Defence`s Feeds

Spanish infrastructure and defence electronics company Indra announced on 6 April that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Chilean aircraft company Empresa Nacional de Aeronáutica de Chile (ENAER). The deal, which was signed at the FIDAE trade show in Santiago, will see the two

MEDIA reports on 2 April stated that 10 civilians had been killed when a landmine, emplaced by unidentified militants, detonated targeting civilians travelling in a donkey-cart in Bulo Burde town in Somalia's Hiiraan region on an earlier unspecified date, Radio Risala reported. No group immediately

AT LEAST four civilians were killed and seven others wounded when a landmine, emplaced by unidentified militants, detonated targeting their vehicle near Godey School on Sanaa Junction in Karaan district in the Banaadir area of Somalia's capital Mogadishu on 4 April, Radio Kulmiye reported. Reports

Pan-European missile manufacturer MBDA revealed on 5 April a goal of expanding its presence in Spain, with comments made to local press by its CEO Antoine Bouvier and the director general of its Spanish subsidiary Daniel García Guelbenzu indicating a goal of establishing production facilities

The Portuguese Army expects to receive its first vehicle-mounted short-range air defence (SHORAD) systems in 2019, it has told Jane’s . The request for proposals (RFP) is expected to be launched through the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) in 2018, as is the contract signing. The

Two Republic of Korea Air Force (RoKAF) pilots are presumed dead after their F-15K fighter aircraft crashed on 5 April in the South Korean county of Chilgok in North Gyeongsang Province. The incident took place at 14:38 h (local time), about an hour after the aircraft had taken off on a mission

The US State Department has approved the sale of 180 M109A5/A6 self-propelled howitzer (SPH) structures to Saudi Arabia, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) announced on 5 April. These structures will be converted into 177 M109A6 Paladin SPHs and three static training devices. Estimated

Spanish defence manufacturing company Escribano Mechanical and Engineering began construction of an expanded facility on 6 April, in a ceremony attended by the country’s defence minister Maria Dolores de Cospedal. Ms De Cospedal used the occasion, which came the day after a state budget

A MEMBER of the provincial council and a religious scholar were killed and a security guard was wounded when an unidentified suicide bomber detonated their explosives in Watapor district in Afghanistan's Konar province on 30 March, Tolo News TV reported. No group immediately claimed responsibility

Americas

• Huntington Ingalls received Monday, April 2, a $179 million cost-plus-incentive-fee modification for for services related to production of the new USS Enterprise, the Navy’s third Ford-class aircraft carrier. The contract covers the procurement of the long-lead-time material for the USS Enterprise, which is currently within the fabrication phase of production. Work will be performed in Newport News, Virginia, and is expected to be completed by February 2027. The agreement follows a $55.8 million award announced by the Pentagon the previous Friday, which tasked Huntington with providing services to support the USS Gerald R. Ford, the class’ flagship vessel that is expected to leave on its first deployment in 2021. Work on this contract will occur in Hampton Roads, Va., and is expected to be complete in June 2019. Washington so far plans to build ten Ford-class carriers with three currently in various stages of construction.

• Last month saw a landing signals officer (LSO) successfully was able to remotely take over a F/A-18 Super Hornet on the glide path and bring it aboard an aircraft carrier for a touch-and-go. Taking place at sea on board the Nimitz-class USS Abraham Lincoln, the event was made possible by the use of an ATARI, or aircraft terminal approach remote inceptor, which allows LSOs to take over an aircraft from up to five miles away. Though not intended to be a primary method for recovering aircraft, it does provide a relatively inexpensive backup system in the case an LSO needs to step in and use their expertise and training to safely guide an aircraft. Along with the ATARI, a van outfitted with the ATARI system was brought aboard and setup behind the LSO platform to allow the engineers to watch the approaches in real-time, monitor safety-of-flight data and ensure passes were going smoothly. The van recorded flight data for engineers to analyze later and allowed the Air test and Evaluation Squadron VX-23 to test their system without having to install it Abraham Lincoln. No plans are yet in place for fleet-wide deployment.

Middle East & Africa

• Turkey has reaffirmed its commitment to buying the S-400 Triumf air defense system from Russia despite threats of sanctions from Western allies if the sale was to continue. The news comes as the US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Tina Kaidanow, who heads the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the State Department, was in Ankara to attend the 5th gathering of Turkey—US Defence Trade Dialogue, following a 2-year hiatus, where the US delegation had offered to sell Turkey the Patriot missile system as an alternative to the S-400. Previous negotiations over Patriots have stalled over issues such as the price and technology transfer. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirum, however, said last week that Turkish efforts to buy the Patriot system would continue, but added, “These are not an alternative to the S-400. Turkey has already made its S-400 decision.” This sentiment was echoed by Turkey’s strongman President Tayyip Erdogan at a press conference in Ankara on Tuesday, who said that his government could cooperate with Russia on defense projects besides the S-400 missile defense system, without giving any further details. Russian media quoted its President Vladimir Putin as saying the S-400 deal was a priority in military cooperation between Moscow and Ankara.

