Obituary: General Abdul Nasution

By JOHN ROUGHAN

Indonesian power broker. Born in Northern Sumatra in 1918, has died in Jakarta, aged 81.

If Indonesia figured as high in New Zealand's consciousness as a powerful near neighbour should, the name Abdul Nasution would be as familiar as Soekarno or Suharto.

He played a crucial hand in the fate of both presidents and in Indonesia's struggle for independence, unity and stability.

He, more than anyone, founded the Indonesian Army and made it a force in the country's politics, providing the basis for authoritarian government.

Abdul Haris Nasution gained his military grounding from the Dutch colonial administration, receiving a commission in the Netherlands Indies Army in 1941.

During the Japanese occupation in the Second World War he was a civilian administrator. When the Dutch returned after Japan's defeat, Nasution became a commander of a guerrilla force fighting for independence in West Java.

He organised the scattered guerrilla bands into a concerted force which was to become the basis of the Indonesian Army after independence.

Nasution led the guerrilla resistance to successive waves of Dutch military action in 1947 and 1948 which failed to regain control of the country.

The two sides fought to a stalemate and eventually a ceasefire under United Nations supervision.

When Indonesia was declared an independent state in December 1949, President Soekarno made Nasution his Army Chief of Staff.

He reorganised and modernised the Army, and briefly became one of the first victims of its resistance to civilian control. In 1952 he was removed from office after demonstrations by the armed forces against staff cuts.

Three years later he was reinstated by Soekarno in an attempt to reassert presidential authority over the military. But as secessionist movements threatened the state, Nasution made the Army a force for stability throughout the archipelago and, soon, a political power in its own right.

In 1959, after putting down rebellions in Sumatra and the Celebes, using paratroops, he helped to persuade Soekarno to produce a new constitution giving the President power to rule by decree and giving the military a direct role in national politics.

Nasution became Minister for Defence and National Security. In that role he visited New Zealand in 1962.

The beginning of the end for Soekarno came three years later on October 1, 1965. Six generals were assassinated. The Army attributed the killings to an attempted coup by the Communist Party.

Nasution escaped sniper fire by leaping over a wall into the Iraqi Ambassador's residence next door to his home. His 6-year-old daughter and an aide were killed.

Over the following days he and another surviving general, Suharto, moved ruthlessly against the rebels. Hundreds of thousands of trade unionists, Communist Party members and sympathisers were hunted down in a countrywide massacre that continued into 1966.

Estimates of the dead ranged from 100,000 to 200,000.

By January 1966 foreign governments regarded Nasution as the effective ruler of Indonesia. In February Soekarno removed him and other military members of the cabinet and restored Communists to some positions.

By March, after a wave of military-inspired demonstrations in Jakarta, Suharto and Nasution were back in control. In July, Nasution chaired the legislature as it approved the transfer of the presidency from Soekarno to Suharto, effective from 1967.

Nasution remained a close adviser to Suharto throughout the early part of his presidency, though after retirement he put his name to a 1980 petition critical of Suharto's rule. It was the last notable act of a powerful life.

General Nasution is survived by his wife and a daughter.