The good, the bad and the hopeful - reflecting on Indonesia

As we descended into Jakarta we were enclosed in the toxic murk that settles over the city like the rain cloud of bad luck over Jonah.

It had been over a year since I had been there, but I had lived in Jakarta and other parts of Indonesia for some 11 years. During that time I have been fortunate enough to gather a Muslim foster son who is now married with a child of his own. I am the happy foster granny to a precocious four-year-old. She will run the country one day.

Australians have a fear of Indonesia that is only equaled by Indonesian’s fear about Australia. The major difference is that Indonesians know far more about Australian politics than Australians know about Indonesia.

I have yet to meet someone in Australia, who is not an Indonesia scholar, who can name the president of Indonesia: while the average Indonesian cab driver could slang off about the racist policies of Howard, Downer’s neo colonial attitude now thankfully gone.

Mid way through 2007 I attended a labour convention in Hong Kong where the Indonesians participating called for nationalisation of mining enterprises, focusing their attention on the massive and corrupt Freeport McMorran mine in West Papua that was known to pay regular tributes to Soeharto.

The largely Muslim participants protested the exploitation of globalisation which allows western consumers to profit from cheap Indonesian labour and showed photographs of foreign-owned factories where asbestos hung in the air and on the faces of the workers like Santa Snow.

The same anger that fuels the type of Islamic rallies seen on Australian TV was this time shot at capitalism and its progeny, the internationalisation of production. Theirs were sophisticated arguments based on political economy and the additional burden placed on the global environment. While they were Muslims and all offered A’salam Aliekum (“may peace be upon you” - the eponymous Muslim greeting), theirs was the language of class struggle, not that of jihad and bombs.

I asked them if things had changed in the six years since I had lived in Jakarta. They said they had, and I was keen to see for myself. The good, the bad, and the hopeful.

And changed they had.

First, the bad

The old town known as Kota, is now a place not to be seen. Once it was a shopping Mecca with classic Batavian architecture, trendy restaurants favoured by the OKB (orang kaya baru, new rich), and software-seeking technocrats; equally hated by the US trade Ambassador Mickey Kantor.

Kota with its factory outlets, bars, gambling dens and strip joints is now a no-go area where violence and drug taking have escalated.

The Jakarta traffic is even worse and made so by unbelievably silly transport policies that favour cars, ill designed bus lanes and non separation of slow vehicles and motor bikes.

Toll roads still owned by the Soeharto family, are groaning with cars. It took us almost two hours to make the journey from the airport into town. We had lots of time to look at the proliferation of development the filling of the wetlands that have protected sea level Jakarta from storm surges.

The once voluble taxi drivers are now silent. People look more stressed than before. As the cost of living hikes leave more and more poor behind, crime and meaningless jobs multiply alongside each other.

I was relieved to see that jokis are still crowding the streets selling their bodies for the half-an-hour transit on the cities major throughways, which require three passengers at peak hours. They are easy to spot, standing on the side of the road with one finger held out in a gesture of “one more”. Seven-year-old children, mothers with babies in batik slings, jilbab-ed and be-jeaned teenagers all sell themselves for a mere 5,000 rupiah (50 cents) which includes the bus fare back to their original location.

The police turn a blind eye to this as they have for the past ten years just like they avoid seeing corruption in their own ranks and among the rich.

And the rich are richer. I met my foster family in Bogor. We stayed at the very popular Novotel where well-heeled families from Jakarta come to enjoy the cooler and marginally cleaner air and women, completely dressed in long tunic, veil and pants, swim in the lap pool. The hotel is now surrounded by multimillion dollar homes. Huge mansions bristling with stainless steel three-storey high windows and doubtless, an alarming number of bathrooms. I wondered hopefully if the owners paid taxes.

For the first time an Indonesian, the Minister for Social Welfare, made the list of Forbes 100 richest men. He is at the centre of the case of the ongoing destructive mud eruptions in East Java that have made life misery for many Indonesians. And for which the good Minister for Social Welfare refuses to take any responsibility.

