West New Guinea

FOR young and dedicated Dutch administrators who arrived in West New Guinea in the early fifties, the task confronting them seemed difficult but magnificent. New Guinea had been at the end of the line in the Netherlands East Indies, a wild, impenetrable, tropical land, bigger than California, totally undeveloped, largely unexplored, and populated by people who hunted for and ate human heads.

What there had been in the way of administrative facilities had been almost totally destroyed during World War II and the Indonesian struggle for independence which followed it. In virgin country, more primitive by far than anything else in the former Netherlands East Indies, there was a challenge that demanded an enormous response from men who were determined to make good the old, proud, but now suspect Dutch claim that of all colonizers they were the best.

While it is true that the desire to salvage something out of the wreckage of the Indies empire and the even more compelling need to appease the angry Dutch parliamentarians, who bitterly opposed the government’s submission to Indonesian demands, were the real reasons behind the decision to withhold the residency of New Guinea and its approximately 700,000 inhabitants from Indonesian sovereignty and administration in 1949, the Dutch sense of mission in New Guinea has been unique in the sorry story of colonialism. With little prospect of commercial gain — and the certainty of considerable loss when the oil fields around Sorong at the western end of the island began to dry up — the Dutch put $30 million a year into education, public health, economic development, and other fields designed to promote the Papuans’ welfare. The task was so formidable, and, even with the best-intentioned efforts, likely to take so long, that no one seriously thought in terms of self-government or selfdetermination for the Papuans.

As Indonesian pressures increased, however, the Dutch radically revised their ideas. Abandoning plans for long-term development, they embarked on a crash program to prepare West New Guinea for self-government. By 1960, the Dutch intention was to hand over all but a handful of administrative posts to a Papuan elite within ten years, or even less. The following year, when Soviet military equipment began to give the Indonesian military forces real teeth, The Hague offered to bow out gracefully and, while continuing its annual subsidy, to transfer its own powers to an international authority under the United Nations.

The United Nations against the Dutch

This final bid for the principle of self-determination in West New Guinea was well intentioned but ill advised. Predictably, the Dutch failed to get the two-thirds majority required in the General Assembly even for a compromise motion. Except for Japan and Laos, both of which abstained, Asia was solidly for the Indonesians and against the Dutch.

Asian leaders in the United Nations were unimpressed with the Dutch argument in favor of self-determination. Where, they asked, did the principle of self-determination end? If every minority group claimed the right to self-determination, the United Nations would have a thousand members, not a hundred. If economic viability, now or in the predictable future, was to be the means test, it was as unreasonable for the Papuans to become self-governing as it was to suggest that the Karens and the Shans in Burma, the Nagas in India, or the Meo tribesmen in Laos should rule their own separate, independent states. Having failed to get the two-thirds majority it needed, The Hague was left with no further diplomatic cards to play. From this point on, it was clear, Indonesia would have the initiative.

The need for a solution

To the United States, which for years had maintained its neutrality in the dispute, the prospect that Indonesia might now use its newly acquired military strength, including long-range Russian jet bombers and fighters, submarines, heavy destroyers, and a considerable amount of other fairly sophisticated equipment, to attain its objectives in West New Guinea demanded a change of attitude, if not quite a change of policy.

As Washington saw it, a settlement of the dispute now became more important than the expedient principle of self-determination. Conflict in southeast Asia over an issue that Asians regarded as colonial, and in which the Communist bloc was only too glad to aid and abet the Indonesians, was, from the Western point of view, the worst possible solution. It would alienate Indonesia‚ the biggest, richest, and most populous southeast Asian state, and might drive it into the Communist camp.

Australia, which had long feared the consequences in Papua and the mandated Territory of New Guinea if Indonesia became its neighbor in New Guinea, suddenly realized the greater danger of isolating itsell from Asia. After years of lobbying on behalf of the Netherlands in the United Nations, it made an agonizing reappraisal of policy and decided to let Djakarta know it would be happy to have Indonesians next door in New Guinea.

Many in Holland were no less anxious for a settlement. For years Dutch businessmen had condemned what they regarded as the woefully bad business of pursuing a policy that cost the Netherlands Djakarta’s goodwill and an estimated $1.6 billion investment in Indonesia.

Responding to these pressures, Professor de Quay, the Netherlands Prime Minister, announced that his government was prepared to negotiate with the Indonesian government for a peaceful settlement “without preconditions and in the presence of a third party.”

Indonesia’s advantage

Knowing now that they had all the advantages, the Indonesians showed little interest in a conference on these terms. Though they softened their earlier demands for sovereignty with the proposal that they would be happy merely to take over the administration and eventually to let the Papuans choose for themselves, the idea of sitting down at a conference table with the Dutch seemed remote from most Indonesians’ thoughts.

“We were born in the flames of revolution and will go on fighting until all our country is free,” declared President Sukarno when he issued his command for the “liberation of West Irian” (West New Guinea) on December 19. “We are not a nation of beggars, but a nation of fighters who have been bathed in fire since 1945.”

It is a curious and singularly undesirable aspect of the evolution of the United Nations that this sort of bombast can also be good diplomacy. Article 24 of the UN Charter confers on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. United Nations action in the event of an Indonesian attack would therefore mean, in the first instance, recourse to the Security Council, probably in the form of a Netherlands appeal.

The Soviet Union, which has not only encouraged Sukarno to adopt his current line but has provided him with the means of making good his threats, would immediately veto any proposal unacceptable to Indonesia, such as a resolution calling for a cease-fire and withdrawal of Indonesian forces. Assuming that the issue were transferred to the General Assembly, Indonesia has already demonstrated that on the West New Guinea dispute it can count on a solid, blocking third of the votes.

