In the land of the ‘calm’ after the bomb, a lazy weekend

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Yesterday, the Sunday edition of the English-language The Jakarta Post bannered: 10 Suicide Bombers at Large: Police.

KOMPAS, the big Bahasa Indonesia daily, which scooped me in October 1965 on my own personal "interview" with then Brig. Gen. Suharto – the man who crushed the GESTAPU coup by summoning the Siliwangi Division from Bandung to re-take Jakarta from the Tchakavirawa and the "Communist" coup plotters – printed much the same warning.

What’s interesting is that the KOMPAS editors got hold of, and published yesterday on page one, four graphic shots taken by the closed circuit television (security CCTV) of the Plaza 89 Building which fronts the wrecked Australian Embassy, showing how the suspect terrorist vehicle, a white Daihatsu mini-van had come up on the opposite road, made a u-turn, then pulverized itself in front of the Kedutaan Besar (Embassy building) of Australia, also obliterating a police van which had been parked in front of the diplomatic building’s steel fence.

I notice that in my column which appeared in yesterday’s STAR, a line had been dropped inadvertently when the newspaper was printed. What I had written was that "it was lucky that they (the JI terrorists) blew up their bomb at 10:20 a.m. Thursday when traffic was relatively sparse in front of the Embassy, instead of at 8 a.m. when it’s normally bumper-to-bumper. If they had detonated their device earlier – they might have killed more than a hundred, not nine, and wounded many hundreds more."

You can see how a missing line changes the entire meaning of a paragraph.

In any event, the police have blamed the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) – the same terrorists who operate in Mindanao in Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) territory – for last Thursday’s atrocity which killed nine Indonesians (no Australians) and wounded more than 180 others.

Indonesia’s police chief Dai Bachtiar (a four-star general no less) has alleged that the JI’s top bomb-maker, Azahari Husin – who’s already being hunted for being behind the Bali bombings of August 12, 2002 (which killed 202) and last year’s bombing of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta (which killed 17) – as having set up the attack on the Australian Embassy.

What’s deplorable is that Azahari and his fellow Malaysian terrorist, Noordin Mohd Top, had been pinpointed as being "holed up" somewhere in Indonesia on two earlier occasions. Why didn’t Chief Bachtiar’s police agency pounce on them and nab them then? That’s the not-too-discreet question that’s been going around this suddenly paranoid capital.

Another fellow, also a Malaysian has been added to the list of suspects. This is 39-year old Dulmatin, who was trained by Azahari in bomb-making techniques. Since the three suspected "perps" are all Malaysians, this is not to say that any of the Malaysian military "monitors" we’ve authorized so much about Mindanao "observing" and helping supervise the peace process between our government and the rebel MILF might have secret "connections" with those Malaysian JI bad boys – but you know the drill: eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

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Jakarta, in the wake of last Thursday’s bomb-attack, is in a state of "heightened alert". Anyway, that’s what they’ve been announcing.

On the other hand, while there are more security guards checking out vehicles when they come up the driveway of hotels and major buildings with detection devices they shove under each car, and opening up doors and trunks, this glittering metropolis of 15 million (counting Metro Jakarta) doesn’t appear to have changed its easy-going, even swinging lifestyle one bit.

Most people who’ve never been to Jakarta don’t realize what a beautiful metropolis it is – if you discount the pall of pollution which hangs over the huge city (there are no typhoons to blow the smog away).

The boulevards are mostly six-lane, and lined with thick lines of trees, with trees frequently lining the middle lane. They have skycrapers galore, architecturally streamlined and imaginative (much prettier than ours, I tell you).

Multiply Makati by five times and put in 46-storey buildings, chromed and glassed – they even have a fantastic Da Vinci Tower building in baroque style, which was erected more than a year before The Da Vinci Code was published by Dan Brown.

Their shopping malls in many ways, surpass our own. These are luxurious, well-air-conditioned, glitzy, and crammed with famous Parisian, Italian, and US designer stores and boutiques, streamlined SOGO department stores, snazzy Metro Department stores – they got them all.

For Indonesia, with its 220 million people (though the majority, alas, earn only US $2 per day), is one of the most resource-rich archipelagos on earth – owning the biggest gold reserves (in Irian Jaya, the former Dutch Hollandia adjoining Papua-New Guinea, huge oil reserves, extensive palm oil plantations.

Indonesia is the Land of Milk and Honey (and most Indonesians, perhaps, don’t know it either). But it shows – with the "boom" of the past eight years that has transformed Jakarta, with a great leap (this time for real, not Mao Zedong-type) into modernity.

Now that they’re under terrorist attack, of course, and the run-off showdown between President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her challenger (General) Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono coming just a week from now on September 20, Jakarta is in suspense. But they’ll soon recover their equilibrium.

SBY, with a poll survey advantage, is seeded to "win" – but again, no predictions. This is a land of suddenly erupting volcanos and surprises.

One thing is sure: Indonesia is on the rise. It will make waves in the next, exciting – turbulent days ahead.