Europe

• Swedish media reports that sensitive data on the RBS-15 anti-ship missile system has been freely available online since 2017. According to the daily newspaper Aftonbladet, the data was obtained by a regular visitor to the War Archive in Stockholm who then took pictures of hundreds of pages of data using his mobile phone and posted it on a website. The information was subsequently posted on a Russian forum. Designed by Saab Bofors Dynamics, the RBS-15 is a is a long-range fire-and-forget surface-to-surface and air-to-surface, anti-ship missile. It arms various naval vessels as well as Saab’s JAS-39 Gripen fighter. An extended-range variant is being developed for the Gripen E will also come with an upgraded seeker and will have a reduced launch weight and increased range compared to earlier incarnations.

• The radar that will operate with the S-500 air defense missile system has been unveiled to the public for the first time. Known as the Yenisei, the phase-array radar was shown by the Rossiya-1, with the report also showing footage of the newly upgraded Pantsir SM short to medium range surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery weapon system. While not much public information is available about the Yenisei, Sputnik News says it features a phased-array antenna to spot and track aerial targets across an entire range of altitudes, provide “friend or foe” identification and determine priority targets. When working in automatic mode, the radar is capable of identifying four types of objects: planes, helicopters, drones and missiles. The S-500, is also billed as the only missile defense system around capable of engaging hypersonic targets.

Asia-Pacific

• The Korean Aerospace Industries (KAI) KUH-1 Surion helicopter has wrapped up several months of de-icing tests in the US, with the helicopter on its way back to South Korea. Testing took place at Sawyer International Airport, Michigan, with staff from both KAI and the South Korean Army joining US Army personnel for the work. This is the second year in a row that Seoul has brought aircraft to Sawyer for testing.

• Chinese UAV experts have said that a drive to gain a carrier-borne UAV capability will need government support if it is to be successful. Speaking to a press conference on Monday, Shi Wen, the chief engineer and designer of China’s Caihong (CH) UAV series said that while there have already been “efforts to promote artificial intelligence (AI) for UAVs to allow manned aircraft to co-pilot UAVs,” he added that “considerable resources are needed in carrier-based UAV research,” so it would be risky to attempt without “government support.” Shi’s team is under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), and his team has developed a series of UAVs, including the CH-3, CH-4 and the advanced CH-5, which can now engage in surveillance and attack missions. The CH series of drones is popular among nations along the Belt and Road initiative, especially in some Middle East and African countries, which have a huge demand for weapons.

Today’s Video

• Russia complete’s third test-fire of 53T6M ABM interceptor:

North Korean KN-09 Multiple Launch Rocket System

Americas

• Boeing has been awarded a ceiling increase modification to a previously awarded contract for the provision of Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) tail kits. The modification is valued at over $311 million. The deal provides for JDAM strap-on inertial guidance kits with the capability to receive guidance updates from GPS which increases the weapon’s accuracy. JDAM tail kits turn previously unguided free-fall munitions such as the 2,000-pound BLU-109/MK 84 or the smaller 500-pound BLU-111/MK 82 warhead, into guided air-to-surface munitions. The awarding of the modification brings the total cumulative face value of the contract to $1.23 billion. Work will be performed at Boeing’s St. Louis, Missouri, facility and is scheduled for completion by March 2020.

• Lockheed Martin Corp. has been awarded a contract for Block 4.1 common capabilities pre-modernization efforts in support of the F-35 Lightning II. This support includes a preliminary design review in support of the US Air Force and other international partners. It is valued at $211 million. The $382 billion F-35 Joint Strike fighter program may well be the largest single global defense program in history. This major multinational program is intended to produce an “affordably stealthy” multi-role fighter in 3 variants. The F-35 is designed as an “affordable stealthy” counterpart to the F-22 Raptor. The Block 4 modernisation, also known as Continuous Capability Development and Delivery, consists of 4 individual increments. Blocks 4.1 and 4.2 focus primarily on software updates, while Blocks 4.3 and 4.4 will consist of more significant hardware changes. The program is expected to cost $10.8 billion through FY2024. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas, and is expected to be completed in July 2019.

• Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. has received a contract for the production of gun mission modules for the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships equipped with the Surface Warfare Mission Package. The contract is valued at $7.4 million. The Navy’s $35 billion “Littoral Combat Ship” program intends to create a new generation of affordable surface combatants that can operate in dangerous shallow and near-shore environments, while remaining affordable and capable throughout their lifetimes. The LCS can be equipped with different mission modules. The Surface Warfare (SUW) attack module makes use of 4 weapon stations. In addition to the 57mm naval gun, firepower would include the same Mk.46 30mm cannon system used in the Marines’ canceled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. That level of armament makes the LCS a $550 million coast guard cutter in littoral regions filled with missile-armed fast attack craft, as well as motorboats with torpedoes. Work will be performed at facilities in Huntsville, Alabama and Bethpage, New York. It is expected to be completed by December 2019.

Middle East & Africa

• Turkish arms manufacturer Aselsan recently unveiled a new weapon’s system. The system belongs to the SARP family of which the company already produced 1.350 units, of which 350 have been exported. SARP enhances a gunner’s situational awareness through its surveillance and remote capabilities and drastically decreases vulnerability to attacks. The company currently works on two new versions. SARP-L is designed for low recoil weapons and SARP-Zafer allows troops to change ammunition without exiting the armored vehicle. The SARP weapon system can be integrated into land and naval platforms. Most recently SARP systems have been used during Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch.

Europe

• The United Kingdom will again join the Dutch-German Boxer program, 14 years after deciding to opt out. The Boxer, a “Multi Role Armored Vehicle” (MRAV), uses a single chassis, with snap-in modules for different purposes from infantry carrier to command, cargo, ambulance and others. The base vehicle has a maximum road speed of 60 mph and an operational range of 600 miles. In its troop-carrying configuration, it has a crew of 2 and can carry 10 fully equipped troops. The UK left the program in 2003 over concerns that the vehicle would be too heavy for transport by RAF’s C-130s. For well over a year, British Army officials have been pushing for a deal with Artec, the Boxer producing Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann and Rheinmetall joint venture. The Boxer is supposed to fulfill the Army’s mechanized infantry vehicle requirement by 2023. Recently Australia tapped the German manufacturer for the provision of 200 vehicles with a total cost of $2.48 billion. Artec will cooperate with local partners including, BAE Systems, Pearson Engineering, Raytheon UK and Thales UK. Assembly, design, and manufacture in the UK would generate approximately 1,000 jobs and keep about 60 percent of the $2.7 billion contract within the UK.

• Jane’s reports that the Polish government will buy several Blackjack UAS’s from Boeing. The contract is valued at $11.4 million. The deal includes a number of air vehicles, a ground control station as well as a launch and recovery system. The system will be equipped with the GPS/Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module (SAASM). The RQ-21A Blackjack is the military variant of the Integrator, which is essentially a larger and more capable version of the ScanEagle. The RQ-21A Integrator boosts endurance to over 24 hours and a maximum payload of about 50 pounds. Its versatile sensor package includes a TV zoom and mid-wave infrared cameras, plus an infrared marker and a laser rangefinder.

Asia-Pacific

• The Republic of Korea Navy has received its third Cheonwangbong (LST-2)-class tank landing ship on the 2nd of April. The vessel is produced by Hyundai Heavy Industries, is named Ilchulbong and has the pennant number 688. South Korea’s defense procurement agency signed a contract for the provision of four LST-II ships in 2013. The contract is valued at $129 million. The LST has an overall length of 416 ft. and can attain a top speed of 23 knots, an economic cruising speed of 18 knots, and a standard range of 8,000 n miles at 12 knots. The ship can accommodate two mechanised landing craft on its foredeck that can be deployed via a 65-tonne capacity deck crane, and can embark up to 300 fully equipped soldiers, and eight amphibious assault vehicles. The platform’s flight deck can take up to two helicopters, such as the UH-60A.

Today’s Video

• Watch: F-16 low level flight over Japan

Afghan refugees in an Indonesian detention centre have been protesting for over two months. As is the case for most Afghan refugees in the country, they must live in centres scattered across the 16,000 or so islands, although they have been granted refugee status by UNHCR. AAN guest author Amy Pitonak (*) spoke to Afghan refugees at a detention centre in Balikpapan on the island of Borneo. Since mid-January 2018, their demands have included being released, quicker resettlement and better treatment from immigration officials. She describes the conditions in which they live and examines Indonesia’s policy towards refugees.

Since 16 January 2018, a group of 150 refugees – most of them Afghans – have gathered daily in the yard of the Balikpapan Immigration Detention Centre to protest the years they have spent in indefinite detention. Balikpapan’s residents are aged between 14 and 60 and comprise 147 Afghans, two Somalis and one Iranian. All of the Afghan residents are Hazara, an ethnic minority group that has often been targeted by extremist groups for their Shia faith. The refugees are demanding release from detention, quicker resettlement and better treatment from immigration officials.

