With its growing economy, strategic location, and pro-Western disposition, Indonesia has long seemed an obvious market for Western defence companies.
But the history of British arms sales to Jakarta is one of controversy and defensiveness — and if the Eurofighter sale goes ahead, the Government will find itself on the defensive once again.
After the British Aerospace (BAE Systems) Hawk was sold to the Suharto dictatorship in the 1980s and 1990s, the British Government never managed to quash suggestions that the aircraft had been used against independence fighters in East Timor.
When four peace activists smashed up a Hawk at the BAE plant they were acquitted by a Liverpool jury on the ground that they had been trying to prevent genocide.
There was further embarrassment when democracy protesters marching against Suharto were dispersed with water cannon mounted on another piece of British kit — the Alvis Tactica armoured vehicle.
Advertisement
News of the Eurofighter negotiations will inflame again human rights groups who believe that the Indonesian armed forces have forfeited the right to be trusted with deadly toys from the West.
They have good grounds. Even after Suharto’s fall in 1998, the Indonesian military demonstrated a murderous disregard for those who opposed its wishes.
The following year, it ran amok in East Timor, killing and burning after the people of the territory voted in a UN referendum for independence from Jakarta.
Both the European Union and the United States swiftly imposed arms embargos — but since then the character of the Indonesian Government has changed profoundly. It has gone from a corrupt democracy to a robust democracy. Despite being a former Suharto-era general, the current President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has won friends in the West for his stewardship of the economy and his effective counter-measures against the threat of violent Islamic extremism.
East Timor is free and independent and the bitter war has come to an end in Aceh province, but nasty incidents continue to occur. In West Papua, where an independence struggle continues, Indonesian soldiers were filmed last year brutally mistreating local men.
Advertisement
In what circumstances is Indonesia ever likely to need sophisticated fighters? In some still unimaginable conflict with China, perhaps — or in a territorial dispute with its neighbours Malaysia and Singapore (both friends of Britain)?
Or in the only conflicts it has known since the 1960s — low-level insurgencies by poorly armed guerrillas?
Will the resumption of arms sales to Indonesia represent a reward for a friendly country making strides in all the right directions — or will it once again leave Britain with egg on its face, or worse still, blood on its hands?