Transactions in Desire Media Imaginings of Narcotics and Terrorism in Indonesia

The relationship between Australia (an outpost of Anglo-western culture) and Indonesia (the world's most populous Muslim nation) has always been precarious. Much of the Australian media and political 'mediasphere' have contributed to the destabilisation of this relationship, most particularly as many media professionals reduce complex transcultural and transnational engagement to simple and essentialised cultural dichotomies. This limited vision is evident in the popular media's treatment of two significant politico-cultural issues: regional terrorism and the trade in illicit narcotics. Within a context of the global war on terror and Islamic attacks in Bali, much of the Australian popular media and public have been particularly agitated by the conviction and death sentencing of a group of Australians (the Bali Nine) who had attempted to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia. This article examines the interrelationship between drug trafficking and regional security in South East Asia, most specifically as the issues have been conflated through transnational politics and the Australian media. The article concludes that these issues have a common trajectory within the momentum of globalisation and the cultural imaginaries created through the modern mediasphere.


-NO SWEAT
An Australian journalist, sweaty and nervous, sits on the floor of the visiting room in Bali's Krobokan Prison.He fumbles around in his pockets looking for a pencil sharpener.'I thought you were a professional', someone laughs.The journalist's eyes darken.'I am!' He sneers and returns his gaze imploringly toward the subject of his interview, convicted Australian drug courier, Scott Rush.Scott is chain-smoking and picking at some chocolate brought by other visitors.Someone produces a pen and the journalist is briefly restored.'So tell me,' he says, 'Why did you do it?Especially here, in this place … Why did you do it?' There are signs all over Bali's Ngurah Rai airport warning visitors that drug trafficking attracts the death penalty.Scott and five others from the group known as the 'Bali Nine' have proven the case, each receiving a capital sentence for attempting to smuggle heroin out of the country.Several of the Bali Nine, including Scott, then aged nineteen, were arrested in July 2005 at Ngurah Rai airport with heroin strapped to their bodies.While three of the sentences have been reduced on appeal, Scott, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran remain condemned to join the lineage of Australian cause celebres who have been executed for drugs trafficking in Southeast Asia-from Barlow and Chambers, who were hanged in Malaysia in 1986, to the most recent, Nguyen Tuong Van, hanged in Singapore in 2006.
The Bali Nine case, and the severity of the sentences involved, attracted considerable media and public attention in Australia.These and similar drug-related convictions have severely strained the relationship between Australia and Indonesia, particularly within the context of a global 'war on terror' and Australian government travel advice warning against visiting Indonesia.
The arrest of the Bali Nine was particularly disturbing as it was Scott Rush's own parents who contacted the Australian Federal Police (AFP) hoping to prevent their son from being caught up in some illegal activity.However, under Commissioner Mick Keelty the AFP tipped off the Indonesian authorities, who arrested the Australians at the airport as they attempted to leave Bali.Rather than arresting the group on their arrival in Australia, Keelty and the AFP knowingly exposed the nine to Indonesia's corrupt judicial processes and the death penaltywhich they would not have faced if convicted in Australia. 2Scott's story is all the more troubling, as his appeal against a life sentence resulted in an upgrade to death by firing squad.
'So why did you do it?'the journalist presses.Scott looks back at the journalist and offers his well-drilled explanation.His eyes are thick with dread and he sighs: 'I wanted a holiday.'But there is an equally well-drilled rhetoric used by Australian governments in their dealings with Indonesia over the past several decades.From the mid-1960s and the rise of Suharto, Australian governments have pursued a complex policy of appeasement, mutual economic interest and carefully targeted security arrangements.Within this complex policy framework, Australia has frequently parenthesised an appalling record of human rights abuses, territorial aggression and internal oppression for the sake of regional trade, investment and security.The conservative Howard government (1996-2007), in particular, sought to mediate Australian public anger over the management of the Bali Nine drugs case against broader issues of national interest, especially Indonesia's role in managing regional terrorism. 3In a double appeasement, the prime minister at the time of the Bali Nine conviction expressed his 'regret' about the cases, while insisting that this was nevertheless a simple matter of Indonesia's sovereign right to determine its own internal modes of governance, law and control of narcotics trading.
