Focusing on
War Against Terror in the Far East
Allah’s Torch
(A report from Behind the Scenes in Asia’s
War on Terror)
Author: Tracy Dahlby
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Pages: 307
Price: $ 25.95
By Dr Afzal
Mirza
So far the books on the war against terrorism
were by and large focused on the happenings in
the Middle East but Tracy Dahlby has chosen to
write a book on some countries of the Fast Eastern
region where Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore
are situated. He has written in particular about
Indonesia, which is considered to be the largest
Muslim country of the world. The attack on the
pleasure island of Bali in October 2002 that resulted
in the death of more than two hundred people and
injuries to thousands majority of whom were foreign
tourists brought into limelight the state of affairs
in those distant lands.
Tracy Dahlby, a former managing editor of Newsweek,
is supposed to be an expert in the affairs of
Asia especially the Far East where he lived for
thirteen years and served as Tokyo bureau chief
for the Washington Post and Newsweek. It seems
he has made apt use of his expertise by revisiting
the troubled areas hitherto ignored by the media
because of their location and distance. The book
has been written in the form of a travelogue which
makes interesting reading although his observations
might not be objective in analysis.
The first question that comes to the mind of a
reader is why has he titled the book as Allah’s
Torch that can be construed as a reflection on
religious terrorism. But he explains that “Allah’s
Torch is meant to stand for the light-giving qualities
transmitted through Islam.” But he hastens
to explain that the “same torch when hoisted
in human hands can be used either to illuminate
the darkness or amplify it.” One fails to
understand how a torch can amplify darkness. He
tells us that these observations are personal,
reflecting an American’s point of view that
takes the reader into the militant Jakarta slums,
terrorist-traumatized Bali and the Islamic heartland
on the Island of Java where the outcome of a struggle
now raging between moderate Muslims and their
extremist brethren could have far-reaching effects
on the lives of ordinary Americans.
He then proceeds to take the reader to a tour
of that country which entertained a large number
of American tourists in Bali and other small islands.
It also has oil wealth which is being well-exploited
by corporate America. About Indonesia he tells
us that it is a country “sweeping 3200 miles
from the jungles of New Guinea in the east to
the Indian Ocean in west and four-fifths water
the country is a huge porous sponge of some 13677
islands.” The country has more than 90 percent
Muslims in a total 238 million human population
with Christians, Hindus and Buddhists as minorities
divided into 300 ethnic groups speaking 300 distinct
languages. Socially speaking in the words of Dahlby’s
Indonesian friend “it’s the United
States on steroids.”
Dahlby writes that after the 9/11 attacks the
President George Bush and his advisers identified
the area in general and Indonesia in particular
as the next important front in the Global War
on Terror and set about trying to persuade the
Indonesians, longtime US allies to join in the
fight. He points out, “For while we Americans
were radically altering our view of them the Indonesians
had been radically altering their view of us.
Although the overwhelming majority of Indonesians
‘s Muslims are decent even keeled people
and generally as war-like as Ohio Presbyterians
at a church picnic the US led air strikes on Al
Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan with
their inevitable co-lateral killing and wounding
of innocent Muslim civilians had put people in
a very sour mood. Thus the American support in
Indonesia according to a poll fell to 15 percent
in 2003 and even thoughtful Indonesians began
to suspect that the CIA might have actually instigated
the Bali atrocities to give Islam a black eye.
Thus the non-violent Islamists of Indonesia openly
started working to turn secular Indonesia into
a purely Islamic state. They started thinking
that an Islamic super state would one day stretch
from Aceh at Indonesia’s western most tip
to Zamboanga in the Philippines and along the
way sweep in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
Dahlby feels that the ignorant Americans could
easily forget about the changing moods in Indonesia
but “Indonesia’s well-being is directly
connected to our own continued good health.”
He explains this link by saying that “this
Southeast Asia’s biggest economy helps anchor
figuratively and literally the dynamo economies
of the South China Sea which in turn account for
a cool quarter of the global GNP and could harbor
trillions of dollars in undersea oil and gas deposits.”
He cautions that “if the world’s biggest
Muslim country suddenly became fundamentalist
or fundamentally dysfunctional as a nation like
Pakistan or Afghanistan to name only two then
where in the world would that leave the rest of
us.”
