Seasons Greetings . Selmat Hari Natal
On 16 October the Associated Press reported that a ‘clash’ between the Indonesian military (TNI) and the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) had left fourteen people dead. According to the AP, the TNI said they faced ‘military-grade weapons’ during a six-and-a-half hour battle in Soanggama, a village in Intan Jaya Regency. The details of the weapons seized from the TPNPB paint a different picture: a home-made rifle, binoculars, four air rifles and some rounds of ammunition.
As the TPNPB told the AP, only three of the dead were connected to the armed struggle. The report omitted a fifteenth victim, a 75-year-old woman who fell into a river and drowned while being chased by soldiers. Another victim, Agus Kogoya, was executed after producing his identity card: he shared a surname with a TPNPB fighter.
Indonesia has occupied West Papua since 1963. A media blackout, enforced for decades, means the scant press coverage is often drawn largely from TNI press releases. What happened in Soanggama seems to have been less a ‘clash’ than a massacre. The three confirmed TPNPB members were captured and tortured before being killed.
In the days that followed, the Indonesian airforce bombarded Kiwirok in the Star Mountains, near the border with Papua New Guinea. Aerial attacks have increased in frequency throughout 2025, reflecting both the sophistication of Indonesia’s arsenal and its reluctance to be drawn into close-range combat with the TPNPB.
The conflict in West Papua may be the world’s most unequal war: raids on military bases have improved the TPNPB’s fighting capacity, but they still often face Indonesian jets and missiles armed only with bows and arrows. The activist Tom Beanal, who died in 2023, once asked if West Papua was colonised by Indonesia or by the entire world. Munitions recovered by Lamek Taplo, the TPNPB commander in Kiwirok, include Serbian mortars, Chinese drones and bombs manufactured by the French arms company Thales. Taplo was killed by one such bomb on 19 October, shortly after recording video testimony of the attack that he hoped would force the UN to intervene. Standing in the fallout zone of an Indonesian missile, Taplo offered his beleaguered troops a final prayer: ‘God please raise up our nature and our ancestors; the ones eaten by Indonesia in Kiwirok.’
To say, as Indonesia does, that increased guerrilla attacks are behind the current escalation in West Papua, is begging the question. Control of West Papua’s resources has long been the principal strategic goal of Indonesia’s occupation, informing how and where it deploys its soldiers and its settlers. Much of Intan Jaya lies within the concession zone of the vast Wabu Block gold mine, including the Hitadipa and Sugapa districts, where in May five Papuans were executed and seven others disappeared. Begun in 2020, Wabu Block’s development has seen soldiers pour into Intan Jaya, spawning new TNI checkpoints – 31 in the last three months – and consequent restrictions on everyday life. In this highly militarised atmosphere, markers of Papuan identity such as dreadlocks become symbols of TPNPB membership, inviting beatings or arbitrary arrests.
At the same time, punitive bombing raids have destroyed villages across Intan Jaya, forcing thousands into makeshift camps. Just over 80,000 West Papuans were internally displaced at the beginning of the year; that figure has now increased to more than 100,000. Perhaps one in ten West Papuans has been a refugee in the last five years. By clearing Indigenous people from their land, the TNI both eases the extraction process and seeds future conflict: displacement allows extraction which leads to further displacement.
The cycle is compounded by the TNI’s financial interests in the mines and plantations that they work to protect. A 2021 report identified a number of military figures – active-duty personnel along with retired generals – as investors in the companies behind Wabu Block. The highest profile shareholder is Luhut Pandjaitan, a four-star general and former investment minister, who brought a defamation case against two Indonesian solidarity activists who accused him of profiting from the mine. They were acquitted in January 2024.
Pandjaitan’s involvement in Wabu Block is a measure of the TNI’s relative independence from Jakarta, which endured in West Papua past the fall of Suharto’s New Order. President Prabowo Subianto, a former general accused of atrocities in East Timor, inherited a number of ambitious industrial ventures in West Papua from his predecessor, Joko Widodo, including the largest deforestation project in human history and the 4000km Trans-Papua Highway, intended both to increase production on existing agribusiness initiatives and to encourage new ones.
Seen at first as a reformer, Widodo won Papuan votes on a promise to loosen media access and address atrocities such as the 2014 Bloody Paniai massacre, in which five children were killed and seventeen wounded. At the end of his first term, however, Widodo appointed his one-time electoral rival Prabowo as defence minister. (On assuming the presidency in 2024, Prabowo selected Widodo’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as vice president.)
Rather than rein in the TNI, Widodo confirmed their status as an autonomous power in West Papua. A law passed in 2021 increased the number of provinces there from two to five, ensuring an expanded checkpoint and surveillance regime and giving the military an increased role in administration. Only one soldier involved in Bloody Paniai was put on trial and he was acquitted of all charges in 2022. The combination of a hands-off approach to military command and a terra nullius view of economic development produced the bloodiest phase of the occupation for two decades.
Where Widodo accommodated the TNI, Prabowo is leading it, synthesising the political and military dimensions of Indonesian rule. He has abandoned the euphemistic language of ‘development’, declared Suharto a national hero and instructed Papua’s regional governors to dress in military fatigues during their inauguration.
The trilateral meeting held in Port Moresby on December 3 between the Indonesian, Australian and Papua New Guinean defence ministers marked a significant moment in Indo-Pacific regional security alignment.
PNG’s Dr Billy Joseph, Australia’s Richard Marles and Indonesia’s Retired General Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin discussed strengthening cooperation on border management, maritime security, intelligence sharing, counter-smuggling and crisis preparedness.
On the surface, this trilateral framework appears to advance a pragmatic vision of collective security, particularly through reinforcing the PNG–Australia Mutual Defence Treaty (Pukpuk Treaty) and the Australia–Indonesia Treaty on Common Security.
