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View all search resultsSmelters and garrisons: Militarization of extractive economy
Beneath the rhetoric of national resilience, Indonesia is deploying troops not to protect populations, but to turn its resource-rich frontier into an armed, state-capitalist enclave.
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Army personnel march on Oct. 5, 2025, during an event marking the 80th anniversary of the Indonesian Military (TNI) in Banda Aceh, Aceh. (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin) (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
W
hen President Prabowo Subianto inaugurated 100 Territorial Development Infantry Battalions (Yonif TP) alongside six new regional military commands (Kodam) in August 2025, the official narrative invoked national resilience: food security, public health and rural infrastructure.
Yet the geographic deployment of these battalions tells a different story. Outside Java, they cluster along what can only be described as the state’s extractive belt: nickel, coal, gas, bauxite, palm oil and the industrial complexes built to process them. Maluku and North Maluku, the twin cradles of the archipelagic colonial economy, offer the starkest illustrations.
North Maluku holds virtually no oil and gas. Instead, its National Strategic Projects (PSN) center on industrial estates and processing plants: the Weda Bay/IWIP industrial complex in Central Halmahera, the Obi/Harita hub in South Halmahera, Antam’s ferronickel-battery smelter in Buli, and the neighboring Alchemist iron sand-vanadium plant. This province is the beating heart of Indonesia’s nickel-to-electric vehicle ambitions.
To reinforce this hub, the state deployed three Yonif TP on top of the regular battalion in Jailolo: Yonif TP 866 in Wasile, East Halmahera, positioned between the Antam and Alchemist smelters and the Maba–Gebe nickel corridor; Yonif TP 867 in Bacan, South Halmahera, within striking distance of the Gane nickel concessions and the Obi industrial estate; and Yonif TP 822 on Morotai, a frontier island facing the Pacific.
Rather than mirroring population density, healthcare deficits or agrarian acreage, this deployment traces an arc through Halmahera’s core mining regencies.
Neighboring Maluku reveals that this security footprint reaches beyond mineral concessions. The province's two PSN are the Way Apu Dam in Buru and the offshore Abadi Field in the Masela Block, linked via subsea pipeline to onshore terminals.
Yonif TP 821 sits in Namlea, directly adjacent to Way Apu. Three others, Yonif TP 912 in Aru, 913 in Moa and 914 in the Kei Islands, line the maritime fishery corridors of the Arafura and Banda seas. While the offshore Masela Field hosts no garrison on its rigs, its planned onshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Lermatang sits beside the regular Yonif 734 in Saumlaki.
