Prabowo Subianto
 Prabowo Subianto    (politician, officer, deep state operative) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Born | 17 October 1951 Jakarta, Indonesia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality | Indonesian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Parents | Sumitro Djojohadikusumo | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Siblings | • Hashim Djojohadikusumo • Rahayu Saraswati Djojohadikusumo | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A CIA assessment pointed him out as "the type of officer who could rise to national leadership"
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Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo is an Indonesian officer and politician.
His father, a CIA asset, was ministry of economy in what was probably the most corrupt government in the world.[1]
Prabowo himself was trained by the US special forces and took part in a number of operations, including the genocidal counterinsurgency in East Timor and creating the 1998 anti-Chinese pogroms in an attempt to keep power.
The Americans saw his presidency coming almost 40 years ago. Then a captain in the military, he exemplified "the type of officer who could rise to national leadership," CIA authors wrote in a now-declassified 1985 intelligence assessment.
Family background
Prabowo Subianto was born in Jakarta in 1951, part of an elite Indonesian family with ancestral ties to Javanese sultans.[2]
Due to political differences and allegations of corruption, his father, Sumitro, fell foul of the nation’s founding president Sukarno and moved his family variously between Kuala Lumpur, London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Zurich for about a decade. They returned to Indonesia at the beginning of the Suharto years in the late 1960s.
Sumitro himself fled Jakarta and joined the insurgent Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia in the late 1950s. Considered a leader of the movement, he operated from abroad, liaising with Western the CIA and MI6 while seeking funding and international support.[3] After the overthrow of Sukarno and the establishment of the New Order under Suharto, Sumitro was invited to return from exile and in 1967 was appointed Minister of Trade. He was involved in the high-level planning of Indonesia's economy.
Prabowo Subianto in 1983 married Siti Hediati Harijadi, aka Titiek Suharto, President Suharto's second daughter. However, the couple separated in 1998 amid the violent political crisis in Indonesia, in which Prabowo was blamed for fomenting some of the anti-Chinese pogroms and afterwards went into exile in Jordan. They have not reunited ever since.[4]
Military career
In 1985 Prabowo Subianto attended the Advanced Infantry Officers Course at Fort Benning, in the United States for special operations training with the US Special Forces[5], where he learned the tactics he later used.
He rose through the Indonesian ranks to become a top general and commander of the elite special forces squad, Kopassus. He was assigned to counterinsurgency in East Timor
Suharto's 32-year authoritarian regime collapsed in 1998 under the weight of the Reformasi [reform] movement and the Asian financial crisis. The same year, Prabowo was dismissed by a military tribunal for his role in the abduction of democracy activists, twelve of whom remain missing.
His military career was marked by accusations of hardman tactics ranging from secret coup-plotting against his father-in-law, Suharto, to fomenting deadly anti-Chinese riots.[6]
In 1996, he used false flag tactics to rescue Western and local hostages in West Papua. The helicopter used in the mission wbore the insignia of the Red Cross, giving villagers a false sense of comfort and drawing some into the open. People were killed. All but two of the hostages were freed.[6] In the early 1990s, as the commander of Kopassus Group 3, the now Major General Prabowo attempted to crush the East Timorese independence movement by using irregular tactics (hooded "ninja" gangs dressed in black and operating at night) and, in main towns and villages, militias trained and directed by Kopassus commanders.
Political career
The Americans saw his presidency coming almost 40 years ago. Then a captain in the military, he exemplified "the type of officer who could rise to national leadership," CIA authors wrote in a now-declassified intelligence assessment.[7]
Joko Widodo beat him in both the 2014 and 2019 presidential elections. Before that, he lost as the vice-presidential candidate for political matriarch Megawati Sukarnoputri in 2009, and in 2004 failed to secure the presidential nomination from the party of former authoritarian Suharto.
References
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/26/indonesia.philippines
- ↑ Djojohadikusumo, Margono (2000). Kenang-Kenangan dari Tiga Zaman. Penerbit Indira.
- ↑ Kahin, Audrey; Kahin, George McTurnan (1997). Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia. University of Washington Press. ISBN 978-0-295-97618-1.
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20141217095340/http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304441404577478151149541634
- ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/indonesia/stories/rights052398.htm
- ↑ a b https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/it-takes-a-special-politician-to-draw-a-crowd-of-100-000-this-one-has-a-chequered-past-20240211-p5f3ym.html
- ↑ https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86T00590R000300450001-3.pdf
