The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

by Vincent Bevins

The truth of the violence of 1965–66 remained hidden for decades. The dictatorship established in its wake told the world a lie, and survivors were imprisoned or too terrified to speak out.

The remarkable film The Act of Killing, by Joshua Oppenheimer, and its sequel, The Look of Silence, smashed open the black box surrounding 1965 in Indonesia, and forced people in the country and around the world to look inside.

To tell it as accurately as possible, to be faithful to the evidence and respectful to those who lived through it, I found it had to be done a certain way. First, the story is truly global; every life on Earth is treated as equally important, and no nations or actors are viewed, a priori, as the good or bad guys. Secondly, we’ve all heard the maxim that “history is written by the victors.” This is usually, unfortunately, true. But this story by necessity pushes back against that tendency—many of the people at its center were some of the biggest losers of the twentieth century—and we cannot be afraid to let the facts of their lives contradict accepted popular understandings of the Cold War in the English-speaking world, even if those contradictions may be very uncomfortable for the winners. And finally, I avoid speculation entirely, resisting any urge to try to tackle the many unsolved mysteries by myself. We have to accept there’s a lot we still don’t know.

Internationally, the country came to represent and champion revolutionary, democratic ideals. But internally, things were much more complicated. The United States remained a brutally white supremacist society. The consequence of the a priori dismissal of the native population was genocide.

And then there was the “Third World”—everyone else, the vast majority of the world’s population. That term was coined in the early 1950s, and originally, all of its connotations were positive. When the leaders of these new nation-states took up the term, they spoke it with pride; it contained a dream of a better future in which the world’s downtrodden and enslaved masses would take control of their own destiny.

The term was used in the sense of the “Third Estate” during the French Revolution, the revolutionary common people who would overthrow the First and Second Estates of the monarchy and the clergy. “Third” did not mean third-rate, but something more like the third and final act: the first group of rich white countries had their crack at creating the world, as did the second, and this was the new movement, full of energy and potential, just waiting to be unleashed. For much of the planet, the Third World was not just a category; it was a movement.

The specific kind of anticommunism that took shape in these years was partly based on value judgments: the widespread belief in the United States that communism was simply a bad system, or morally repugnant even when effective. But it was also based on a number of assertions about the nature of Soviet-led international communism. There was widespread belief that Stalin wanted to invade Western Europe. It became accepted as fact that the Soviets were pushing for revolution worldwide, and that whenever communists were present, even in small numbers, they probably had secret plans to overthrow the government.

Marxism as a guiding ideology, including in the Marxist-Leninist formulation cemented by Stalin, certainly did not prescribe that everyone everywhere make revolution at all times. In their worldview, you certainly didn’t get socialism just because you wanted it.

US intervened heavily in Western Europe to make sure that the leftists didn’t take over. In Paris, the government, which was heavily dependent on US financial aid, ousted all its Communist ministers in 1947.29 In Italy the US funneled millions of dollars to the Christian Democratic Party and spent millions more on anticommunist propaganda.

Like Ho Chi Minh in August 1945, Mao had also been under the illusion that he could have good relations with the United States. He was wrong, of course.33 After his victory, the emergency of “Red China” led to violent recriminations back in the United States.

McCarthyism was a top-down process, driven especially by the presidency and the FBI.

During World War II, British policies created a famine that took the lives of four million people.

In June 1948, the Allied governments decided to unilaterally issue a currency for West Germany, the deutsche mark, catching the Soviets off guard and likely forcing the long-term split of the country into two.

Because they refused to recognize Mao’s communist government on the mainland, the US government recognized this as the “real” China, even though Taiwan had its own population and identity before they arrived. This was no democracy. In February 1947, the new government massacred thousands of people opposed to Nationalist rule, beginning another period of White Terror and intermittent repression of dissidents, often justified on anticommunist grounds, that continued for years.

In Germany, the CIA had no problem recruiting former Nazis, including those who had run death squads, as long as they were anticommunist.

When studying or working back in the imperial capitals, colonial subjects often came into contact with ideas that were never allowed to reach their territories. Much of colonialism had relied on the logic of “Do as I say, not as I do.” Or in practice, “Do as white say, not as white do.”

Francisca said, “I think this was one of the worst crimes of colonialism. After three and a half centuries of Dutch occupation we were left with almost no knowledge of our own people, and our own culture.”

During the resulting three-year stalemate, the US dropped more than six hundred thousand tons of bombs on Korea, more than was used in the entire Pacific theater in World War II, and poured thirty thousand tons of napalm over the landscape. More than 80 percent of North Korea’s buildings were destroyed, and the bombing campaign killed an estimated one million civilians.

As part of a range of psychological operations alongside the war on the guerrillas, CIA agents spread the rumor that an aswang, a bloodsucking ghoul of Filipino legend, was on the loose and destroying men with evil in their hearts. They then took a Huk rebel they had killed, poked two holes in his neck, drained him of his blood, and left him lying in the road.

