War of Ideas against Islam
Chapter # 11
Year of the Generals
To understand events in Indonesia on the eve of Ann Dunham's arrival
in Jakarta in 1967 a good place to turn is research of Steve Sailer
from the website, Taki's World, for an October 29, 2014, article
entitled "A Small World."
What is undeniable is that for all of its religious focus, Subud was
involved
in Indonesian politics in that time period. The only question concerns the
extent of this involvement, whether it was important or whether it would
be better to characterize it as secondary, something that may have simply
been pursued on an opportunistic basis. This is my view although somewhere
lurking in a cloak-and-dagger conspiracy theory may be some kind
of uncomfortable truth..
.
Sailer introduced the subject with a straight forward comment that informs
us that Subud's "connections tended to be anti-Communist. Indonesia’s
new dictator, General Suharto, publicly backed Subud." Which, when you
think about it, is news that might go in several different directions.
As for an upheaval, this had happened in the country not all that long
before 1967, in 1965-1966, during a period in which Sukarno was
effectively removed from power and replaced by General Suharto,
and a vast purge of Communists took place. The reason for the purge
was extreme unease among Indonesian elites -as well as popular unrest-
because of growing Communist influence; the party had more members
there than any other nation on Earth outside of Russia and China.
By the time the purge had ended, it took about a year for the full
process to play out, approximately 500,000 Indonesians had been
killed and several hundred thousand more imprisoned. And the
Communist Party had been almost totally wiped out,
its political allies discredited.
The spark that ignited the de facto revolution was an attempted coup
on September 30 of 1965 that gave an opening to people in power
not only to suppress the uprising, but to seize even greater power and,
from it, to reorganize the state.
To the extent that there was conflict at the official level it was between
Islamists in the army and secularists in the army and in the state.
Inasmuch
as Islam was the majority religion in the country there was no possibility
of marginalizing Muslims altogether but Suharto, from every indication,
wanted to outflank them wherever he could. By 1980 this policy became
untenable. Muslims had organized themselves effectively and their numbers
were overwhelming; Suharto needed to change course and made his peace
with Sufi Islam anyway, and with the more 'moderate' among orthodox
Muslims.
But the issue here is the situation as it existed from 1967 until
some time in the 1970s.
Incidentally, many Indonesians have just one name. In the past a British
journalist added a fictional first name to Indonesia's first head of state
because,
in his view, otherwise most westerners would be needlessly confused. Hence
Indonesia's ruler became "Achmad Sukarno," but that isn't correct despite
the fact that documents sometimes use this form.
An essay by John Braddock published at WSWS, the World Socialist
Web Site, for July 7, 2009, provides useful information. This document
is available from a service called Global Research.
.
To be sure, exactly why WSWS looked into this matter is unclear,
although a reasonable guess is that various Marxist-Leninists would like
to discredit Suharto and, back in 2009, possibly Obama as well.
On what grounds? As unlikely as this sounds the "Left Socialists"
at WSWS seem to have thought they had a case against Barack Hussein
as accessory to murder and other serious crime during the period when
Communists in Indonesia were being slaughtered in great numbers.
.
The trouble with this view, if, indeed, this is what is behind the WSWS
essay,
is that Barack Hussein was a young boy at the time and in no position to do
much of anything to support anti-Communist activities in a country where
he didn't even know the language -not for a year or so after arriving.
.
In any case, WSWS people did some valuable research and it is worth
recounting. I disagree -vehemently with Marxist-Leninists but credit
where credit is due.
The title of the July 11, 2009, story is:
Historian says US backed “efficacious terror”
in 1965 Indonesian massacre
What got Braddock's attention was the fact that the Darwin-based
Southeast Asian Times had reported that the mass killings could be seen
as abetted by Americans affiliated with the CIA. The view of the article
was that the West wanted to control events in Indonesia as much as
that might be possible at a time when the United States was engaged in war
in Viet Nam and in a contest with Red China and the Soviet Union. And,
indeed, "immediately after the coup, the US administration rushed to
express
political support for the Suharto regime." Along with that went "covert
monetary assistance to the Indonesian armed forces" and arms shipments
originating in Thailand. There was even more but to give you an idea.
