State of Siege (2 page)

Even when the danger had become manifest, the
Nasjah Government underestimated it. Struggling with vital day-to-day problems of administration and caught up in the political battle being waged over the new Constitution, they felt that they had no time to spare just then to deal with petty discontents. No doubt something would have to be done soon, but not now. With the peculiar innocence of politicians in office, they even assumed that as long as the surplus officers continued to draw their pay and allowances they would remain loyal to the leaders of the Republic. Had these men not fought to make it all possible? Were they not, after all, patriots?

The politicians soon had their answer. By the time they were ready to submit the Draft Constitution to the General Assembly, there was an insurgent force of nearly three thousand men operating in the central highlands. It was led by an ex-colonel named Sanusi, who promoted himself to General and rapidly gained administrative control of an area which straddled the only two roads connecting the capital with the northern provinces. Moreover, Sanusi was a devout Moslem and issued a series of manifestos calling upon all True Believers to join his Sundanese National Freedom Party and declare a Holy War on the infidels in Selampang who had betrayed the new state at the very moment of its birth.

The riots which ensued caused some casualties among the Eurasian population of the capital, but order
was eventually restored without much bloodshed. Although most Sundanese are Moslems and a majority of the men wear the black cap of Islam, religion is not an important factor in their lives. It was General Sanusi’s hold on the interior of the country which constituted the real problem. A punitive expedition sent against him had to withdraw ignominiously when one of its regimental commanders deserted, together with all his men and most of the expedition’s ammunition supply. A subsequent series of air attacks on what was believed to be Sanusi’s headquarters resulted, because of the hazardous flying conditions in the mountains, in the loss of two out of the ten obsolete planes that constituted the Government air force.

Having swallowed these humiliations, the Government were forced to examine the problem more realistically. They believed that Sanusi possessed neither tanks nor artillery, and that without them he would be obliged to remain in the hills. They knew, too, that any further loss of face on their own part would shake the public’s confidence badly. Foreign sensibilities had also to be considered. Arrangements were almost completed for large United States dollar credits to be placed at their disposal. An appearance of calmness and stability must be preserved at all costs.

So they decided to bluff.

A communiqué issued by the Minister of Public Enlightenment announced that the “Sanusi gang” had
been rounded up and liquidated, and a directive to newspaper editors ordered them to refrain from all further allusions to the “incident.” Political murders committed by Sanusi’s undercover agents in Selampang were to be blamed on “colonialist reactionaries.” For inquisitive foreigners who wanted to know why it was still impossible to travel by road from the capital to the north, there was a bland statement that, in view of the extensive damage to bridges and mining of roads carried out by the retreating Dutch forces during the war, land communications would take at least a year to restore. Meanwhile, both sea and air transport were readily available.

At the same time, the Minister of Defence was instructed to take special and secret precautions against any further treachery in the armed forces. The reliability of every army officer was to be carefully tested by the use of
agents provocateurs
. A list of the dissident was to be compiled and steps taken to render them harmless. Sanusi was to be left to cool his heels in the mountains until a full-scale offensive could be mounted against him.

The feeling of security which the Government derived from the making of these decisions did not last long. The inquiries made by the Minister of Defence soon provided the frightening information that there was open talk of a
coup d’état
among the officers, that a group was already in secret communication with Sanusi,
and that it was doubtful if more than a third of the officers of the Selampang garrison could be relied upon in an emergency.

The Council of Ministers’ first reaction was to panic, and for an hour or so, apparently, there was wild talk of asking for a British warship from Singapore to stand by. Then, they pulled themselves together and gave General Ishak, the Minister of Defence, special powers to deal with the conspirators. Within twenty-four hours, sixteen senior officers had been shot and a further sixty were in prison awaiting court-martial.

The immediate crisis was over; but the Government had been badly frightened and they did not for get the experience. The news from Indonesia of the “Turko” Westerling incident intensified their anxiety. If a small force of Javanese counter-revolutionaries led by a few mad Dutchmen could capture a city like Bandung under the very noses of the lawful Indonesian Government, a large force of Sundanese insurgents under Sanusi could probably capture Selampang. Only the Selampang garrison, with its Japanese tanks and armoured cars and its six German eighty-eights, prevented their trying. If Sanusi could ever neutralise the garrison by allying himself with a Fifth Column conspiracy of the kind that had so nearly succeeded before, the game would be up. From now on there must be extreme vigilance. Reliable police spies must be found to report on the activities of all officers and former officers. The
malcontents must be dealt with shrewdly. With a determined trouble-maker, a knife in the back would be the only safe solution. With a more self-interested man, however, a well-paid civil appointment might be the best answer. If, besides purchasing his loyalty, you could also expect to gain his services as an informer, an even more lucrative post could be awarded.

As self-interest seemed to be the dominating characteristic of most of the officers on the list of suspects, the new policy worked. From time to time there were plot scares and midnight executions, and for one period of a month martial law was declared; but although the roads to the north were now permanently in insurgent hands (Sanusi impudently collected taxes from the villages in his area), the Government did not lose any more ground. The losses they suffered from now on were in terms of morale rather than territory.

The black market, for example. There were simple economic reasons for its growth. The American credits had been spent not on capital goods, but dissipated on such things as cars, refrigerators, radios and air-conditioning equipment, the importation of which had produced huge personal commissions for members of the Government and their subordinates. Efforts to control the resulting inflation had been half-hearted. “Inducement taxes” had been imposed only to be evaded. In Selampang there was a black market in practically everything. In the tuberculosis clinics set up by the
World Health Organisation, a
mantri
would even inject water into his patients so that he could steal the B.C.G. vaccine and sell it on the black market. All kinds of racketeering flourished. In Asia, admittedly, the giving and taking of bribes is a normal, accepted part of the daily business of getting things done; but in Sunda it assumed stultifying proportions.

