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