CRISIS IN SOUTH ASIA
Alarm grows as U.S. military moves in
By Deirdre Griswold
Alarm is growing in several of the countries
hit hard by the tsunami disaster over the sudden appearance of U.S. troops in
the role of aid-givers. From Indonesia, where the military has a long and bloody
history of suppression, to Sri Lanka, where a civil war has been raging for
years, to India, where the government has refused foreign aid as an incursion
into its sovereignty, there is deep suspicion about Washington's
motives.
Apologists for the U.S. imperial role in the world are trying to
put a favorable spin on the deployment of Marines and Special Forces in the
area. Derek Mitchell of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a
Washington-based think tank, says, "The United States has this unique capability
to move rapidly with its military to take care of humanitarian and other
security challenges in Asia."
Rapidly? If anything, the Bush
administration has been molasses-slow in its response to this massive
catastrophe. Even when thousands were known to have died, the White House took
days to even make a statement, and the initial aid pledges were less than
pathetic.
But now, it seems, the U.S. government has decided that this is
a good opportunity to beat its chest, strengthen its relations with local
militaries, and establish its presence in areas that have not been very
welcoming to a military stained with the blood of the Iraqi and Afghan
people.
"Before the tsunami disaster it would have been unthinkable for a
U.S. aircraft carrier to dock in Indonesia's waters, or U.S. Marines to rub
shoulders with troops from the world's most populous Muslim nation," wrote the
French Press Agency on Jan. 5. Now more than 13,000 U.S. military personnel,
backed by warships, planes and helicopters, have been dispatched to the area,
making it the largest Pentagon operation in Asia since the Vietnam War. They may
stay for six months.
"U.S. Marines arrived in Sri Lanka on Tuesday for a
deployment that will eventually total 1,500 troops--reportedly much to the
chagrin of giant neighbor India, suspicious of U.S. military intentions,"
continued the report. "U.S. forces are also using Thailand's Vietnam war-era air
base of Utapao as an airlift hub for the humanitarian mission in the region,
strengthening potential U.S. military logistical support throughout southeast
Asia. ...
"U.S. Rear Admiral Doug Crowder told the Washington Post he
expected the joint efforts to improve prospects for resuming full military ties
with Indonesia."
Those ties were cut back after massive movements in both
Indonesia and East Timor exposed the repressive character of the Indonesian
military to a world audience. Back in the 1960s, the Indonesian generals had
taken over in a U.S.-backed coup and massacred over 1 million people--primarily
leftists and nationalists. Ten years later, again with U.S. covert approval,
Indonesian troops invaded East Timor, starting a war that killed one-third of
the population there. The military continues to wield enormous political power,
and retired army general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is now running the
country.
Fighting continues in Aceh
Most recently, the
Indonesian military has been carrying out a bloody suppression of the
independence movement in Aceh, the northernmost province of the oil-rich island
of Sumatra. This is exactly the area hit hardest by the Dec. 26 tsunami and
earthquake, causing the deaths of over 100,000 people there, according to the
latest Indonesian estimates.
There are many reports of continuing military
operations against the people of Aceh, even since the tsunami disaster. The most
recent came in an article in the Jan. 5 Washington Post focused on U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell's overflight of Aceh in a helicopter.
Amid praise for Powell it briefly men tions that on Jan. 3, trucks taking
aid to Aceh "had to halt for eight hours because they encountered a firefight
between government troops and rebels."
A separate article in the same
newspaper and datelined Jakarta reports that "Indonesian separatist rebels
charged Tuesday that the military had launched at least three attacks on them
since the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami, and that at least two rebels had been
killed as they attempted to assist people affected by the calamity.
"A
spokesman for the Free Aceh Move ment said the military has continued its
attacks on his organization, also known by its Indonesian-language initials,
GAM, despite the rebels' unilateral declaration of a cease-fire while aid
workers help tsunami survivors.
"The military last week killed the two
unarmed rebels as they tried to assist relatives, said Tengku Jamaica, a rebel
spokesman speaking by cell phone from Aceh province, the scene of the most
extensive damage."
Many Indonesian officials in Aceh were among those
killed in the quake and floods following the tsunami. Undoub tedly, the generals
in Jakarta hope that Powell's visit and the influx of U.S. troops will help
stabilize their rule over Aceh at a critical moment.
The November 2004
bulletin of Tapol, an organization that for many years has brought information
about the plight of Indonesian political prisoners to the world, contained an
article entitled "Hor rendous abuses persist in Aceh" that summarized the
situation there as follows:
"The Acehnese still suffer widespread abuses
at the hands of Indonesian troops. Although martial law was downgraded to a
civil emergency in May 2004, abuses have continued unabated."
The article
pointed out that the area was officially closed to outsiders--a condition that
has persisted since the tsunami disaster. It cites reports of torture and rigged
trials issued by several international human rights groups.
An advance
contingent of 42 U.S. Marines has arrived in Sri Lanka in preparation for the
arrival of 1,500 more. A British military vessel is also off Colombo. This has
drawn a sharp rebuke from the New Left Front there.
A statement signed by
the group's leader, Dr. Vickramabahu Karunarathne, and issued in Colombo on Jan.
3 condemned the influx of foreign troops into Sri Lanka under the guise of
helping the tsunami victims. The New Left Front said "it is totally unnecessary
to commit troops" for relief work, and accused the U.S. of having its own agenda
of "gaining a foothold with designs to suppress the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam and control the Tamil liberation struggle on behalf of local capitalist
rulers."
The statement added that the deployment provides an opening for
the U.S. not only to arm-twist Sri Lanka to "go along with global capitalism,
but also to use Sri Lanka's strategic location to consolidate its neocolonial
agenda all the more blatantly." Karunarathne called upon all "oppressed people
and the left and democratic forces to protest strongly against the induction of
foreign troops to Sri Lanka under cover of relief and rescue operations."
Reprinted from the Jan. 13, 2005, issue of Workers World newspaper
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