How “militarized” is Indonesia’s COVID-19 management? Preliminary assessment and findings

Evan A. Laksmana, Rage Taufika

Indonesian analysts have recently debated whether Indonesia’s handling of the COVID-19 management has been “securitized” or even “militarized” as military (TNI) officers appear to be at the forefront of both national and local mitigation efforts.[1] This essay provides a preliminary empirical analysis of the patterns and extent to which Indonesia “militarized” its national and local management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is an extensive, even if arguably inconclusive, literature on “securitization” and “militarization” in general.[2] We focus on the latter and operationalize it as the degree to which military officers are in positions of influence with regards to both policy decision-making and implementation. This conception leads to at least three ideal-typical militarization of public policy: maximalist, partial, and minimalist.

We should see a maximalist militarized public policy when the military as an organization is put in charge of both policy formulation and implementation while civilians take a backseat or at best play a minor role. A partial militarization is observed when a significant number of individual officers, but not the military organization as a whole, help shape and implement policies. Finally, in a minimalist militarization, we would only see only a select few officers helping shape policy implementation.

We argue that in the context of Indonesia’s COVID-19 management, we are witnessing partial militarization thus far. When assessed at both the national and local levels, we demonstrate that the TNI organization as a whole has not been fully mobilized to take over civilian policy decision-making and implementation.

At the national level, about two dozen retired and active-duty officers are in key government positions — some of which are salient to COVID-19 management. The various TNI operations thus far in support of the government’s COVID-19 management only utilized a small number and localized military assets and personnel. At the local level, hundreds of TNI officers are assigned as Deputy Chiefs of local COVID-19 task forces — but they do not dominate them. Chief local executives still control decision-making, the police remain part of the local task forces, and the TNI provides support in implementing mitigation efforts.

National level patterns

At the national level, active duty and retired military officers are involved — some directly more than others — in the management of COVID-19. First, at the cabinet level, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo employs several retired generals, including Terawan Putranto (Health Minister), Prabowo Subianto (Defense Minister), Luhut Pandjaitan (Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment), Fachrul Razi (Religious Affairs Minister), Moeldoko (Chief of Staff), and Wiranto (Presidential Advisory Council Chair). They have been playing different roles throughout the pandemic, with Terawan leading the way. As health minister, his special staff includes at least three retired generals. Ahmad Yurianto, the current COVID-19 national spokesperson, is an Army colonel and an official with the health ministry.

Second, Jokowi created the national Coronavirus Disease Response Acceleration Task Force in March 13 headed by current National Disaster Agency chief and former Army Special Forces Commander Lieutenant General Doni Munardo. The Task Force coordinates the government-wide efforts to mitigate the pandemic. Although it employs active duty officers, it also has dozens of medical and public health experts as part of its Expert Council. The Task Force’s Executive Council includes two senior generals: The Assistant to TNI Commander for Operations and the Secretary General of the National Resilience Council.

Third, the TNI has engaged in various operations to assist with the mitigation efforts. The TNI created four Integrated Joint Task Commands in Jakarta, Natuna, Sebaru island, and Galang island. These units, comprising of elements from the military, police, civilian agencies and volunteer groups, seek to assist the TNI’s localized mitigation efforts (filed under its “Military Operations Other Than War”). The Commander of the Joint Regional Defense Command 1, Vice Admiral Yudo Margono, controls these four Task Commands.

Along with these Commands, the TNI has deployed more than a thousand personnel to assist with various COVID-19 related tasks, from helping build emergency hospitals, providing maritime and airborne medical evacuations, quarantine patrol and management, to transporting and distributing medical supplies and other efforts. These do not include the various supporting effort local TNI units and commands have provided to local governments across Indonesia as part of the local COVID-19 task forces (discussed below).

Overall, we have at least 21 retired and active duty officers directly involved in the decision-making process of the various mitigation efforts at the national level. But these officers, while certainly significant in shaping policies, were part of an overall system outside of the TNI structure or chain of command. In other words, they do not take orders from or are working on behest of the TNI leadership. In fact, the TNI has been helping the government implement — not single-handedly formulate — mitigation policies.