As well, while there is no evidence at all to suggest that the US had
anything
to do with the coup itself, it probably was the case that the takeover took
place with assurances of American support.
.
As the news story added, "US diplomats and CIA officers, including the
former US ambassador to Indonesia and Australia, Marshall Green,
subsequently admitted working hand-in-glove with Suharto in carrying
through the massacres." This included use of American intelligence to
identify a large number of Communists.
Then there are archive documents that were declassified and released
to the public in 1999. These papers show that the Johnson White House
was "actively agitating for the formation of a military regime, and urging
its embassy in Jakarta to co-ordinate closely with the army." JBJ added
that he wanted Suharto to obliterate the Communists. Both the British
and Australian governments concurred.
The article also said that various Muslim organizations worked in
co-operation
with elements in the military to "eradicate" the new "proletarian" classes
then arising because their further progress could undercut the Muslim
power base of "traditional landowners and vested religious interests."
In true Muslim fashion, these killings bore the hallmarks of jihadist
terrorism. "Many victims were either beheaded, garrotted, or had
their throats slit with knives or machetes wielded by the Islamic militias.
This takes us to a 2015 article by Mike Billington, "Obama and the
Indonesian Murder Cult." It is difficult to know exactly what to say about
this piece. It was written under the auspices of Lyndon LaRouche,
widely regarded as a crackpot or no better than a malcontent.
.
On the subject of LaRouche's credibility what should be said is that even
a broken clock is right two times every day. That is, while he deserves
more than a little of the criticism he receives from the media and from
'mainstream' politicians, sometimes he hits the target.
.
In this case, the Billington article (presumably cleared by LaRouche)
is a mixed bag. Especially objectionable is the implication that a
schoolkid
named Barack Hussein, learning to read and write and add up numbers,
was somehow culpable for events in Indonesia between 1967 and 1971
-which is preposterous. If anything, my dismay at Obama is even more
severe than LaRouche's but it does no-one any good at all to make claims
-or implicit claims- that cannot stand up to basic tests of probability.
.
This said, LaRouche, that is, Billington writing on behalf of LaRouche,
did some valuable homework that enables us to piece together more of
the puzzle of Obama's years in Indonesia.
.
What Billington learned was that a 1971 Subud meeting at a place named
Cilandak, a Subud compound, was attended by Suharto at least on one day,
and was the site of a large scale Subud conference. And not incidentally,
while there is no definitive proof, quite possibly it was attended by Ann
Dunham and Lolo Soetoro, husband and wife at that time. But more to
the point the meeting was notable for what it ostensibly shows about Subud
in the mid-1960s and somewhat later. Here is how events were reported,
verbatim, as outlined by Billington; it begins by discussing an
"informant"
identified only as "an American."
.
"One evening at the week-long conference, the young American was chatting
with a group of older [Subud] members from Chile, along with several other
Americans and a few Indonesians. He asked the Chileans about the election
of President Salvador Allende the previous year, 1970. The Chileans very
heatedly denounced Allende as a communist who was destroying Chile.
The young member had read about Allende and thought he had been
doing some positive things for the country, and tried to defend his
policies."
.
"The Chilean Subud members became extremely agitated, and, joined by
the other Americans and the Indonesians, angrily berated the young
American. Finally one of them burst out: “You don’t understand.
The communists are evil. When the communists were taking over Indonesia,
Bapak called on all Subud members to pick up their machetes and help
cleanse the country of this evil.”
.
This account, brief as it is, is nonetheless revealing.
.
Not that it is smart to accept everything said at face value. There are
too many problems for that. And people may exaggerate, or the
"view from the trenches" may be different than those of decision makers.
However, there is a minimum that seems certain, namely, anti-Communist
sentiments shared by Suharto and Bapak, and a willingness to assist
the new government in its actions against Communists. Whether
Subud members carried out machete attacks seems very doubtful
simply because the cult espouses a peaceful ideology which is
centered on the meditative practice known as latihan. But strong feelings
are unmistakable in this report and are consistent with some kind
of Suharto-Bapak working relationship or friendship. Which is
all that is necessary for purposes of this essay.
