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Indonesia Personnel
Unavailable
Figure 11. Armed Forces Personnel Strength, Selected Years, 1966-
90
Source: Based on information from The Military Balance,
London, 1966-91.
The size of the armed services--approximately 468,000,
including the police, in 1992--was small in comparison
with other
nations of comparable population and with other Asian
countries.
The army was by far the dominant branch of service, with
approximately 217,000 personnel; the navy and marine corps
totalled about 44,000, the air force about 27,000, and the
police
about 180,000. Personnel strength in the army was
gradually but
steadily reduced over the 1966-82 period, and average
annual
enlistment in the other services was limited to
maintenance of
existing force levels
(see
fig. 11;
table 29, Appendix).
Two
successive five-year plans covering the period through
1997
mandated that there be no increase in the size of the
three
military services and limited recruiting to the number
needed to
maintain current strength to compensate for retirements,
deaths,
and other separations. Virtually the entire growth of the
armed
forces took place in the National Police
(see The National Police
, this ch.).
Under the constitution, every citizen is entitled and
obliged
to defend the nation. Conscription is provided for by law,
but in
light of limited civilian-sector employment opportunities,
the
armed forces have been able to attract sufficient numbers
to
maintain mandated strength levels without resorting to a
draft.
As of 1992, almost all service members were volunteers who
had
met the criteria set for conscription. Officer
specialists, such
as physicians, however, were occasionally conscripted for
shortterm service. Most enlisted personnel were recruited in
their own
regions and generally trained and served most of their
time in
units near their homes. Each service had small women's
units
(see Women in the Armed Forces
, this ch.).
The officer corps was estimated to comprise some 53,000
in
1992. Less than 1 percent of these were of general officer
rank.
Aggressive retirement of officers at or over the usual
retirement
age of fifty-five during the early 1980s reduced spaces
after the
reorganization of 1985; continued slow rates of promotion
at the
highest levels into the early 1990s, and the large numbers
of
officers reaching retirement age in the same period,
accounted
for most of the reductions in total officer numbers since
the
1970s. With personnel strength mandated to remain static
during
the 1990s, a steady balance between new officer accessions
and
losses (through death, attrition, and retirement) was
likely to
be maintained in the force structure in the future.
For the first twenty years of independence, entry into
the
officer corps was very competitive. According to both
patriotic
and traditional values, a military education and career
were
regarded as highly desirable. Since the late 1970s,
however, the
armed forces had experienced difficulty in attracting the
best
qualified candidates to the Armed Forces Academy of the
Republic
of Indonesia (Akabri), the national military academy at
Magelang,
Jawa Tengah Province. Akabri trained most of the military
and
police officer corps. Throughout the 1980s, as many as 150
spaces
a year at the academies went unfilled. Many officers were
children of serving or retired armed services personnel.
However,
the armed services were dissatisfied with the quality of
cadets
entering the academy system and further blamed the system
for not
providing officers of sufficiently high caliber. Better
jobs in
the civilian sector accounted for the fact that the
brightest and
best-qualified high school graduates preferred to attend
civilian
degree-granting universities (Akabri did not grant
academic
degrees as of 1992).
In spite of these problems, in the early 1990s, the
armed
forces, particularly the officer corps, had achieved a
cohesive
and highly professional esprit de corps. This was an even
more
remarkable achievement in light of the deep-seated and
persistent
factional strife and interservice rivalry that plagued the
defense establishment in the first two decades after
independence. Maturation through institutionalization,
increased
civilian and professional military education, and emphasis
on
integrated national (not regional) loyalty produced an
armed
force that was a far cry from the fractionalized and
ideologically diverse military that existed at the time of
the
1965 coup attempt. Uniting the individual services under a
strong
central command structure and a conscious effort to
eliminate
"warlordism" and regionalism by routine rotational
assignments
throughout the officer corps contributed to the new
cohesiveness.
Purges conducted in the aftermath of the abortive 1965
coup and
continuous close examination of personnel's political
reliability
were also important because they rid the military of those
with
radical religious or political views. Mandatory retirement
for
officers at age fifty-five and routine periodic
reassignments
also ensured that the officer corps was politically
reliable.
The officer corps in the early 1990s was composed
mainly of
ethnic Javanese. In 1992 ethnic Javanese occupied most key
command and staff billets. This was especially true of
those
holding the highest positions in Hankam and in each
service: 53
percent of the top eighty-three incumbents of these
positions
were filled by ethnic Javanese officers and, when combined
with
Sundanese and Madurese also from Java, the total
represented 67
percent in 1992 (see
table 30, Appendix).
Importantly, however, there was a strong trend toward
assignments based on ability rather than ethnic or
religious
considerations. Since the late 1970s, non-Javanese rose
throughout the general officer leadership ranks in greater
numbers, and there was a feeling within the armed forces
that
ethnic background was not a major factor in promotions.
NonJavanese have held the number-two posts in both Hankam and
the
army as well as several of the army's ten Military
Regional
Commands (Kodams); the minister of defense and security
and
several other senior officers were Christians. Most senior
officers were Muslim, and of those most were nominal
Muslims
(abangan--see Glossary).
In light of their
experiences in
putting down armed challenges to the national leadership
by
Islamic separatist groups, the armed forces had developed
an
institutional distrust of orthodox Muslims
(santri--see Glossary;
Islam
, ch. 2).
Data as of November 1992
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