With every conceivable advantage on its side. Indonesia realized that it could profitably beat the war drums at home while marking time abroad. Veterans’ organizations, women’s organizations, former rebels against Sukarno — almost everyone, in fact, except the modest and moderate leaders of the outlawed Socialist and Masjumi parties, who were clapped in jail — announced their readiness to fight for the “liberation of West Irian.”

The first clash occurred some thirty miles off the New Guinea coast. The Indonesians lost a motor torpedo boat; Commodore Jos Sudarso, the deputy naval chief of staff, and eighty-two others were killed or captured. Djakarta reacted with moderation. Though some of Sukarno’s advisers were in favor of retaliatory action, there were no immediate incidents. Indonesia had the means to cause a rumpus in West New Guinea anytime it wanted to. But West New Guinea itself, not trouble, was its objective.

With Australia backing away from its earlier solid front with the Netherlands in New Guinea and Washington anxious, above all, for a settlement, President Sukarno and his followers needed only to keep the crisis boiling and West New Guinea, they were sure, would be theirs.

The fear in most Western capitals was that since Indonesia and the Netherlands had drawn so far apart over the years, the issue might be decided on the battlefield and not at the conference table. This fear became acute in March, when secret talks between Indonesia and the Netherlands collapsed almost before they had begun. Arranged after long and patient effort by the United States, which sat in as a third party, the talks got no further than the Indonesian insistence that the Netherlands should agree in advance to hand over the administration of West New Guinea. When the Netherlands declined to surrender its only bargaining point, the Indonesian delegate walked out.

Djakarta was divided on the merit of this tactic. However, the advocates of a vigorous policy, led by , President Sukarno and Dr. Sukarno‚ the Foreign Minister, prevailed. Indonesian infiltrators landed at scattered points along the coast of West New Guinea, and tension rose rapidly as both sides moved reinforcements into the area.

A primitive and savage land

Fewer lands have ever been less worth fighting for. Rich in scenery but desperately poor in natural resources, West New Guinea makes the rugged, backward eastern part under Australian administration seem like an orderly, well-kept tropical garden. A magnificent range of mountains, capped with permanent snow and rising to 16,000 feet, stretches like a spine along the center of the island. There are a few foot trails through passes as high as 13,000 feet across the mountains, but no roads or even jeep tracks. Among the natives who live in the deep valleys in the mountain folds, even the wheel and the use of iron are not known. South and north of the mountains are some of the world’s largest swamps, malarial, crocodile infested, unproductive, and sparsely populated by natives, who in at least one coastal area are still headhunters.

Planes shuttle around the coast linking the main administrative centers, and before the noonday clouds blanket the mountains, make hazardous trips to the mission and administrative outposts in the interior. Christian missionaries divide the island into the Catholic north and the Protestant south. Though their collective claims to 200,000 converts may be dubious, the missionaries have played a significant part in making contact with remote tribal groups. For nearly a century the church had the field to itself‚ and almost all the early progress in health and education was due to its efforts. Even today, when everyone is working against the clock to establish contact with the estimated 200,000 natives who still live beyond the administration, the missionaries are often first to befriend new and savage tribes.

Hollandia, the capital, is a pretty little town on Humboldt Bay. As a precaution against air raids, General MacArthur’s forces deployed their installations over a wide area here during World War II. The Dutch, making such use as they could of what was left of the installations, have done likewise, and the population of the town, which reached a peak of about 17,000 in 1960, is widely dispersed. About a third of the 150 miles of road and jeep tracks in all West New Guinea wind in and about the town and around the hills, which are dotted with bungalows made of pink coral bricks.

Back to Holland

Today many of the houses are empty. The Indo-European refugees from the Netherlands East Indies who did not want to live under Indonesian rule in 1950 are fleeing again, this time to Holland, at the rate of about four hundred a month. Since they filled the clerical positions in the administration and in local Dutch import-export firms, their departure has been a serious blow. The largest Dutch firm now airmails its clerical work to Holland, where it is handled by the same clerks who only a year ago performed these tasks in Hollandia. The middle echelons of the administration have also been badly hit by the exodus. Replacements cannot be found in Holland, and the crash training program of local administrators has not yet reached the stage where there are enough skilled Papuans to take over.

On the one hand, therefore, there are not enough trained Papuans to serve as clerks, and on the other, there is the New Guinea Council, whose sixteen elected and twelve nominated members have been promised that the future of West New Guinea will be theirs to shape. Their vested interest in self-determination ensures that the council is strongly against an Indonesian takeover. Among others who have less to lose, the obvious merit in the Dutch effort and the constant emphasis on self-determination in recent years have built up a genuine resistance to the Indonesian propaganda, which is broadcast from Radio Makassar and spread by underground organizations.

Since Indonesian is the lingua franca of the coastal regions, and such Netherlands East Indies administrators as there were before World War II came mostly from Indonesia, the Indonesians are not entirely without indigenous support. But, in any event, the issue is of direct interest only to the more sophisticated Papuans in the coastal towns and villages. To the tribesmen, who do not even wear clothing and work only to keep alive, the question of self-determination or rule by Indonesia is not merely of no interest or importance, it is not even known.

Indonesia’s resolution to wrest New Guinea from the Dutch has become an intense emotional and deeply nationalistic campaign in which almost all Indonesians have joined. Moscow and Peiping appreciated this several years ago and made the most of it; the West understood only at what may yet prove to be a little after the eleventh hour.