The protest at Balikpapan is not an isolated event. Afghan refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia – the world’s fourth most populated country – went on a hunger strike in 2012 at Tanjung Pinang detention centre on Bintan Island between Sumatra and Singapore, as well as in a detention centre on the island of East Nusa Tenggara and in the city of Makassar on Sulawesi island  in 2016. Balikpapan is only the latest example of collective action taken by Afghans in Indonesia.

The district of Balikpapan is located in the province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. Tourists come to the province for its white sand beaches, while international companies are drawn by the oil and gas reserves off its coast (see here). The detention centre itself is located near Lamaru Beach, one of Balikpapan’s most popular tourist attractions.

Ehsanullah Sahil is the protestors’ unofficial spokesperson and administrator of their Twitter account through which they document their situation. He told AAN that he had worked as an interpreter with the US Army for three years before threats to his life forced him to flee Afghanistan in 2014. His journey took him first to India, then Malaysia, and finally to Indonesia. After registering with UNHCR in Jakarta he was transported by plane to Balikpapan, where he has been detained since 18 December 2014. In a video interview he describes the conditions of the former prison-turned-immigration detention centre: bars on the windows and doors, high voltage wire surrounding the periphery, men sleeping on mats in overcrowded rooms, and laments “For years we’ve been here, and now we just want to be free.”

The detainees pass their time trying to construct a semblance of normalcy; they bake Afghan naanin the centre’s spacious yet bare kitchen and hang their laundry in neat rows from the bars on its windows. However, Sahil says that most of the detainees are suffering from depression, insomnia or PTSD, and adds that some need surgery for untreated medical conditions. “Everyone is lost mentally.” The centre’s youngest resident, a 14 year-old who has been detained in Balikpapan with his older brother since 2015, adds that there are no activities at all in the centre, emphasising that at the very least, he wants to be able to study.

These are not the ‘economic migrants’ or ‘failed asylum seekers’ that are so often derided in the Western press; all but two of them (one Afghan and an Iranian) have been granted refugee status by UNHCR (more on this below).

However, over the course of their protest many of them relinquished their refugee cards, which are carried by refugees in Indonesia to prevent them from being apprehended by the police for being in the country illegally. One protest organiser explained there was no point in having them while they were being detained.

UNHCR officials have not commented on the protest publicly. However, inside the detention centre, they have informed residents that if they continue their protest, they will not be resettled to a third country or placed in a community house, which is a more comfortable form of accommodation. The use of indefinite detention to punish refugees for participating in a non-violent, peaceful protest goes against UNHCR’s standards. IOM Indonesia have not responded to the author’s queries on this, or indeed for other details, either.

Despite UNHCR and IOM’s stated goal of eliminating the detention of refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia, the protesting refugees’ spokesman, Sahil, estimates that only 65 refugees have been transferred from Balikpapan to a community centre since 2014. As single men, they are far more likely to be kept in detention than women or families. However, as the presence of a 14 year-old boy at Balikpapan demonstrates, male minors also run the risk of being held indefinitely. UNHCR has voiced its concerns over the regular occurrence of unaccompanied children being detained with unrelated adults in Indonesia, citing instances of abusive behaviour towards minors by prison officials, as well as their lack of access to education (see here).

Afghans in Indonesia and Jakarta’s refugee policy

As of December 2016, Indonesia hosts 14,405 refugees and asylum seekers (see UNHCR’s factsheet here), around half of whom, or 7,154, are Afghans. The majority of them are thought to be Hazara, although there are no definitive statistics on the ethnicity of protection seekers in Indonesia (see this journal article).

Most Afghans come to Indonesia via India or Thailand, often using tourist visas, with the intention of reaching Australia – which has a very restrictive refugee policy, generally preventing newcomers reaching the country’s mainland (see this New York Times Magazine story about Afghan and Iranian migrants crossing the Indian Ocean on their way to Australia). In order to prevent this onward migration, 13 immigration detention centres have been constructed on all the main Indonesian islands, including Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan (Borneo) and Sulawesi, alongside 20 makeshift detention centres. Although Australia does not fund these centres directly, it has funnelled millions of dollars through IOM to provide “care and maintenance” to intercepted irregular migrants, which includes maintaining operations in detention centres (see here and this article on the IOM’s “blue-washing” – ie the use of humanitarian language and branding to mask more controversial projects–of immigrant detention in Indonesia, here). UNHCR has stressed the importance of providing alternatives to detention. To this end, it has helped build 42 community houses based in six of the 34 Indonesian provinces.

