MARITIME SECURITY IN NORTH SULAWESI

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 JAKARTA 000092 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR EAP/MTS, S/CT, DS/IP/EAP, DS/DSS/ITA, DS/CC DOJ FOR CTS THORNTON, AAG SWARTZ FBI FOR ETTIU/SSA ROTH E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/10/2017 TAGS: PTER ASEC EFIN KCRM KHLS KPAO ID SUBJECT: MARITIME SECURITY IN NORTH SULAWESI REF: A. 2006 JAKARTA 03898 MEETINGS WITH EAST KALIMANTAN OFFICIALS ¶B. 2006 JAKARTA 1454 BUILDING AN SEA CT STRATEGY ¶C. 2005 JAKARTA 16218 JOINT PROPOSAL FOR PROMOTING SEA CT Classified By: Political Officer David Willis, for reasons 1.4 (b,d). ¶1. (C) Summary: Indonesian officials in North Sulawesi are eager for bilateral security assistance to make up for Jakarta's meager investment in developing the area's maritime security assets. Foreign assistance and training programs are essential for Indonesia to develop effective maritime law enforcement security measures in the critical but remote triborder area adjoining the Philippines and Malaysia. A variety of USG initiatives are working to fill the gap. These include a recent U.S.-sponsored maritime exercise with the Indonesian Marine Police units responsible for law enforcement in the Sulawesi Sea. Other programs managed by the U.S. Pacific Command's Joint Interagency Task Force West (JIATF-W) and Embassy Jakarta's International Criminal Investigator Training Assistance Program (ICITAP) provide needed equipment and seamanship training, and assist the GOI in developing the area's law enforcement assets. Indonesian capabilities remain woefully inadequate and will need sustained support to be properly developed. The upcoming Border Control Assessment Initiative (BCAI) will offer an opportunity to view these needs at first hand. End Summary. ¶2. (C) Poloff's recent visit to North Sulawesi underscored the need for continued assistance to develop Indonesian maritime CT capabilities in the archipelagic triangle bordering the Sulawesi Sea. S/CT's Border Control Assessment Initiative (BCAI) team, which will visit the area later this month, will have an opportunity to pay particular attention to these needs and what can be done to meet them. The ATA-led team will include representatives of DHS, the U.S. Coast Guard and Embassy officials and will be joined by GOI officials from the Indonesian National Police (INP),Customs, and Immigration to conduct a border security needs assessment in North Sulawesi and East Kalimantan. The trip will include meetings with local GOI officials as well as site visits to key border crossing and transit points. The Team's assessment will identify needed equipment and training to effectively secure these strategic border points. SULAWESI SEA A CRITICAL AREA ¶3. (C) The Department's Southeast Asia Regional Strategic Initiative (RSI) initiated by regional Chiefs of Mission in 2006 identified the Sulawesi Sea region as an area of particular concern (Ref B). North Sulawesi province is home to Indonesia's largest Christian population, which comprises around 75 percent of the province's 2.1 million residents. At the same time, its location has made the area a natural transit stop for Muslim extremists traveling between southern Philippine training camps and Indonesia's Christian-Muslim conflict areas. This is not as strange as it first sounds because the majority of North Sulawesi residents are ethnic Minihasans, who consider themselves ethnically and culturally much closer to Filipinos than any Indonesian ethnicity. A Filipino landing a small boat on a North Sulawesi beach would not look nearly as strange to locals as a Javanese or Sumatran, who would be noticed immediately. ¶4. (C) A mixture of legitimate business and criminal networks have long exploited lax controls along the province's thousands of miles of coastline to conduct their activities without formal maritime regulation. Although irregularly scheduled ferries shuttle passengers to the province's Sangihe-Talaud district, closest to the border, local residents tell us they are not aware of any formal ferry routes that connect the province with the Philippines. Nasir Abas, a former terrorist who now works with Indonesia's CT investigators and is personally familiar with border transit routes used by terrorists, recently confirmed to us that terrorists primarily use informally arranged local transportation to travel the route between Mindanao and Sulawesi. VAST AREA, WEAK MARITIME LAW ENFORCEMENT JAKARTA 00000092 002 OF 003 ¶5. (C) The Indonesian National Marine Police, which is under the umbrella of the Indonesian National Police (INP), maintains primary responsibility for maritime law enforcement. Despite assertions from GOI officials that maritime security is a GOI priority, the Marine Police has remained a proverbial step-child within the INP with restricted resources. The regional base in Bitung, approximately 40 km east of Manado, has ten boats, seven of which are currently operational, to cover the entire Sulawesi Sea area stretching to the border with the southern Philippines. Their largest boat, a class C 70-foot aluminum hull patrol boat with machine guns fore and aft, was assigned to the base within the last several months. The other six boats in operations are a mixture of wood and fiberglass hulled 15-foot runabouts with 30 hp outboard motors. ¶6. (C) Further, local Marine Police budgets are controlled by the provincial INP (Kapolda) headquarters, whose priorities remain land-based. For example, according to Marine Police officials in Bitung, the INP headquarters for North Sulawesi in Manado allocates the base approximately 500 liters (132 gallons) of fuel per week, less than the amount needed to operate the single class C boat for a day. Despite this limitation, Marine Police officials in Bitung assert they intercept and board an average of ten suspicious vessels every month. MARINE POLICE TO RECEIVE HIGHER PRIORITY ¶7. (C) Imminent changes appear to signal renewed GOI attention to the Marine Police, with budgetary implications. Marine Police officials in Sulawesi said INP organizational changes expected in 2007 may give the Marine Police far greater independence