JAKARTA: Before the full glare of television cameras last week, Indonesian army chief Gen Ryamizard Ryacudu walked toward a line of 20 soldiers and tore one-by-one the badges of rank from their uniforms.

These soldiers were stripped of their rank and dismissed at a ceremony in Medan in North Sumatra, north-western Indonesia on Oct 2, because they had attacked a police station after officers refused to release a civilian friend of theirs who had been detained for drug possession.

Late on Sep. 29, more than 100 soldiers from an army airborne battalion attacked a police post in Binjai district in Medan, about 1,350 kilometres north-west of Jakarta, using rifles, grenades and mortars.

The nine-hour shootout left six policemen, one soldier and one civilian dead, and 23 bystanders wounded.

“What you have done has had a disastrous impact on the army,” Ryamizard said at the ceremony. “It’s not you alone who should be held responsible for this, but the military.”

“You acted not as the army but as security disturbers. You embarrassed and sullied the face of the Indonesian armed forces,” he said.

The incident underscores the growing conflict between the police and military over what even military chief General Endriartono Sutarto concedes are rival criminal interests between the two forces.

Agus Mulya, a security expert working at a private security company in Jakarta, says it is widespread knowledge that the military and the police back dirty businesses, “but seeing that it has led to such a brutal gang war, it surprises many”.

“Everybody is surprised. Now they cannot distinguish between the military, the police and criminal groups,” he said.

The tussle between the police and the military has been growing in the years after Suharto was ousted in 1998, not least because the military has been searching for a new role in a more open society where its traditional power base has diminished from the Suharto decades.

The military has had a political role listed in the Constitution, but changes are underway that are reducing its representation in the legislature and undercutting their wide powers in local governments and restive territories.

The police, for its part, is flexing its muscle with new powers it got after being removed from the military command.

This erosion of the military’s power has also meant less opportunities to indulge in various businesses and foundations that it has run for more than five decades, and an increase in illegal businesses from prostitution, poaching, logging or narcotics.

For instance, Binjai, the district in the Aceh-North Sumatra provincial border — where the soldiers’ attack took place last month to get a drug suspect freed — is known as the first stop in the marijuana trade from Aceh province, where marijuana is traditionally used as a cooking spice.

Officials say that marijuana is trafficked by the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), as a means of funding its insurgency, and by criminal groups — invariably with the backing of the military or the police.

The September attack adds pressure on the military and the police to put an end to their business operations. “They should focus on security matters. Business is not their domain,” said Agus.

Many of the business operations the military and the police have been running are legal, if questionable in the eyes of political critics. Often however, the businesses — for instance the military controls more than a million hectares of forest concessions in Kalimantan province — do not always get fully audited.

But these have been growing — and stretching into doubtful sectors like prostitution and gambling — as an independent means of funding their existence. Some officers who name themselves the foundations’ directors are also “getting the windfall” from these foundations, according to a state audit body official.

Misbehaviour and corruption are also emerging amid political pressure for the military to reform and reduced resources for the armed forces and police.

Gen Endriartono says he does not support illegal businesses, but says the military’s presence in legitimate business on the side has its own justification: “The government is unable to meet the military budget, so we have to do something to deal with it.”

The military’s yearly budget stands at 1.06 US billion dollars, less than one-fourth of the 4.4 billion dollar military budget of Singapore, a city state of 4 million people compared to Indonesia’s 220 million population.

The Indonesian military’s budget also compares badly with smaller nations like Thailand (2 billion dollars), the Philippines (1.3 billion dollars), and Malaysia (1.6 billion dollars).

The low funds mean that soldiers are paid poorly. The wages of mid-ranking soldiers range from 540,000 to 850,000 Indonesian rupiah (60 to 95 dollars), while high-ranking officers earn 1.6 million to 4.5 million rupiah (110 to 350 dollars) a month.—Dawn/InterPress News Service.