.
Regardless, it would not be smart to dismiss the possibility that some
Subud members, acting on their own, carried out violent attacks
against Communists. It would not be the first time in history that
a group-within-a-group took matters into its own hands and
physically attacked people. When Billington said that there was
a cover-up masking Subud involvement in a government program
of genocide -most Communists in Indonesia at that time were Chinese-
what cannot be dismissed is the possibility that some Subud people
did, in fact, participate. However, without further evidence this is
as far as this part of the story can be taken.
What should also be treated with great skepticism was the charge,
also reported by Billington, that Subandrio, the Foreign Minister
under Sukarno, that Bapak and his Subud cult were "CIA assets"
during the time when the Sukarno regime was overthrown. There
may be some truth to this allegation but how much?
No-one can say.
What is more compelling is Billington's observation that there is a
"close connection between Subud and British intelligence." This refers
to the part played by John Bennett in popularizing Subud in the 1950s.
Bennett, a minor celebrity in British elite circles, had done much
to popularize Bapak's new religion.
Of course it must be kept in mind that Bennett became disenchanted with
Subud and gravitated to Idries Shah's version of Sufism. By the early
1960s,
at least five years or so before the rise of Suharto to power in Indonesia,
Bennett was no longer active in Bapak's group. Yet he didn't leave in
acrimony and did keep some of his contacts current.
.
More to the point, Bennett was "head of British military intelligence for
the Mideast in the 1920s," as Billington pointed out. It would seem like
a good bet that even though he no longer had professional relations with
foreign intelligence that he retained contacts with cloak-and-dagger
people.
He could well have acted as some kind of "back channel" between
Subud insiders and the British foreign service -who had serious interest
in Indonesian politics. Not only for the sake of the United Kingdom but
as a partner in alliance with the Aussies.
.
Here we should look at Steve Sailer's article again. As Sailer said:
"Subud seems to have been especially influential among Australian elites
posted to Jakarta." This can be concluded generally but also through
individual examples. Hence, Sailer cited the case of the novelist
"Blanche D’Alpuget, the second wife of former Aussie prime minister
Bob Hawke," who "was married to an Australian diplomat in Jakarta
when she began her affair with the rising politician."
.
Sailer continued with an observation about "Murray Clapham, a legend
among Australian foreign correspondents for his hard man’s role
in the 1965 Indonesian countercoup," someone who "was another
Subud follower."
.
Not at all incidentally, even though he still was a schoolboy, it seems
as if
the young Barack Hussein met some of the Australians and carried memories
well into his adulthood. Thus, as Sailer observed:
"An odd passage in the President’s life was his love affair in New York
in 1983-1985 with Genevieve Cook, the daughter of the future Australian
ambassador to the United States. She kept quiet about this until
cooperating
with Washington Post reporter David Maraniss for his exhaustive 2012
biography of Barack Obama. Maraniss describes their meeting at a Manhattan
party from Miss Cook’s point of view, emphasizing how pleasantly surprised
she was by how both had so many Indonesian connections. But Maraniss
pointedly doesn’t mention the names of the people who must have carefully
set up the meeting of the two Indophiles, Barack and Genevieve."
.
Michael J. Cook, Genevieve's father, was the segundo at the Australian
embassy and was to serve as the star intelligence analyst for Prime
Minister
Hawke. Genevieve's mother was an expert on Indonesian art -which is
most interesting inasmuch as Ann Dunham would also become a docent
of Indonesian art.
.
Indeed, close relationships could continue even after the breakups of
marriages.
After a divorce, the mother remarried; her new husband was Philip Jessup,
the son of a noted Truman Administration official and at one time the
chief lawyer for International Nickel -which has a billion dollar
smelting
plant on the island of Sulawesi, aka, Celebes.
.
In other words, the possibility exists that as late as the mid 1980s Obama
was still associated with Subud, assuming, that is, some association
as far back as his years in Indonesia. But it is necessary to be
circumspect; we are discussing a schoolboy with a pre-teen's
level of understanding -even if this isn't zero, and may have
been something that impressed him and that stayed
in his memory.