The way it looked from Indonesia was that in both Iran and Guatemala, nascent democratic movements had tried to assert new independence in the global economy, and the new Western power had reacted violently, and crushed them back into the subservient role they had always played. Sukarno liked to call this “neocolonialism,” or the enforced conditions of imperial control without formal rule. Thoroughly modern, he loved neologisms and acronyms, and later coined NEKOLIM—that is, neocolonialism, colonialism, and imperialism—to name the enemy he believed they all faced.

As Howard Jones understood, the Bandung Conference put forward an entirely different type of nationalism from the type that existed in Europe. For leaders like Sukarno and Nehru, the idea of the “nation” was not based on race or language—it indeed could not be in territories as diverse as theirs—but is constructed by the anticolonial struggle and the drive for social justice.

It was the nascent alliances between the USSR and radical Arab nationalist regimes, we know now, that formed the basis for a growing US-Israel alliance.6

Throughout the course of the CIA’s history, this dynamic would often be repeated. The Agency would act behind the back of the diplomats and experts at the State Department. If the CIA was successful, the State Department would be forced into backing the new state of affairs the Agency had created. If the secret agents failed, they would just move on, leaving the embarrassed diplomats to clean up the mess.

The Kennedy administration provided increasing levels of assistance to the Indonesian military, which was meant to serve as a counterweight to support that Sukarno was now receiving from the Soviets.

the power and influence of the anticommunist Indonesian military, in constant coordination with US officials with Washington, rose steadily in the background. Kennedy’s positive engagement took the form of a “civic action program” (CAP) in Indonesia, which included the covert training of “selected personnel and civilians” and a range of anticommunist activities whose nature, more than fifty years later, is still a classified secret.41 The CAP proved crucial in the creation of a negara dalam negara, a “state within a state,” led by the generals. The process had begun when the military got emergency powers to fight the CIA in 1958. Now, the military received equipment and training from the US to engage in fishing, farming, and construction, which increased its economic interests and role around the country.42

The Vargas government used the real event, from then on somewhat incorrectly referred to as “Intentona Comunista,” or Communist Uprising, to crack down on the left and his critics in general, and then as an excuse to consolidate dictatorial powers. Vargas declared a state of emergency, created the “Committee for the Repression of Communism,” suspended individual liberties, and began to round up the country’s leftists. Many of the Intentona’s leaders were executed, though the popular Prestes remained in jail. Authorities banned left-wing books.

The 1935 Intentona served as a foundational legend for the Armed Forces, and for the increasingly virulent anticommunist movement that overtook the military and society in general. Every year, on November 27, the military gathered in front of a memorial structure on Praia Vermelha, or “Red Beach,” to commemorate the defense against the communist rebellion. And a powerful myth took shape. The military came to tell the story that November 1935 was not a conventional attack on military barracks. The tale became that communists snuck into the chambers of officers, and stabbed them to death while they slept.

This achievement in Brazil in 1964 was not only possible because of the new tactics JFK put in place to build alliances with the military. The United States also got lucky. And importantly, Brazil had its own, very deep anticommunist tradition, built on five centuries of fear of the black, the poor, and the violent and marginalized, and with its own, incredibly effective, myths and annual rituals.

Like Kennedy before him, Johnson’s administration considered Indonesia more important than Vietnam. “President Johnson has come increasingly to the conclusion that, at the end of the day, he would be ready for major war against Indonesia,” said Secretary of State Dean Rusk to a British official.

Suharto had a checkered past within the Indonesian military. He had been caught smuggling in the late 1950s, and was fired by Nasution himself. According to Subandrio, Suharto’s flagrant corruption so angered Yani and Nasution that Yani personally gave him a beating, and Nasution almost put him on trial.55 During Konfrontasi, Suharto had made sure that troops along the border with Malaysia were understaffed and underequipped, using his power to minimize Indonesia’s conflict with the UK (and the US) at the time.

Curiously, General Suharto took command of the Armed Forces on October 1, not Nasution—the highest-ranking officer in the country—after Washington’s longtime friend was lucky enough to survive the events of the previous night. This was such an unexpected role reversal that it took several key actors weeks to understand that Suharto was actually in charge.

Everything Suharto did in October suggests that he was executing an anticommunist counterattack plan that had been developed in advance, not simply reacting to events.

Soon after the initial confusion, the US government assisted Suharto in the crucial early phase of spreading propaganda and establishing his anticommunist narrative. Washington quickly and covertly supplied vital mobile communications equipment to the military, a now-declassified October 14 cable indicates.63 This was also a tacit admission, very early, that the US government recognized the Army, not Sukarno, as the true leader of the country, even though Sukarno was still legally the president.

