W

ednesday'€™s armed clash between members of an Army infantry battalion and officers of the police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) in Batam, Riau Islands, came as no surprise after the tension that gripped the island from early in the afternoon until the late evening.

The general public could immediately correlate the incident with a Sept. 21 skirmish between members of the two forces. Upon learning about the dubious settlement of the previous fight, people were expecting that sooner or later, a new clash would erupt.

What matters, however, is the fact that such violence has become a repeated phenomenon without any sign of a solution. Wednesday'€™s conflict was the fourth this year, equalling last year'€™s tally.

A number of analysts and observers have insisted that the latest brawl would not have happened if leaders, particularly within the Bukit Barisan Military Command, which oversees four provinces including Riau Islands, had controlled their personnel and taken stern action against insubordination in the past.

Around 30 armed personnel of the Tuah Sakti infantry battalion continued to besiege and attack the Brimob headquarters for hours, despite orders from Bukit Barisan Military Commander Maj. Gen. Winston P. Simanjuntak to return to their barracks and surrender their weapons. The soldiers pulled out only after Winston directly ordered them to withdraw via loudspeaker.

Mounting calls for dismissal of not only the non-commissioned soldiers involved in the attack but also the leaders of the Batam and Bukit Barisan military commands, as well as the provincial police, are therefore reasonable.

Such stiff measures could help to prevent similar incidents occurring in the future. It is beyond doubt that leaders of the local police and military institutions failed to resolve the Sept. 21 incident. But can such limited structural disciplinary and administrative measures address the root cause of these armed clashes?

There has been no thorough study conducted to identify the primary cause of the rivalry. However, there are a number of key indicators of problems that could lead the authorities to a long-term and perhaps permanent settlement to the conflict.

One thing is certain: clashes between the two forces have been rampant since the People'€™s Consultative Assembly separated the National Police from the Indonesian Military (TNI) in 2000 as part of military reforms. Previously, the police had been under the Indonesian Armed Forces (ABRI) '€” along with the Army, the Navy and the Air Force '€” for over three decades.

It is not that the separation was a bad idea. It is in fact a universal practice, particularly in democracies. The problem is that the decision to split the police from the TNI, the concept of which was extracted from the spirit of reforms following the downfall of Soeharto'€™s New Order in 1998, was not followed by a fair and complete set of rules to support true implementation of the reforms themselves.

The reform movement at that time recommended the nation'€™s total departure from practices of corruption, collusion and nepotism (popularly known by their acronym KKN), which were blamed for the collapse of the New Order government.

In the spirit of the fight against KKN, both the TNI and the National Police were required to relinquish their side-businesses, which under the New Order were justified to raise funds to finance their operational costs. The commitment, however, was not accompanied by a set of rules that could prosecute any personnel within the three military forces and the police for violating the commitment.

That failure has left a loophole in the country'€™s legal system, which has made it difficult for the justice system to act against, let alone to prevent, violations of the commitment. In the case of the National Police, its constitutional authority as a law-enforcement institution, alongside the Attorney General'€™s Office and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), has often undermined efforts to prosecute police officers, particularly high-ranking ones implicated in corruption. It is likely, though denied by the National Police, that esprit de corps has had an influence on the failed prosecution of corrupt officers.

The general public might still remember the revelation by the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) of fat bank accounts belonging to 21 police generals and high-ranking officers in 2010. The findings never reached the court after an internal investigation by the police cleared them of all allegations.

In reference to the police-soldier clashes, Neta S. Pane of the Indonesian Police Watch (IPW) recently said that conflicts were often sparked by disputes surrounding illicit businesses protected by military or police personnel. A joint TNI-National Police investigation following the Sept. 21 clash confirmed the role of police and military personnel in an illegal fuel-stockpiling business in Batam.

In the past, military individuals and groups dominated such illicit businesses, with only a smaller portion going to the police. Following the separation of the police from the military, the economic cake has since been distributed between the two more equally. It is this struggle for business control that has apparently led to contretemps between police and soldiers in the field and eventually escalated into armed clashes.

Another aspect that has contributed to the continuing conflict, although it has not been thoroughly studied, is '€œinstitutional jealousy'€ with regard to the exclusive status of the National Police, which directly answers to the president. Its older brother, the TNI, on the contrary, comes under the supervision of the Defense Ministry as a consequence of the military reforms.

Numerous seminars have been held to discuss the thorny issue of equality between the police and the TNI. It remains a hotly debated subject that perhaps only the country'€™s top leadership can address.