As India’s armed forces rolled into Goa last week, Indonesia’s jaunty President Sukarno tried to hitch a ride. Standing beneath a canopy in the cultural center of Djokjakarta, Sukarno told a wildly cheering crowd of 100,000 to prepare “for the coming general mobilization of all the Indonesian people soon to liberate West Irian from the claws of Dutch imperialism. My brothers, this is my command!”
West Irian is the Indonesian name for a
California-sized island of swamp and jungle that the Dutch call Netherlands New Guinea (the eastern part of the island is administered by Australia, whose rights there Sukarno so far has not disputed). To add muscle to his speech, Sukarno has assembled an invasion army of 16,000 (backed up by another 100,000) on a small group of islands near the coast of New Guinea, which is defended by some 5,000 Dutch soldiers and marines. For air cover Sukarno can use 60 MIG jet fighters and 26 TU-16 bombers supplied him by the Soviet Union.
To the extent that the conquest of Goa encouraged Sukarno to hope for a cheap victory of his own, it also caused widespread dismay in The Netherlands. Dutch Foreign Minister Joseph Luns, 50, a strong man in a weak, conservative Cabinet, had based his New Guinea policy on the belief that India’s “peaceable” Nehru would never support military action by Indonesia, and that the U.N. would immediately act against aggression. Now his policy lies in ruins.
The cancerous dispute over New Guinea is almost entirely one of national prestige. Sukarno bases his claim on the 1946 agreement between Indonesian leaders and Dutch representatives that gave sovereignty to Indonesia over “the whole territory of the Netherlands Indies.” There were loopholes, however, providing “special arrangements” for regions not wanting to join the Indonesian union. The Dutch did withdraw from some 3,000 islands inhabited by 95 million people, but under the treaty loophole held onto New Guinea, on the ground that the Papuan inhabitants are ethnically, linguistically and religiously different from the Indonesians and (claimed the Dutch) do not really want to belong to Indonesia. The Dutch also held that New Guinea could serve as an asylum for some 200,000 Eurasians of mixed Dutch and Indonesian blood who might not wish to live under Indonesia’s new rulers.
The then resident Dutch governor offered another explanation: “We are a seafaring, air-minded people. We cannot give up our last possession in the Pacific.”
To the Indonesians, the continued Dutch occupation of barren, poverty-stricken New Guinea represents the loss of one-sixth of the land area of Indonesia, and, valueless or not, they want it.
As for the 700,000 Papuan inhabitants of New Guinea, many of them living deep in impenetrable jungle valleys are unaware that there is either a Netherlands or an Indonesia, much less a dispute. The few educated Papuans seem inclined toward independence but recognize their present inability to stand alone.
The seemingly senseless struggle has cost both sides dear. In 1957 Sukarno brutally expropriated $1.5 billion in Dutch investments in Indonesia and expelled 50,000 Dutch residents. In addition, the Dutch government has had to sink nearly $30 million a year into New Guinea just to keep it economically afloat. Because of Indonesia’s determination to regain its “lost” territory, Sukarno devotes a large part of his annual budget to arms, thus further wrecking the wobbly economy of his island nation.
At the U.N. last September, Foreign Minister Luns stated that “The Netherlands wishes irrevocably to terminate its history as a colonial power.” He proposed handing over New Guinea to the U.N., which could then allow the native Papuans to determine their own fate. Indonesians view the Dutch move as simply an attempt to give a “cloak of legality” to an illegal act. In a speech to a mothers’ meeting last week, in which he urged them to put their sons and daughters in uniform, Sukarno cried: “I call on the whole world not to bother trying to get us talking about self-determination for West Irian. We definitely reject that sort of self-determination.”
Last week the U.N. appealed to both countries for a “peaceful settlement” of the issue. In The Netherlands, Foreign Minister Luns is propelled toward negotiation by the obvious reluctance of the Dutch to get involved in a pointless colonial war. A majority of the Cabinet also backs negotiations but a stubborn and potent minority, including Luns himself and Home Affairs Minister Edzo Toxopeus. wants Papuan self-determination guaranteed by the Indonesians before sitting down to the conference table. In Indonesia, Sukarno is restrained by the fact that an invasion of New Guinea is a far more risky military operation than was the Indian walkover in Goa. Should the invasion fail, Sukarno might well be overthrown as a consequence.
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