Strategic Mis-Translation

An anonymous but high-profile public text from the Nautilus Institute ('Indonesia to Build Two Naval Bases in East Nusa Tenggara, Kompass' [sic]) demonstrated how far Australia has dropped in its Indonesian language ability. The news clipping meant to summarize the most pertinent reported facts from the Indonesian original – an article in Jakarta daily Kompas (TNI AL Bangun Pangkalan di NTT, 17 March 2008). However, the hapless translator made mistakes for most the facts selected from Kompas (in fact, all of the Nautilus precis' sentences contain basic errors), while missing most of the original's other, actually important facts. An appraisal:

BASIC FACTUAL INACCURACIES
1. Number of planned naval bases
Kompas source: Four
Nautilus: Two (in title), one (in text)
2. Locations
Kompas source:
- Labuanbajo (eastern edge of Flores by Sape Strait)
- Sumba (near Mangudu and Salura islands)
- Boking area (South-Central Timor Regency) and
- Rote Island
Nautilus:
- Mangudu Island and
- Salura Island
3. Australian tourism business in Sumba islands
Kompas source: business discontinued after army troops deployed there
Nautilus: “are managed by an Australian tourism businessman”
4. Troops at Sumba islands
Kompas source: army i.e., “TNI-AD”
Nautilus: navy i.e., “TNI-AL stationed troops”

ERRORS OF THOUGHT PATTERN, CONTEXT AND NUANCE
- The Nautilus precis missed the plural condition implicit in the Kompas article's title and first sentence. The Indonesian report meant “bases”, contrary to Nautilus' simple word substitution of “base” for pangkalan.
- Nautilus presumed a gender for “tourism business operator” (pelaku bisnis pariwisata), rendered as “tourism businessman”.
- Nautilus created a notion about “fears” that Mangudu and Salura islands “were slowly creeping into Australian hands”. The Kompas original specified that the Indonesian Army deployed troops there upon “getting wind of an issue” (mengendus isu) concerning the islands' potential to "fall gradually into Australian hands in a style similar to Malaysia's seizure of Sipadan and Ligitan islands".

SIGNIFICANT OMMISSIONS
- Quoted and otherwise interviewed sources for the Kompas article: Chair of East Nusa Tenggara House of Representatives (DPRD NTT) Drs Melkianus Adoe, and Chief of Kupang Main Naval Base Commodore Syaiful.
- The expressed intention behind the planned Boking base i.e., deterring possible spying activity in its adjacent oil-rich area.
- The expressed intention behind the planned Rote Island base i.e., deterring Indonesian fishing vessels from seeking stocks in the “sand islands” (pulau pasir, probably Ashmore Reef area) of Australian territorial waters.

The Nautilus Institute is not some volunteer freebie or “vanity publishing” site. It is a well-funded organ with many international corporate sponsors, including some backing from government and branches of the UN too (its “Global Collaborative Sponsors” list needs registration to see, but it may be identical to Nautilus' associate lists). If this attempted translation was by a student, there is clearly a failure of supervision and quality control; if it was by an academic...

[For the record, the transcript is as follows (as retrieved 04 May 2008:
"5. Indonesia to Build Two Naval Bases in East Nusa Tenggara, Kompass*, 2008-03-17
The Indonesian Navy (TNI-AL) will add an operational base in East Nusa Tenggara to guard the area against disturbances from other countries and to control any illegal fishing. Pulau Mangudu and Pulau Salura are managed by an Australian tourism businessman. However, TNI-AL stationed troops at the islands after fears arose that they were slowly creeping into Australian hands.
*Indonesian Language"]

OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE (OSINT), BY NUMBERS...

Reference: The Sunday Age, 'Money for nothing and your clicks for free', 03 March 2008.