In his opening remarks, Joseph said the trilateral meeting was a “significant moment” for the three nations, emphasising shared borders, maritime zones, cultural linkages and strategic interests.
However, beneath this diplomatic language lies a deeper contradiction: the trilateral security agenda operates in the shadow of the conflict, humanitarian and political crisis in West Papua.
This crisis is not mentioned directly in the joint communique, but it undeniably shapes the security landscape in which the three states operate. A critical analysis of the meeting therefore requires confronting the tensions between regional security cooperation, state-centric stability and the unresolved conflict at the heart of the Pacific.
Can regional stability genuinely be achieved when the West Papuan humanitarian realities remain structurally excluded from diplomatic and security processes? To what extent do defence pacts framed as instruments of regional stability enable and perpetuate cycles of violence?
These questions highlight a deeper theoretical tension: that security cooperation grounded solely in state-centric paradigms may fail to address, and may even exacerbate, the underlying political and humanitarian drivers of conflict.
Humanitarian situation in West Papua continues to deteriorate
Indonesian military forces reportedly used an armed drone in an operation that struck a civilian home in Yahukimo District on November 25, killing 17-year-old student Atin Sam and seriously injuring others.
Just days before the Port Moresby meeting, West Papuans commemorated their symbolic Independence Day on December 1 by raising the Morning Star flag, staging peaceful protests, and participating in acts of cultural resistance across West Papua and Indonesia.
These events demonstrate the persistence of Papuan political identity and collective memory despite decades of repression. Meanwhile, Indonesian security forces intensified surveillance and arrests, reinforcing the pattern of securitised governance.
Militarisation and asymmetry in West Papua
Against the backdrop of colonial narratives emphasising development, stability and normalisation, independent reporting suggests a starkly different reality.
Project Multatuli, among other civil society sources, has reported that more than 80,000 Indonesian security personnel including soldiers, police and intelligence units are currently deployed across the Papuan provinces under the Prabowo Subianto administration.
Although Jakarta has not publicly confirmed these figures, the scale of the deployment would indicate one of the highest levels of militarisation in the Pacific. It also reinforces widespread perceptions that a large-scale, coordinated security operation is underway but not publicly acknowledged.
In striking contrast, various independent estimates indicate that the TPNPB — the military wing of the Papuan independence movement (OPM) and the primary armed resistance group — possesses fewer than 100 firearms and maintains roughly 1000 fighters, most of whom still rely on traditional weapons such as bows, arrows and spears.
The power imbalance is therefore extreme: the conflict is not between two symmetrical armed forces, but between a modern, heavily equipped state military and a lightly armed, territorially dispersed insurgency embedded in rural communities. This asymmetry carries profound implications for civilian safety, the nature of state coercion and the structural dynamics of the conflict.
Indonesia’s strategic silence and the politics of legitimacy
Indonesia’s engagement in the trilateral meeting must be understood within the framework of strategic legitimacy-building. By participating in high-level security dialogues, Indonesia enhances its international standing and reinforces the perception that the situation in West Papua is an internal matter fully under control.
By controlling the narrative, Indonesia can maintain the appearance of stability while deflecting scrutiny of its domestic security policies.
The West Papuan conflict is not a simple domestic security issue, as Indonesia often claims. It has deep international roots, beginning with the controversial Act of Free Choice in 1969, which was overseen and legitimised by the United Nations despite widespread criticism from scholars, human rights groups and West Papuans themselves. Because the UN facilitated this process, the conflict’s legitimacy and outcome remain part of an international dispute, not an internal matter.
The TPNPB positions itself as a liberation force fighting against colonial occupation. Its struggle is framed in the language of anti-colonialism, self-determination and international human rights law — principles recognised under the UN Charter.
Lesson from East Timor, Bougainville, Aceh
The trilateral meeting’s silence on West Papua stands in contrast with important regional precedents. These cases complicate assumptions about military dominance, conflict resolution and the long-term viability of territorial control.
A central tension that the UN, regional and sub-regional fora in the Pacific — including the recent trilateral defence meeting — often fail to acknowledge is that the largest ongoing armed conflict in both the Pacific and Indonesia is the protracted conflict in West Papua. Many West Papuans including armed factions such as the TPNPB explicitly describe the situation as liberation war.
While they continue to challenge Indonesia’s sovereignty over the region, external observers commonly assess that the TPNPB is unlikely to prevail militarily against the far more powerful Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI).
Yet historical precedents complicate such assumptions of inevitability. For decades, the prospect of East Timorese independence likewise appeared impossible, until the political and military dynamics shifted dramatically in the late 1990s.
The example of Bougainville further demonstrates how protracted conflicts can produce unexpected political outcomes. PNG ultimately moved toward dialogue and political accommodation not out of strategic preference but because the PNG Defence Force failed to defeat the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA), eventually withdrawing in disarray.
The long-term settlement has led toward an almost inevitable trajectory of Bougainvillean independence. This path, however, represents precisely the kind of outcome Indonesia seeks to avoid in West Papua, where any form of internationally mediated political process is perceived as a potential threat to territorial integrity.
The case of Aceh is often cited as a more positive and potentially transferable model, but the differences between Aceh and West Papua are substantial. The Aceh settlement was facilitated by strong international support, the role of the EU-led monitoring mission, the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, and the presence of a comparatively sophisticated and well-armed movement (GAM) with external networks.
Building regional stability without addressing conflict resolution in West Papua is impossible, as the crisis constitutes one of the most severe and enduring humanitarian tragedies in the Pacific. Lasting stability cannot be built on silence or strategic avoidance; it requires confronting the unresolved conflict at the very heart of the region — West Papua.
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