Indonesia’s problem is not poverty but distribution. And the powers-that-be continue to refuse to acknowledge this - as do aid donors, including Australia. Policies that favour the rich, such as education fees, are still promulgated by the World Bank, eager it seems to live up to its reputation as an instrument of blind capitalism.

The posh suburb of Kebayoran is now dotted with expensive houses being turned to rubble so that even more expensive houses with multiple garages can be built on the site.

Despite this frenzy of consumption and construction, the World Bank, we were told by one of their consultants, had earmarked a US$800 million loan, ready to go.

Apparently no planning guidelines, or projects had been identified, nor guidelines for disbursal, monitoring or evaluation. It was simply a “give ‘em the loan and saddle ‘em with debt” strategy by some empire building banksters. The consultant was concerned that the World Bank actions would undermine the Indonesian Finance Minister’s goals of reducing the rampant corruption and cronyism that has plagued Indonesia since 1945.

The good

The art and literature scene is flowering. Photography and magazine culture is part of youth culture as are plays and radical music.

While Australians would like to characterise Muslims as being down on women, Indonesia has many more women in high places than Australia. “They're called the three divas but the three most powerful women in Indonesia are anything but prima donnas.” Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Trade Minister Mari Pangestu, and the central bank's Senior Deputy Governor Miranda Goeltom form the guiding light that is gradually pulling Indonesia out of the quagmire of back door deals and family franchises.

I was asked to lead a session on occupational health and safety to women trade unionists in Bogor. A veiled engineer in charge of a major power plant in Java asked me about the problems of noise and electromagnetic radiation and an equally veiled air traffic controller asked me about excessive aircraft noise in the tower at Soehkarno Hatta airport. Others came from a range of manufacturing businesses, only one fitting the stereotype of a garment worker. These were feisty, professionally and technically trained women who defy the stereotypes of submissive cowed Muslim women.

Soeharto, in effect, turned Indonesia into one huge franchising operation from which he and his family profited; and continue to do so. The recent Bali Climate Carnival was held in Soeharto-owned hotels. While Sadam killed thousands and was hanged, Soeharto stole from and killed millions, and lives on. Justice is not a notable feature of Indonesia, or of American patronage.

The most public of Australian concerns focuses on Islamic influences in Indonesia. There are many estimates about the number of Muslims in Indonesia. The government would like to insist it is more than 80 per cent but that includes what are known as KTP Muslims - literally ID Card Muslims - who convert for marriage or for social convenience.

And the hopeful

The ABC Asian news services recently trumpeted that Jema’ah Islamiya had a membership of 9,000, no doubt promoting shocked outrage and “I told you so” nodding in Australian suburban lounge-rooms. What they failed to add was that in a population of 260 million, 9,000 does not represent recruitment success. Repeatedly Islamic parties do poorly in the elections. Radical Islam is less popular than Family First.

But that could change. Officials in the Ministry of Religion are beginning to acknowledge that Indonesia could soon be an Islamic state given current Western inspired wars, impoverishment of Muslim communities, ongoing judicial corruption and mismanagement of community conflicts and misdirected aid.

What is of great concern is the amount of money in the form of Zakat (alms) and Wakaf (wills and legacies) coming into Indonesia every day, on the ever increasing number of flights from other Islamic nations. Most of this money does not go though formal government channels and is thus not visible in the system on national accounts. It also goes to the poorer villages which have fallen through the system infected by corruption and ineptitude of the development agencies such as the World and Asian Development Banks.

Amrozi came from such a village. His mother - a widowed peanut farmer; his house - dirt floored and with no reticulated water. Wahabiism finds fertile soil in the powerless and bottom-dwelling poor.

