HABIBIE AND THE ERODING CREDIBILITY OF INDONESIA'S KILLING MACHINE

By Harlan Pryce · September 11, 2026

While state troops continued to kill unarmed civilians in the provinces, a confidential report from 1998 shows the US monitoring the collapse of military credibility in Jakarta.

Seventeen people died in November 1998 when state troops opened fire on unarmed protesters in Jakarta, and twelve more followed a year later. This was the cost of a "reform" era that left the triggers in the hands of the same men who had spent three decades perfecting the art of the massacre.

I am working from the archive's curated description of a 1998 telegram from the US Embassy in Jakarta to the State Department. The record captures a moment of calculated friction in August of that year, just as the smoke was clearing from the May riots that had finally broken the grip of Suharto, the general and politician who served as the second and longest-serving president of Indonesia from 1967 to 1998. By the time this cable was sent, Suharto had been replaced by Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, an engineer and scientist who served as the third president from 1998 to 1999.

Habibie was presented to the world as the face of the Reformasi—the transition to a democratic era. But the record shows that behind the optics of transition, the Indonesian Armed Forces, the military body that includes the Army, Navy, and Air Force, were not interested in reform. They were interested in survival.

May 1998 and the Illusion of Reform

The public record establishes that the May 1998 protests were the catalyst for Suharto's resignation, but the violence did not end with his departure. The Indonesian Armed Forces had spent the better part of the 20th century treating the Indonesian population as an internal enemy. When the leadership shifted to Habibie, the military did not simply step back; they stepped into the shadows of the new administration, maintaining a veto over any real accountability.

According to the record, the Indonesian Human Rights Commission (KOMNAS-HAM), the national human rights institution tasked with the protection and promotion of human rights, spent the early months of the Habibie presidency trying to turn the page. KOMNAS-HAM pressed the incoming administration to move beyond symbolic gestures and undertake a "systematic investigation" into the bloodletting of May 1998.

But the record reveals a grim reality: the killings in the capital were not an isolated incident of crowd control gone wrong. They were the urban expression of a doctrine that the military had already perfected in the provinces. While Habibie spoke of democracy in Jakarta, the Indonesian Armed Forces were continuing to operate with impunity. A member of the Commission told US officials that "ABRI abuse of human rights was continuing, notwithstanding public condemnation and ongoing investigation."

Document imagery from nsarchive.gwu.edu From the files: nsarchive.gwu.edu

The Blood of the Periphery

To understand the "systemic" nature of the abuses mentioned in the record, one must look away from Jakarta and toward the edges of the archipelago. The Indonesian Armed Forces did not just kill students in the capital; they were waging wars of attrition in the periphery.

In Aceh, the westernmost province of Indonesia on Sumatra island, the military had long utilized a scorched-earth approach to suppress separatism. In West Papua, the western half of the island of New Guinea, the military maintained a permanent state of occupation to stifle independence movements. In East Timor, the territory now known as Timor-Leste, the military's presence was defined by mass killings and forced disappearances.

The record specifically notes that KOMNAS-HAM was pushing Habibie to investigate abuses not just in Jakarta, but in these three regions. This is where the connection becomes clear: the violence of the Semanggi shootings in Jakarta was the same violence used in the jungles of Papua and the hills of Timor. The military did not have two different strategies—one for the world to see and one for the provinces. They had one strategy: the total erasure of dissent through lethal force.

As these atrocities moved from the periphery into the light of international scrutiny, the record notes that "ABRI credibility was eroding as case after case came to light." The military was losing the propaganda war, even as they continued to win the war against the civilians.

The Intelligence of Human Rights

There is a particular irony in the way the US Embassy in Jakarta—the mission responsible for monitoring the republic's stability—interacted with KOMNAS-HAM. The record shows that members of the Commission were providing intelligence and testimony regarding ongoing military abuses directly to US officials.

On the surface, this looks like a diplomatic effort to support human rights. But the desk's reading is that the US Embassy was utilizing KOMNAS-HAM as an intelligence asset. By listening to the Commission's frustrations, the US was not necessarily seeking to end the killings; it was mapping the internal fractures between the new civilian administration under Habibie and the military command. The US was gauging exactly how much pressure Habibie could withstand before the military decided he was no longer useful.

Furthermore, the record's focus on "eroding credibility" suggests a tactical calculation. The pattern suggests that the reporting on the military's failing reputation served as a pretext for the US to recalibrate military aid or security assistance. By framing the issue as a matter of "credibility" rather than a matter of war crimes, the US could adjust its leverage over the Indonesian Armed Forces without appearing to interfere in the domestic politics of a sovereign ally.

A Buffer for the Empire

If this file is shaped the way it looks, Habibie was never intended to be the architect of a new Indonesia; he was being leveraged as a buffer. He was the shock absorber designed to absorb the friction between the burgeoning human rights movement and a military that refused to disarm. By allowing Habibie to be the target of KOMNAS-HAM's pressure, the US Embassy could monitor the chaos from a distance, shielding Washington from taking a definitive stance on the military's systemic abuses while maintaining a relationship with the men who actually held the power.

The document's silence is as telling as its text. It mentions the "pressure" on Habibie, but it omits the military's active resistance and their absolute veto power over the judiciary. The desk's reading is that the "pressure" described in the record was an exercise in optics rather than a viable path to legal accountability. The US knew the military would never allow a systematic investigation into Aceh or West Papua to reach the top of the chain of command, and they were content to let the Commission shout into the wind as long as it provided a useful stream of intelligence.

The focus on the periphery—Aceh, West Papua, and East Timor—indicates that the US was less concerned with the morality of the killings and more concerned with the military's ability to maintain territorial integrity during a regime transition. The fear was not that the military was killing too many people, but that their "eroding credibility" would fuel separatist movements to the point of collapse.

Ultimately, the pattern established here is one of managed instability. The US Embassy watched as KOMNAS-HAM pleaded for a review of the national security doctrine, knowing full well that the doctrine of the Indonesian Armed Forces was not a set of rules, but a license to kill. The result was a transition that changed the man in the palace but left the killers in the field. The victims of the Semanggi shootings were not casualties of a failing democracy; they were the predictable outcome of a system where the US and the Indonesian state decided that stability was more valuable than justice.

HABIBIE AND THE ERODING CREDIBILITY OF INDONESIA'S KILLING MACHINE

May 1998 and the Illusion of Reform

The Blood of the Periphery

The Intelligence of Human Rights

A Buffer for the Empire

Sources