MAIN ADVANTAGES OF OPEN SOURCES OVER CLASSIFIED SOURCES, AND OSINT'S ENHANCEMENT TO CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE PROCESSES
Intelligence exploitation of open source information (OSI) offers a more efficient intelligence process, as better return on investment, in:
- acquisition / collection
- collation, archiving and analysis
- security (for all aspects i.e., information, personnel and facilities)
- dissemination
- quality control
- training benefits
- recruitment pool
- tasking of resources

a. Acquisition / collection. Open sources are far more widely and cheaply accessible.
b. Collation, archiving and analysis. OSINT optimizes the institutional and individual knowledge base necessary for understanding all sources, including that appearing in more carefully guarded and controlled classified / sensitive material. Open sources offer more useful and diverse contexts with which to better understand a topic, and to associate intelligence products of all sources more broadly with thematic and categorization for retrieval by thematic or subject classes of location, organization, incident, personality, etc.
c. Security. Open sources can reduce if not eliminate the high costs of security involved in classified intelligence processes i.e., information secrecy, personnel vetting and other control, and source and facility protection .
d. Dissemination. OSINT offers a much broader potential client base than that available for classified intelligence product. Various government departments and educational bodies, private sector enterprises, and foreign and multinational entities may all become recipients of OSINT product without the risks such broadened access may cause for classified intelligence product.
e. Quality control. Greater access to open sources and OSINT product allows for broader and more practical avenues of critical scrutiny and feedback - crucial for identifying product errors and source deficiencies, and fitting the product to clientèle needs.
f. Training. Further to the potentially wider avenues of lay and expert feedback for on-the-job improvement, the more varied formats, registers and contexts of open sources, and their wider accessibility, allow for a faster and more thorough subject matter mastery by the more skilled and capable practitioners. Training processes and material need much less of the distance from workplace reality that arises due to security concerns in classified matter.
g. Recruitment. Wider source access and reduced security concerns allow for broader pool of practitioners, without the constraints and supervisory concerns traditionally associated with classified intelligence work e.g., nationality, lifestyle, ideological and other background checks. Open sources' potentially wider reach for exposure to intelligence processes and subject matter allow for a broader selection of talented and motivated personnel for strengthening the intelligence apparatus i.e., via competition and raised skill levels. Broader selection should help overcome any institutional tendencies to emphasize extraneous and potentially corrupting factors such as: party membership, family and other personal ties, ethnic / religious background, etc.
h. Tasking. Savings from resources spent on OSINT processes allow for a more sharply focused, better concentrated treatment of classified / sensitive sources. Classified / sensitive sources can be better applied to fill gaps and build greater detail around the foundation of knowledge constructed from OSINT processes.

Reply to Akhmad Kusaeni on "The Fall of Suharto"

THE CONTINUED SUBJUGATION
OF INDONESIAN HISTORY

Tak Kenal Maka Tak Sayang
- proverb

For this western reader it was a welcome change to enter a latest account of Indonesia's quite recent tumultuous history. Written in the blogosphere by Akhmad Kusaeni, Deputy Chief Editor of Indonesia's Antara News Agency, 'The Fall of Suharto' promises an authoritative and authentic Indonesian description and explanation of the downfall of Soeharto's 'New Order' regime in May 1998.

In trying to explain those events and their key personalities, Kusaeni offers enthusiastic reference to four westerners' versions of that Indonesian history. Some of these western histories may serve novice readers well by packaging certain details and widely accepted previous accounts into a kind of chronicle form, handy enough for a student's effort at familiarization. Though sadly a very limited sample of an actually much wider discourse, Kusaeni's chosen histories present some analyses and perspectives more or less useful for consideration a decade or so after the events.

But on the more diplomatically delicate and ideologically contentious issues, these studies tend to locate the chief cause of instability away from the economic mechanisms of western-sourced globalization and Indonesia's acute strategic vulnerabilities to that post-Cold War fiscal and cultural expansionism. As Kusaeni summarizes it within his own endorsement, his four chosen authors (Eklof, Vatikiotis, Schwarz, and Kingsbury) believe "the fall of Suharto was more due to intra-elite manuevering than to 'people power', while "economic collapse provided the impetus for" a process of leadership downfall in train years before. At best, this view would hold monetary disaster to be akin to a hard-to-predict environmental calamity. Indonesia's people would be largely ineffectual, almost passive bystanders of almost no significance to the elite spawned from them. Outsider investment circles too would be virtually neutral, disinterested parties in inverse proportion to the extent of their actual wealth, power and ambition.

