CAATnews December 2003/January 2004 - CAAT In Depth

“Cooperation with others for the general good”

UK arms sales to Indonesia in the early Suharto years. By Nicholas Gilby

Although UK arms sales to Indonesia were an extremely controversial topic in the 1990s, there is very little literature on the UK’s history of arming Indonesia. There is none on sales in the 1960s, during which the Suharto putsch of 1965–6 and the military confrontation between the UK and Indonesia over Malaysia occurred. The files on this were declassified in 1998. Here, for the first time, based on archival records at the Public Record Office, is an outline of how the UK armed Indonesia during the early Suharto years.

Some relevant background: In 1963 Indonesian President Sukarno’s opposition to the UK-backed Malaysian plan to create Malaysia from Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak (in Borneo), led to a UK-Indonesian low-intensity military confrontation in Borneo. During Confrontation, the UK embargoed the sale of military and dual-use (called “para-military” equipment at the time) equipment to Indonesia, and (quite successfully, judging from the files) persuaded NATO and other “friendly” countries (e.g. India and Japan) to do likewise. In October 1965, an internal Indonesian Army dispute resulted in a botched coup against Sukarno, which General Suharto quickly suppressed. Falsely claiming the Indonesian Communist Par ty (PKI) was behind it, Suharto initiated a six-month orgy of killing described by Amnesty as ranking “among the most massive violations of human rights since the Second World War” and the CIA as “one of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century... far more significant than many other events that have received much mor e publicity”. The killings, most of which concluded by March 1966, took the lives of at least half a million Indonesians (a conservative estimate). Suharto then set up a military dictatorship, ruling Indonesia until 1998, and he remains the world’s greatest living mass murderer (Sukarno was forced to hand over power in March 1966 and lived under house-arrest as nominal President until his death in 1970).

In his recent book, Web of Deceit, Mark Curtis has shown that the Foreign Office (FO) totally supported (along with the US) Suharto’s massacres, and arranged for word to be passed to Suharto that the UK “shall not attack them while they are chasing the PKI”. The UK ambassador to Jakarta saw “no reason to object or complain” about the US supply of radios “to help in internal security” and assist the generals “in their task of overcoming the Communists”. The files on UK arms sales show that by December 1965 the FO were “ready to recommend a revision of our embargo policy if it became apparent that the [Indonesian] policy of confrontation [over Malaysia] had been dropped”.

Although, the Defence Sales Organisation (now DESO) was set up during the Wilson Government (1964–70), for most of the 1960s UK arms sales were considered by three inter-departmental committees. The most senior was the Ministerial Committee on Strategic Exports (SEC(M)), supported by the Strategic Exports (Official) Committee (SEC(O)). Less controversial issues were decided by middle-ranking officials making up the Arms Working Party (AWP), chaired by the Head of Defence Secretariat 13.

Allowing Dual-Use Supplies (August 1966)
By the end of May 1966, HSH Stanley at the FO was urging the AWP to relax the arms embargo to “avoid impeding British exports” and that unnecessary controls would damage bilateral relations. The embargo should only apply to equipment “directly useful for subversive infiltration operations”. At an AWP meeting the next day, FO official RH Hanbury-Tenison said he hoped an “early agreement on a possible liberalisation of our current policy” could be reached. At a special meeting of the AWP on 8th June 1966 the FO, along with the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Board of Trade, pushed hard for a review against opposition from the armed services, and a paper prepared by the AWP for the Chiefs of Staff was submitted. The Chiefs of Staff concurred with Service anxieties about continuing Indonesian military operations and decided a relaxation should wait until Confrontation had finished.

The files show that throughout the early months of 1966 there were constant debates in the AWP about “dual-use” items, with the FO and Board of Trade constantly pushing for sales against MoD opposition. As the ratification of the Bangkok agreement (which ended Confrontation) approached in the summer of 1966, another paper was put to the Chiefs of Staff urging that the embargo on dual-use items should be lifted. Although the AWP noted “there might... be some risk of para-mil equipment supplied by the UK or its allies being used against us” the difficulty of “restraining” allies and the imperative that “no potential market should be lost” led them to recommend a relaxation on dual-use items, which the Chiefs of Staff “with some reluctance” accepted on 11th August 1966 (the day of ratification in Bangkok). The FO were delighted, with one official noting “this is something the Foreign Office hav e been pressing for several months, against strong opposition from the MoD”. The US were informed and quickly followed suit.

