Understanding Indonesia’s Role in Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis

On March 6, Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs Wiranto met with Indonesia’s new ambassador to Myanmar, Iza Fadri. The meeting, which was reported widely in local media outlets but less so internationally, was significant in that it spotlighted Indonesia’s multifaceted and deepening role in Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis, which has been on display since last year.

Since August 2017, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh to escape brutal operations carried out by Myanmar’s military in the wake of attacks by a new Rohingya militant group. The United Nations and other observers have labeled the acts of violence, including killings and the burning of villages, “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” A chorus of condemnation followed against the Myanmar government and military in general as well as Nobel Laureate turned de facto head of state Aung San Suu Kyi.

While various regional states have attempted to play a role in the management of the Rohingya crisis since last year, Indonesia has been among the most active from the outset. Indeed, apart from Indonesian officials, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, though hardly a foreign policy president, has been involved in several aspects of Jakarta’s response to the crisis, issuing statements on the humanitarian crisis, presiding over the dispatch of aid to refugees, and even visiting refugee camps in Bangladesh earlier this year.

For seasoned observers, Indonesia’s active role in Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis is not all that surprising. The multifaceted rationale for that involvement has long been clear. As with neighboring Malaysia, it is no doubt partly about domestic politics. It is far from coincidental that the world’s largest Muslim-majority country tends to support Muslim causes that have domestic traction. This is evidenced by Indonesia’s activism on other such issues as well, such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, with its vocal opposition to the Trump administration’s decision to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem being a case in point.

On the Rohingya crisis itself, it is important to note that from the outset the crisis has been an issue within Indonesia’s domestic politics, with protests initially rocking the country, calls coming from Muslim groups and parties urging the government and the international community to take a stronger response, and even attacks that had been foiled by the government. Though that sentiment has since waned somewhat with Indonesia now into election season – regional elections later this year and presidential elections next year – there is no doubt an incentive for the Indonesian government to take these domestic perceptions seriously.

This is also equally about how Indonesia sees its role in the region and the world. Years before the Rohingya crisis hit Myanmar, Indonesia had been imparting advice to Naypyidaw about its ongoing transition to civilian rule, drawing on Indonesia’s own democratization experience in the 1990s. While Jakarta is no doubt cognizant of the challenges it still faces on this front and aware of the differences between the two cases, the soft power of Indonesia’s example continues to factor into the country’s perception of itself as well as its own role in the region and the world.

As a regional leader in Southeast Asia, Indonesia has also consistently and rightly argued that despite the norm of noninterference in the domestic affairs of neighboring states, democracy and human rights challenges in individual states, including Myanmar, can have broader implications for the subregion as well as the image of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The Rohingya crisis has only served to illustrate this point: given the sheer magnitude of the humanitarian crisis, it has led to even more questions about ASEAN’s inability to confront problems within the regional bloc and even national security concerns about potential Rohingya radicalization that could compound the terrorist threat in the region.

Therefore, it is no surprise that we have seen a high level of Indonesian involvement in the Rohingya crisis over the past few months. Some of these steps have admittedly been a strengthening of ongoing Indonesian lines of effort, be it delegation exchanges to learn from Indonesia’s past experiences at handling peace and conflict resolution or relief efforts by the Indonesian government and Indonesian Islamic NGOs, which had been on the ground for years. An example in this respect was the formation of a grouping of  Indonesian NGOs called the Indonesian Humanitarian Alliance for Myanmar (AKIM), which was inaugurated in January and led by Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi on a trip to Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state.

Still, the heightened level of involvement has been notable. Last September, immediately following the outbreak of the crisis, Marsudi even went as far as to propose Indonesia’s own approach to resolving it, a far cry from the noninterference norm that has traditionally governed ASEAN. Though the approach was carefully packaged under the so-called Formula 4+1 approach – including vague steps such as restoring stability, demonstrating restraint, and protecting all people combined with more forward-leaning and specific ones like providing humanitarian access and implementing the recommendations of Kofi Annan’s Advisory Commission on Rakhine State – Jakarta’s message, which was combined with more candid private exchanges with Myanmar officials, was quite clear.

Of the moves Jakarta has taken thus far, perhaps the one that has gotten the most attention has been the offer for counterterrorism assistance. Though there had been other exchanges before by the two countries on counterterrorism, particularly in the wake of rising concerns about the Islamic State, the Indonesian proposal for greater assistance first began getting public attention last December, when Wiranto visited Myanmar and subsequently highlighted the need to boost collaboration on the threat of terrorism and radicalism. During another visit to Myanmar in February, Wiranto said military exchanges would soon occur to increase cooperation on this front. And in his conversation with Indonesia’s new ambassador to Myanmar in early March, he mentioned that proposal again along with other aspects of Indonesian involvement.

To be sure, Indonesia’s involvement in the Rohingya crisis has not been without its challenges or critics. Though the media attention has been on the successful manifestations of Jakarta’s involvement, other proposals that it has suggested, including variants of fact-finding missions and even peacekeeping operations, have unsurprisingly been opposed by the Myanmar government. For perspective, although Jakarta’s diplomatic energy has no doubt been evident, resource limitations mean that its contributions as measured by dollars and cents have been quite modest: the initial contribution from Indonesian donors to AKIM, for instance, amounted to just $2 million.

As Indonesia engages on these issues abroad, there are also legitimate questions about how Jakarta handles them at home. To take just one example, despite some promising recent steps, Indonesia still lacks a comprehensive approach to and system for managing refugees. That challenge has manifested itself periodically over the past few years, including in Jakarta’s rather uncoordinated response to the Rohingya boat crisis back in 2015.

As we have seen with many Southeast Asian states, the Rohingya crisis has said a lot about not just how Myanmar treats its people but how neighboring states deal with these issues too. In Indonesia’s case, it has shed light on not only the sorts of opportunities that Jakarta is looking to seize in line with its interests and ideals, but also the remaining challenges it has to confront domestically and regionally as it seeks to carve out a role for itself in the Rohingya crisis.