Dahlby takes us back into the history of this
interesting country. The founding fathers waged
a struggle for independence against the Dutch
colonialists. They were Sukarno, Dr Hatta and
Sjahrir. . In 1942 the Japanese invaded Indonesia
and threw the Dutch in prison camps. Hatta and
Sjahrir returned to Jakarta where they were joined
by Sukarno. Sukarno and Hatta agreed to form a
nationalist government under the Japanese whom
Indonesians generally regarded as liberators and
fellow Asians. Sjahrir was assigned the task of
making contacts with the Allies. The Japanese
surrendered to the Allied forces on August 15,
1945 and two days later Sukarno and Hatta declared
the independence of Indonesia at Sukarno’s
residence. In 1959 a rebellion against Sukarno
forced him to woo the communists as well .Painting
Sukarno as an autocrat and womanizer Dahlby does
not mention that the Suharto plot was engineered
by the CIA because of Sukarno’s leftist
leanings and his role in the formation of the
association of neutral countries. In mid-sixties
Suharto struck against the founding father Sukarno
and sent him home. However Dahlby points out that
Suharto’s crackdown against pro-Sukarno
people cost a million lives or more that “made
the brutal Dutch look congenial by comparison.”
“Suharto went on to translate two oil booms
into impressive economic and social gains lifting
much of his country above the poverty line….From
his gilded palace in Jakarta he cemented fealty
by doling out patronage or cracking skulls as
the situation required,” he writes Suharto
and his cronies siphoned away billions of dollars
out of Indonesia muzzling the popular discontent
with the help of brutal military power. But man
proposes and God disposes. The famous economic
crises of Asian tigers resulted in the ouster
of Suharto in1998 after thirty years of dictatorship
Dahlby says that radical Muslim movements flourished
in Indonesia during the period of Suharto.
Dahlby has written about his chance encounter
with Jaffar Umar Thalib whom he calls Islamic
warlord whom the New York Times identified as
“ arguably the most feared militant in the
most populous Muslim nation on earth.” Jaffar
whom he terms as an Indonesian of Arab descent
fought in 1980 with other holy fighters to end
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. According
to Dahlby he attended his ‘militant’
prep school in Pakistan and it is there that he
met fellow holy-warrior-in-training Osama bin
Laden. He writes, “ Jaffar would later insist
that bin Laden was neither much of a Muslim---’
an arrogant, spiritually empty man weak on his
Koranic ABCs nor a particularly gifted soldier.”
He further reveals that “like Osama Jaffar
did not believe in democracy, political parties,
women’s rights, capitalism, or save the
whales. According to his blueprint Indonesia will
be ruled by Allah’s laws, the shariah, and
not the law of men---and a board of wise men would
be responsible for picking presidents and deciding
policy.”
With the training camps for militants organized
by his party Jemmah Islamiyah (JI), Jaffar spearheads
the Islamic militancy in Indonesia .In his thought-provoking
and humorous style of writing Dahlby takes his
reader through various islands of Indonesia in
pursuit of Jaffar whom he wanted to interview.
With the help of some Indonesians he reaches his
destination but Jaffar becomes alarmed when he
is told that an American wants to interview him.
Dahlby is scrutinized by the piercing eyes of
Jaffar’s followers, whom he calls young
men with goatees, but does not succeed in his
plans.
Based on his vast tour of the country and discussions
with Indonesian intellectuals and common men,
Dhalby makes the observation: “The good
news of course is that Indonesia was and is no
Iraq. The country’s game if highly stressed
democracy has risen from within, not been imposed
from without and therefore despite their presently
hibernating regard for United States many of its
Muslim scholars, activists, business people and
politicians have continued bravely and of their
own accord to argue for the democratic values
and the standards of fairness and decency we all
share.” Quoting Tom Friedman he writes that
“we cannot win a war of ideas against such
people by ourselves - only fellow Muslims can
do that. Friendship will require effort and imagination
and coming up with creative solutions to help
Indonesia gain momentum over the social and economic
problems that threaten its natural grace and integrity---in
other words it requires Jihad in the best and
broadest meaning of the word.”
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