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Indonesia Narcotics and Counternarcotics Operations
Although production of narcotics, particularly
opiate-derived
products from the Golden Triangle in the Thai-Burmese-Lao
border
area, substantially increased during the late 1980s,
Indonesia
did not become either a major producer or user of illicit
drugs.
There was, however, considerable concern on the part of
the
national leadership and police officials that Indonesia
might
become an important drug trafficking center as major drug
routes
in mainland Southeast Asia shifted to take advantage of
Indonesia's relatively innocuous reputation. The booming
tourist
destination of Bali provided a base for individual
traffickers
and transactions. Although there was no extradition treaty
between the United States and Indonesia, Indonesian
authorities
were cooperative in deporting drug suspects, particularly
if the
International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) was
involved. During 1991, for example, a suspected American
drug
trafficker was deported to the United States with the
cooperation
of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the
Indonesian National Police, and Interpol. In addition,
periodic
police campaigns in the Special Region of Aceh and
Sumatera Utara
Province, which were the country's leading producers of
marijuana
(much of it used for local cooking and consumption),
targeted
marijuana fields in joint police/military eradication
operations.
The criminal justice system was still evolving in the
early
1990s, particularly under national and international
scrutiny
because of intense interest in the prosecution of
civilians
charged with criminal or subversive actions in the East
Timor
incident
(see National Defense and Internal Security
, this
ch.).
Those trials, which were monitored by the international
press and
foreign diplomats stationed in Indonesia, were judged to
have
been smoothly run. The trials illustrated the close
relationship
in Indonesia between the larger issues of internal
security and
national defense and Indonesia's criminal justice system.
* * *
Several works treat the development of the Indonesian
armed
forces before 1970, the most balanced and comprehensive
being Ulf
Sundhaussen's The Road to Power: Indonesian Military
Politics
1956-1967. Ernst Utrecht's The Indonesian Army
offers
a very detailed and often critical view from the
perspective of a
former insider. Ruth T. McVey's two-part "The
Post-Revolutionary
Transformation of the Indonesian Army" focuses mainly on
the
military's shortcomings in its early years. An
Indonesian
Tragedy by Brian May and The Army and Politics in
Indonesia by Harold A. Crouch are more concerned with
the
causes and effects of the 1965 coup; they also evaluate
the armed
forces in a somewhat negative light. The National
Struggle and
the Armed Forces in Indonesia, a collection of essays
by
ABRI's former official historian, Nugroho Notosusanto,
presents
the viewpoint of the armed forces and the government
regarding
ABRI's development, its role, and its doctrine. The most
comprehensive look at Indonesian military organization,
the
dwifungsi concept, and the role of the military in
Indonesian society are several works by Harold W. Maynard.
Current reportage is available in the Far Eastern
Economic
Review [Hong Kong] and in the periodically updated
"Current
Data on the Indonesian Military Elite," compiled in
Cornell
University's journal Indonesia. Data on the size
and
composition of the armed forces are collected by the
International Institute for Strategic Studies in its
annual
publication, The Military Balance, and in the
annual
United States Department of Defense Congressional
Presentation
Document.
Annual reports by Amnesty International and Asia Watch
examine the state of human rights practices in Indonesia,
as does
the annual Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices
prepared for the United States Congress by the Department
of
State. (For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of November 1992
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