Local level patterns

At the local level, we examine data provided by the national COVID-19 task force.[3] As of April 30, the data covers 34 provinces, 417 districts, and 99 cities. We supplement and expand the data with our own open-source ongoing research as well as various media reports.

At the local level, military units and personnel were not only deployed to assist with the distribution of medical supplies. Local governments also asked them to engage in various tasks, from public health and policy socialization to erecting local kitchens. But more broadly, most the military participation in local COVID-19 mitigation efforts (outside of those decided by the TNI leadership in Jakarta) have come through two primary channels.

First, the Regional Leadership Communication Forum (FORKOPIMDA) spread throughout Indonesia’s provinces, districts and cities. The forum consists of the chief local executive (governor/district chief/mayor) and the local security, military, or judicial ranking officers or commanders. As the name implies, the forum helps local principals to coordinate and implement policies, including COVID-19 management.

Second, the creation of dedicated local COVID-19 task forces, which often includes local TNI and police commanders as the Deputy Chief. Except for cases where the governors or district chiefs are retired military officers (at least nine of them), all of the local COVID-19 task forces are essentially civilian-led. Not all provinces, districts and cities have a dedicated COVID-19 task force.[4] In other words, while the local military commanders are part of the local COVID-19 task forces, they do not always dominate them.

To measure the degree of local involvement, we propose and code for two ideal types: (1) “primary”, where either a military or a police officer forms the majority of the local task force membership (up to 3 people), and (2) “collective”, where a military or a police officer is part of a larger civilian-filled task force (more than 5 people). The assumption here is that the more reliant the local chief executive is on local military or police commanders (as indicated by task force size), the more likely those officers play a larger role in shaping COVID-19 policies.

Organizational distribution

Our data records 236 different police officers and 225 different military officers listed as part of the hundreds of local COVID-19 task forces created across Indonesia. Except for two districts, all of these officers were appointed as the Deputy Chiefs of the task forces. We focus specifically on the 226 military officers as described in the figures below.

Figure 1 TNI officers assigned to local COVID-19 task forces (by rank)

Figure 2 TNI officers assigned to local COVID-19 task forces (by academy class)

First, Figure 3 shows that the Army dominates the local task forces. This is unsurprising given their extensive territorial command structure and local engagement activities as well as their overall size relative to the other services. Specifically, the data shows that almost 85 percent of the TNI officers assigned as Deputy Chiefs of local COVID-19 task forces were Military District (KODIM) Commanders and senior officers. The Army’s territorial structure (along with the police units and commanders) therefore provides an underlying support system for the local governments to implement various mitigation efforts.

Second, Figure 1 shows that senior mid-rank officers, especially lieutenant colonels and colonels, provide the leadership backbone of the TNI’s support of local COVID-19 task forces. These are officers who have suffered the brunt of the various promotional logjams plaguing the TNI over the past decade.[5] As such, they are likely to take this opportunity to assist with COVID-19 mitigation seriously as the ability of their localities (province/district/city) to overcome the pandemic could be an important promotional benchmark in the future.

Third, Figure 2 shows that most of those assigned to local task forces (about 70 percent) came from the post-New Order academy generation — those who graduated in 1998 and after. Many have placed their hope on this generation as these officers did not cut their teeth under a highly politicized military organization backing an authoritarian rule. The local pandemic management is a crucial test of whether the next generation of TNI leaders could work well with their civilian counterparts in a democratic setting. It is also a test of whether local civilian leaders can perform admirably in dealing with local COVID-19 cases. How local civilian and political institutions and leaders perform will determine whether the next generation of TNI leaders develop trust in those democratic-era institutions.

Fourth, the military officers do not dominate all of the local COVID-19 task forces, as Figure 4 shows. Almost 60 percent of those assigned as Deputy Chiefs of the local task forces were part of larger civilian-led groups (“collective”) — making their role less significant compared to those assigned to smaller groups (“primary”). In other words, the presence of military officers alone should not be assumed to have a perverse or dominating “militarized” effects across different localities. It remains to be seen, however, whether some individual officers could have more influence than others over local policy decision-making and implementation.

