Brutality in our own backyard

By JAN CORBETT

At home in Wadestown, Rosemary Banks heard it first on National Radio's 8am news. As deputy-secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, she makes a point of tuning into the hourly news, even early on a Sunday morning.

She immediately telephoned the office where Guy Lewis was consular duty officer. Could he please call Jakarta and get more details of the bomb blast in Bali?

Embassy official Nigel Alladyce was roused from his bed. He called the Australian consulate on the island for confirmation and made immediate plans to head there himself.

Suddenly our diplomats were confronting the unprecedented scenario of New Zealanders being targeted abroad.

Banks, meanwhile, activated the ministry's emergency response team. She knew instinctively that New Zealanders would be involved and that family and friends would be desperate for information. Yet whatever the ministry did that day, it would never be enough to assuage the concerns of relatives frozen in the fear of not knowing and not being able to find out.

And someone had to tell the minister.

Phil Goff quickly formed the view, according to his spokesman John Tulloch, that the bombing was the work of Jemaah Islamiyah, the extremist Islamic group with suspected links to al Qaeda.

All through Sunday the phones ran hot as the Prime Minister's Department, police, defence, intelligence services and Foreign Affairs formed into a loose association that took the name Bali Watch Group. As far as assessing whether this was a new and imminent threat to New Zealand, the view was wait and see.

Obviously they needed to know how many New Zealanders were dead or injured, how to help, and how much more threatened we now are in this part of the world. And although it seemed to take all day to reach them, Helen Clark had to talk to John Howard and Phil Goff to Alexander Downer.

It was clear already that for New Zealand this was a tragedy, but for Australia a national calamity. We offered to help Australia airlift the wounded - the Anzac spirit rekindled. We sent a Hercules and a medical team who, in the end, weren't required. We've sent two police liaison officers and have offered help with forensics. Next week we will send medical supplies.

Banks couldn't help noting that she has had to activate the emergency response team with surprising regularity in the past two years, not only on September 11 but because of unrest in the Asian-Pacific region generally. Fiji, Honiara, India and Pakistan and Jakarta itself have all provoked emergency evacuation strategies.

"Things are more uncertain than they used to be," she says. Indeed.

After September 11, terrorism in our region was not a surprise. And despite arguments now about how much United States and Australian intelligence knew about a terrorist threat in Bali, and how much was passed on, warnings about Jakarta had been posted on our Foreign Affairs website in the previous week.

We have already passed the first wave of our anti-terrorism laws and directed an extra $30 million into terrorism-proofing. There are people in Wellington now who are employed full-time to assess the risk of terrorism. The question was not how to respond to this new threat, but whether our response is enough.

Because of September 11 and the ensuing war on terrorism, our intellectual response was already programmed. We did not start by asking who could have done this, instead requiring proof of why we should not suspect al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, or at least his Indonesian equivalent, Riduan Isamuddin aka Himbali.

Although Indonesia has been racked by internecine violence for years, suddenly the victims were people like us - were us.

The first-hand accounts poured in, numerous and unvarying: a crowded nightclub on a steamy night, a traffic jam outside, a blast, shock waves knocking revellers to the floor; the erratic pattern of an explosion that leaves one unscathed and the next person shredded; a fireball, wind, darkness, a burning, collapsing roof, screaming, survivors scrambling over the charred, bloodied, limbless or impaled, trapped at the back wall.

There were the shaggy-haired surfies forming a human chain to pull people out and over until the flames grew too intense; the frantic search for friends, partners, mothers, and then the grim methodical search through ill-equipped hospitals, clinics and fetid morgues, where unidentifiable bodies and body parts are stacked behind thin curtains.

And then there were the miraculous stories of those who were running late and missed the blast by minutes, and the stories of those last seen walking towards its epicentre, unlikely to have left any remains.

There was no doubt that Western tourists were the target. The Sari Club does not admit Balinese unless they work there.

In New York, the victims personified Western capitalism; in Bali, Western hedonism, particularly the antipodean beach, backpack and party culture. They were expats in finance jobs throughout Southeast Asia who were on the island that weekend for the annual Bali 10s rugby tournament.

They were the young and rootless enjoying their chill-out years. They were the tanned, toned wives and mothers who left their husbands either back in Australia or back in the hotel room for a girls' night out on the dance floor.

They were parents taking their teenagers on a tropical family holiday. They were teenagers and twentysomethings doing what they do when parents aren't around. They were members of the East Timor peacekeeping force.

Yet their playground was a Hindu enclave of a Muslim country where, thanks to its nurturing of this tourist market, living standards are higher than elsewhere in Indonesia, though nowhere near that enjoyed by their itinerant, some might say arrogant, guests.

Sooner or later, perhaps, there was going to be a reaction to these religious and economic affronts. But the race to establish motive for an unexpected atrocity always outpaces the gathering of facts.

It might be the nearest neighbour of our nearest neighbour, but despite our peacekeeping role in East Timor, Indonesia barely registers in New Zealand's consciousness.