Yet, the Government, although recognising the need for measures to deal with the problem, were quite unable to agree what those measures should be. It was not mere indecision, and it was not simply because there were some ministers with personal interests to consider. Their inability to deal effectively with this or any of the other social and economic problems which confronted them had a deeper cause. The Sanusi affair had in some subtle way served to demoralise them completely. Certainly, after the discovery of the conspiracy of 1950, the whole business of government in Sunda was conducted in a deadly atmosphere of guilt, greed and mutual suspicion that made any major decision seem horribly dangerous. The Nasjah Government, in fact, was suffering from a recurrent nightmare, and their fear of it incapacitated them. A watertight plan for eliminating Sanusi was the only thing that could have produced unanimity.

Up in the Tangga Valley we were to some extent isolated from all this madness; at least during the first year. We used to be told about what was going on by
visitors, especially World Health Organisation and UNICEF people who came to work in our area, and be surprised that such intelligent men should expect us to believe the fantastic stories they told. Later on, when our own contact with the capital became closer, we knew better. But as long as Gedge had the labour force he needed and supplies continued to come up to us from our small port on the coast, we were able to feel that what went on in Selampang was no concern of ours.

And then the “government nominees” began to arrive.

It is one of the basic principles of Colombo Plan policy that, when aid is given for a project like the Tangga River dam, as many of the managerial posts as possible should be held by Asians. If qualified Asians are not immediately available and Europeans (i.e., whites) have to be employed under contract, then every effort has to be made to replace them with Asians when those contracts expire. Obviously, this is good sense, and, naturally, a man like Gedge was in eager sympathy with the principle. But the operative word is “qualified.” Asia is desperately short of technicians of all grades, and at the managerial level the shortage is acute. In Sunda, the position was as bad as could be.

However, that fact did not deter the authorities in Selampang. When a government depends for its physical safety on a policy of “jobs for the boys,” highly paid jobs become scarce. Furthermore, the salaries were
paid by the Colombo Plan contractors, not by the Government. When the Europeans’ service contracts began to expire, the Tangga Valley project must have looked like a gold mine in Selampang. Innocently, Gedge assumed that his formal, routine requests for Asians to replace the departing Europeans (requests that he was legally obliged to make) would be acknowledged and then forgotten in the usual way. He knew perfectly well that they had nobody suitable to send him. And he was right.

The first surplus officer to report for duty was a brutish-looking man in the uniform of a captain of infantry, who announced that he was taking up the post of surveyor to the project and then demanded a year’s salary in advance. On being questioned as to his qualifications, he stated that he was a graduate of the new School of Economic Administration at Selampang, and produced a certificate to that effect. He also produced a pistol which he fingered suggestively during the remainder of the interview. I was there and it was a nerve-racking hour. In the end Gedge gave him a warm letter of recommendation for a post on the central purchasing commission (whose salaries were paid by the Government) and held the plane so that the captain could return at once to the capital and present the letter.

The captain soon proved to be a fairly typical example of what we had to expect. After three other
would-be surveyors had been returned, together with a dozen or more candidates for other jobs, the Ministry of Public Works had changed its tactics. Instead of sending the applicant in person, it would send his name, together with an imposing account of his alleged qualifications, certified as correct by the Minister of Public Works. This left Gedge with the choice of accepting the applicant unseen at the Ministry’s valuation, or of questioning the valuation, and thus, by inference, the Minister’s honesty.

In the end, both sides had to compromise. The Ministry promised to stop sending half-witted gangsters who had been found unemployable even by Sundanese standards. Gedge agreed to take on six Sundanese officers with experience of administrative duties as “liaison managers.” The real jobs were filled, as Gedge had always intended they should be, partly by re-engagement, partly by promotion and partly by bringing in new men, Asian and European, from outside.

I think that we all thought that he had made a good bargain. Friendly relations with the Government had been preserved. His own authority had been unimpaired. His employers’ interests had been safeguarded. The work could now go forward smoothly to its completion (as per specification and on schedule) and to the moment when he would stand bare-headed in the breeze above the eastern spillway accepting the President’s congratulations. Permission had arrived from the
contractors’ head office to debit the salaries of six useless Sundanese officers to the contingency account. All that remained now was to see if the Government kept faith with him.

In their own tortuous way they did keep faith. They did not send half-witted gangsters. They sent intelligent ones.

They arrived all together, four majors and two captains, by special plane from the capital, and began by complaining that the Chief Engineer was not there to welcome them officially. They then announced that they would wait until he arrived. I was with Gedge when he got the message.

He sighed. “I see. Prima donnas. They mustn’t get away with that. Would you mind going over, Steve?”

“Me?” Strictly speaking, it was no concern of mine. Labour relations were the contractors’ business. I was there to represent the firm of consulting engineers who had planned the project, and to see that the contractors did the work according to our specifications. But I had always got on well with Gedge and could see that he was genuinely concerned.

“If someone senior doesn’t go they’ll lose face,” he explained; “and you know I can’t afford to start off badly with these people.”

“All right. But it’ll cost you a couple of large Scotches.”

“Done. And if you go right away I’ll make it three.”

I was not to know that he was, in a way, saving my life.

I found the new arrivals standing in the shade by the radio shack, glowering into space. The jeep drivers who had been sent to collect them looked terrified. I got out of my jeep and walked over.

They were all very smartly turned out, their uniform shirts spotless and their pistol holsters gleaming. I was a bit impressed.