By Kathleen Kern

The December tsunami united people regardless of their political leanings. No person caused the tidal wave that killed more than 200,000 people. The world’s inhabitants could simply grieve and offer humanitarian relief.

Unfortunately, in Indonesia, the country hardest hit by the tsunami, an entirely different sort of disaster is looming. In February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the United States would restore International Military Education and Training, or IMET, for Indonesia because of its improved human rights record.

Two days after her announcement, the State Department, for which she supposedly speaks, issued its annual report on Indonesia. It noted, “Government agents continued to commit abuses. . . . Security force members murdered, tortured, raped, beat and arbitrar-ily detained civilians and members of separatist movements.”

Indonesia’s recent history is full of atrocities. When dictator Mohammed Suharto seized power in 1965-66, he committed “one of the worst mass murders in the 20th century,” according to the CIA. More than a million Indonesians died at the hands of the military and their affiliates.

U.S. Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan supplied the Suharto government in subsequent years with military aid despite its human rights record. Ford and Henry Kissinger essentially gave the Suharto government permission to invade East Timor after the Portuguese granted the colony autonomy in 1975. About 200,000 East Timorese, one-third of the country’s population, died in the ensuing years.

In 1992, the U.S. Congress cut IMET funding to Indonesia after Indonesian soldiers slaughtered — with U.S.-supplied M-16 rifles — more than 200 civilians at a peaceful demonstration in the East Timor city of Dili.

The Clinton administration cut all military ties in 1999, when the Indonesian military and militias it supported went on a rampage of killing, raping, looting and home demolitions in East Timor after the inhabitants voted for independence.

The Indonesian government, in response to international pressure, prosecuted some officers responsible for the devastation, but they were acquitted in the lower courts. Gen. Wiranto, whom the U.N. charged with crimes against humanity for masterminding the East Timor atrocities, was a presidential candidate in 2004.

By 2002, U.S. policy toward Indonesia had shifted. Congress maintained only one condition for restoring IMET funding: the Indonesian government needed to cooperate with an FBI investigation into the ambush and murder of two American schoolteachers in West Papua.

The State Department’s 2003 human rights report criticized as “ineffectual” the joint Indonesia police-military investigation. Para-military member Anthonius Wamang told the FBI he committed murders with weapons supplied by the Indonesian military. A U.S. court indicted him for the killings, but Indonesian courts have yet to arrest or prosecute him.

Nevertheless, Rice reportedly told key lawmakers in February she will certify that the Indonesian military is cooperating fully in the investigation.

The United States has an ignominious tradition of training soldiers from other countries to suppress dissent. Its School of the Americas has trained Latin American officers who committed gruesome atrocities in their own countries. In pursuit of its war on terror, the United States has granted IMET funding to nations that practice torture, such as Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Fifteen Indonesian military officers charged with crimes against humanity in East Timor were former IMET students.

With such a track record, why would anyone believe, as the State Department’s Richard Boucher claims, that restoring IMET funding will strengthen Indonesia’s democratic process?