Suharto, Indonesian Dictator, Dies at 86
JANUARY 24, 2008 TAGS:
By Michael Currie Schaffer
In 1996, I spent two weeks crossing most of Java and Sumatra by bus. It was 30 years into President Suharto’s rule, and the strongman was everywhere. His puffy face peered out from under his heavy eyelids in identical photos in a half-dozen dingy hotel lobbies. His favored philosophy — a bland self-reliance notion known as Pancasila — adorned roadside signage. Once, though, when a conversation with a restaurateur drifted towards politics, he motioned me towards a back room. There, on the wall, was a black silhouette of a dashing guy in black sunglasses against a red background. It was Sukarno, General Suharto’s predecessor. The former president had been dead since the 1960s, his aides rounded up and his policies happily jettisoned by the new boss. But he still made a much better visual.
Thus had I stumbled onto a truth of the Cold War that was even then petering out in Indonesia: While the United States and the Soviet Union both sponsored their share of murderous dictators, there was at least one category where the brutes of the left clearly outdid the brutes of the right — style. Moscow teamed up with swashbuckling autocrats like Fidel Castro, Gamel Abdel Nasser, and Ho Chi Minh, glamorous figures whose faces adorned banners and who could fill the streets with cheering crowds, even in cities not under the control of their secret police forces. Washington’s dictators, on the other hand, were mostly a stolid array of ham-fisted military men and dubiously legitimate royals. And few were more stolid than Suharto, the former Indonesian military strongman, who died January 27, 2008 at 86.
Suharto — like many Indonesians, he used only one name — was the classic pro-Western postcolonial dictator: vaguely religious, energetically kleptocratic, monomaniacally anticommunist, and not particularly concerned about his American patrons’ professed faith in things like democracy. As it happened, his takeover displaced an equally prototypical example of the sort of Third World honcho that made Washington nervous: Sukarno, the rabble-rousing champion of Afro-Asian solidarity made famous by the Mel Gibson film The Year of Living Dangerously. The film ends with Suharto’s right-wing coup and images of Communists being lined up and shot on the streets of Jakarta.
For the General, the takeover — estimated death toll: 500,000 — was just the beginning. Over three-plus decades, he thoroughly dominated the sprawling former Dutch colony, the world’s most populous Muslim country. After consolidating control on the central island of Java, the regime was especially brutal at the edges of the archipelago. Suharto clamped down on locals after Indonesia’s 1969 annexation of the culturally distinct province of Irian Jaya, the western half of New Guinea. In 1976, he invaded the former Portuguese territory of East Timor, leading to a bloody quarter-century occupation that left 200,000 dead as a result of what some observers labeled a policy of genocide.
In both cases, the ugly publicity blew back into Washington’s face: U.S. mining firms remain major beneficiaries of Indonesian rule in Irian Jaya. And the fact that Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger met with Suharto in Jakarta on the eve of the East Timor invasion left many observers certain that “Operation Komodo” had received Washington’s blessing. Such was Third World geopolitics in the Cold War: distant dictators consigning thousands to their deaths with the witting or unwitting aid of superpower patrons.
Suharto’s defenders, including many contemporary Indonesian political figures who flocked to his sickbed, point to his stewardship of a national economy that boomed during his rule. It was Indonesia whose citizens — some of them, at least — joined the ranks of Southeast Asia’s economic tigers. During Suharto’s long reign, Indonesia went from backwater to a country that could build its own cars. All those photogenic leftists never managed that. But to critics, the car that was such a source of national pride also represented the apotheosis of another aspect of the general’s reign: corruption. The project just so happened to be run by Suharto’s son, Tommy. The nonprofit anticorruption group Transparency International estimates that, all told, the elder Suharto stole between $15 and $35 billion from his people. In 1998, Forbes estimated the family’s net worth to be $46 billion.
Ultimately, it was the economy that doomed Suharto, who stepped down after the 1997 Asian economic crisis dramatically weakened his regime. By 2001, his old seat was held by Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Sukarno, the man Suharto displaced. Yet although the new leaders opened up the political system, they never fundamentally altered the pro-American, pro-capitalist orientation of the country. With Suharto living quietly in his Jakarta villa, they also never brought him to justice over either corruption or human-rights abuses, despite occasional efforts.
Tommy, the car-building playboy son, wasn’t so lucky: After he got 18 months for corruption, he hired a hitman to kill the judge, earning himself an extra 15-year sentence. He went free after four years, a decision critics said was solely due to his family’s prominence. To this day, the standard image of the younger Suharto shows him alighting from one of his Rolls-Royces. At last: a photogenic member of the old dictator’s family.
Michael Currie Schaffer, a frequent contributor to Obit, is writing a book about the pet industry and American culture.
