___________________________________________
Subject: your Letter to the Editors
From: flc2[at]cornell.edu [Fred Conner]
Date: 09/01/07 04:40
To: lismatt[at]optusnet.com.au
cc: dlh10[at]cornell.edu [Deborah Homsher]
Dear Matt Davies,
Unfortunately, your revised letter is not suitable for publication. In my opinion, its tone is too aggressive and combative. Feel free to revise it yet again and resubmit it. Be aware, however, that time is running out for us to be able to accept and prepare your letter for the October issue of *Indonesia.*
Fred Conner
Book Review Editor
___________________________________________
Subject: Re: Your letter to SEAP editors
From: flc2[at]cornell.edu [Fred Conner]
Date: 08/15/07 04:40
To: lismatt[at]optusnet.com.au
cc: dlh10[at]cornell.edu [Deborah Homsher]
Dear Mr. Davies,
I'm the SEAP book-review editor and Deborah Homsher has turned over your "letter to the editors" project to me. Yes, we will consider publishing the revised response that you submitted on 10 August.
In the coming weeks I'll do a light editing of your letter and format it for publication. Of course, you will get to see that version before it's published and to weigh in with corrections and comments.
Following standard practice, before publication I will share a copy of your letter with the reviewer, Leena Avonius, and invite her to craft a response. If she chooses to reply in writing, both items will be published simultaneously. After that, we won't entertain any further discussion on this particular matter.
Thank you for taking the time to rewrite your letter and giving us the chance to alert our readers to different points of view.
Fred Conner
**************
Fred Conner
Assistant Editor/Book Review Editor
Indonesia journal
Southeast Asia Program Publications
Cornell University, Kahin Center
640 Stewart Avenue
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-255-4359
607-277-1904 (fax)
http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/southeastasia/publications/index.asp
___________________________________________
Subject: Indonesia's War over Aceh
From: dlh10[at]cornell.edu [Deborah Homsher]
Date: 08/01/07 03:03
To: lismatt[at]optusnet.com.au
Dear Dr. Davies,
We will be able to publish your response to the review of your book, "Indonesia's War over Aceh," that was published in Indonesia 83, in the October issue of Indonesia. Please send a Word file of the document by attachment.
Forgive me if this next piece of advice is unwelcome, but as an editor I would recommend that you ask a diplomatic colleague to read your reply before submitting the final version to us. Your own authority will be enhanced by a firm, relatively brief, even cool, rebuttal.
Sincerely,
Deborah Homsher
Deborah Homsher
Managing Editor
Southeast Asia Program Publications
The Kahin Center, Cornell University
640 Stewart Avenue
Ithaca, NY 14850
Phone: 607 255 4359
Fax: 607 277 1904
www.einaudi.cornell.edu/southeastasia/publications
___________________________________________
Subject: Submission enquiry
From: lismatt[at]optusnet.com.au
Date: 07/13/07 19:37
To: SEAP-Pubs[at]cornell.edu
Dear Ms Homsher,
I wish to submit my reply to Leena Avonius' review of my book Indonesia's War over Aceh.
Despite my best efforts since knowing of the review in April, I could not obtain a copy of Indonesia Vol. 83 as early as I hoped. As CIP staff may confirm from my e-mail enquiries, I experienced repeated hindrance while trying to sight the article via both the Indonesia web site's electronic application for journal subscription and the 'pay-per-view/article' functions (I believe those of the site's software designs have now been altered or removed). Furthermore, local and interstate libraries here advised me of delays of several months due to their subscription arrangements. I have only this week had access - finally - to Indonesia Vol. 83.
I feel it is important to readers that Indonesia publishes my reply for its October edition. Given my unusual troubles trying to procure that latest volume, I feel it would be only fair to accommodate my submission, which I would have much preferred to make within one month of the review's publication.
Please advise as soon as possible if you can grant my request. If so, I will post a print of my reply via airmail--courier service upon your confirmation, or merely email a .pdf file if such electronic submission is acceptable in rights of reply and the regrettable circumstances of delay in this case.
Thank you for your attention,
Matthew N. Davies
[residential address, etc.]