Muslims have religio-financial obligations to give alms to others and where possible to bequeath land and money for the promotion of, and tributes, to Islam. In this way, huge amounts enter Indonesia from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Egypt, Libya, Sudan (yes), Morocco, Bangladesh (yes) and the Philippines. That the latter two, plus Sudan, are themselves poor and themselves targets of development assistance should not go unnoticed, nor should the political and ideological affiliations of each contributor.

Saudi Arabia in particular promulgates the puritan form of Islam known as Wahabiism. Increasingly nations such as Egypt are proponents of Ibn Qtub, the anarcho-Islamicist whose spitfire word inspire the murderous Algerian groups.

Australia’s front line defence has been a blindingly successful long term aid project that seeks to improve Islamic schools. At this point I have to declare interest and say that in 2004 I was part of the evaluation team which found that virtually all the project components were incredibly successful. Students opened and managed libraries where none existed before, parents were involved in fund raising for schools, students were getting scholarships: the secret was that few Australians were involved, the being project largely managed and run by Muslim Indonesians.

However the Bali and Embassy bombings hardened Australian hearts and honed, to a vicious point, official reaction to aid for Islamic programs. It felt like collective punishment. The ignorant media fed this anti Islamic feeling by calling Amrozi the "Smiling Assassin" - ignorant of the cultural norms that make Indonesians respond to anxiety, death, injury, shame and guilt by smiling.

Australian SWAT-like auditors found a Muslim member of the team had downloaded porn. Rather than seeing this is a sign of humanity and an indicator of success, they turned into a swarm of paternalistic Grundys slapping restrictions on computers, installing nanny programs and sacking the well known local consultant. Fundamentalism indeed.

Talking with my friends still in the team, they listlessly complained that the program had lost its spark. “Before, it was exciting; we all shared a commitment to getting the pesantrens working well. We had hope and enthusiasm. We were treated like adults. Now the [new] manager’s nice, but she is like a robot. She has no commitment to Islam or to Indonesia. She could be managing a water supply project in Africa. We are all bored and we have lost enthusiasm.”

This is dangerous for Australia.

Islamic schools are free and are used increasingly by the poor in the wake of user-pays education cost rises. My granddaughter’s kindergarten costs US$400 a term, in a country where the minimum wage is less than US$1,000 a year.

Indonesian’s major complaint to me was that user-pays education excludes the poor who can then only send their children to village pesantrens (Islamic boarding schools) where academic standards are low and curricula restricted. Teachers are often poorly trained and resourced. Into this come the Muslim carpetbaggers from Malaysia and Saudi Arabia using Syhari’a principles to influence Indonesian children to take up the puritan form that they espouse.

I noticed a greater number of swathed heads and long gowns as well as an increase in the number of tragic threadbare beards. Ziuddin Sardar is fond of reminding fanatical Muslims that the prophet wore a beard as the Gillette had yet to be invented.

But the message is the Saudi influence is biting. The way to combat radical Islam is not by weapons, spies and training police, but by supporting the majority of moderate Muslims who want a good education for their children to open the doors of opportunity for which they don’t have the key.

The new Kevin Rudd-led government has many policy seismographs to check before it twiddles with the knobs of international assistance. Right now, and correctly, climate change has centre stage. But waiting in the wings for significant bit parts are the millions of extras who have been disenfranchised and whose lives have been made worse by development assistance to date.

The Howard government was actively disliked in Asia for its neo colonial, expedient foreign policies and paternalistic attitude.

Nehru once said that Indonesia was a nation of beggars. That is still true, but aid patronage does not help it move out of this mire. Puritan Islam’s biggest enemy is enlightenment, social and financial equity, not arrest or detention. We fail intellectually and tactically as a nation if we fail to see this.

Howard’s worst legacies, and the ones hardest to combat, are careless arrogance, infectious ignorance and the alarming and generalised parochialism he promoted. Indonesians. That the West, including Australia, continued to support Soeharto through the worst years of disappearances, torture and detention is a matter of shame. We supported the bed upon which the seeds of radical Islam were sewn. Engaging our largest neighbour with new and curious eyes will be a challenge.