But that emphasis on anecdotal court intrigues in Jakarta would also be contradicted by many influential western parties themselves, who would prove by the nature of their surveillance the real coercive, gravitational power of their own interests in Indonesia. To deny the very intense Indonesia focus among the west's mutually dependent bankers, statesmen, academics and journalists would be like claiming that Heisenberg's discovery about observed phenomena had no relevance to the very malleable and dynamic fields of human activity we identify as strategy, economics, diplomacy and politics. Regardless, it is arguably quite blinkered and self-justifying - and certainly premature - for any study to draw conclusions which dismiss the causal significance of a phenomenon that actually lies largely unexamined in the study itself.

Is it not now understood as most fundamentally important that monetarist speculation smashed Indonesia's economy from 1997, and that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed extreme austerity measures and conditional terms, thereby all but demanding explicitly Soeharto's exit? Perhaps there is a pattern now typical in increasingly relaxed notions of 'democracy' and 'sovereignty', as the state's 'reformist' and 'moderate' face appears usually when financier elites intend to collect the bigger debts, rents or assets. While on those points, we should not be surprised if Schwarz's 'prediction' of Soeharto's 1998 resignation was more a reasonable assertion of probability based on a 'deadline for Soeharto' heard via financier circles or even from someone directly within the IMF itself.

Instead, the Indonesian military (TNI) and other state apparatus supposedly shoulder the main responsibility for Indonesia's turmoil, including that seen around Soeharto's retirement. Yet during Soeharto's regime in particular, those uniformed TNI members often complied or colluded with a global regime, barely influencing and never commanding it. By mythologies so apologetic for neoliberalism and its essential project called 'globalization', four problematic points strike particularly in the case of the Indonesian Army's Prabowo Subianto and his repeated excoriation as the 'bad guy' of Indonesia's military (or its "virus" by Kusaeni's elaboration of Vatikiotis' account).

A first possible point for dispute is Prabowo's alleged factional intrigues and attached sinister connotations. Presumed factionalism is one of the most enduring western myths about the TNI i.e., 'Red & White / Nationalist' and 'Green / Islamist' factions. "Presumed factionalism" seems a more appropriate term because on close examination source detail is actually vague, thickened by conversational gossip (interviewees), and second-hand gossip (textual references of similar anecdote). Moreover, the discourse can assume a very insidious quality, because the phenomenon itself is undeniable: factionalism is a loosely defined but more or less routine part of organizational politics anywhere. By imposing simplistic assumptions and credulity around local conditions upon universal fact, these views create a polarizing agenda largely devoid of nuance. Thus may gossip mongers counter any reasonable, basic criticism of claimed 'military factionalism' to allege that critics somehow perpetuate nationalistic propaganda about a monolithic compact between state and military. Yet how do the 'factionalism' arguments hold now? A key 'player' in 1998 was Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, for example: supposedly a 'Green' officer and 'Prabowo ally'. Sjafrie progressed well these past four post-Soeharto presidencies. Credulous students would be very tempted to thereby contrive a new 'Garibaldi faction', confounding such gossip about factional division.

Real dynamics of factionalism in scheming, shadowy alliances and treachery - or merely general philosophical or professional concord between colleagues - are usually much less apparent; indeed, they probably intensified most in Indonesia upon attempted manipulation by strong foreign parties. And while it appears true that Prabowo nurtured close connections in countries like Jordan or Tajikistan, mentioning those foreign links would be a conspicuously selective and unfair pursuit if disregarding the larger, more numerous - and often murkier - trails of money leading from Soeharto's Jakarta into western countries and businesses. We may serve history far better by contemplating just such ties and their persistent effects on western diplomacy towards Indonesia.