In 1996, I spent two weeks crossing most of Java and Sumatra by bus. It was 30 years into President Suharto’s rule, and the strongman was everywhere. His puffy face peered out from under his heavy eyelids in identical photos in a half-dozen dingy hotel lobbies. His favored philosophy — a bland self-reliance notion known as Pancasila — adorned roadside signage. Once, though, when a conversation with a restaurateur drifted towards politics, he motioned me towards a back room. There, on the wall, was a black silhouette of a dashing guy in black sunglasses against a red background. It was Sukarno, General Suharto’s predecessor. The former president had been dead since the 1960s, his aides rounded up and his policies happily jettisoned by the new boss. But he still made a much better visual.
Thus had I stumbled onto a truth of the Cold War that was even then petering out in Indonesia: While the United States and the Soviet Union both sponsored their share of murderous dictators, there was at least one category where the brutes of the left clearly outdid the brutes of the right — style. Moscow teamed up with swashbuckling autocrats like Fidel Castro, Gamel Abdel Nasser, and Ho Chi Minh, glamorous figures whose faces adorned banners and who could fill the streets with cheering crowds, even in cities not under the control of their secret police forces. Washington’s dictators, on the other hand, were mostly a stolid array of ham-fisted military men and dubiously legitimate royals. And few were more stolid than Suharto, the former Indonesian military strongman, who died January 27, 2008 at 86.
Suharto — like many Indonesians, he used only one name — was the classic pro-Western postcolonial dictator: vaguely religious, energetically kleptocratic, monomaniacally anticommunist, and not particularly concerned about his American patrons’ professed faith in things like democracy. As it happened, his takeover displaced an equally prototypical example of the sort of Third World honcho that made Washington nervous: Sukarno, the rabble-rousing champion of Afro-Asian solidarity made famous by the Mel Gibson film The Year of Living Dangerously. The film ends with Suharto’s right-wing coup and images of Communists being lined up and shot on the streets of Jakarta.
For the General, the takeover — estimated death toll: 500,000 — was just the beginning. Over three-plus decades, he thoroughly dominated the sprawling former Dutch colony, the world’s most populous Muslim country. After consolidating control on the central island of Java, the regime was especially brutal at the edges of the archipelago. Suharto clamped down on locals after Indonesia’s 1969 annexation of the culturally distinct province of Irian Jaya, the western half of New Guinea. In 1976, he invaded the former Portuguese territory of East Timor, leading to a bloody quarter-century occupation that left 200,000 dead as a result of what some observers labeled a policy of genocide.
In both cases, the ugly publicity blew back into Washington’s face: U.S. mining firms remain major beneficiaries of Indonesian rule in Irian Jaya. And the fact that Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger met with Suharto in Jakarta on the eve of the East Timor invasion left many observers certain that “Operation Komodo” had received Washington’s blessing. Such was Third World geopolitics in the Cold War: distant dictators consigning thousands to their deaths with the witting or unwitting aid of superpower patrons.
Suharto’s defenders, including many contemporary Indonesian political figures who flocked to his sickbed, point to his stewardship of a national economy that boomed during his rule. It was Indonesia whose citizens — some of them, at least — joined the ranks of Southeast Asia’s economic tigers. During Suharto’s long reign, Indonesia went from backwater to a country that could build its own cars. All those photogenic leftists never managed that. But to critics, the car that was such a source of national pride also represented the apotheosis of another aspect of the general’s reign: corruption. The project just so happened to be run by Suharto’s son, Tommy. The nonprofit anticorruption group Transparency International estimates that, all told, the elder Suharto stole between $15 and $35 billion from his people. In 1998, Forbes estimated the family’s net worth to be $46 billion.
Ultimately, it was the economy that doomed Suharto, who stepped down after the 1997 Asian economic crisis dramatically weakened his regime. By 2001, his old seat was held by Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Sukarno, the man Suharto displaced. Yet although the new leaders opened up the political system, they never fundamentally altered the pro-American, pro-capitalist orientation of the country. With Suharto living quietly in his Jakarta villa, they also never brought him to justice over either corruption or human-rights abuses, despite occasional efforts.
Tommy, the car-building playboy son, wasn’t so lucky: After he got 18 months for corruption, he hired a hitman to kill the judge, earning himself an extra 15-year sentence. He went free after four years, a decision critics said was solely due to his family’s prominence. To this day, the standard image of the younger Suharto shows him alighting from one of his Rolls-Royces. At last: a photogenic member of the old dictator’s family.
Michael Currie Schaffer, a frequent contributor to Obit, is writing a book about the pet industry and American culture.
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5takhanov wrote on January 29, 2008 7:02am
'After the economic collapse in '97 I guess all those people rioting must have been tourists because Indonesians have an undying love for Suharto.' [Report Comment]
