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It's the first Friday since the U.S. attack on Iraq, and the streets of Jakarta are peaceful on this weekly Islamic day of prayer. At noon, Vice-President Hamzah Haz, leader of a conservative Islamic political party, attends the noon prayer at Masjid Istiqlal, the national mosque. He prays for Umar Wirahadikusumah, a former Indonesian vice-president who died in the morning. Not a word is said about the U.S. or Iraq.
Jakarta's eerie peace may prove fleeting. Indonesia, with 220 million people, has the largest concentration of Muslims outside the Middle East, and the country is prone to anti-American and antigovernment riots led by Islamic student leaders. In the privacy of their own homes, radical Islamic leaders are invoking fire and brimstone, and even moderate Islamic leaders are seething.
ECONOMIC FALLOUT. President Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose pluralist coalition government depends on the support of a wide range of liberal and conservative Islamic political parties, condemned the U.S. attack in harsh language -- and now student leaders are urging her to take an even firmer stance against the U.S. or face impeachment. In Cairo, angry Muslims are rioting in the streets.
The danger for the U.S. is that the antiwar, anti-American, and Islamic political movements could converge over Iraq. That would spur the growth of radicalism and present a threat to the pluralist -- though not completely secular -- government of Megawati. "I'm afraid things will go in this direction," says Amien Rais, chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly [the equivalent of Parliament Speaker in most countries]. "I know exactly what the danger of this is."
The impact on the world's fourth-most populous country could go far beyond the inner machinations of political parties, Islamic organizations, and student groups. On Mar. 21, a senior official in Indonesia's State-Owned Enterprises Ministry said the government may have to postpone plans to sell stakes in Bank Danamon and other banks that were nationalized after the financial crisis of 1998 -- a critical component of an International Monetary Fund bailout. The official cited global uncertainties for the delay. "They're coming up with excuses to put off restructuring," says a Western diplomat in Jakarta.
JUST HEATING UP? On the same day, Finance Minister Boediono said he was recalibrating the national budget to compensate for such changes. Earlier, Salomon Smith Barney forecast that the war in Iraq could shave half a percentage point off Indonesian gross domestic product growth this year, cutting the figure from a hard-earned 4% to 3.5%
If the reaction to the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in late 2001 is any measure, Indonesian anger toward the U.S. over Iraq could be just heating up. During the buildup to the Afghan invasion, violent mobs marched on the U.S. embassy in Jakarta for 24 consecutive days, and several radical Islamic organizations threatened to assassinate the ambassador, expel American expatriates and tourists, and recruit homeless local boys to fight American troops in Afghanistan.
This time around, among the first to voice their anger were leaders of such radical Indonesian organizations as the Islamic Defender's Front, which has claimed responsibility for brutal attacks on brothels, gambling dens, and bars in Jakarta in the name of Muslim piety. "It's like a time bomb waiting to explode," Habib Rizieq Shihab, chairman of the front, told BusinessWeek Online. "I consider the attack on Iraq an attack on Islam."
"STINKING AMERICAN." Islamic organizations that describe themselves as moderate are also starting to join in the fray. The mainstream Majelis Ulema Indonesia, which administers the national mosque, is calling for a freeze on diplomatic relations with the U.S. The head of the youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama, which with 34 million members is the country's largest Islamic organization, called for the expulsion of American diplomats and threatened to drag them to the airport if they resist.
Then there's Rais, who's a senior leader of the 28 million-strong moderate Islamic organization Muhammadiyah. "Bush is a stinking American," Rais said in an interview with BusinessWeek Online. "He's destroying mankind and civilization."
In front of the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, about 200 Indonesian university students demonstrated to vent their anger at Megawati. Her statement on Mar. 21 that the Indonesian government "strongly deplores" the attack on Iraq, and calling it "an act of aggression which is in contravention to international law," wasn't enough for them. Blocking traffic, they unfurled a banner and shouted slogans warning Megawati that she riskes downfall if she fails to take an even firmer stance against Washington. A day earlier, another group of students blocked the entrance of a nearby McDonald's, preventing customers from entering or leaving, and setting fire to a pile of tires in the street.
SLEEPER CELLS. Western diplomats here are certainly worried. They admit the possibility of terrorist attacks, such as the bombing that killed nearly 200 people, mostly Western tourists, in Bali in October, 2002. They say the risk of another attack staged by sleeper cells of Islamic extremist organization Jemaah Islamiyah -- several members of whom have been arrested on charges of planting the bombs used in Bali -- will depend largely on the length and severity of the war in Iraq.
"Wait a little longer, see a few more images coming off the TV screens," says one senior diplomat, referring to news coverage of Iraq. Until then, he says, his embassy is taking an "hour to hour" approach to security. Though little has happened yet, no one expects this eerie peace to last indefinitely.
Shari, who is Singapore correspondent for BusinessWeek, filed this dispatch from Jakarta. Follow his Southeast Asia Watch columns, only on BW Online Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
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