Another deficiency of such western histories' perspective on Indonesian politics is its typical neglect of political brinkmanship in an environment so highly charged and volatile. Yet such a consideration usually helps when analyzing a 30-year dictatorship that teeters under intense foreign and local pressures. So the orchestrated mass criminality ("riots") of May 1998 makes more sense if seen to threaten devastating 'scorched earth' to leadership contenders; specifically scorched earth in the financial sector as terrified ethnic Chinese either fled Indonesia or contemplated just such action. On the one hand the message seemed rather simple, even old fashioned, in the manner of extortionists petulant over their rejection by old subalterns: burn us, and we leave your prize in yet worse ruin. On the other hand, the mid-1998 unrest in Jakarta and elsewhere could have been a scheming device designed to provoke and implicate some of its obedient participants - just as appears to have happened to a few TNI officers loyal to Soekarno in 1965. But to assert "why the military would instigate riots was also not clear" - as Kusaeni alludes to Schwarz's analysis - seems an odd concession amid repeated, confident allegations of military involvement and direction. If firm conclusions remain unattainable then analysis should offer the available explanations rather than a resigned avoidance of the task.

In a similar way, the fatal shooting of several students at Jakarta's private Trisakti University showed the same dynamic of brinkmanship at work: Trisakti was a well-known finishing school for many children of Indonesia's ruling elite, including those of military and police chiefs themselves. However, even by the middle class standards of Indonesian tertiary education, Trisakti was hardly the wellspring of revolution or challenge to oligarchical wealth and other privilege, much less to military and police powers. The message then seemed an unequivocal one to elements of the ruling elite itself: 'stay loyal, if you don't want yourself or your kids to be next'.

More specific organizational and sub-cultural detail exposes those western histories' weakness on that point and on the apparent caricature in their prevalent historiographical verdict on Prabowo. He was Kostrad Chief at the time, so some units in his chain of command were already based in Jakarta, while others deployed there during that critical emergency period of May 1998 unrest and Soeharto's resignation. However, Kostrad units attached as outsiders to locally based formations, and Prabowo did not hold the direct command responsibility for the capital's security. The chain of command was clear: Sjafrie commanded the TNI's Jakarta territorial command - along with attached TNI and local Police - and Sjafrie was directly answerable to TNI Chief Wiranto. Moreover, Sjafrie's command held the local trump cards for instigating unrest: the local gangland of criminals and street thugs, as used just a couple of years earlier to oust Megawati from her political party. Earlier still, Wiranto too held the Jakarta command and was involved in those processes of territorial 'law and order' when he officiated at public parades to commence paramilitary discipline and organized coordination for such proxy gangster elements so important to routine and special military business.

On that point, the ironies are stark, exposing some rarely addressed neoliberalist cliches. In all the oddities of Jakarta's politics in the 1960s - the claimed 'G30S coup attempt' and the 'Supersemar' succession - historiographical anomalies, distortion and lies accompanied Soeharto's rise from his own term as Kostrad Chief (the CIA station leadership later claimed he was an unknown at the time!)... Little wonder that Soeharto's retirement brought similarly grand distractions, this time in a naïve morality play about the evil that comes from a 'fiercely loyal' and 'hardline' military man. Yet Prabowo's loyalty (and presumably that of Sjafrie, Subagyo - and Wiranto in his time) was to a chain of command that had the civilian office of President at its apex. Therefore, Prabowo was in this sense a staunch supporter of constitutionality and 'civil supremacy' over the military: key tenets of the liberal-reformist advocacy which would mould Indonesia into some idealized western image. Yet many who would claim to advocate those legalistic ideals of state reform would also condemn Prabowo without exception, and without regard for thorough processes of rigour, evidence or contrary views.

Another problem in the 'Downfall from Intrigue' history arises from the racialist overtones of 1998 violence, especially in Jakarta. The May 1998 murders, rapes, arson and looting apparently contained very racist motives among perpetrators at the street level, especially where class resentments mixed with old anti-Chinese hatreds fanned during the colonial-era. By implication, any military involvement in such 'scorched earth' unrest would reveal the heinous creed of race supremacy, especially to European onlookers mindful of colonialism and their own twentieth century history in particular. But Prabowo had some ethnic Chinese descent on his mother's side, still very rare for TNI officers. To not only isolate Prabowo for these crimes but assign to his command the original and main responsibility, or agency, needs good and reliable evidence as well as plausible explanation and analysis. The Intrigue School meets little of any such reasonably expected criteria. Where impressionistic western histories describe an Indonesian Kristallnacht in mid-1998, they do so more from their own navel-view than from specific evidence of fact. In this sense Kusaeni refers to Danish scholar Eklof, who mooted signs of 'a concerted campaign...to drive parts of the ethnic Chinese business community out of the country and thus facilitating a redistribution of their business and other assets to non-Chinese Indonesians'. Alas for Eklof's relativist hunch, any substantial 'redistribution to non-Chinese' could probably be found more in the post-1998 property markets and state revenues of such areas as Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Vancouver, LA and London than in Jakarta.