Despite the gradual increase in numbers of those seeking protection, Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention or its 1967 protocol. Rather, the Indonesian government insists that Indonesia is only a temporary place for refugees to wait for resettlement. In countries such as Indonesia that are not signatories to the 1951 Geneva Convention, the UN often serves as a substitute for the state in determining the status of refugees. Asylum seekers in Indonesia must register with UNHCR upon arrival, after which they undergo a registration interview and receive an identification card that allows them to stay in the country while awaiting their refugee status determination interview. Those who are recognised as refugees receive a UNHCR refugee ID card, which allows them to stay in Indonesia until they are resettled to a third country. This does not entitle them to additional legal rights or assistance from the Indonesian government, however. As such, they must rely on services provided through IOM or other NGOs.

From 2013 to 2017, 2,387 Afghans were resettled from Indonesia to a third country, with 423 resettlements in 2017. The majority of them went to Australia, followed by the United States. However, since 2014, Australia has not resettled any refugees from Indonesia who arrived after 1 July 2014 (see here).

In December 2016, the Indonesian government passed a presidential decree to better regulate refugee and asylum policies on the islands (see here). In addition to establishing procedures for the rescue of refugees found at sea, the decree also aims to standardise detention facilities and shelters in terms of ensuring that they meet refugees’ basic needs by providing adequate food, clean water, clothing, and access to healthcare and religious facilities. The decree also provides an official definition of a refugee in line with the Geneva Convention’s definition,(1) and formally recognises as refugees and asylum seekers those who have received their status through UNHCR.However, the individual heads of centres and shelters remain in charge of standard operating procedures, and the decree does not include any provisions that address refugee integration (article 26 of the decree stipulates that shelters for refugees should be located in the vicinity of a medical facility and religious faculty, however education facilities and other social services are not mentioned).

Moreover, while the decree mentions ‘temporary shelters’ as alternatives when shelters such as community housing are unavailable, it does not specify what exactly constitutes a ‘temporary shelter’, nor the length of stay. In practice, immigration detention centres appear to function as temporary shelters for refugees awaiting placement in community housing, although the head of Jakarta’s immigration detention centre was quoted in the Jakarta Globes saying “The immigration detention centre is created as a temporary shelter for foreign nationals who break our immigration rules, not to accommodate asylum seekers or refugees” (see here).

Community housing facilities

A little over two-thirds of Indonesia’s total refugee population (4,344 refugees), live outside the detention centres, either independently or in community housing facilities ran by IOM (see UNHCR’s factsheet here). Community houses are required by the 2016 presidential decree to be in the same regency as a detention centre, but the reverse is not always true in practice. For example, Borneo has two detention centres, but there are no community houses on the island (see here for a list of community house locations).

Some refugees in Balikpapan detention centre have stated that community houses are better than detention centres, as they believe that the proximity of community houses to various embassies gives them a better chance at resettlement. Moreover, community houses provide them with food and shelter in a country where they are not allowed to work legally. Refugees who cannot get into a community house are forced to live off remittances from family and friends. Those who do not have the savings to support themselves risk becoming homeless, with some sleeping outside UNHCR offices on cardboard and foam mats. An article by the news website VICE documented the plight of young Hazara refugees who live on Jakarta’s streets at the mercy of mosquitos, heavy rains and older men who proposition them for sex. Many of them resort to self-harm in order to cope with their situation (for more information, please see this article by VICE on homeless Hazara teenagers in Indonesia).

Since each Indonesian island has its own resources and rules governing community housing, conditions in each facility vary. All of the refugees the author spoke to named Jakarta as having the best community housing facilities, with more services and fewer restrictions on refugees’ freedom of movement. Refugees in Jakarta’s community housing are allowed to have visitors in their rooms and can travel outside of the island. They also have access to vocational and language courses provided by IOM.

In Makassar, further east in southern Sulawesi, the arrival of a new head of community housing in early 2018 marked a deterioration in the treatment of refugees living there. They are no longer allowed to have visitors in their rooms. A resident at a community house in Makassar who did not want to be named recounted an incident in February during which a resident who was caught with guests in his room was beaten by security guards, and transferred to a detention centre. Although IOM used to offer vocational and language courses in the city, these programmes were cut in 2017, with only Bahasa Indonesia language courses remaining. Many Afghans at the centre report verbal abuse from staff, who tell them they are ‘like animals’ due to their perceived lack of rights in the country. UNHCR has told residents that they have no control over how refugees are treated at the centre, as this falls under the jurisdiction of the Indonesian immigration authorities. This led to groups of refugees protesting outside the UNHCR office in Makassar to ask for quicker resettlement or better treatment, although both demands have gone unheeded so far.

Refugees in both Makassar and Jakarta have said that access to medical care is subpar. Although they have access to free treatment for serious health problems, they must pay out of pocket for routine illnesses. There is also a lack of mental health treatment in community houses.