[Below is my original reply, as posted on the western/US-initiated Indonesian studies mailing list, possibly without authorized clearance by arbiters of "free speech, democracy, liberalist enlightenment", etc. I sent this reply to Cornell on 17 July 2007, hence the e-mail preamble:
Subject: Reply to review in Indonesia Vol. 83
From: lismatt[at]optusnet.com.au
Date: 17/07/07 02:52
To: SEAP-Pubs[at]cornell.edu
Dear Ms Homsher,
Attached is my reply to Leena Avonius' review of my book Indonesia's War over Aceh. Please acknowledge receipt of this mail and its attachment. I look forward to your confirmation that this reply can appear in the forthcoming October edition of Indonesia.Thank you for your attention,
Matthew N. Davies [address & contact details]]
Leena Avonius' review of my book Indonesia's War over Aceh (Indonesia 83) raises several points of concern where a reviewer attempts the task with little or no specialization in the reviewed subject matter. As Avonius herself wrote separately to me: hers is “a different discipline”, which she explained as a possible reason for her difficulties in engaging with my study. Unfortunately, she made no such candid disclaimer in her review. Avonius' openness with me stopped abruptly anyway: she did not supply my two e-mailed requests to her for a copy of her review (maybe it stayed “classified” in Finland?); she did not even deign to reply to my second request around a month later.
But the review's most conspicuous and revealing deficiency is its omission of my book's polemical approach, which deploys in each chapter as a secondary mission. Indonesia's War over Aceh criticizes several other researchers in the field for complacency, uncritical “groupthink” and plain old factual and analytical errors; it also assails (with bolshier zeal) the harder, elusive targets in my old profession of intelligence work. In my book's reception so far after publication, it seems my critique has so annoyed vested private and institutional interests that the polemic must be airbrushed out lest there be wider critical scrutiny of certain established academic, diplomatic and government circles. My complaint here is no mere exasperated gripe by an ex-bush soldier, but one that should concern all sincere researchers in our studies. The polemic in my book points to some apparent triumphs of “network” and hierarchy over scholarship. My reply here aims to interdict the reviewer in case she means to join those sometimes gaudy, smug and otherwise vicious Roman processions.
Another glaring omission in the review is the role of my book's maps, tables and other illustrations (a total of 30) presenting extensive research detail for more concentrated focus on the war's developments as treated within the text. That major graphic effort, at least equal to the energy spent on the text and still (to my knowledge) unchallenged by reviews and other studies, should elicit some mention. Given that Avonius was a diplomatic participant in Aceh's peace process with its crucial considerations for combatants' troop and weapon totals, for example, we would also expect her to show some ability in confirming or countering my book's graphic illustration and chapter discussion of such details, especially where they contradict some claims by the Aceh Monitoring Mission. She shirks both tasks. Is this why she omits mention of my Chapter 1 study into GAM's structure, and their personnel and weapon strengths? It must take a sturdy and fully loaded airbrush to wipe 14 pages, two tables and a map, with all their basic - even causal - relevance to the book's subject! Her apparent timidity is regrettable given my book's timely and accurate anticipation of obstacles and dangers in Aceh's peace process and ensuing tensions within the Acehnese resistance.
As my book implores on page three, it is essential that researchers of an army's war immerse themselves in the specialized military areas of doctrine, sub-culture, terminology, and localized variations, in a self-evidently similar way to engineering's importance in studies of bridges and construction projects, for example. By contrast, Avonius depicts my own immersion into the study as causing me to “drown in (a) swamp of acronyms and details”. But as a military-experienced specialist in this field, I swim Breast Stroke through, and Australian Crawl across, such deep, dynamic torrents of operational and bureaucratic terminology - including their Indonesian tributaries. Some may regard me an arrogant yet average swimmer, aided unfairly by the scuba gear of professional experience (and yes, enough prominent Australians truly deserve a reputation as unscrupulous sports, opportunistic charlatans and ruthless cheats). From Avonius' odd perspective however, an amphibious writer's specialized and detailed knowledge becomes a hazardous drawback. The reviewer, dry and static on shore, implies that her own ignorance of such specifics constitutes a virtue of innocence, unsullied by subject matter facts, free of the empirical contamination risked in primary sources! Perhaps Avonius loses sight of my discussion as I dive ever deeper into the source material. From other parts of her review (and a February 2007 conference paper), her avowed comprehension of some parts of my book suggests that she need not feel so out of her depth in those rushing waters she seems to fear: daily conversation in Indonesian helps; regular, conversant reference to TNI—POLRI sources makes it easier still, and; further reading on (especially US) military doctrine abounds in the public domain. I hope that Avonius is not that “Indonesianist” type who feels rather better suited to those shallow ponds of journalistic opinion and non-Indonesian language sources. As many of us know, that species of “researcher” should only wade there too under close supervision, in clear view of the lifeguards...
My most personally indignant objection is to Avonius' insidious allegation against my integrity, claiming that “reading this book starts to resemble surfing the Internet...as if the author has followed numerous intriguing links, and decided to pass them on”. On the one hand, a conscientious reader could infer from such comment that my book was born of plagiarism or, at least, dependency on others' thoughts and research; examination of my references proves such insinuation unsustainable, even defamatory. Other possible inference is that my book lacks structural integrity, but she omits the reason my chapters' conclusions tend to “jump from one argument to another”. I say again: it is a polemic, with description and analysis preceding corrective raids against some established apparatus in the field. Avonius' ill-considered comment substitutes fact with imagination, further concealing my book's polemical treatment of other studies, but inviting questions into her own academic integrity.