Very clearly, conservative commentators recognised that drugs issues and the respective legislative and cultural differences between the two countries threatened to further destabilise an already precarious bilateral relationship.At the time, commentators like Tim Lindsey, for example, argued that prosecutions against foreign drugs traffickers, such as Schapelle Corby and the Bali Nine, were a legitimate response to Indonesia's narcotics crisis and the significant threat it poses to community wellbeing and security. 4Even more pointedly, Mick Keelty, the head of the Australian Federal Police, continually confirmed the legitimacy of these laws, subsuming the lives of the Australian drugs couriers to the greater good of national security and the global war on terror.As a key player in the fight against international terrorism, the Indonesian government was not to be antagonised for the sake of a few Australian wrongdoers.
Indeed the former head of Indonesia's National Narcotics Board, Major General I Made Mangku Pastika, made the connection between the drugs trade and terrorism even more explicit, declaring that Indonesia is currently faced with rising illicit drugs production, trafficking and abuse: 'I have deep concerns with the growing link between illicit drugs trafficking, and terrorist and transnational crime activities.' 5 Pastika, who led the police investigation into the first Bali bombings, urges that a specific form of narco-terrorism is evolving in Indonesia, and that this complex web of criminal activities clearly implicates Balinese tourism and drug couriers like Scott Rush and other members of the Bali Nine.This essay examines the ways in which the illicit drugs trade and terrorism are connected in Indonesia.In particular, we examine the various points of intersection that have been postulated and the ways in which the discourses of narco-terrorism are implicated in various forms of transnational and global cultural politics.We reflect on the way these postulations are framed within a media context that is clearly constituted around the current 'war on terror' and a re-invigorated East-West divide.
As with much cultural studies scholarship, this essay uses a transdisciplinary approach.Rather than using a single theoretical framework, we integrate research from disciplines such as media studies, security and terrorism studies and drug research, with theoretical perspectives on desire, excess and capitalism offered by Baudrillard, Lacan and others.Our aim is to locate the issues of drug trafficking and narco-terrorism within the context of a globalising economy of desire-and to illuminate the complex dimensions of their mediation.
The specific article to which we refer is titled 'Life after Death'. 6We will make reference to this article and the journalist's interview practice (which we observed in Krobokan) throughout the essay.While we have focused specifically on this article, and another by Fitzpatrick, we argue that it represents the vast majority of commercial media reporting and journalistic practices relating to the Bali Nine case. 7As academic researchers, we have worked in Krobokan Prison on a regular basis since 2005.
In 2004, ten years after their conviction for drugs trafficking in Indonesia, two Thai nationals and an Indian were executed by firing squad.This and subsequent executions mark the resumption of capital punishment which had been informally suspended for three years.According to Amnesty International, a significant proportion of the 116 prisoners waiting on death row in Indonesia have been convicted of drug-related offences. 8Recently, the ranks of death row prisoners were fortified by a new class of 'political' felon, including Bali bombers Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Muklas (Ali Gufron), who were executed by firing squad in 2008.
We might reasonably assume that the relationship between drugs crime and Islamist political violence is entirely antithetical.Purist Indonesian Islam formed around salafi and wahhabi principles rejects all forms of 'unholy' hedonism, especially the narcosis-derived pleasures associated with illicit drugs.Moreover, and as the International Crisis Group (ICG) has noted, this form of purist Islam has a deep aversion to criminality of any kind, most particularly as it is associated with violence and the disruption of a government that is legitimately 'Islamic', at least inasmuch as it represents and is supported by people of the Muslim faith. 9Thus, while purist salafi rejects all forms of secular political engagement, including democratic processes, it also rejects the forms of violent sedition preached by radical jihadists.