Anti-Shia sentiments and Hazara self-organisation

The relationship between Afghan refugees and host communities in the Muslim majority country Indonesia was reported as being positive overall. A community housing resident in Jakarta said that since the centre was far from the city, interactions between locals and refugees were cursory but friendly. An Afghan resident in Makassar reported that the local community was very welcoming at first. However, he says that things have changed since the increase in negative media coverage fuelled by disparaging comments about refugees made by the head of the housing facility on local TV and large signs on the door of the community house identifying it as a ‘detention centre’. As a result, he says that local people in Makassar have begun to think of Afghans as criminals, and avoid them.

Although the refugees’ relations with their host community are generally peaceful, this peace is maintained on the basis that the Hazara keep their religious practices to themselves. Hazara refugees cannot freely practice Shia religious ceremonies such as Muharram for fear of reprisals from the majority-Sunni host community.

This anti-Shia sentiment has been exacerbated by the National Anti-Shia Alliance (ANNAS), a group made up of various Indonesian fundamentalist groups such as the Majelis Mujahidin and the Council of Islamic Dawah Indonesia. In Makassar, ANNAS has hung banners proclaiming “Shiism is not Islam” and distributing pamphlets accusing the Shia of spreading homosexuality and perversion. The refugees in Balikpapan detention centre also suspect that ANNAS’s activities have contributed to their lengthy detention. After one of the group’s affiliates spread a rumour that the residents of Balikpapan had been brought there by international organizations in order to ‘slaughter Sunni Indonesians’, some IOM staff told the Hazara residents in Balikpapan that they were being kept in the centre because locals do not want them in the community.

This need for secrecy has caused Indonesia’s community of Hazara refugees to withdraw into itself, creating intense solidarity between community members as well as bolstering relative isolation from locals (see this journal article here). Members of Indonesia’s small native Shia population  – approximately 1.2 million out of a population of 261.1 million – also try to be as inconspicuous as possible. A Hazara refugee in Makassar said that even local Shia are afraid of openly practicing their faith, while a Hazara in Jakarta said the province’s only Shia mosque was too far away for refugees to access.

Instead, over 3,000 Hazara have congregated around the Puncak Pass in West Java, an area known for its clean air and sprawling greenery, where they have developed a wide range of initiatives to improve their situation. One prominent example is the Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre, a school founded by Hazara refugees that functions as a school for the area’s children while offering English classes and extracurricular activities for adults. Positive representations of the Hazara have also begun to appear in Indonesian society, such as a photo exhibition entitled “Living in Transit: Refugee life through the Eyes of the Afghan Hazara Community” hosted at the University of Indonesia.

IOM’s voluntary return programme

UNHCR cites three “durable solutions” available to refugees in Indonesia: resettlement to a third country, integration into the host community, or voluntary repatriation. The likelihood of the first solution is slim; the resettlement rate for Afghans in Indonesia is between three and five hundred per year since 2014 (see here). UNHCR warns that many refugees in Indonesia may never be resettled (see here). However, many Afghans in Indonesia are not satisfied with the remaining two options, citing the lack of integration opportunities available to them and a fear of returning to their home country.

While UNHCR and IOM present the Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration programme as an alternative to detention, it is doubtful whether any decision to return made in this context can be truly voluntary. IOM claims that this programme helps migrants return safely to their country of origin, but it is hard to imagine a safe return for at-risk minority groups such as the Hazara. As well as being fully informed and not physically coerced, having at least one option that ensures a reasonable level of welfare is an important aspect of a voluntary decision (see this study, pp 631-45). For Afghans kept in indefinite detention in Indonesia, none of the options presented to them provide a level of welfare that would generally be considered as acceptable.

According to IOM Afghanistan figures, 1,478 Afghans returned from Indonesia via the AVRR programme between 2003 and 2016. By August 2017, IOM had registered 58 voluntary returns from Indonesia for that year. In the case of Balikpapan, Sahil recounts the pressure that centre residents face from a return to Afghanistan, stating that when they complain about their detention, IOM employees tell them “The resettlement process is too long. If you can’t endure it, you can go back to your country.” Both Sahil and another centre resident said that since 2014, 44 detainees in Balikpapan have accepted this offer. One returnee said that he would try to flee Afghanistan again as soon as he had enough money, this time to Iran or Pakistan.

Other residents, when faced with a choice between detention and return, attempt to create their own alternatives. In 2017, five Afghans escaped from Balikpapan by using bed sheets to climb the six-metre high wall surrounding the enclosure and jumping past the high voltage and barbed wire to freedom (see here). A sixth man broke his leg during the attempt. Some committed suicide; a media report counted at least six such cases since 2016), at least two of which were Afghans. The most recent case was that of a young Hazara refugee in Medan, Sumatra who killed himself after a lengthy period of detention (see here).

