User:Vanished user msu46VwF2/Military career of Suharto

Pre-Independence military career

After a brief stint in a clerical job at a bank (from which he was fired), followed by a spell of unemployment, Suharto joined the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) in 1940, and studied in a Dutch-run military academy in Gombong near Yogyakarta. This unusual opportunity for an indigenous colonial subject came as a result of the Netherlands' growing need for troops as World War II widened and the threat of an invasion by Imperial Japan grew more likely.

After graduation, Suharto was assigned to Battalion XIII at Rampal. His service there was unextraordinary, but for his contracting malaria requiring hospitalization while on guard duty, and then gaining promotion to sergeant.

The invasion of Imperial Japanese forces and subsequent surrender of the Dutch forces led to Suharto's desertion from the Dutch and defection to the Japanese occupation force. He first joined the Japanese sponsored police force at the rank of keibuho (assistant inspector), where he claimed to have gained his first experience in the intelligence work so central to his presidency ("Criminal matters became a secondary problem," Suharto remarked, "what was most important were matters of a political kind").

Suharto shifted from police work toward the Japanese-sponsored militia, the Peta (Defenders of the Fatherland) in which Indonesians served as officers. In his training to serve at the rank of shodancho (platoon commander) he encountered a localized version of the Japanese bushido, or "way of the warrior" , used to indoctrinate troops. This training encouraged of anti-Dutch and pro-nationalist thought, although toward the aims of the Imperial Japanese militarists. The encounter with a nationalistic and militarist ideology is believed to have profoundly influenced Suharto's own way of thinking.

Service in the Indonesian National Revolution

The arrival of VJ Day, bringing Japanese surrender to the Allies in World War II, brought forth the opportunity for the leaders of the Indonesian Nationalist cause Sukarno and Hatta to hastily declare the complete independence of Indonesia and the beginning of the Indonesian National Revolution. International recognition of Indonesia's sovereignty, however, would only come after armed action - a task at which Suharto would prove himself adept.

Expulsion of the Japanese

For his part, the Japanese surrender had left Suharto in a position to create a name for himself as a part of the military effort to first expel the remaining Japanese forces, and to prepare nationalist forces for the Dutch attempt to retake their former colonial possessions in the archipelago. He became a deputy to Umar Slamet in the service of the revolutionary government's People's Security Body (BKR).

Suharto claims to have led a number of attacks against remaining Japanese forces around Yogyakarta. The central role he commonly portrayed himself playing in his reminisces on the period during his presidency is debatable; however, it may be acknowledged that Suharto's familiarity with military functioning helped in the organization of the disparate independence forces into a unified fighting force. In the early years of the Revolution, Suharto organized local armed forces into Battalion X of Regiment I; Suharto was promoted to the rank of Major and became Battalion X's leader.

Return of the Dutch

The arrival of the Allies, under a mandate to return the situation to the status quo ante bellum, quickly led to clashes between Suharto's Division X and returning Dutch forces, bolstered by Gurkhas in the employ of Great Britain. Political differences within both the Allies and the civilian Nationalist forces caused the conflict to alternate in intensity from the end of 1945 into first months of 1946, as negotiations went on between the leaderships of the Indonesian Nationalists and the Dutch in between periods of fighting. In this muddle, Suharto led his troops toward halting an advance by the Dutch T ("Tiger") Brigade on 17 May 1946. It earned Suharto the respect of his superior, Lieutenant Colonel Sunarto Kusumodirjo, who invited him to draft the working guidelines for the Battle Leadership Headquarters (MPP), a body created to organize and unify the command structure of the Indonesian Nationalist forces.

The military forces of the still infant Republic of Indonesia were constantly restructuring. By August 1946, Suharto was head of the 22nd Regiment of Division III (the "Diponegoro" Division) stationed in Yogyakarta. In late 1946 the Diponegoro Division became responsible for defense of the west and south-west of Yogyakarta from Dutch forces. Conditions at the time are reported in Dutch sources as miserable; Suharto himself is reported as assisting smuggling syndicates in the transport of opium through the territory he controled, in order to make income.

After a period of cooling down, the Dutch-Indonesian conflict flared up again in 1947 as the Dutch initiated Operatie Product ("Operation Product"), the first of its two Politionele acties ("Police Actions") to recapture Indonesia. Operatie Product severely demoralized Indonesian forces, but diplomatic action in the United Nations granted a respite from the fighting in order to resume negotiation. In the meantime, Suharto was married to to Siti Hartinah, a woman of a high class family that in the years of the revolution lost its prestige and income.

The Second Police Action, Operatie Kraai ("Operation Crow"), commenced in December 1948 and decimated much of the Indonesian fighting forces, resulting in the capture of Sukarno and Hatta, the civilian leadership of Indonesia. Suharto, for his part, took severe casualties as the Dutch invaded the area of Yogyakarta; the retreat was equally humiliating.