A key doctrinal point separates salafi from salafi jihadis in Indonesia, as elsewhere.It is a central tenet of mainstream salafi thinking that it is not permissible to revolt against a Muslim government, no matter how oppressive or unjust … In Indonesia most salafis are opposed to Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and the Darul Islam movement because they actively promote rebellion against the Indonesian state. 10us while the Bali bombers and other Islamists interpret jihad (struggle for Islam) as imprimatur for the armed imposition of an Islamic political order and Islamic law (Sha'riah), purist salafi regards jihad as far more defensive.This polemic within Islamic political theology in Indonesia bears a direct relevance to issues around drug use and trafficking in Indonesia. 11Indeed, the revision of Indonesia's drugs laws in 1997 was as much a response to Islamic politicism in Indonesia as to drugs-based health and social issues.Like the ascent of the current so-called 'anti-pornography laws', much of the political force which expanded and intensified the drugs laws in 1997 was driven through various forms of conservative Islam.In the twilight of his political reign, President Suharto introduced the drug laws, at least in part, as a means of fortifying support among Islamic groups in Java.With a deepening middle-class and secularist opposition to the aging dictator, the laws represented a significant gesture toward Sha'riah and the widening ambit and political strength of religious politicism in Indonesia.During these last years, Suharto had assumed the role of pious statesman, consciously courting the support of Islamic political and community leaders.
Since the fall of Suharto, however, drugs have remained a significant public and political issue in Indonesia, providing a point of convergence for conservative social and religious organisations.While the figures are notoriously unreliable, it has been estimated that Indonesia now has between one and six million drug addicts, and injection-related HIV and Hepatitis C cases have escalated dramatically over the past decade. 12What is clear, is that the social and health impacts of the illicit drugs trade is embedded in Indonesia's modernisation and integration with the global capitalist economy.Indeed, while Indonesia has had a long history of drug usebeetlenut, marijuana and opium in particular-the move to injectable drugs, methamphetamines and 'party' drugs like ecstasy marks a significant change in the economy, cultural values and practices associated with narcotics in Indonesia.These new narcotics practices and industries have evolved in parallel with Indonesia's greater integration with Western consumerism and the global economy of pleasure.Indeed, just as desire and pleasure represent the centrifugal force of the legal economy, they are also central to the illicit narcotics industry and to drug use itself.For Indonesia, in particular, this alignment is underpinned by the country's extreme levels of poverty and underdevelopment.Despite reasonable economic growth and an expanding middle-class, Indonesia has a GNP per capita of less than $US4000 per annum and a poverty rate of around 16 per cent, indicators that are likely to decline during the course of the global financial crisis. 13The inefficiencies in the economy are further exacerbated by endemic public and private corruption which contributes to, and is a symptom of, seriously low levels of international and domestic investment. 14The Political and Economic Risk Consultancy has identified a significant trending down in Indonesia's overall business risk-benefit index assessment since 2003/04; corruption continues to be the major obstacle to international and domestic business investment and growth. 15The majority of Indonesians live in subsistence conditions, and despite some strong years of economic growth, high levels of unemployment, underemployment, disease and social dislocation persist.Education levels are critically low, contributing to the proliferation of Islamic boarding schools (pesantren), some of which have been established by jihadist organisations like Jemaah Islamiyah.Within such social and economic conditions, large numbers of young Indonesians cluster around the fringes of urban centres and cities, living in extraordinarily harsh conditions, surviving on begging, prostitution, drug-trafficking and a broad raft of other criminal activities. 16ine Berman argues that these hardships lead many Indonesians into drugtaking practices for relief and pleasure.Berman also suggests that the new party drugs are themselves linked to the consumerist lifestyles frequently propagated through media motifs, contemporary music and tourism. 17Specific groups and individuals within the broad class of impoverished, unemployed and underemployed Indonesians are tempted into the drugs trade as couriers and other lower-level workers.In this sense, there is clearly an overlap between the recruitment of young sub-class Indonesians into the narcotics industry, and into the ranks of militant jihadism to act as footsoldiers and suicide bombers. 18In both cases, these young people seek some form of pathway through, against or beyond the system that so bleakly oppresses them.
