TNI and the Terrorism Bill

Kompas/Toto Sihono

.

The Terrorism Bill has been deliberated over for more than two years since the government first began the revision process of Law No. 15/2003 on terrorism and delivered the bill to the House of Representatives.

The deliberation began after the Thamrin bombing on Jan. 14, 2016. At the time, there was a plan to expand the Indonesian Military’s (TNI) involvement in preventing and eradicating terrorism rather than just assigning the TNI to help the police. This proposal of involving the TNI was reaffirmed in a letter from TNI commander Air Marshall Hadi Tjahjanto to the House Special Committee on Terrorism Law Revision on Jan. 8, 2018.

In short, Hadi proposed that the law’s full name be changed from “Terrorism Eradication” to “Terror Acts Prevention” and to include threats on state ideology and sovereignty, state security and national safety. The TNI also proposed that its role in terrorism prevention be coordinated through the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT).

In an earlier meeting with the House Special Committee on Terrorism Law Revision in June 2016, then-TNI commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo proposed seven forms of TNI involvement in terror prevention, namely to tackle terror acts against the President, the Vice President and their families; against Indonesians abroad; against Indonesian embassies and representative offices abroad; against foreign countries’ embassies and representative offices in Indonesia; against Indonesian ships and airplanes; against foreign countries’ ships and airplanes in Indonesian territories; and on escalating and expanding terror acts that put the state sovereignty, territorial unity and national safety in danger.

The interesting thing here is not only the substance of TNI’s proposal but also TNI’s delivery of said proposal to the House in June 2016 and again in January 2018. This highlights the disagreements between ministries and government agencies in ways to tackle terrorism.

These disagreements had apparently never been resolved through direct communication between the TNI and the House.

Government institutions and officials should have shown a united stance since the bill was first proposed to the House two years ago as a consequence of Article 20 Point 2 of the 1945 Constitution. If there are conceptual differences between ministries and state bodies in the deliberation process, these should be straightened out first before the proposal is delivered as the President’s proposal to the House.

In essence, ministers and heads of state bodies are the President’s ambassadors and mouthpieces to the House. Similarly, House factions should have discussed their position and shown a united stance in deliberating the issue with the government.

National security reform

Disagreements in tackling terrorism come as a result of incomplete reforms of national security. The division of duties and authorities between the TNI and the National Police in tackling armed threats, including terrorism and separatist movements, are not properly managed in line with strategic changes in global and regional levels.

Prevailing laws, including the State Defense Law, the TNI Law, the National Police Law and the Terrorism Law, cannot anticipate the increasing complexity of security threats due to advancements in information and communication technology (ICT). Law enforcement has never been deemed a crucial issue in the deliberation of the Terrorism Law and it has never been discussed by the Defense Ministry and the TNI.

Apart from that, there is still the paradigm of splitting the responsibilities of the TNI in territorial defense and external threats and the National Police in domestic security and domestic disturbances. This is despite technological advancements in cybersecurity, which have blurred the lines between a state’s internal and external matters.

Therefore, the cyber world can become a place for competition and cooperation in defense and security, as well as in politics, economy and other sectors. Apart from information technology advancements, globalization of finances, flow of goods and services and investment have also blurred the lines between a state’s internal and external matters and between security and defense.

Internet is now an integral part of human life and not just an information-sharing and communication medium. Consequently, the internet may help expedite matters, including in helping the police, the military and intelligence in preventing terror acts and helping locals monitor their homes online.

Terror groups can plan their attacks from far away and educate lone-wolf terrorists in making explosives or carrying out propaganda pieces to divide the nation through international and intercontinental computer networks.

At the same time, the infrastructure of the government and the military’s decision-support system, electricity, payment and other systems, can be attacked from far away to cause country-wide destruction and be used as negotiation tactics by terrorists. The presidential election in a country as sophisticated as the US was even alleged to have been rigged by foreign countries and individual perpetrators through the cyber realm.

Changes in strategic contexts have paved the way for the threat of hybrid wars. These type of threats are more complex than what is implicitly defined in Indonesia’s Defense White Paper (2015) as a mixture of military and non-military threats. Hoffman (2007) said the threat of hybrid wars mixed conventional military capabilities, non-regular tactics and formations, terror acts and criminality. The capacity of the cyber world has increased the complexity of hybrid threats.

The model of hybrid threats must be anticipated by the Terrorism Bill and other security and defense regulations. As the forms and sources of security threats have grown more complex, their prevention and eradication efforts must also be done in collaboration between ministries and state bodies, including at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Law enforcement must remain within the authority of the police, prosecutors and the judicial system.