.
Still, Sailer was not convinced about this theory -there isn't any
evidence
that makes the idea likely. Instead, it is more probable that Tim Jessup,
Genevieve’s stepbrother, who was an anthropologist working in the
islands, knew Ann Dunham, and made the contacts that, for a short time,
brought Barack Hussein together with the young Australian lady.
.
But either way, we can see the shadow of Subud in Obama's life
well past the time he lived in or near Jakarta.
.
..
None of this information definitively demonstrates a bond between Suharto
and Bapak, but there are plenty of grounds to infer exactly that.
-------------------------------
.
The Australians had some part in Indonesian politics themselves. Not, as
far
as I can tell, because of an uplifting political ideology or great
expectations
or other such noble motives, but for practical reasons. Australia is
located
about as close to Indonesia as Cuba is with respect to the United States.
The distance from Cape York (the northernmost point in Australia) to
Irian Jaya (western New Guiana) is a hundred miles or so. The distance
from Cape Londonderry (in Western Australia province) to Indonesian
Timor is approximately 300 miles.
.
More relevant, Australia has economic interests in Indonesia, strategic
interests,
and has strong desire for political stability in the archipelago.
.
To understand what was happening in 1967, however, Indonesian domestic
politics needs to be explained; what was at stake was far larger than
Australian
interests, or those of any other foreign state. Even then Indonesia was
the fifth
most populous country in the world and this meant complexity and
competition
for power. It also meant upheaval after decades of misrule by Sukarno
.
.
It was at this time that the new strongman, Suharto, a decided improvement
over the previous potentate, set about reconstructing the nation -which
was until then an economic mess due to the Marxist-influenced officials
who made one mistake after another in guiding the nation in its plans,
most of which were failures, toward development.
.
------------------------
As a matter of fact, Indonesians themselves are able to understand the
obvious.
Hence, almost as soon as Suharto assumed power in 1966 he set out to
minimize the role played by Islam in his country. Which is not simply a
matter
of hearsay; in those first years several Christians were appointed to his
cabinet
and new religious policy was instituted under the rubric of "Pancasila."
.
The subject of Pancasila is somewhat complicated -there is useful
discussion
of this in the articles in Wikipedia about Indonesian history and
Indonesian
religious history, but it is roughly comparable to the policy of Ataturk in
Turkiye in the 1920s, still dominant in the 1960s , and even to the policy
of Saddam Hussein in Iraq contemporaneous with events in Indonesia.
There was even a small scale version of the same phenomenon in Arab
Palestine
in the 1990s and early 2000s. And from scattered reports this may also be
true
for Kurdistan, Tajikistan, and possibly Azerbaijan.
.
What this is mostly about is reuse of the ancient religion of a country or
a population as something to rally around, on which to base a cultural
revival and give spirit to rising nationalism. Which is not to say that
Saddam wasn't always a megalomaniac and a criminal, but at one time
in the past he decided to revive ancient Mesopotamian religious traditions
as an alternative to Islam. Among some Palestinians the subject of cultural
revival centered on ancient Canaanite deities like the Goddess Asherah.
In Persian cultural areas of the "stans" (Tajikistan, etc,) it was
Zoroastrianism
that was revived -or that re-emerged from centuries of secrecy- to serve
cultural needs. Ataturk didn't go that far, he was a secularist more than
anything else, but he also went the furthest in dismantling Islam,
including abolition of the Caliphate.
.
The new policy of Pancasila was consistent with official policy decreed
by Suharto's "New Order" that took effect in 1967 -the year when
Ann Dunham arrived in Indonesia. This policy was based on economic
development, including openness to foreign investment and it was stridently
anti-Communist. In the process of consolidating his regime Suharto
sidelined
some of the groups that had been his supporters, most notably the Islamic
parties. He also exiled to overseas diplomatic posts a number of leading
military figures who, it seems, were critical of various of Suharto's
plans
for the future of the country. He had, in effect, cleared the decks of
nearly
all obstacles to his rule, hence to reconstruction of Indonesia.
.