A final point of dispute here relates a little more deeply to the vague 'factionalism' allegations against Prabowo (and by implication also against the TNI as an institution). Prabowo's supposed 'Green' factional membership was meant to define a preferred or at least calculated affiliation with political Islam nascent since the 1980s. In general, such presumed factionalism tended to exaggerate impressions of an absurd military riven by unprofessional conduct, questionable discipline and compromised loyalty to country. However, in western eyes, a 'Green' label for TNI officers carried a further badge of stigma: the old phobia of an exotic muslim threat, quintessentially and irreconcilably alien, driven by the danger of dogmatic fanaticism, or at least the unreliability of mystical irrationality. In the years after Prabowo's own retirement from the military, it can be seen how the west's demonization of him contained a subdued call to old European prejudices, since rendered in sensationalist alarms of an official and elaborate discourse known typically as 'counterterrorism studies'.

None of this argument is to deny that Prabowo or his colleagues engaged in savage repression in their service to Soeharto's regime. But many of Prabowo's alleged political rivals too had similar experience, if not worse. In 1998 Jakarta too it was clear that Prabowo continued the brutal calling of a career made bloody from Aceh, East Timor and West Papua. So Prabowo was a 'loyalist' in the professional military sense that he had chosen his job and intended to stick by its core rules and ethos. This prompts some questions. Who were not so loyal in the same sense? Where exactly were their loyalties? Were they loyal to foreign parties, and if so, were they not traitors to their own people?

Perhaps on some level Indonesian readers like Akhmad Kusaeni feel flattered that western publishers pay prominent attention to events and personalities in their country. But I think it more a pity when Indonesians have such uncritical regard for western histories of Indonesian politics; shocking where those histories contain much gossip for sources, packaged in simplistic and uncritical analysis. The many nuances of a more lively, multi-dimensional, and human Indonesian history await their composers - Indonesian historians.

Matthew N. Davies
Melbourne

GLOSSARY
G30S: Gerakan 30 September - (alleged) movement supposed to have plotted a Communist coup d'etat
Kostrad: Komando Strategis Cadangan Angkatan Darat - Army Strategic Reserve Command
Supersemar: Surat Perintah Sebelas Maret - Executive Edict of 11 March 1966 conferring officially national powers of governance to Soeharto

Cornell's E-Mail Correspondence & Refusal of Right of Reply

[Note: My e-mail address since changed. Five other e-mails sent me - in a protracted wind-up - pledging to allow reply with amendments for style, if necessary. Original submission appeared on online discussion list here - after weeks of no reply from Cornell. See bottom of this post for alternative source of that text]

___________________________________________
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

Reply to Cornell Review (refused by Cornell)

[Final draft offered, sent 28 August 07, after drafts sent 17 July 07, 07 August 07, 10 August 07, 16 August 07, 20 August 07 - all refused]

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Dear editors of Indonesia,

From Leena Avonius's review of my book Indonesia's War over Aceh (Indonesia 83: 165--168), I perceive several points of concern where the reviewer produces an overall effect of misrepresentation. My concerns cover apparent carelessness by the reviewer, including: errors of reading comprehension; major omissions of essential issues; mistaken and misleading comparisons with other studies; criticism based on considerations irrelevant to the book's context; unsubstantiated judgement; expressions of opinion posed as statements of simple fact; and apparent recourse to insult. These last two matters seem to contravene the journal's own policy.

The review starts with a simple claim citing Kirsten Schulze's chapter as "an earlier study", but I understand that claim to be incorrect. Submission or publication dates may yet prove my own study to pre-date Schulze's but, in the circumstances, it would be reasonable to regard both studies as contemporary. Moreover, Avonius's comments from "Schulze examined the war...based on the material and statements produced by the Indonesian military" may mislead by an impression that my study did not use such sources but rather examined some vague "spread" of official material.

