In the middle of all this, in 1947, Francisca went to Holland to study in the small university town of Leiden. She attended the Royal Institute of Eastern Countries, set up to study European colonial possessions. Right away, she got involved in the Indonesian student organization, as almost everyone did. And right away, she met a man named Zain, five years her senior.
She didn’t like him at first. She had considered herself “some kind of a feminist” from an early age, and had no intention of marrying, ever. She had seen that even the smartest, best-educated women in the Dutch East Indies never got to put to use all the wonderful things that they learned once they got married. She wanted to work. Zain was handsome, sure, even gallant, but he was a little too self-assured, maybe, a little too bossy when he asked her to take the role of treasurer within the student organization. She wasn’t going to let anyone think she was impressed with him, like so many other girls were. So at first, a bit coyly, she rejected his advances.
But then she got to know him. They’d spend hours and hours talking, about history, and the anticolonial struggle, and the ways her childhood had been unjust, twisted by European domination. How they could fight to make things right. This was exciting. He was exciting, she was willing to admit that. They began working together tirelessly, united by a common cause. That cause, of course, was independence.
Somewhat ironically, direct contact with Europe had always been important for fomenting revolutionary movements in the Third World. The Indonesian independence movement had early roots in Holland, and it was in Paris that Ho Chi Minh got his political education. When studying or working back in the imperial capitals, colonial subjects often came into contact with ideas that were never allowed to reach their territories. Much of colonialism had relied on the logic of “Do as I say, not as I do.” Or in practice, “Do as white say, not as white do.” So while Europeans themselves were extending education to their entire populations, and their intellectuals were debating the merits of socialism and Marxism, much of this was banned in the colonies. The natives might get ideas. For example, in the Congo, brutally controlled by the Belgians since King Leopold II established the Free Congo State in 1885 (and the United States rushed to be the first country in the world to recognize the colony), authorities banned left-leaning publications and liberal lifestyle magazines that circulated freely back in Europe, and were scared even by the fact that working-class blacks lived together in urban areas. Wouldn’t this lead to subversion, or worse, Bolshevism? Congolese pupils learned about the Belgian royal family, but not the American civil rights movement, and the French Revolution was explained very carefully, so as not to make that whole affair seem too attractive in African editions of textbooks.
The justification given by European authorities in the Congo went like this: “All those in our colony are unanimous in stating that the blacks are still children, both intellectually and morally.”8
For Francisca and Zain, who began dating in earnest in the late 1940s, the colonial independence struggle was intimately tied to left-wing politics. So she, a wholehearted supporter of Indonesian freedom, fell naturally into socialist circles, as the two struggles had long been married together. In the 1930s and 1940s, practically no Europeans supported colonial independence except the leftists. The Indonesian Communist Party, the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI), was founded in 1914 as the Indies Social Democratic Association with the help of Dutch leftists, worked alongside Sukarno and pro-independence Muslim groups in the 1920s, and then engaged in active antifascist work during the Japanese occupation.9
Francisca heard a little bit about socialism at the student meetings, and she liked what she heard, but she didn’t get too involved in any of the more intricate ideological battles. She didn’t take part in debates over the so-called “Madiun Affair” and the clashes between communists and Sukarno’s republican forces within the revolutionary movement. It was much easier to take sides when the Netherlands launched a second attempt to reconquer Indonesia. In protest, all the students with Dutch scholarships returned them, and Francisca joined them in walking out of their classes. Then, that same year, she jumped at the opportunity to attend the second World Festival of Youth and Students in Budapest. It was organized by the World Federation of Democratic Youth. She knew, of course, that “Democratic” in this usage basically meant “socialist,” and that Hungary was allied with the Soviet Union, but none of that made the prospect of the journey any less exciting.
Not all of the Indonesian students could afford to attend, but she had the money for a ticket, so she jumped on the train and crossed what the Americans were now calling “the iron curtain.” She didn’t see one. For her, the trip was a wonder, and she stared out the windows as postwar Germany, then Austria and Hungary, flew by. Europe was in tatters; but still, Budapest was enchanting. And there, no one treated her like a second-class citizen, like they did in her home country. But nothing prepared her for the youth festival itself. She met left-wing students from all over the world, from nations across Asia, from Africa, and even from the United States! This was a real shock to her, as she’d really only seen Americans in the movies.
She began talking to the students from the US, and was even more shocked to see a black man and a white woman together. She didn’t know much about international politics, but she knew all about the racism back in the United States. So she asked them, “How did you come here together? Isn’t it difficult for you? Don’t they keep you apart?”
They chuckled, and nodded. “Well, yes, but we manage,” the American woman said.
Next, she met students from Korea and the Congo. Among the Congolese delegation, she swears she met a charming young man by the name of Lumumba, but she didn’t know much else about him at the time.10 The students put on dances and cultural performances from all over the world. They were a display of international unity, as well as the pride that each nation felt. When she described this show afterward, her voice got so high it practically became a whistle.
