What does Bobetko have to do with Aceh?

[Ivo Skoric]

Recently, I was at some party with NGO groups that work within 
the UN framework, i.e. the peace movement jet-set. So, there was 
a lawyer working for the UN General Secretariat asking an 
Australian lawyer, working for a humanitarian organization, why did 
the Australian military force rushed into East Timor, taking away all 
the documents that UN wanted to use to implicate Indonesian 
government in crimes against humanity? She was playing ignorant.

But the fact is that Australia led the emergency force to stabilize 
East Timor and virtually brokered the withdrawal of Indonesian 
troops - that must have come after certain agreements were made, 
like that the regime would not be held liable, for example. Now the 
UN is furious, because they don't have the evidence to work with, 
and also there is no equivalent of the Hague Tribunal for Indonesia. 
Australian interest in stability in Indonesia is pretty clear: Indonesia 
is an impoverished, densely populated (4th population size on the 
planet) island nation, a short boat-travel distance from the 
Australian West coast. Any trouble there spells a nightmare 
refugee crisis for Australia. 

Meanwhile, media are pretty quiet on that: Indonesia is also an 
important U.S. secular Muslim ally in the 'war on terrorism' and, 
incidentally, the Exxon-Mobil owned oil-fields there are in the 
region with a large Muslim fundamentalist population (Aceh) that is 
kept in check brutally by Indonesian military, virtually on lease to 
Exxon-Mobil. So, there is no U.S. pressure on Australia to release 
that evidence. On the contrary, perhaps. This story in itself is an 
interesting evidence how the crimes against humanity are used as 
a political tool of coercing the 'rogue states' to play the ball 
following the rules set down by the Empire for a sole reason of 
maximizing profits. 

It is not politically acceptable to the Empire, that Indonesian 
regime is destabilized at the time, with the UN prosecuting their 
high officials for crimes against humanity, so evidence against 
them is securely and secretly kept by Australia, a loyal vassal of 
the Empire. Empire, of course, likes to keep some of its cards in 
the sleeve, and it can use this evidence at liberty if it becomes 
displeased with Indonesian 'rogues' - just as Bush Sr. used old 
Amnesty International reports on Saddam's brutality when he 
needed them to build a strong case for the Gulf War in 1991, 
although he routinely ignored them previously, supplying Saddam 
with weapons he used to excersise that brutality. 

In respect to the general Bobetko's case, Croatia is not Indonesia, 
and nobody is interested in stability of Croatia. Au contraire, 
possibly: it seems that 'international community' likes Balkan 
states weak, cowered, insecure and kept on their tippy-toes about 
what the tommorow may bring for them. Beggars are not choosers. 
And the world economy needs a pool of cheap, but well educated 
labor force. On the other hand, there was enough crimes against 
humanity committed by all sides in the wars of Yugoslav 
succession, so that The Hague can hover like a sword of Damocle 
over the fragile political structures there for years to come (since, of 
course, there are no statutes of limitations for crimes against 
humaity), while serving competing Western political agendas. 

This puts the Balkans (and Croatia, of course, since the West 
obviously do not recognize Croatia's futile aspirations to avoid that 
classification) back to where it was for centuries: actually save for 
the brief periods of king Tomislav of Croatia in 10th century, the 
Nemanjic's dinasty in Serbia's 13th century and king Tvrtko of 
Bosnia in 14th century - and the "king" Tito of Yugoslavia in 20th 
century, the territories, that we know now as the former Yugoslavia, 
were always serving foreign interests, and not the local population 
(or, at least, local strongmen).

ivo