Spatial distribution

The spatial distribution of the local COVID-19 task forces across Indonesia (see Figure 5 below) also shows that TNI officers do not dominate all of them. These officers were listed as the Deputy Chiefs on 35 percent, 31 percent, and 30 percent of local COVID-19 task forces at the provincial, district, and city levels, respectively.

Figure 5 Spatial distribution of local COVID-19 task forces

Some of the officers, however, are assigned to more than one local task force. This is likely due to the geographical scope of the respective locales; territorial command units often span a few administrative districts or cities. The military officers were also not “alone” in assisting the local government as the police are also almost always part of the local task force. There is thus a relative “balance of local coercive power” in that regards.

Conclusion

Overall, despite the significant roles of individual retired and active-duty officers played in the management of COVID-19, the TNI as an organizational actor is not yet fully mobilized. As far as we know, there is yet a specific directive for an organization-wide TNI task force to be mobilized to deal with the pandemic. This is not to suggest that the TNI leadership has no influence whatsoever — they clearly shape the policy options available to the government.

But the balance of evidence thus far suggests that most of the organizational role has been concentrated in providing support for the national and local government’s mitigation efforts, rather than taking over policy formulation away from civilian authorities. In other words, the TNI as an organization remains a “supporting” cast member in the management of the pandemic, it is not yet the definitive leading actor.

It is unclear however whether this partial militarization of COVID-19 will last. If the government’s mitigation efforts are proven to be simply too little too late, and major domestic political and economic instability ensues, we are likely to see more calls for the military as an organization to step in and fill the void. In other words, whether we see a transition from a partial to a maximalist militarization of pandemic policies is likely to depend on the extent to which the national and local governments could take decisive actions informed by public health experts and medical science.

[1] See for example R. Moh Hiu Dilangit Ramadhan Sasongkojati, “COVID-19: Indonesia Needs to Consider Pandemic Diseases a National Security Issue”, CSIS Commentaries DMRU-061-EN, 29 April 2020; Rage Taufika, “The militarization of COVID-19: mixing traditional and non-traditional security?”, CSIS Commentaries DMRU-063-EN, 1 May 2020; Tangguh Chairil, “Indonesia Needs to Change Its Security-Heavy Approach to COVID-19”, The Diplomat, 30 April 2020; Chaula Rininta Anindya and Sigit S. Nugroho, “Jokowi’s War on Pandemic: Growing Dependence on TNI?”, RSIS Commentaries, 11 May 2020

[2] See for example Michael Mann, “The roots and contradictions of modern militarism.” New Left Review 162.2 (1987): 27–55; Richelle M. Bernazzoli and Colin Flint. “Power, place, and militarism: Toward a comparative geographic analysis of militarization.” Geography Compass 3.1 (2009): 393–411; Alexander Wendt and Michael Barnett. “Dependent state formation and Third World militarization.” Review of International Studies 19.4 (1993): 321–347; Anna Stavrianakis and Jan Selby (eds), Militarism and International Relations: Political Economy, Security and Theory (London, Routledge, 2012)

[3] See https://covid19.go.id/p/konten/gugus-tugas-covid19-indonesia-combine. The data however remains incomplete and filled with gaping holes, some of which we try to fill with our research.

[4] The local COVID-19 task forces were not established in a systematic or uniform manner. Some were created as early as late February, and some were only created a little over two three weeks ago; nearly all were established without a definitive duration or timeframe.

[5] See the discussion of promotional logjams for example in Evan A. Laksmana, “Reshuffling the Deck? Military Corporatism, Promotional Logjams and Post-Authoritarian Civil-Military Relations in Indonesia.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 49.5 (2019): 806–836.

Evan A. Laksmana, Senior Researcher, Department of International Relations CSIS Indonesia, evan.laksmana@csis.or.id

Rage Taufika, Project Research Assistant, Defense Policy Research Project, CSIS Indonesia, ragetaufika@gmail.com

This article was originally published in CSIS Commentaries on 20 May 2020