Not everything worked out as Suharto had hoped, and in the end
he was almost as susceptible to cronyism and corruption as Sukarno,
but to speak of the heady years of the late 1960s things were very
different
and very hopeful. It does not seem like an exaggeration to say that most
of the country looked forward to the creation of a 'brave new world.'
.
-----------------
Suharto and Subud
.
A number of articles mention the reputed fact that Suharto gave support
to Subud in those early years around 1967. But what is the evidence?
.
Unfortunately such evidence as exists is sketchy but it does affirm the
conclusion that there was a connection. Exactly what this was remains
a mystery but some kind of Suharto / Bapak friendship is certain.
This, of course, means that whatever was being said about Subud
in those years, or that has been said subsequently, is incomplete and
misleading if this relationship is glossed over. After all, General Suharto
was the ruler of the country, equivalent for Indonesia as the President
of the United States is for Americans. And, clearly, if a head of state
was on good terms with the leader of an otherwise obscure religious cult
it would be of national as well as international interest.
.
.
Here is that evidence:
.
The first item consists of film footage reputedly showing Suharto visiting
a large scale gathering of Subud people at the group's Cilandak compound
in 1971. The Youtube source is-
.
_International Subud Congress, Cilandak, 1971 - YouTube_
(https://www.google.ca/url?url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAbjAF7IEo4&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc
=s&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwiQpJSAzL3OAhVD5mMKHcasAsMQtwIIFDAA&usg=AFQjCNEZfL9FX6MA4u
UvovQPrHwqkO7kLg)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAbjAF7IEo412 Mar 2008 - 3 min - Uploaded
by Arianela
Bapak greets President Suharto outside new latihan hall.
Glimpses of over 1000 people ...
.
.
To be sure, 1971 is not 1967 but if this footage is authentic, which it
seems
to be in that pre-Photoshop era, it is entirely plausible to infer a
friendship
that dates well before 1971 even if we can't be certain exactly when.
.
The video does not provide narration, however, and it would take someone
with Indonesian expertise that I do not have to tease out all the
information
the film contains.
.
--------------------
.
.---------------------------------------------------.
An additional inference can be drawn from another retrospective
consideration. This returns us to Steve Sailer's 2014 article,
"A Small World," in which we are informed that Subud owns
a skyscraper in Jakarta as well as a productive mining operation
in Indonesian Borneo. This kind of wealth presupposes connections.
.
After all, there are now no more than about 10,000 members worldwide,.
a figure that has never been much larger than 20,000 and which seems
to be shrinking. No known past or present members are reported to
have sufficient money to afford the construction of a high rise building,
something that probably has a value in the $100 million range.
.
A successful mining company could earn considerable money but that
begs the question, "where did the cash come from to buy a mining
company?" All known Subud ventures of the past -and there were
several that were rather ambitious, such as organizing a major bank,
were failures. Subud literature is filled with accounts of these business
ventures and their unhappy endings.
.
However, the problem would be solved if we assume connections to the
elite of Indonesian society, viz, to Suharto and his circle. While this is
speculation for now, this circumstantial evidence deserves to be
considered as relevant and suggestive.
.
----------------------------
.
.
A 2010 book by Mark Woodward, Java, Indonesia and Islam,
takes this further. In his discussion of Aliran Kepercayaan, a catch-all
term for a variety of mystical Indonesian cults, he observed that
a number of groups of this persuasion have assured reporters that they
have received sanction and support from Suharto or his wife -or from
other well placed officials in government. The connection to Subud is
the fact that this terminology refers to the spiritual traditions of Java
in which one finds a blend of Animism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and
the Sufi version of Islam, and the fact that Subud is sometimes
categorized as a special form of Aliran Kepercayaan.
.
You can also classify Subud as a form of Kebatinan, something commented
on in a 2007 volume by Martin Van Bruinessen, Sufism and the 'Modern'
in Islam. According to this text, Subud is more appropriately thought of
as
a version of kebatinan, a word that means something like "religion"
although
with an unspoken subtext to the effect that what may be meant is syncretism
that combines more than one established faith into something that can be
regarded as either a conventional religion or as a new brand of
spirituality.