Avonius's first major omission is in her summary of Chapter One, where she ignores entirely my study of GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, Free Aceh Movement) structure, and GAM personnel and weapon strengths: some fourteen pages, two tables, and a map, all with basic even causal relevance to the book's subject. Given that Avonius was a diplomatic participant in Aceh's peace process with its crucial considerations for combatants' troop and weapon totals, we could expect her to confirm, counter, or at least mention my book's graphic illustration and chapter discussion of such details, especially where they contradict claims by the Aceh Monitoring Mission. Avonius's avoidance there also causes her omission of my timely warning (pp. 237--238) on the dangers to Aceh's peace process and tensions within the Acehnese resistance. Her silence on GAM is part of the review's larger gap for all thirty of my book's illustrations, which I believe have set new standards for the studies in levels of detail, source accuracy and quality.

On Chapter Two, Avonius conveys superficial understanding of my study into the relationship between Indonesian military (TNI) territorial commands and expanded civilian government apparatus. I describe (pp. 54, 58--61) how civil expansion long precedes most TNI territorial growth, with non-parallel civil--military hierarchies giving seniority preemptively to TNI (and to lesser extents Police/POLRI) commanders, as mapped overlaps ensure a 'security approach' and TNI--POLRI primacy in local government processes. Avonius ignores these processes' complexity, perpetuating instead a simplistic and superficial 'standard' view, i.e., "...the military's territorial structure grows with the civilian administration", a view my research qualifies by detailed reference to Aceh's case. The TNI territorial hierarchy rather overlaps and intersects civil administration at varying levels, which I emphasize by criticizing (p. 58) common, established views like Avonius's and other, slightly more sophisticated claims that such non-parallels are exceptions to a rule of simple civil--military parallel. Such of my book's explanations offer new understanding about these dynamics of military influence in Indonesian state processes.1

On Chapter Three, Avonius misses my explanations of TNI--POLRI force structure, organizational evolution, and operational tasking. Indeed, my efforts on definitions seem wholly lost on Avonius, who perpetuates common mistakes in this area by mistranslating KOPASSUS as "special operations military" and BRIMOB as "the special anti-riot police unit". As my graphics and Chapter Three text assert clearly (pp. xvii, 87, 93, 235), the Army's Special Forces Command (KOPASSUS) is but one of several TNI arms created for special operations; on page 93 I detail how Aceh saw deployments by special action forces from all three TNI services. Also, POLRI's Mobile Brigade (BRIMOB) is not the dedicated "anti-riot" unit she describes but, as I stress by my criticism of such common error (pp. 76, 99, 244--245n7), it is a basic infantry arm in POLRI's corps structure - anti-riot tasks (dakura / PHH in dalmas - 'crowd control') are allocated as functional capabilities among various POLRI (and still in some cases TNI) units. One of Avonius's complaints is that I "should have put more effort into opening up and explaining the specialist language". Indeed, I do provide a six-page list of acronyms and terms, while the text follows normal convention by expanding or translating less common terminology on its first appearance in the chapters. However, since Avonius's confusion after my unambiguous definitions for the commonly used "KOPASSUS" and "BRIMOB", it would seem futile to shift the book towards some dictionary-style reference that she may prefer.

Avonius further confuses on this subject by noting Henk Schulte Nordholt's chapter on genealogies of Indonesian violence: a broad, discursive piece with only fleeting and indirect relevance to my book's study of colonial precedents. In just one paragraph in his description of "a regime of fear", Schulte Nordholt mentions in passing the Korps Maréchaussee to trace colonial atrocity in Aceh. He adds a cursory, unsubstantiated and largely inaccurate comment on military genealogy: "the colonial army's Indonesian offspring, the Kopassus". By contrast, I plot traces of colonial, Japanese and Indonesian origins for most TNI--POLRI force types (including militia proxies), their counterinsurgency philosophy in concepts of command, control, and tactics, and the modern operational flexibility and standardization in the TNI's Satgas Rajawali system (pp. 70--79, 83, 167, 169). My research and analysis are not "elaborating upon a similar notion made by Henk Schulte-Nordholt" as Avonius claims; my book redefines post-colonial military history, thereby inadvertently correcting Schulte-Nordholt's very brief comments and their exaggeration of Dutch influence.2 My book makes other revisionist disturbance by investigating force structure, capabilities and institutional culture across all TNI--POLRI ranks from the mid-1990s; earlier, standard approaches to 'structure' often suggested a predominance of entrail readings from army academy and promotion lists, spawning much 'table talk' speculation about factionalism and networking, or which military executives will get the top jobs, and why.3

