Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 21. August 28 1978

Indonesian Desperation

Indonesian Desperation

This new stage in the war signals the growing desperation of the Indonesian Government at its inability to crush the independence forces. The longer Fretilin holds out the more likely they are to win support throughout the world. Yet even with a massive influx of troops and hardware Suharto's success is not guaranteed. For one thing, it is sure to turn more public attention on East Timor and lose him support.

Furthermore, the Vietnamese experience showed that people fighting for their own rights to self determination have an advantage which no invading force can match: they believe in their cause and are willing to die for it. It is unlikely that the USA will be prepared to go as far as it did in Vietnam, but the nature of its escalating involvement bears too many hallmarks of the earlier struggle for anyone to rest easy.

The presence of the US has another side effect. Indonesian troops have long prided themselves on their own independence, never before being obliged to use mercenaries. The long months of fighting for a cause they do not benefit from and know little about has taken its toll. This open sign of their servile neo-colonial role cannot do much for raising morale.

The US involvement looks suspiciously like a CIA operation. In Angola, the US was unwilling to use regular military personnel, so the CIA recruited mercenaries to supplement the covert supply of finance and weapons. The pattern is the same.

Suharto has a well-documented history of association with the CIA going back to the 1950s, when a group of right-wing intellectuals trained in American Universities gained CIA support. After the overthrow of Sukarno they gained control of the economy and opened the doors to multinationals. US economic domination soon became the major factor in Indonesian development and remains so to this day.