Other misrepresentation is balder and, I believe, even more professionally irresponsible. Most obvious is Avonius' spurious complaint that I do not explain the need or relevance for comparisons with East Timor and Northern Ireland (she contradicts her own stance later, imposing strict orders to apply such universal context for non-military syariah topics!). In fact, I highlight commonalities and differences between Aceh and East Timor militia campaigns, for example, in accordance with the book's title and primary mission of historical description and analysis. On page 172 I state: “In this broader paramilitary activity, Aceh showed some more substantial parallels, and key differences, with contemporary and preceding East Timor and Papua cases”, which I set out in detail to emphasize Aceh developments. One Northern Ireland—Aceh comparison appears (pp. 237—8), though less critically, from a British MoD retired general and consultant in discussions with Indonesia's Defense Ministry about Aceh, while in other cases my book evokes Ulster in analysing certain strategic emphases of Jakarta's Aceh campaigns (Aceh's gerrymandering was one part where I felt direct comparison would insult the reader's general knowledge). I find it disturbing that Avonius – a European somehow involved in Aceh's peace process – would need more explicit guidance in contemplating these issues. If she fails to note the need or relevance for such comparison, I fear she runs a serious risk of irrelevance in her own field of avowed expertise.
Contrary to another of Avonius' misleading claims, my book does indeed offer “new information on the legal and illegal business activities of the TNI in Aceh” i.e., reported detail overwhelmingly not appearing in the McCulloch—Kingsbury study, and hitherto unseen in English. Avonius would know this if she checks both studies' sources. Indonesia's War over Aceh contains similar focus, but offers some different discussion about those details of formal and informal TNI—POLRI economies involving pay, recruitment, compensation, graft, extortion, plunder and fraud. As I allude (p. 103), my book does not separate into such broader study of institutionalized TNI—POLRI business, but adheres more closely to that area's warfighting considerations. My investigation of TNI—POLRI sub-cultural and individual business realms makes greater emphasis on their motivational aspects of aggression, stress, conformity, unit logistics, competition, incentive and privation.
On my Chapter 6 treatment of syariah as a sub-strata of war via intra-Islamic contest, Avonius' rash excursion develops misrepresentation into caricature. All her sentences here are problematic, misleading and too remote from my actual text, forcing my disciplined discussion of institutional and cultural complexity into her own simplistic understanding of the topic and her alluring pretences to grasp the now officially fashionable fields of “Islam in Indonesia” and Aceh. By disengaging fully from my chapter's (and book's) context of Indonesian warfare, Avonius miscontextualizes her own review, ignoring my chapter's properly maintained counterinsurgency focus. Instead she demands her own implicitly preferred but altogether different context from a separate book on syariah, rather than my book about Indonesia's war and its treatment of syariah's relevance thereof. Thus does she present the unedifying spectacle of plunging head-first into that classic reviewers' pit-trap, then creating “criticism” to mask her obviously early capitulation in her task while my book and its topics envelop her. To airbrush over the aquatic graffiti-taunts begun in Avonius' review: she breaches basic rules of etiquette and safety at the public pool, endangering my book (and by precedent our studies in general) with artificial ballast obviously inappropriate to my study's design and navigational purpose. Conscientious, disciplined academics will have noted Avonius' transgression there. In a professional sense, she may find she has tried body-surfing too close to large and agile patrolling sharks, while ensnaring herself on that drifting net spun, while ashore, from her own hubris.
To analyse in detail: Avonius subtly edits my original phrase “a uniform Indonesian interpretation of Islam” (p. 189), isolates it from earlier and closer following text on syariah in militia processes and state bureaucratic structures (p. 173, 178, 189—91), thereby decontextualizing it from my book's primary mission ("Indonesia's War..."). My study refers to unremarkable, uniform state and bureaucratic interpretations of religion mainly from: Egyptian syariah training of judges selected nationwide; national hierarchies of religionist discipline and theological authority; similarly controlled ranks of syariah police, and; related TNI—POLRI staff functions. Her review also mis-attributes to me a simplistic notion of Indonesian Islamic orthodoxy, while my actual description is far less controversial i.e., “an orthodox Indonesian Islam deployed” from vast, centralized and disciplined state hierarchy (p. 190). She then claims “not to discredit (my) main point", which she conjures by her own superficial appreciation into "the military played an active role in imposing the religious law...", thus dissolving my actual main point about an “intra-Islamic contest” in syariah proselytization and implementation. I make that actual main point in clear introductory and concluding text (p. 189, 194) for my investigation of syariah in TNI—POLRI headquarters specialization, perception management, surveillance, and coordination with militia and other state apparatus branches and proxies.