In 1950, she and Zain eloped. They had to sneak off to Prague to get married, because Dutch authorities would have required her to get her father’s permission, and he was still withholding it for some reason or another—they didn’t care much why. The trip was another little adventure, and they got to put their language skills to use, because their humble ceremony had to be in German. No problem. By that time, Zain knew English, Indonesian, Dutch, and Batak (the language native to his family on the island of Sumatra), and Francisca was now fluent in German, French, Indonesian, Dutch, and English on top of a bit of Bahasa Ambon.
Francisca’s father came around to her new husband soon enough, and gave them his blessing. More importantly for them, they both established themselves quickly as productive members of a brand-new society. Upon returning to a new, independent Indonesia, Francisca started working as a librarian—a dream job, because she could be surrounded once more by books. It wasn’t hard for her to land a position. The new republic was starving for qualified workers, and was still relying on Dutch librarians to work alongside her. As a result of intentional Dutch neglect, the Indonesian people were badly deprived of education. By the time the Dutch withdrew, only around 5 percent of the Indonesian population of sixty-five million could read and write.11
Francisca said, “I think this was one of the worst crimes of colonialism. After three and a half centuries of Dutch occupation we were left with almost no knowledge of our own people, and our own culture.”
Meanwhile, Zain started working in journalism, and got a job at a paper called Harian Rakyat, or The People’s Daily. This was the newspaper run by the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI. It was a great job for Zain to land, and Francisca was very happy for him. There was nothing strange about working for a communist paper at that time, as far as she was concerned. She knew he was close to the Communist Party, and probably a member, but none of it was a big deal. After the 1948 clash, the Communist Party had reorganized and integrated into the new nation. The PKI was one branch
of a multiparty patriotic revolution. The PKI was part of Sukarno’s new Indonesia.
Because of his language skills, Zain was assigned an extremely interesting beat at the paper. He began writing about international affairs, translating stories from abroad for a local audience. And for someone concerned with Third World liberation and the fight against “imperialism”—to use the language his paper used—the early 1950s were an incredibly interesting time.12
US troops were in Korea, in a war few people had expected to break out. After the Japanese left the Korean Peninsula, which they had dominated even more brutally than they did Indonesia, the country was divided in two. During Japanese rule, what was left of the Korean Communist Party (Stalin had much of its leadership executed in the late 1930s) waged fierce guerrilla warfare against the occupiers across Korea and Manchuria until they were forced into exile in Siberia. One of these Communists, Kim Il-sung, took over in the North in 1945.13 In the South, the occupying US forces plucked up Syngman Rhee, a Christian and anticommunist who had lived in the US for decades, and installed him as leader. His authoritarian government targeted leftists and massacred tens of thousands of people on Jeju, an island that had been controlled since the war by independent “people’s committees,” using the threat of communism as justification.14 In 1950, war erupted at the dividing line. Northern communist troops rapidly pushed into Seoul, leading the United States to take to the UN to gather forces for a counterattack. For reasons that are unclear, Stalin instructed his ambassador to sit out the vote at the UN rather than protest, and the US easily won the vote. The US-UN troops pushed North Korea back to the original borders, but then proceeded north in an attempt to take the whole country. The Soviets offered little help, but to Washington’s surprise, Mao’s tired and ragged Red Army mobilized to help the Korean communists, largely because they felt they owed the Koreans a debt for the assistance Kim’s insurgents had offered them against the Japanese in Manchuria. During the resulting three-year stalemate, the US dropped more than six hundred thousand tons of bombs on Korea, more than was used in the entire Pacific theater in World War II, and poured thirty thousand tons of napalm over the landscape. More than 80 percent of North Korea’s buildings were destroyed, and the bombing campaign killed an estimated one million civilians.15
In Korea, the CIA boys also tried out some of the same tools they had unleashed in Eastern Europe. Thousands of recruited Korean and Chinese agents were dropped into the North during the war. Once again, the infiltration was a total failure. Later, classified CIA documents concluded that the operations “were not only ineffective but probably morally reprehensible in the number of lives lost.”16 The CIA only found out later that all the secret information the Agency gathered during the war had been manufactured by North Korean and Chinese security services.
Once again, the CIA’s well-funded covert operations came up short against actual, battle-hardened communist soldiers dedicated to achieving victory. In Iran, however, where there was no such contingent, the young CIA found its first big win.
Operation Ajax
At the end of 1952, Frank Wisner met with Monty Woodhouse, an English spy working in Tehran. The Brits had a problem and needed help. Since the end of World War II, they had been overseeing the formal deconstruction of much of their empire, but they certainly didn’t expect that to mean they would lose control over the natural resources, too. In Iran, new Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overseeing the nationalization of oil production. And he had already caught MI6 trying to overthrow him for it.