-NARCO-TERRORISM At least in an economic sense, the relationship between drugs and Islamist terrorism is a good deal more complex than first presumed.Indeed, as we noted earlier, the former head of the Indonesian Drugs Board, Major General Pastika, has identified considerable and growing overlap between Islamist terrorism and organised crime.This 'narco-terrorism', identified as a worldwide phenomenon, is constituted around a confluence of interests and criminal infrastructure. 19The commercial and economic value of illicit drugs has been recognised by the criminal underworld in Indonesia, including the clandestine networks of regional and global jihadists.
Organisations like al-Qa'ida have engaged directly in narcotics trading, operating through various parts of Afghanistan and into Burma and South East Asia. 20Equally important, clandestine communication and trading networks used by organised crime have enabled terrorist organisations to move arms and funds across the region, supporting militant activities in Ambon, Aceh and Bali.
Peter Chalk has demonstrated how drugs and terrorist organisations have exploited the clandestine system of financial trade and money laundering called the hawala. 21Operating throughout South East Asia, the hawala uses a complex system of trust and coded messages to facilitate the bulk transmission and trade of very large sums of illegal finances in a very short period of time.Chalk locates the coextensive relationship between terrorism and the drugs trade in terms of a broader, post-Cold War security context: One specific threat that has assumed greater prominence on South East Asia's broadened security agenda … has been transnational organised crime.The increased salience of this particular issue stems, in many ways, from the region's overriding predilection with financial power and influence.Combined with the existence of severe and widespread disparities in economic wealth, situations have increasingly arisen where people have been motivated more by the need to possess dollars and less by considerations of the means used to acquire them.The net result has been the gradual evolution of a parallel underground economy, which is currently being powered by syndicates dealing in everything from humans to drugs, gems, timber and weapons. 22is is particularly disturbing, as it is clear that some members of the Indonesian political elite-including members of the military and law enforcement agencies-are directly involved in the drugs trade.This has been evidenced not only in Indonesia's Anti-Corruption Commission hearings but in those drugs cases involving members of the Indonesian elite against whom charges have been dropped or whose sentences have been pitifully light. 23This point was acknowledged in 2007 by the Indonesian attorney general, Hendaman Supanji, who conceded that four out of five prosecutors in Indonesia were open to corruption and bribery. 24deed, the link between public officials and organised crime is a key element in the honeycomb of Indonesia's political and economic order.The Indonesian military continues to play a significant social, political and economic role in Indonesia, and there is a general belief in the community that the forces are corrupt, avaricious, incompetent and entirely untrustworthy. 25Indeed, suspicions about links between factions of the TNI (Indonesian military) and Islamic militant groups are also widespread. 26As the International Crisis Group has reported, there are factions within the Indonesian parliament and the military who have expressed considerable sympathy for radical Islamist organisations and their ideologies.The former vice president, Hamzah Haz, was a notorious supporter of Abu Bakar Ba'syir, the co-founder of Jemaah Islamiyah.Moreover, there have been persistent reports of strong support in the Indonesian military for organisations like Laskar Jihad, which was responsible for a range of violent attacks in Ambon. 27e confluence of narco-terrorism and public corruption in Indonesia remains shadowy, of course.The density of corruption and the force of the clandestine economy in Indonesia continue to restrict the capacity of the Anti-Corruption Commission to identify and prosecute individuals who are engaged in organised crime, including drugs trafficking and political violence.