Allowing Some Military Exports (February 1967)
The first indication I have seen in the files of arms company lobbying show that starting in August 1966, the FO and MoD were approached by agents of Alvis to supply armoured vehicles and related equipment, and in September by BCC Ltd for the supply of radios for the Indonesian Army. By November 1966 the FO were pressing in an AWP for a further relaxation, saying of the Indonesians: “if we continue to refuse all their requests [for military equipment] they might tighten up their attitude towards us”. On 1st November 1966, the AWP decided to draw up another paper for the Chiefs of Staff, arguing the embargo on “inoffensive” military equipment should be dropped. A list of “offensive equipment” to remain under embargo was drawn up, the agreed definition of “offensive” being equipment “applicable to infiltration, intelligence gathering or small-scale insurgency operations across the borders of Kalimantan or West Irian”. The MoD noted “there is no need to place an automatic embargo on such items as tanks and armoured cars”, and considered that examples of equipment suitable for supply were wireless sets, Saracen armoured personnel carriers, Ferret scout cars, and spares for armoured vehicles the Indonesians had purchased in the late 1950s. An internal MoD review of equipment the Indonesians were most likely to request came up with precisely these items.

The AWP paper noted “the political and commercial pressures for a further relaxation so far as military considerations allow” with the FO advising “the situation vis-á-vis Indonesia has developed favourably over the last 6 months” and Indonesia “has no ambitions of territorial expansion”. The paper, and list of 14 items still under embargo, was approved by the Chiefs of Staff on 28th February 1967.

Lifting the Embargo in Full (October 1967)
Inevitably the entire embargo was soon lifted, with the FO and Commonwealth Office agreeing in June 1967 “that a relaxation of the embargo should now be considered”, noting its continuation would “exclude ourselves from whatever market there may be for “offensive” armaments”. An AWP paper recommended to the Chiefs of Staff that the “time has come for Indonesia to revert to normal customer status” and that “there is no longer any reason for maintaining our selective embargo”. The Chiefs agreed on 10th October 1967 and there was no embargo on Indonesia again until September 1999.

In 1967 equipment approved for export included:

• Radio equipment for Indonesian tanks and troops carriers (approved 31st January 1967) from BCC Ltd. Purpose stated on the licence: “Government communications”.
   
• Spare parts for Indonesian Army armoured cars from Cory Brothers and Co. (approved 31 January 1967).
   
• 50 VHF radios for the Indonesian Army from BCC Ltd (approved 31st January 1967). Purpose stated on the licence: “communications for internal security”.
   
• 25 Shorland Armoured Cars (the armoured version of the Land Rover) from Short’s Brothers (approved 16th March 1967). Short’s assured the Board of Trade “the Shorland is designed primarily for internal security”.
   
• Spares for Saracen, Saladin, Ferret and Humber troop carriers and armoured cars (approved 16th March 1967).
   

Conclusion
Two further points are worth making. Firstly, having waded through files inches thick I have not come across a single reference (even veiled) to the nature of the UK’s client when arms sales issues were discussed, just as Curtis found among FO officials “no reference to any concern about the extent of [Suhar to’s] killing at all”. From Curtis’s work, it is clear the same FO officials receiving accurate and chilling reports of massacres were participating in discussions on arms sales to Suhar to. Secondly, the saga of lifting the embargo to Indonesia was discussed at the lowest official level, with no meaningful ministerial involvement.

Michael Stewart, Labour Foreign Secretary in the Wilson Government, once said of UK foreign policy “our task...was to discover how best a nation of our rank could co-operate with others for the general good”. Yet, under his and Healey’s stewardship, the Wilson Government rushed to arm a man who had committed “a war crime of the same type the Nazis perpetrated” (historian Gabriel Kolko). Suharto of course, went on to illegitimately annex West Papua and invade East Timor (using UK equipment), while Labour were in office, adventures which cost hundreds of thousands more lives. Co-operation with others for the general good, indeed.

This article provides an outline of preliminary findings – research is ongoing. Readers with comments or who wish to be kept informed on the progress of research can email the author at nick(at)caat·org·uk