When we think of Asia, we think of China, Japan and Singapore. And if forced to think about Indonesia, says Tim Behrend, senior lecturer in Asian Studies at Auckland University, we conjure up an image of a populous, inscrutable, poor, human rights-abusing nation that should be viewed with suspicion.

For Australia, the relationship is entirely different, albeit fragile. There, views range from fearing the designs this overpopulated archipelago may have on the vast empty continent to its east, to a desire to exploit the potential market of 216 million people.

Australians study Indonesian at school and the Australian National University in Canberra hosts the world's largest Indonesian study centre. By contrast, Auckland University's Indonesian studies programme shut down last year because of lack of student interest.

Yet in recent times Indonesia has taken steps to embrace us. Phil Goff was strolling along Kuta Beach eight days before the bomb went off, on his way to Jakarta and the inaugural meeting of South West Dialogue.

This new grouping of Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, the Philippines, East Timor and Papua New Guinea has been drawn together by Indonesia to discuss issues of common concern in the region, such as people-smuggling and, of course, terrorism.

The Indonesians have been generous in passing on information about people-smugglers suspected to be loading boats with a New Zealand destination in mind.

How the Bali bombing will change our view of Indonesia will depend on who committed the crime and why, says Behrend.

If it was a group linked to al Qaeda who sneaked through Indonesia's borders, then we will perceive it as a security breach which Indonesia should have fixed and still can. The US and Singapore have been bitterly critical of Indonesia's lax attitude to the threat of terrorism.

But Behrend suggests its unwillingness to introduce draconian anti-terrorism laws is rooted in its desire not to reimpose the personal restrictions reminiscent of the Suharto days.

Should it turn out that the bombing was the first strike in a campaign by extremists in Jemaah Islamiyah to transform Indonesia into a super-Islamic state, then our sense of regional security and economic stability will be shaky.

Certainly, foreign investment would stampede out of Indonesia faster than traumatised tourists. Indonesia could once again erupt the way it did when the 1997 Asian economic crisis hit it hardest.

Right now, gripped in the reality of having your own people targeted while holidaying in their own backyard, Australia has no doubt that, like Gallipoli, the Bali bombing will become a defining moment in its history. Phrases like "Australia's coming of age" have predictably surfaced.

As cities and towns across Australia grieve for their losses, an equally painful political soul-searching will ensue. Was it because Australia is too cosy with the US generally and way too supportive of its aggressive stance on Iraq specifically? Commentators wonder if this will make Australia more determined to join the front line in the war on terror, or more isolationist.

Sydney-based New Zealander Anthony Clark and friend were staying in a hotel behind the Sari Club when the bombs went off. He left as soon as he could - "you've never seen two Kiwis move so fast".

Back in Australia, he has noticed considerable anger towards the Howard Government and its determination to help topple Saddam Hussein.

Something like 10 per cent of radio talkback callers in Australia this week believed Australia was paying the price for supporting the US.

Here, renewed fears about our own safety re-ignited the opponents of the Government's defence policy.

One thing that September 11 taught us about this new genre of terrorism is to expect the unexpected. Anger will now flow through the families of the victims here and in Australia over how much the intelligence community knew and why the Bali warnings weren't widely disseminated.

New Zealanders who have been to Bali this year, such as Labour Party President Mike Williams, remember the thing they found most strange about the tourist mecca was how few Americans were there.

Either Americans have stayed home since September 11 or they avoid Muslim countries. That might explain why flights to Bali have been comparatively cheap and therefore more alluring for the antipodean holidaymaker.

Here, the feeling of personal threat remains varied. Caira Hodge, an Aucklander in her 20s, has spent long periods in Indonesia and intends returning this year. Although she will avoid Muslim strongholds, at least on her own, she feels no more at risk going there than if she was heading to London.

Jenny Mason, who works in advertising production, has cancelled her Christmas holiday to Bali, although she hopes to go some time in the future.

Travel agents report that unlike September 11, which cut the number of travellers, the Bali bombings have tended to redirect them.

In the meantime, we worry now about congregating at the Viaduct Harbour during the America's Cup. Silly? Who can say?

On Thursday, the Bali Watch Group made a calm assessment of what the Bali bombings mean to New Zealand.

"We wouldn't say the risk domestically has changed dramatically because of Bali," says a spokesman. What it has done is snapped us out of post-September 11 apathy, and reinforced our efforts at border security and the idea that we not only need good information but also to assess it from a New Zealand perspective.

The bomb's proximity gives us a heightened perception of risk. But in unconventional warfare, the location of the terror at any one time is largely meaningless.

- additional reporting by Dita De Boni

Bali messages and latest information on New Zealanders
New Zealand travellers in Bali, and their families around the world, can exchange news via our Bali Messages page. The page also contains lists of New Zealanders in Bali and their condition.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade

* Latest travel advisory for Indonesia

* Bali Bombing Hotline: 0800 432 111

Feature: Bali bomb blast

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