State of Siege

At the moment, however, his feelings towards his Asian collaborators were anything but friendly. He was having trouble with them. Indeed, since Major Suparto and his five brother officers had arrived from Selampang six months earlier, there had been practically nothing but trouble.

Sunda used to be part of the Netherlands East Indies. In 1942 it was occupied by the Japanese. When the Dutch returned three years later, they were confronted by a Sundanese “Army of Liberation” and a demand for independence which they were unable in the end to resist. In 1949 Sunda became a Republic.

The moment of greatest difficulty for all revolutionary leaders seems to be the moment of success; the moment when, from being rebels in conflict with authority, they themselves have suddenly become the authority, and the fighting men who procured the victory wait jealously, and inconveniently, for their reward. Armies of liberation are more easy to recruit than they are to disarm and disband.

At first, it looked as if the Provisional Government of the new Republic of Sunda were dealing shrewdly with this embarrassment. A policy of dispersal was applied to break down esprit de corps. No unit was disbanded as a unit. Men who came from the same district were collected together and then transported back to that district, before being disarmed and demobilised. Meanwhile, the Government rapidly built up the small regular army on which their authority was to rest in the future, and used it against any of their former supporters who showed fight. And, of course, some did; particularly the younger soldiers, who frequently banded themselves together and terrorised the people in the villages. But this sort of brigandage had little political importance. For some months after the proclamation of independence by President Nasjah all seemed to be going fairly well.

Unfortunately there was an aspect of the problem that the Government had neglected. In their anxiety to dispose of the rank and file, they had not troubled to do anything about disposing of the officers; and by the time they had realised the gravity of that mistake, it was too late to retrieve it.

There were several hundreds of these surplus officers; many more than could conceivably be absorbed by the regular army or by the new police force. Moreover, many were not officers in the ordinary sense of the term, men sensitive in matters of loyalty, but guerrilla leaders and ex-bandits who had both fought and collaborated with the Japanese occupation forces before doing those same things with the Dutch colonial troops, and who might reasonably be expected to start fighting the new Government in Selampang if the promised Utopia did not immediately materialise; or if they became dissatisfied with their share of the spoils. With such men, making revolutions may easily become a habit. Machiavelli thought that the wise usurper should, as soon as he comes to power, trump up charges against his more ambitious supporters and have them killed off before they can get into mischief. But not all politicians are so wary or so practical.

Even when the danger had become manifest, the Nasjah Government underestimated it. Struggling with vital day-to-day problems of administration and caught up in the political battle being waged over the new Constitution, they felt that they had no time to spare just then to deal with petty discontents. No doubt something would have to be done soon, but not now. With the peculiar innocence of politicians in office, they even assumed that as long as the surplus officers continued to draw their pay and allowances they would remain loyal to the leaders of the Republic. Had these men not fought to make it all possible? Were they not, after all, patriots?

The politicians soon had their answer. By the time they were ready to submit the Draft Constitution to the General Assembly, there was an insurgent force of nearly three thousand men operating in the central highlands. It was led by an ex-colonel named Sanusi, who promoted himself to General and rapidly gained administrative control of an area which straddled the only two roads connecting the capital with the northern provinces. Moreover, Sanusi was a devout Moslem and issued a series of manifestos calling upon all True Believers to join his Sundanese National Freedom Party and declare a Holy War on the infidels in Selampang who had betrayed the new state at the very moment of its birth.