Migration scholars have argued that the ‘voluntary return’ of rejected asylum seekers could be better described as ‘soft deportation’. (2) If so, the return of recognised refugees forced to choose between detention and a return to danger or persecution may be, in reality, no more than a mild form of refoulement (3), as this goes against international refugee law. Although the original cause of this situation is Indonesia not being a party to the 1951 Geneva Convention, IOM and UNHCR should not tacitly facilitate the host government’s violation of one of the Convention’s most basic tenets.

The refugees in Balikpapan say that a choice between return and detention is not a choice at all. Instead, they say they will continue their protest until they can gain, if not resettlement, at least their freedom.

 

* Amy Pitonak is a research fellow with Bosphorus Migration Studies, an independent think tank based in Istanbul, Turkey.

Edited by Thomas Ruttig and Jelena Bjelica

 

 

(1) According to the 1951 Geneva Convention, a refugee is someone who has a ‘well-founded fear of persecution due to race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, and different political opinions, and does not wish to avail him/herself of protection from their country of origin’.

(2) Leerkes, A., van Os, R., and Boersema, E. (2017) What drives ‘soft deportation’? Understanding the rise in Assisted Voluntary Return among rejected asylum seekers in the Netherlands. Population, Space, and Place, 23.8.  (See here.)

(2) Refoulementis the forcible return of refugees or asylum seekers to a country where they are liable to be subjected to persecution.

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The display of 72 paintings from the mid-sixteenth century Mughal period in Kabul as well as late sixteenth and seventeenth century Indian Mughal paintings opened in the Queen’s Pavilion of Babur’s Garden in Kabul on 31 March 2018. This, as well as an earlier exhibition in Herat’s Citadel in December 2017 showcasing fifteenth century Tîmûrid and sixteenth century early Safavid pictorial art, are extraordinary displays of some of the most outstanding miniatures in Islamic art. As AAN’s Jelena Bjelica and Kate Clark report (with input from Thomas Ruttig), both exhibitions symbolise the long homecoming of Afghanistan’s extraordinary cultural legacy.

Royal courts in fifteenth century Herat and sixteenth century Kabul once sponsored some of the most magnificent pictorial creations in Islamic art. Despite wars and destruction in Afghanistan, many of these miniatures survived, albeit outside the country in public and private collections around the world. After the paintings were taken out of what is now Afghanistan in the second half of the sixteenth century and entered royal collections in Mughal India, Safavid Iran and Ottoman Turkey, many were sold on to European and North American private and public collections in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their enlarged reproductions were only brought together for the first time and put on public display in Afghanistan in 2017.

As AAN reported in December 2017 the exhibitions are taking place at carefully chosen sites – the Herat Citadel and Kabul’s Babur’s Garden. Both sites have been restored since 2001 by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture with funding from both the German and the US governments, and are now permanently open to the Afghan public (for the restoration of Babur’s Gardens see here and for the Herat Citadel, here). More importantly, these could have been the exact places where some of these miniatures were created. The restored Herat Citadel, also known as Qala-ye Ekhtiaruddin, is one of the most magnificent Tîmûrid monuments in Afghanistan.

Babur’s Garden, named after the first Mughal emperor (1483-1530), was established in the early sixteenth century when Babur gave orders for the construction of an ‘avenue garden’ in Kabul, described in some detail in his memoirs, the Baburnama (here an online English translation). It is also where he found his last resting place, according to his own wishes, after he died from illness on one of his campaigns to India. His description was used when the garden was renovated to find the exact tree species that had existed in his lifetime. The emperor’s description of Kabul in his Baburnama is famous and often quoted by Afghans:

It has a very pleasant climate; if the world has another so pleasant, it is not known.

The two exhibitions

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Professor Michael Barry, a global authority on Medieval Islamic art who located reproductions of these miniatures held in museums and private collections across Europe, Canada, the USA, Turkey, Egypt and India, the exhibitions are now on display in Afghanistan. Barry did not only locate and collect the works, he also made high-resolution images of the miniatures and conceptualised both exhibitions. In partnership with Boston University’s American Institute of Afghanistan Studies (AIAS) they then printed enlarged, high-resolution images onto metal, a material that supports shifts in both light and temperature. (1) These works are also easy to copy anew from electronic files that are kept at the Centre Dupont in Paris, should they ever be attacked or damaged, and allow for a meaningful regrouping of these widely scattered paintings by artist, date, theme, royal sponsor – in optimal conditions of display, as AIAS explained. It also allows Afghan visitors to view these masterpieces created by their ancestors in close detail, and, indeed, almost in the same privileged way that only princely owners once could in the past.