within the INP structure. The changes, rumored to be under way for months, allegedly will shift control over the Marine Police back to Jakarta, away from provincial INP offices and out from under the INP's Uniformed Patrol Division that manages the standard police investigative offices. The Marine Police will become a distinct branch within the INP, giving it greater central authority and functional coherence. Embassy has been urging a more unified chain of command for some time, and this step is welcome. Also, five tactical (regional) commands will soon be established. In addition to giving the Marine Police a more direct budget allocation controlled by the INP Police Chief, the head of the Marine Police may be elevated from a one-star to a three-star general billet, thus further increasing its political clout within the INP. USG INITIATIVES TO IMPROVE MARINE POLICE CAPACITY ¶8. (C) Local officials welcomed the second bilateral Fusion Iron counternarcotics training mission at the Marine Police base in Bitung in mid-December. The mission was sponsored by the U.S. Pacific Command's Joint Interagency Task Force West (JIATF-W),in coordination with Post's International Criminal Investigator Training Assistance Program (ICITAP). JIATF-West Admiral Zukunft (USCG) attended the ceremony with other representatives from JIATF-West, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office in Singapore, and Post's ICITAP Marine Police program. The Indonesian officials in attendance included the National Marine Police Deputy Chief General Suristyono, North Sulawesi Police Chief Jackie Uly, the Governor of North Sulawesi, and several other local officials. The GOI officials told us they highly valued the training, and said they hoped similar training and assistance would follow. The North Sulawesi region's senior-most administrator (Bupati),further emphasized the importance of U.S. assistance during a private meeting with Admiral Zukunft at her office in Manado following the closing ceremony. ¶9. (C) Instructors from U.S. Navy special operations units focused the three-week training mission on navigation, seamanship, and boat handling, needs they had identified during the initial June 2006 Fusion Iron training. The Indonesian participants included over 40 Marine Police officers and four National Narcotics Agency officers, most of whom had attended both Fusion Iron training missions. The U.S. trainers told us the participants were enthusiastic but lacked even the basic maritime skills and equipment needed to conduct effective operations. They further observed that the lack of communication equipment, night vision capability, and JAKARTA 00000092 003 OF 003 charts or maps contributed to an overall reluctance to conduct night patrols, or to venture more than several kilometers from their base. ¶10. (C) In addition to coordinating the Fusion Iron exercises in Bitung, JIATF-West and ICITAP are arranging additional training modules for the Marine Police in Bitung. In February 2007, U.S. instructors will train Marine Police boat operators on procedural and crime scene management skills for handling specific cases, such as illegal logging, trafficking in persons, and narcotics. In preparation for small boat maintenance training in March 2007, an advance team of U.S. Navy trainers is expected in January to visit with the Marine Police to conduct an initial training assessment. ¶11. (C) As a part of its support for the Indonesian National Narcotics Agency (BNN) and INP counterdrug units, JIATF-West is developing a network of interagency GOI fusion centers at several locations, including at both the Manado Airport and the Bitung Marine Police base. If the communication and information technology infrastructure at these centers can be exploited as intended, it will allow the Marine Police to better communicate within the Sulawesi Sea operational area, enhance collaboration and data exchange with the national center, the Joint Inter Agency Counter Drug Operations Center in Jakarta, as well as other outstations in Indonesia, and potentially with interagency fusion centers in the Philippines. The current JIATF-West project at the Bitung base is expanding the training facility to include classroom, mess hall, and dormitory; the project is anticipated to be completed early next year. ¶12. (C) ICITAP's Marine Police Special Boat Unit Project has targeted the Bitung Marine Police base to receive one of the program's special boat units, which will consist of four 31' rigid hull patrol boats, each with twin 250hp Mercury outboards. The boats have a 250-mile operating radius, which technically will allow them to cover the area leading to the border with the southern Philippines. Post ICITAP program officers anticipate delivery of the boats by June 2007. A similarly equipped special boat unit is planned for the East Kalimantan border area with East Malaysia, possibly in Tarakan or Nunukan. Among the Fusion Iron training participants were several Marine Police officers identified by the INP as trainers for the special boat units being developed by ICITAP. AUTHORITIES KEEN ON UPCOMING BCAI TEAM VISIT ¶13. (C) As was the case with our visit last year to the province of East Kalimantan along Indonesia's border with Malaysia (Ref A),officials we met in North Sulawesi appeared eager to work with us to address border security issues, and seemed genuinely interested in improving their capability if the appropriate equipment and training were available. Despite a decades-old terrorist and criminal transit problem, the border area remains poorly-regulated, and the lack of resources to control traffic effectively at official ports invites terrorist and criminal activity. Monitoring the hundreds of informal coastal access points near the border presents an even greater challenge. Our visit confirmed the utility of the U.S.-sponsored border control needs analysis suggested by Chiefs of Mission at the January CT meeting in Jakarta. Although we were unable to visit the more remote areas closer to the border, our extensive interaction with local residents in both Manado and Bitung found them to be friendly and supportive of our presence. PASCOE