INDONESIA: Military seeks help from top universities

In an attempt to boost their professionalism, Indonesia's sometimes notorious armed forces - the TNI - have agreed to cooperate with the Ministry of National Education. The ministry will direct TNI to top state universities that it hopes will aid the military in achieving its aims.

Sceptics have pointed out the TNI has yet to be taken to account for the late 1990s killings of demonstrating university students in Jakarta and the disappearance of some 14 activists at the hands of the Army Special Forces, Kopassus.

Colonel Guntur Wahyudi, a spokesman for the military, said the planned co-operation with the national education ministry would be part of a TNI drive "to be more professional and innovative". "It is the ministry that will direct us to universities that fit our needs," Wahyudi said.

Under the plan, some university lecturers from top state institutions will teach at the Indonesian Military Staff and Command College in West Java. Among the areas Wahyudi has pinpointed are management skills, technology and human rights.

Given the abuses for which the TNI is known, the latter reference can either be seen as a breakthrough or a cynical ploy. Whether inclusion of human rights on the proposed scheme of co-operation brings about an improvement in the TNI's abysmal rights record remains to be seen. It most certainly poses a challenge to the academics charged with teaching the programme.

Wahyudi's remarks followed hard on the heels of a statement by current Armed Forces chief General Djoko Santoso that the TNI was pledged to upgrade the officer corps through improvements in its education system. Speaking at a passing-out parade for young officers, Santoso said they were facing a "more challenging world owing to rapid advances in information technology and science".

"We must keep up to date by making many innovations to face these challenges. We have to enhance our co-operation with national universities."

The Indonesian Air Force earlier this year signed a deal to co-operate with two of Indonesia's leading higher education institutes, the University of Indonesia and the Bandung Institute of Technology. The latter was chosen for its past kudos in aeronautical engineering, Bandung having once been a centre of aircraft manufacture in the time of Suharto's German-trained Minister of Research and Technology, BJ Habibie.