As Van Bruinessen pointed out, Subud was given special status under the
Suharto regime, at least for maybe a decade although not much beyond that.
.
In any case the impression is strong that in those early years Suharto had
a stake in the success of kebatinan religions and, it seems certain, this
included personal relationships with their leaders, especially Bapak.
Problem #1, however, is Lolo Soetoro's motivation to return to Indonesia
and Ann Dunham's motivation to stay in Hawaii while her husband relocated
to Jakarta. Political events were happening in Indonesia and possibly if
not
probably Soetoro had connections to the Suharto faction.
1966 was a violent year in the archipelago, large numbers of people were
getting killed. It might be dangerous to return. Hence it would not be
advisable
for Ann Dunham to travel the Indonesia at that time. Danger could have
lurked
for Soetoro also, but his actions on behalf of Suharto could result in an
important break for him; if so, it would have been worth the risk.
There isn't much further we can go following this line of reasoning. There
aren't
enough solid facts to be certain about exactly what transpired.
--------------------
Here is the situation as Ann Dunham, the young Barack Obama at her side,
prepared to leave Hawaii and rejoin her husband, Lolo Soetoro-
The year 1967 was pivotal, that much is certain. As the Wikipedia article
reported: "The new president enlisted a group of mostly American-educated
Indonesian economists, dubbed the "Berkeley Mafia", to formulate
government economic policy. By cutting subsidies and government debt,
and reforming the exchange rate mechanism, inflation dropped from
660% in 1966 to 19% in 1969. The threat of famine was alleviated
by influx of USAID rice aid shipments in 1967 to 1968."
.
This was not all. The "Foreign Investment Law of January 1967" granted
tax privileges to overseas investors and expedited transfers of large sums
of money without impediment. Indeed, capital began rolling in which,
while its primary objective, rejuvenation of the economy did take place,
allowed Suharto to "enrich... himself and his family through business
dealings
and widespread corruption."
.
Also in 1967, Suharto "adopted a policy of neutrality in the Cold War
with quiet alignment with the Western bloc (including Japan and South
Korea) with the objective of securing support for Indonesia's economic
recovery. Western countries, impressed by Suharto's strong anti-communist
credentials, were quick to offer their support." Diplomatic relations with
China
were broken off as well, amidst charges that the Chinese Peoples Republic had
helped Indonesian Communists during the failed 1965 coup.
Relations were not restored resumed until 1990.
.
Starting in 1967 several agreements were reached with the Russians and
various East European regimes to restructure debts that mostly financed the
Indonesian military. These debts had become onerous and were the
legacy of Sukarno.
.
And, after relations with Malaysia were finally normalized in 1966,
ending years of disputes about territory, Indonesia joined the then-new
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) aligned with the West.
.
Lastly in 1967, Suharto's government was able to obtain low-interest loans
from a variety of foreign nations which allowed Indonesia to control
the budget deficit that Sukarno was responsible for.
.
These efforts paid off.
.
Within a year or so a number of multinational business firms began
operations in Indonesia. Heading the list was a company I once worked for
as a technical draftsman, Inco, viz., International Nickel Company,
drawing
plans for undersea manganese mining equipment that looked like machines
invented by science-fiction screen writers. The specifications and
preliminary
plans were prepared in the engineering offices of the company; I was
responsible for developing those ideas into finished drawings that could
be
used to fabricate the devices. This was temporary work during 1977.
.
In any case, other companies followed, not only American businesses,
but corporations from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and an assortment
of European firms, plus Australia. As Suharto had anticipated, this
investment spurred the rise of a native Indonesian capitalist class. Often
these
new entrepreneurs were Chinese-Indonesians but the effect was to bring a
measure of prosperity to the country mostly across ethnic lines. Where the
state had owned and operated such light industry as there was,
which wasn't much, now the country began to experience a boom
in the private sector.
.
This is the background for the arrival of Ann Dunham and her young son.
It is also background for the story of Eva Bartok and her daughter.
.
For what must be pointed out is that Suharto was supportive of Subud and
was a friend of Bapak. Dunham reached Jakarta at a propitious time. Subud
would figure in with Suharto's concepts
for a new kind of Indonesia
--
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