Mossadegh and the Iranians had a lot of reasons to resent the British. During their period of imperial glory, Iran suffered a famine that took the lives of two million people. And after World War II, the British set up an arrangement in which they took twice as much income from petroleum as Iran, while local oil workers lived in shanties without running water. When Mossadegh and Iran’s elected parliament maneuvered around the Shah the British had put in place, London began looking for a way to claw back what it considered its own. The Americans, Wisner included, were wary of getting tied up in British imperial affairs. But their allies from across the pond appealed to their anticommunism. Mossadegh had legalized the well-organized, Communist-led Tudeh Party (along with all other political parties), and the Brits suggested to the Americans that, perhaps, the Tudeh could take over if they weren’t careful, or even that the Soviets might invade.
Changes at the White House at the beginning of 1953 were a very big help to the supporters of regime change. Newly elected Republican President Dwight Eisenhower appointed John Foster Dulles to serve as secretary of state and tapped his younger brother, Allen Dulles, to lead the CIA. John Foster had two lifelong obsessions, according to historian James A. Bill: fighting communism and protecting the rights of multinational corporations. These came together in Iran. “Concerns about communism and the availability of petroleum were interlocked. Together, they drove America to a policy of direct intervention,” Bill wrote.17
The Dulles brothers and the CIA got the green light. Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, whom Wisner had hired in 1950, took charge of the mission, which they decided to call Operation Ajax. He had a million dollars to spend in Iran as he pleased, a huge sum for the kind of help he wanted to buy. The CIA bribed every politician it could, and looked for a general willing to take over and install the Shah as dictator. Agents paid street thugs, strongmen, and circus performers to riot in the streets. When CIA station chief Roger Goiran argued the US was making a historic mistake by aligning itself with British colonialism, Allen Dulles recalled him to Washington.
The CIA created pamphlets and posters proclaiming that Mossadegh was a communist, an enemy of Islam. They paid off journalists to write that he was a Jew. The CIA hired gangsters to pretend to be Tudeh Party members and attack a mosque. Two of Roosevelt’s Iranian agents, who were handling some of the hired muscle, tried to turn down further work at one point, saying the risk was becoming too great. But Roosevelt convinced them by saying that if they refused, he’d kill them.
For his part, the Shah was not convinced any of this was a good idea. He took off to Rome at one point, infuriating the Americans who wanted to make him king. But he returned to the palace in August 1953, rigged parliamentary elections, and served both the CIA and international oil companies well as ruler of the country. The Soviets did not rush to intervene in the country in which they were supposedly so powerful. In Washington, there were celebrations all around, and Kermit Roosevelt was declared a hero. Wisner had finally proved to the men upstairs that there was a real use for his gang of weirdos.18
In 1954, the CIA wrapped up another successful operation, nearby in the Philippines. The left-wing “Huk Rebellion” that began under Japanese occupation continued after both the Japanese left and the US (officially) handed over power to Filipinos. Anti-occupation “Huk” guerrillas were opposed to the new president, who had been an active collaborator with the Axis powers, and the ongoing oligarchical control of the economy by hugely powerful feudal landowners. US military adviser Edward Lansdale, who would later inspire the character of Colonel Edwin Barnum Hillendale in Burdick and Lederer’s Ugly American, wrote in his diary that the Huks “believe in the rightness of what they’re doing, even though some of the leaders are on the communist side… there is a bad situation, needing reform.… I suppose armed complaint is a natural enough thing.”19 The US helped the Philippines devise and implement a counterinsurgency operation, and made considerable progress, including the use of more napalm.20 In a bit of bizarre psychological warfare, Lansdale also collaborated closely with Desmond FitzGerald—a Wisner recruit at the CIA—to create a vampire.
As part of a range of psychological operations alongside the war on the guerrillas, CIA agents spread the rumor that an aswang, a bloodsucking ghoul of Filipino legend, was on the loose and destroying men with evil in their hearts. They then took a Huk rebel they had killed, poked two holes in his neck, drained him of his blo
od, and left him lying in the road.21
After years of conflict, the Huks gave up, and the Philippines settled into right-leaning pro-American stability that would last decades. With special privileges granted to US corporations, the woeful condition of the Filipino people described by Lansdale remained entirely unchanged.
The People’s Daily reported on the events in Iran and the Philippines, of course.22 Even though Washington’s real activities were secret at the time, Zain’s newspaper and the global left-wing press were often closer to getting the story of Washington’s interventions right than US newspapers, which largely saw it as their duty to peddle the official line that Wisner and his team passed on to them.23
Zain, working late nights back in Jakarta every day, exhausted himself in this period, being one of a few people who could read and translate all the reports coming in. He was rarely at home with Francisca, as he was always rushing back to the newsroom, working night shifts. Harian Rakyat, or The People’s Daily, was always a lean operation, twenty to thirty people working in downtown Jakarta at all hours.24
For a communist newspaper in a heady postrevolutionary environment, The People’s Daily was a remarkably lighthearted read. There were cartoons poking fun at the bumbling Western imperialists, original works of fiction published every day, a children’s section, and educational inserts with explanatory essays on global left-leaning figures like Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin. International news, the area that Zain oversaw, was a huge part of the coverage, and the paper paid special attention to events in the rest of the Third World.
The Jakarta Method Page 5