By TIARMA SIBORO
JAKARTA — US and Indonesian military ties are growing as evidenced by US participation in the recent US-Indonesian joint-funded Counterterrorism Exercise (CTX) held Sept. 5-13 at Indonesia’s peacekeeping forces training center in Sentul, West Java.
Participants included all special operations forces of the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations member countries, plus eight counterpart states: the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, India and Russia.
However, Indonesia’s best special operations force, the infamous Kopassus, was excluded from participating in the CTX due to past US complaints about human rights abuses by the unit during the 1999 East Timor crisis, in which civilians were murdered, kidnapped and tortured.
The Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) is implementing military modernization efforts, but excluding Kopassus remains a problem, experts say. The TNI suffered from the US arms embargo after the 1999 crisis. The Kopassus are the best trained and disciplined unit within TNI, and exclusion from training opportunities by the US will be difficult.
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