southeast Asia, ready for Australia’s new advances?
Howard’s pragmatism and ‘forward defence’ doctrine over the previous dozen years was unashamedly aimed at garnering an image of being a “considerable power and significant country” (Downer, 2006). Howard’s loyalty to the United States, no-matter-what, was also aimed at banking up some credit with Washington on the security front. Given the concerns of the time over terrorism (in particular the attack on Bali which killed dozens of Australians), one could argue his staunchly pro-American policy was well founded. Moreover, Downer was quite dismissive of past Labor policy on developing a closer relationship with its immediate neighbours. In 2006, he said of Labor: “In effect, they argue for a retreat to regionalism.”
Last week, Rudd spoke of Australia returning to this regionalism. He spoke of the “dawn of the Asia-Pacific century”, “regional engagement” and Australia’s interests in being pro-active about shaping the strategic environment in the Asia-Pacific. At the same time, the Sinologist Rudd is aware he must keep the China and India plates spinning, conscious of their strategic and financial importance to his commodity-driven economy.
But for over a decade before Rudd’s election, Australia’s relations with its immediate neighbours were frosty. Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad railed at Howard, and argued Australia was not “Asian” in any sense and therefore his attempts to become more involved in Asian affairs should be resisted by Asian countries. Ties with Indonesia were frayed over East Timor. There was friction with Singapore over human rights. And then there was Pauline Hanson, who shot to popularity on a populist policy of curbing Asian immigrationto Australia.
So, is Southeast Asia ready for Australia’s renewed overtures? Or does their history prevent reconciliation?
Now here's an interesting question. The New York Times reports that President-elect Barack Obama wants to make "a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office." But from which one? As NYT staffer Helene Cooper explains, it's a question that's fraught with diplomatic, religious and personal complications. After a day of calling around Washington, she found a consensus:
It’s got to be Cairo. Egypt is perfect. It’s certainly Muslim enough, populous enough and relevant enough. It’s an American ally, but there are enough tensions in the relationship that the choice will feel bold. The country has plenty of democracy problems, so Mr. Obama can speak directly to the need for a better democratic model there. It has got the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that has been embraced by a wide spectrum of the Islamic world, including the disenfranchised and the disaffected.
(Photo: Obama image in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)
That's a diplomatic answer, the kind you'd expect to get inside the Washington Beltway. Let's look at this more from the point of view of religion. If the American president gives a major speech in a Muslim country, it will be seen as an indirect comment on the type of mosque-state relations found in that country. It's not for him as a non-Muslim to endorse a certain type of Islam over another, say Sunni over Shi'ite. But as a politician from a country where church-state relations are a lively issue, one could expect him to ask what message his choice will send concerning the political relationship with religion in the state he chooses.
There is no obvious answer. There are Muslim states with close or distant links to violence in the name of religion, which should rule them out from the start. There are Muslim states that do not respect full equality for women, religious minorities and other groups -- that's a strike against them. Others Muslim states seem stuck in a time warp, or are politically unacceptable because they are not even barely democratic. This is where the diplomats start to see some daylight. But there is also overlapping among these groups, so no model candidate emerges. The world is a complicated place, an insight that should now return to U.S. foreign policy after eight years of denying this reality.
Seen that way, the diplomats Cooper consulted seem too cautious. While there is no ideal candidate, two Muslim countries seem to represent more of what Obama might want to see than Egypt -- Indonesia and Turkey. On Indonesia, Cooper writes "the very fact that Mr. Obama once lived and went to school there would make choosing it seem like cheating." Says who? It's the most populous Muslim nation in the world and it has an Islamist problem that it is fighting better than many others.
Cooper also rules out Turkey because a Turkish diplomat told her his country had no problem with its Islamic identity but it had a secular system. Turkey's certainly not perfect, but isn't it trying more than many other Muslim countries to harmonise its faith, its past and its future in a globalised world?
(Photo: Saudi women pose with Obama cutout in Jeddah, 6 Nov 2008/Susan Baaghil)
So those are my picks. Where do you think Obama should deliver this speech?