Working with CIA analysts, embassy political officer Robert Martens prepared lists with the names of thousands of communists and suspected communists, and handed them over to the Army, so that these people could be murdered and “checked off” the list. As far as we know, this was at least the third time in history that US officials had supplied lists of communists and alleged communists to allies, so that they could round them up and kill them. The first was in Guatemala in 1954, the second was in Iraq in 1963, and now, on a much larger scale, was Indonesia 1965.

This was a new characteristic of the mass violence. People weren’t killed in the streets, making it very clear to families that they were gone. They weren’t officially executed. They were arrested and then disappeared in the middle of the night. Loved ones often had no idea if their relatives were still alive, making them even more paralyzed with fear. If they complained, or rebelled, could that be what cost their imprisoned loved ones their lives? Might they be taken too? Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that mass murder is occurring, the human instinct is to hold out hope that your son, or your daughter, might still be saved. This freezes people, and makes populations much more quiescent—easier to exterminate and easier to control.

Bali—The violence arrived on the island of Bali in December. It’s almost like it started at Indonesia’s westernmost tip and moved east across the main population centers, through Central Java, to East Java, and then to Bali. Like the movement of the sun, only precisely in reverse. The slaughter in Bali was probably the worst in all of Indonesia. As the new year began, the island convulsed with violence.

The people of Bali knew something was very suspicious about the outbreak of violence. People were being killed with big machetes. Machetes are not native to the island. Balinese people use the klewang, a thinner, local blade. Someone must have brought the heavy weapons in from another island.

The machetes arrived around the same time that military anticommunist propaganda campaigns, nationally coordinated, arrived in Bali.

In total, at least 5 percent of the population of Bali was killed—that is, eighty thousand people, probably the highest proportion in the country.

A little bit later, the first tourist hotel went up on the very beach, Seminyak, that had been used as a killing field.

Most of the Western press repeated the narrative being peddled by the new Indonesian government, which Washington was enthusiastically welcoming onto the world stage. That story went, more or less, that some spontaneous violence erupted when regular people found out about what the communists had done, or been planning. These articles said that the natives had “run amok” and engaged in bloodshed. Because the word “amok” originated in Malay (the language that formed the basis for both Indonesian and Malaysian), this made it easier for Western journalists to employ Orientalist stereotypes about Asians as primitive, backward, and violent people, and blame the violence on a putative sudden, irrational outburst.

This story of inexplicable, vaguely tribal violence—so easy for American readers to digest—was entirely false. This was organized state violence with a clear purpose. The main obstacles to a complete military takeover were eliminated by a coordinated program of extermination—the intentional mass murder of innocent civilians. The generals were able to take power after state terror sufficiently weakened their political opponents, who had no weapons, only public sympathy.

In total, it is estimated that between five hundred thousand and one million people were slaughtered, and one million more were herded into concentration camps. Sarwo Edhie, the man who ambushed Sukarno in March, once bragged that the military had killed three million people.

They didn’t do anything wrong at all. They were sentenced to annihilation, and almost everyone around them was sentenced to a lifetime of guilt, trauma, and being told they had sinned unforgivably because of their association with the earnest hopes of left-wing politics.

The prime responsibility for the massacres and concentration camps lies with the Indonesian military. We still do not know if the method employed—disappearance and mass extermination—was planned well before October 1965, perhaps inspired by other cases around the world, or planned under foreign direction, or if it emerged as a solution as events unfolded. But Washington shares guilt for every death.

When Washington parted ways with Jones and his strategy of working directly with Sukarno, it instructed its secret and not-so-secret agents to destabilize the country and create conflict. When the conflict came, and when the opportunity arose, the US government helped spread the propaganda that made the killing possible, and engaged in constant conversations with the Army to make sure the military officers had everything they needed, from weapons to kill lists.

The US embassy constantly prodded the military to adopt a stronger position and take over the government, knowing full well that the method being employed to make this possible was to round up hundreds of thousands of people around the country, stab or strangle them, and throw their corpses into rivers. The Indonesian military officers understood very well that the more people they killed, the weaker the left would be, and the happier Washington would be. Up to a million Indonesians, maybe more, were killed as part of Washington’s global anticommunist crusade.

It’s believed the events of 1965–66 in Indonesia were the first time Asia suffered from disappearances as a tactic of state terror.

The Cultural Revolution was built around the idea that hidden bourgeois elements could infiltrate and threaten a left-wing movement. The events in Indonesia in 1965–66 served as self-evident justification for this narrative.

By the end of the 1960s, it was safe to say that the Third World movement was in disarray, if not destroyed. The “Bandung Spirit” had become a ghost. The leaders of the progressive wing of the postcolonial movement were gone: Nehru had died in 1964; Sukarno was languishing in Indonesia as his allies bled out, waiting to die soon himself; Ghana’s Nkrumah and Burma’s U Nu had been deposed in military coups. Many of Iraq’s leftists were already dead, and US-backed Saddam Hussein would finish them off soon; Egypt’s Nasser had been weakened by the collapse of the United Arab Republic following a coup in Damascus, whose leaders in turn purged the Syrian Communist Party.