The first exhibition in Herat in December 2017 was such a success that the US Embassy in Kabul requested of Herat’s authorities that the panels – still technically the property of the US government, which paid for them – remain in the Citadel on permanent loan. On 23 February 2018, the Afghan government hosted a heads of state conference with Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India for the inauguration of the TAPI pipeline initiative framework within the grounds of the Herat Citadel, surrounded by the Tîmûrid art exhibition, which served as an international showcase of Afghanistan’s centuries-old cultural glory.

The exhibition in Herat displays reproductions of over one hundred miniatures. The paintings largely date from the fifteenth century, when the city was the seat of the powerful Tîmûrid Court. Artists, at the time, illustrated calligraphic texts of poems with meticulously painted scenes. They drew on the poets of the region for inspiration: Ferdowsi, who wrote the Shahname in Ghazni in the tenth century, Saadi, from Shiraz in modern-day Iran, and the Herati Jami. The most famous miniaturist of them all was Kamal al-Din Behzad (roughly 1450-1535) whose workshop in Herat attracted artists from all over the region. As in early Renaissance Europe, the wealth of artistry was also the result of enlightened patronage. Queen Gawharshad, wife of the Tîmûrid ruler Shahrukh, whose mausoleum is in the city’s famous Musalla area, was a key connoisseur of poetry and miniatures.

Nevertheless, the Herat school’s influence extended well beyond what is now Afghanistan. In 1545, when the Mughal emperor, Babur’s son Humayun, retreated from India to Kabul because of dynastic rivals, he was, said Michael Barry, “smitten” when he saw the miniatures that had been taken from Herat to Kabul forty years earlier. He invited the surviving artists from Herat and further afield, including Tabriz in Iran, to come to Kabul where a new academy was established. These artists would later follow Humayun back to India and train a generation of new artists. “So the Mughal style,” Barry told AAN, “is daughter of the school of Kabul and granddaughter of the school of Herat.”

The name of Herat persisted more broadly throughout Islamic culture. “The Mughals in India, the Ottomans in Istanbul and the Safavids in Iran,” said Barry, regarded Herat as the model of perfection, like Florence is for Europeans.” Even more recently, Barry said, when the French impressionist Henri Matisse saw Behzad’s miniatures for the first time in 1903 in Paris, he was overwhelmed by their beauty. “They completely changed his manner of painting and through Matisse and his colour and composition, the Herat school has influenced all modern art.”

Babur, though, was somewhat more critical. In his Baburnama, he wrote of Behzad:

His work was very dainty but he did not draw beardless faces well; he used greatly to lengthen the double chin; bearded faces he drew admirably.

The combined catalogue for the two exhibitions

The exhibitions’ catalogue (in five languages: Persian/Pashto/Arabic/English/French) to accompany these exhibitions is designed as a scholarly publication and a fundamental work of reference for Afghans and interested non-Afghans. In one large volume, the paintings that feature in both exhibitions are printed with detailed explanations, including their precise allegorical significance. Barry has been a pioneer in deciphering the allegorical codes of late medieval Islamic paintings in light of the literature they illustrate.

Furthermore, the catalogue will make supporting illustrations accessible from materials that are not displayed in the exhibitions but that are important for the surrounding discourse (eg, Sasanian and Byzantine, then Chinese and Venetian Renaissance influences on Islamic paintings, and, in turn, the influence of Islamic and notably Herati paintings on twentieth century art, notably on Matisse, and hence on global modern art) in all 200 illustrations. It will also offer a general introduction to the evolution of Islamic painting from the thirteenth and fourteenth century Baghdad schools to the flowering of art in fifteenth and sixteenth Tîmûrid and early Safavid Herat, and then in mid-sixteenth century Mughal Kabul, with a subsequent impact on India. An appendix will also offer an anthology of the most important fifteenth and sixteenth century eastern Islamic source texts on Islamic painting in their original languages (with facing translations), many penned in Afghanistan. This will be essential to all serious scholarship on the subject, which, until now, has been almost inaccessible to the Afghan public.

The catalogue will serve as a national Afghan educational resource, available to all Afghan institutions of higher education (including the American University of Afghanistan). It will hopefully also serve as a prestigious diplomatic gift on behalf of the Afghan government – to promote and increase global awareness of Afghanistan’s medieval Islamic cultural heritage. Other copies will be sold to university libraries around the world and displayed in international museum bookshops.

The exhibitions’ website can be accessed here. The Kabul exhibition runs until end of June 2018.

 

 

(1) The exhibitions have been supported by a grant from the United States Embassy in Kabul through Boston University’s American Institute of Afghanistan Studies (AIAS) – whose Afghan branch is housed on the campus of the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF). The French Embassy in Kabul, through the Institute de France en Afghanistan (IFA), contributed a major grant to sponsor the accompanying catalogue, making this a fully Franco-American educational project.

 

 

 

 

 

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