Guerrilla warfare and victory

It is widely believed that the humiliating nature of this defeat engrained a sense of guilt in Suharto, as well as a sense of obligation to avenge his honor. Suharto, and the aggrieved Indonesian armed forces, attempted to do this by means of guerrilla warfare, using intelligence and supply networks established at the village level. During this time ambushes became a favored tactic; villagers were enlisted to attack Dutch patrols with weapons as primitive as bamboo spears. The desired effect was to remind the populace of the continuing resistance to Dutch rule. However, these attacks were largely ineffective and were often comparable to suicide.

Suharto's efforts to regain the national honor culminated in an attack on Dutch forces at Yogyakarta on 1 March 1949. Suharto would later embellish his role as the singular plotter; according to more objective sources, however, the nationalist Sultan Hamengku Buwono IX (who still remained in power), as well as the Panglima of the Third Division ordered the attack. General Nasution would recall, however, that Suharto took great care in preparing the "General Offensive" (in bahasa Indonesia, Serangan Umum).

In a series of daring small-scale raids under cover of darkness and with the support of locals, Suharto's forces captured the city, holding it until 12 noon. The attack yielded some ammunition and a few light arms; as propaganda and psychological warfare it had filled the desired effect, however - civilians sympathetic to the Nationalist cause within the city had been galvanized by the show of force, and internationally, the United Nations took notice, with the Security Council putting pressure on the Dutch to cease Police Action and to re-embark on negotiation. Suharto gained both national and international recognition of his abilities as a military planner.

The return of the Dutch to the negotiating table all but assured, Suharto took an active interest in the peace agreements, though they were much to his dissatisfaction.

Post-Independence military career

During the following years he served in the Indonesian National Army, stationed primarily on Java. In 1959 he was accused of smuggling and transferred to the army Staff College in Bandung, West Java. In 1962 he was promoted to the rank of major general and took command of the Diponegoro Division. During the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation, Suharto was a commander of Kostrad (Strategic Reserve), a sizeable army combat force, which most importantly had significant presence in the Jakarta area. By 1965, the armed forces split into two factions, one left wing and one right wing, with Suharto in the right-wing camp.

Indonesian Civil War

Main article: Indonesian Civil War

As Major General, Suharto (at right, foreground) attends funeral for assassinated generals 5 October 1965. (Photo by the Department of Information, Indonesia)

On the morning of October 1 1965, a group of Sukarno's closest guards kidnapped and murdered six of the right-wing anti-Communist generals. Sukarno's guards claimed that they were trying to stop a CIA-backed military coup which was planned to remove Sukarno from power on "Army Day", October 5. Suharto, at the time a Major General, joined surviving right-wing General Abdul Haris Nasution in pointing the blame for the assassinations toward Sukarno-loyalists and the Communist Party of Indonesia - a conspiracy they collectively dubbed the "30 September Movement" (in bahasa Indonesia, Gerakan 30 September). The group's name was more commonly abbreviated G30S, and propaganda would refer to the group by the epithet Gestapu (for its supposed similarity to the Nazi secret police the Gestapo).

Crisis and opportunity

Chaos and confusion surrounded the assassinations, but provided an opportunity for Suharto to rise within the army's ranks. At the time of the assassinations of the generals, Maj. Gen. Suharto and his Kostrad units were closest to the capital Jakarta; thus he became the field general in charge of prosecution of the alleged G30S forces. He gained further military powers through the intervention of the surviving right-wing Defense Minister and overall military Chief-of-Staff Gen. Abdul Haris Nasution, who forced President Sukarno to remove Maj. Gen. Pranoto Reksosamudra (seen as a leftist and Sukarno-loyalist) from the position of Army Chief-of-Staff, and to replace him with Maj. Gen. Suharto.

On 18 October, a declaration was read over the army-controlled radio stations, banning the Communist Party of Indonesia. The army, acting on orders by Suharto and supervised by Nasution, began a campaign of agitation and incitement to violence among Indonesian civilians aimed not only at Communists but the ethnic-Chinese community and toward President Sukarno himself. The resultant destabilization of the country left the Army the only force left to maintain order.

Power struggle

In the following months, as alleged Communists and Sukarno loyalists were killed and captured from the cities and villages, and liquidated from government, the trioka of Pres. Sukarno, Nasution, and Suharto jockeyed for power. Contemporary reports state that Sukarno was politically weak and desperate to keep power in the hands of his presidency by starting a factional struggle between Gen. Nasution and Suharto, while the two were absorbed in personal ambitions.

On 1 February, 1966, Pres. Sukarno promoted Suharto to the rank of Lieutenant General. The same month, Gen. Nasution had been forced out of his position of Defense Minister. The power contest had been boiled down to Suharto and Sukarno; with Sukarno in ill-health politically isolated in the absence of the PKI, Suharto had virtually assured himself the presidency.