In her pose of expertise on subtle, complex “particularities” of Aceh's syariah and Indonesian Islam, Avonius wastes specious criticisms on a hastily erected wicker man. She further misrepresents by depicting my discussion as an “interpretation of Aceh's current syariah regulations", whereas that letter of the law is largely incidental in my book's depictions of the subtler spirit and forms of syariah in publicity, structural organization and enforcement. By ignoring my main point, she also drops syariah from my broader discussion of information war and its less tangible syariah-related pop-cultural and business aspects (pp. 126—8, 191—4). A timely case I explore at length is Aa Gym, a Sundanese entrepreneur and advocate of syariah in less formal though more widely Indonesian senses: Gymnastiar toured Aceh in early, high-profile TNI—POLRI perception management roles preaching “repentance” to captured GAM members. I also identify the Indonesian Army's leading infowar intellectual Syarifudin Tippe as a key architect of Aceh's syariah proselytization and implementation when a local territorial chief. For readers less familiar with Aceh-related sources, such of my book's contextualization may be clearer by drawing attention to some obvious parallels with recent Western news publicity about military humanitarian activity in Iraq and Afghanistan. Alas, Avonius barely dips her toe in that entire discourse, despite its importance to (post-)modern warfare.
From her unfortunate mishaps with “contextualization”, Avonius further undermines her own allegations by her sub-strata of self-destructive hypocrisy. Alleging my supposed neglect of “particularities” and exceptionalism in syariah, she loses all sight of my specialized book's clear and contextually focused particularity. And as I alluded earlier when she upbraided me over comparisons to East Timor and Northern Ireland, she applies such comparative device herself as a compulsory dress code for all researchers of Aceh's syariah thus: “any analysis of (syariah implementation, policing and reception) in Aceh must take...into account...Aceh's (exceptional) situation in the wider Muslim world (sic)”! I know of no serious researcher who implies that Aceh's syariah is not unique, and my book too treats local source detail accordingly. It is odd that Avonius reads aloud her “riot act” to our studies without deploying enough units of cogent fact or analysis to try enforcing her apparent “state of academic emergency”. Her condescending injection of legalistic near-truism also rings hollow like micro-managing direction by a nervous, titular authority i.e., "TNI soldiers were excluded from syariah regulations" - redundant advice I reject emphatically. That the TNI has its own separate legal system is a basic, commonly understood fact which even novices will fast gather from my book anyway. It starts to seem as if Avonius “corrects” me for using correct punctuation, then “criticizes” me for not spelling out explicitly just how and why my book makes use of periods, commas, etc.
It is a pity that many of the West's paid “Indonesia experts” so frequently airbrush out dissent in their field, so my riposte here may be over-fuelled by vast stores of exasperation. But this political situation is yet more discernible in Avonius' review when she makes another telling omission of new information in Indonesia's War over Aceh: she ignores entirely my study of whistleblowers and dissent in TNI—POLRI ranks (p. 96, 116—19, 121—2). With Avonius' recourse to some creative ridicule, her review might distract readers away from such New Order-style approach to dissent and history. But on checking the target – my book - it also seems she has tried to use a hair-triggered automatic shotgun to shoot passing mosquitoes, missing them and my book with each cartridge.
Since East Timor's referendum, our studies have suffered much flippancy, neglect, manipulation and other abuse at the hands of government and media, accelerated by more than the usual covert opportunism, due to the recent diplomatic theatre of contrivances called “culture wars”, “clash of civilizations” and “the War on Terror”. Much of Leena Avonius' review reflects that lamentable trend. Perhaps her basic unfamiliarity with Aceh's war was due to another trend which saw an influx of new scholars keen to partake of Aceh's post-tsunami reconstruction and peace processes.
Nonetheless, I heartily commend her partial attempt to understand some more straightforward aspects of my study, and thank her for bringing to my attention Henk Schulte-Nordholt's 2002 KITLV book chapter, which I regret having missed during my own pursuit of Dutch-era precedents.
But wait! While I behold the little caesars' street parade headed by its many makeshift, grotesque “Middle East” floats, isn't that Avonius I see in the more discreet “Asia-Pacific” cavalcade at the rear, being received warmly with nods, winks and drinks from the strange Australian delegation of diplomatic dirty tricksters in their ideological fancy dress? Perhaps she was part of the same motley caravan all along...
Matthew N. Davies
Melbourne
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