To gain among Muslims, Indonesia Offers to mediate Middle East disputes

Tehran Times - Iran

JAKARTA, Indonesia (NYTimes) -— In April, Indonesia held a gathering of Sunni and Shiite clerics and scholars in an effort to contribute to reconciliation in Iraq, where the death toll is overwhelmingly the result of Muslims killing Muslims.

In August, it hopes to bring the warring Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah together at a conference to which it will also invite political figures and scholars from the United States and Europe.

With these and other recent efforts at playing peacemaker, Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation and at the same time a democracy that promotes moderate Islam, has signaled a desire to take a bigger role in solving problems in the Islamic world.

As a country with about 15 percent of the world’s Muslims and good relations with other Muslim nations and the West, Indonesia hopes to encourage mutual understanding and show how Islamic states can profitably embrace modernity, better government and globalization, Indonesian officials say.

Since it won independence from the Dutch in 1949, Indonesia has largely avoided direct participation in the convulsions of the Muslim world. But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who won Indonesia’s first direct presidential election in 2004, has indicated that he would like that to change.

“Countries in the Middle East have been so deeply involved in the problems of the region for so long a time that they can get too focused on some specific aspects,” Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said in an interview. “We, who follow events in the Middle East from a distance, can see a larger, clear picture,” Mr. Wirajuda said. “Hence we are able to produce some fresh ideas that might be helpful in the quest for a solution.” The new effort has shown few results, and has prompted a lukewarm reaction. Greg Fealy, a specialist on Islam in Indonesia at the Australian National University, said the government’s initiatives were driven in large part by domestic politics and Mr. Yudhoyono’s desire “to appear to be a Muslim leader.”

Mr. Fealy said in a telephone interview from Canberra that Indonesia faced an uphill battle to influence conflict resolution or social development in the Middle East because many countries there still regarded Indonesia as an “outpost” of Islam, despite the size of its Muslim population. But Indonesia seems undaunted. Last year, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Yudhoyono urged Muslims to liberate themselves from isolationism, “to be at the forefront of globalism” and to “embrace technology and modernity.”

He said Islamic countries needed to promote better governance and to build bridges with the West. His message suggested that Islamic countries would be wise to follow Indonesia down the path to liberal democracy. Alwi Shihab, Mr. Yudhoyono’s special adviser on the Middle East and a former foreign minister, has been more emphatic. At a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Mecca in December 2005, he said Muslim countries had a “democracy deficit.” “The tradition of Islam has nothing to contradict participatory politics and good governance,” he told an audience that included King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. “Indeed, democracy is fully commensurate with the ethical and legal precepts of this great religion.”

Indonesia is itself a relatively new democracy. After 32 years of authoritarian rule under one leader, Suharto, it held free parliamentary elections in 1999, followed by the direct elections for president in 2004.

Mr. Wirajuda said that in Indonesia’s “more open and democratic” environment, it was necessary for foreign policy to reflect a popular desire for the country to be more engaged in the affairs of the Islamic world. Now, he said, Indonesia has had the experience of contributing to peace efforts in Cambodia and the southern Philippines, as well as solving a Muslim separatist conflict in its own Aceh Province. “We have our own credentials,” he said. “Perhaps from our experience we can contribute something.”

The United States sees Indonesia as a valuable ally among Islamic countries.

When Mr. Yudhoyono met with President Bush in Bogor last November, the Indonesian leader declined at their news conference to call for the immediate withdrawal of American forces from Iraq despite Indonesia’s firm opposition to the invasion in 2003.

Instead, he put forward what American officials refer to as his “three R’s” — reconciliation among factions in Iraq, replacement of American forces by a Muslim-dominated coalition under United Nations auspices, and reconstruction.

Indonesia has not had many takers for its proposals.

The Sunni-Shiite conference in Bogor in April brought together Islamic figures from eight countries, but some major Iraqi and Iranian leaders did not attend. Indonesia faces similar problems in arranging the conference with Hamas and Fatah, now twice delayed. “I think there is a huge gap between Indonesia’s rhetoric and aspirations, and what is achieved,” Mr. Fealy said. “I am not saying it is in vain, but the way Indonesia conducts its diplomacy is likely to end in failure.”

But he said Indonesia and Malaysia had played leading roles in the Organization of the Islamic Conference in the deployment of peacekeepers to southern Lebanon. Indonesia has about 850 peacekeepers with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

Last year, Indonesia was elected to a rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council. Mr. Wirajuda said in an interview that Indonesia would use its seat on the Council to present “the views, interests and desires of the developing world, including the Muslim world.” But the difficulty Indonesia faces in navigating those issues was evident in March, when the Security Council decided to impose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

On March 24, Indonesia lined up with the major powers and voted for the sanctions — despite consistently supporting Iran’s right to pursue the peaceful use of nuclear energy and boasting of close diplomatic ties to Tehran.

Rizal Sukma, who leads the international relations committee of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second-largest Muslim social organization, said the greater engagement in Islamic affairs would have to be carefully managed to avoid causing tensions at home and in relations with other Islamic countries. “We have to be realistic about our ability to promote a moderate Islamic and democratic agenda outside Indonesia,” said Mr. Sukma, who wrote the book “Islam in Indonesian Foreign Policy.”

“It can serve as a double-edged sword if we are not careful to define what kind of Islamic influence we want to project in our foreign policy,” he said. (Source: NYTimes)