Avonius misunderstands parts of most chapters when she states that "the book does not offer new information on the legal and illegal business activities of the TNI in Aceh". Within most chapters I do offer such new information, because that of my book's reported detail is hitherto unseen in English and overwhelmingly not in the McCulloch--Kingsbury chapter Avonius notes. Chapter Eight (pp. 234--236), for example, exposes major TNI funding conduits via post-tsunami aid, while chapters four and six (especially) are peppered with local report detail of such TNI enterprise at lower levels. My book makes different discussions in this area, too, consistent with its war-fighting focus. It also considers TNI--POLRI business motives in: Chapter Two's look into anomalous internal statistics on population and expanded government apparatus; Chapter Three's view of TNI unit flexibility and logistics; and Chapter Five's investigation of underreported casualties. Such various considerations are largely absent in other studies, including the reference Avonius cites.

From her reading of Chapter Six, Avonius makes several suggestions and criticisms which miscontextualize her own review. She seems to read that chapter under the shadow of her own apparent preference for an altogether separate book with different approach, focus, and even title. Her first complaint here is that I did not make greater emphasis on what she believes to be an important factual point about popular pressure bringing late-1990s trials for military atrocity. Even if her point itself is factually true and valid, it is not mine or my book's to pursue. Besides, it is clear from my text (pp. 90, 98--99, 128, 164, 168, and, on the case to which Avonius refers, 96--97) that I am much less optimistic about military and other state publicity in such cases. Her point would therefore clash with my own expressed views, as if stamping an awkward, artificial postscript caveat to promote a rosily imagined 'success of local and international human rights advocacy against militarist brutality'.

On Aceh and syariah, Avonius strays farther from the subject's context of Indonesian counter-insurgency warfare, while claiming that it is my book that needs "further contextualization". Alleging my supposed neglect of "particularities" and exceptionalism in syariah, she loses all sight of my specialized book's clear and contextually focused particularity. Via severe quotation quarantined from my discussion's original context, she creates a critique of my chapter's quite unremarkable description of how syariah amounts to a strategic manipulation of religious difference between the uniform apparatus of the Indonesian state and its proxies on the one hand, and Aceh's local religious traditions on the other. Contrary to Avonius's liberal interpretation, my text (pp. 189--190) does not contrive some simplistic argumentative dichotomy of crude incompatibility between a state-driven Indonesian Islamic orthodoxy and some (imagined) Acehnese opposite of other uniformity.

About my main point on syariah Avonius is wrong i.e., claiming it is "that the military played an active role in imposing the religious law on Aceh". My actual main point is that TNI leadership on syariah steered Aceh into an extra venue of contest within Islam itself, as I assert in clear introductory and concluding text (pp. 189, 194). She also misrepresents my discussion as an "interpretation of Aceh's current syariah regulations", but that letter of the law is really incidental in my book's depictions of the subtler spirit and forms of syariah in publicity, planning, and organization. By missing such points, she drops syariah from my broader discussion of information war and its less tangible syariah-related pop-cultural and business aspects (pp. 126--128, 191--194). A case I explore at length is Sundanese entrepreneur Aa Gym, a syariah advocate in less formal though more widely Indonesian senses: Gymnastiar toured Aceh in 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 obvious parallels with recent Western news publicity about military humanitarian activity in Afghanistan and Iraq. Alas, Avonius barely dips her toe in that entire discourse, despite its importance to (post-)modern warfare.

Another problem I noted was where Avonius seems to demonstrate other mistakes she claims to identify in my book. She upbraids me over my comparisons to East Timor and Northern Ireland, though I make such points in the book's consistent context of counterinsurgency (she does not seem to object to my mentions of Mindanao). But then for the non-military issue of syariah she sets such universal context herself as a compulsory dress code for all researchers 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. Her other advice is a near-truism in the bizarre addendum: "TNI soldiers were excluded from syariah regulations". That the TNI has its own separate legal system will be apparent even to novice readers, as in page 91's table, for example; Avonius could have been advising me to make a separate point about TNI uniforms being generally green-colored. I was reminded here of her earlier tautology in: "This book does not cover the developments after the peace agreement..." (translating as Indonesia's War over Aceh ≠ peace"!)

The greatest problem I find in the review is its omission of my book's entire polemical approach, made explicit in the introductory chapter as an "agenda". My book makes critiques of much error and complacency in this area of study. Avonius complains that my chapters' conclusions tend to "jump from one argument to another", but the reason for that is that my book is a polemic, making its various corrective raids on established apparatus in the field after description and analysis. If Avonius had not made that great omission about my book's polemic and critiques, readers would more likely see that her complaint has no grounds. An unfortunate coincidence is that Kirsten Schulze and Damien Kingsbury together catch probably most of my book's critiques, so Avonius's major omission here combined with her prominent, complimentary, but tenuous referencing of those two writers may also give unsavory impressions of scholarly process abused for priorities of partisan, networked favoritism.

Avonius makes a restrained allegation that I use an internet-surfing writing style ("as if the author has followed numerous intriguing links"). I reject wholly that insinuation about my book and its potential implications that it lacks structural integrity and relies on others' research. Avonius states her opinion here as if it is no opinion but rather a matter of fact: she implies yet more certainty by associating the alleged shortcoming with a "strategy"! Despite her implicit pose of factual certainty, she offers nothing to substantiate her allegation; not a single quotation, endnote, source, or any analysis of compositional structure.

Avonius imagines me seeming "to drown in" what she asserts casually i.e., with no substantiation, as "the swamp of acronyms and details". On this point, I refer to my book's assertion on page three that it is essential for researchers of an army's war to 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. I think that her many problematical claims about my book and other sources should require her to devote much greater energy to such empathic immersion and other substantial matters of study than she seems to apply to her creative work in criticism (or insult barely concealed as ridicule). Perhaps Avonius' difficulties with specific but routine details of the war's terminology reflect a trend that saw many new scholars and others too hasty in joining Aceh's post-tsunami reconstruction and peace processes.

Given Avonius's several factual and analytical shortcomings identified above, it may be clearer just why she found my book "not easy reading" and "such a struggle": she may have found it hard to accept new information and analysis that contradicted her own ideas about the subject. Furthermore, not a few of her criticisms betray her own firmly held beliefs about warfare, diplomacy, human rights, and other studies, whereas my own research and arguments would pose a frontal challenge to certain articles of faith there. I am aware that my book's specialization, emphasis on local sources, relative complexity, and new, often revisionist approach may pose additional challenge for those used to studying the Indonesian military via non-Indonesian secondary sources and non-military perspectives. On reflection, although I believe that the journal has failed to provide readers a properly engaged, informed or otherwise competent review in this case, the vexed reaction apparent in Avonius' review would seem to vindicate my book's polemic.

Matthew N. Davies
Melbourne

1For more detailed description of such overlaps, though in contemporary West Papua, see: Matthew N. Davies, 'TNI & POLRI Forces in West Papua: Restructuring & Reasserting Sovereignty', 2006, pp. 15--17. Online: <http://members.optusnet.com.au/lismatt/papua_brief_davies_aug06_namemod2.pdf> (accessed August 2007).
2Henk Schulte Nordholt, 'A Genealogy of Violence', in Roots of Violence in Indonesia, ed. Freek Colombijn and J. Thomas Lindblad (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), pp. 36--37.
3See for example: The Editors, 'The Indonesian Military in the Mid-1990s: Political Maneuvering or Structural Change?' in Indonesia 63, April 1997, pp. 91--105.