-NARCOTIC TERROR AND THE ECONOMY OF DESIRE
There is yet a further overlap between illicit drugs and political violence in Indonesia, most particularly through the interflows of globalisation and culture.In order to understand this dimension of the overlap, we need to understand that contemporary 'terrorism' is largely a communicational act and is profoundly embedded in culture and a mediated global public sphere or 'mediasphere'. 28Thus, as many definitions now clearly acknowledge, the objective of contemporary terrorism as a mode of political violence is to communicate a message to governments, communities and individuals who are not the immediate victims of the attack. 29The terror that is created by the attack is designed either to frighten and persuade enemies, or attract recruits and supporters to a given political cause.
In this way, the current phase of global terrorism is constituted around complex wars of meaning and 'language', as they are amplified through the modern global media.However, while former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, famously stated that 'publicity is the oxygen of terrorism', this 'oxygen' is the lifesource of all modern politics; terrorism is a player in a political sphere that is constructed essentially around 'mediated' broadcasting and networked information systems.Significantly, these broadcast and networked systems are created through broader economic systems and ideologies which are, as we noted earlier, shaped through consumer culture.In this sense, the 'clash of civilizations', 30 which is being invigorated through Islamist militancy and the antithetical 'war on terror', is being shaped through an 'East-West' divide that is itself being propagated through contemporary media politics.Jihadists, thereby, promote their interests as traditional Islam, while the 'West' invokes a powerful rhetoric of modernisation.
Both discourses, however, operate within the context of a contemporary mediasphere with modes of cultural agonism that are essentially modern and forged around consumer capitalism, desiring bodies and spiritual transcendence.Thus, militant Islamist organisations like Jemaah Islamiyah, Laskar Jihad, Islamic Defenders, Islamic Youth Movement and the more regionally constituted Abu Sayyaf Group may well invoke deep history and the religious orthodoxies of the Middle East-but the whole notion of 'tradition' is a construction of modern societies as they debate the force and direction of their modernisation.The past, that is, becomes engaged in modern debates over values and ethics.The deployment of modern communications systems, weaponry and modes of economic exchange by these terrorist organisations also marks them as hybrid cultural forms within the contemporary mediasphere.
Jean Baudrillard has argued that modern terrorism is in fact the inevitable reciprocate of globalisation; 31 it is perhaps more accurate to regard Islamist jihadism as a part of the complex cultural elements, contests and flows which are forming around globalisation processes.Clearly, consumer capitalism is predicated on infinite demand for product (image, experience, service), which in turn is a contingency of the perpetual stimulation of desire in desiring bodies.Where desire exceeds itself, there can be no satisfaction, even though that satisfaction is inscribed in the mobilisation of that desire.Indeed, the satisfaction of desire can only ever be partial in capitalist economics, as complete satisfaction would endanger the very premise of the system itself.Capitalist production realised a long time ago that both dissatisfaction and stimulation had to be inscribed into the process of desiring, otherwise the whole system would collapse.Baudrillard himself recognises this paradox, arguing that product has to be transformed into image to ensure the robustness of the system; but this 'simulacra', which is bonded to human libido, can never be complete or grounded as it must always lead to further stimulation, desire and demand.This process of infinite desiring and dynamic dissatisfaction might best be understood in terms of the notion of 'excess', as the perpetual momentum of dissatisfaction exceeds the momentum of pleasure.
Jihadism, in this context, is an expression of capitalist economics of pleasure as it is formed around the cyclical and often chaotic dynamic of desire and dissatisfaction.Like other forms of politically motivated violence, jihadism is created by the over-agitated momentum of capitalism and modernisation.Its criminality and destructiveness are forged through a constellation of historical elements that form essentially over the failure of modernisation to fulfil its inscribed promise of satisfaction.At the moment where the illusion and disappointment collide, violence becomes possible.The Islamist propensity toward an extreme political consciousness is less a statement of theological conviction, and more an expression of deep despair turned to outrage.
A parallel with narcotics suggests itself here.Drugs are shaped within a broadly based fantasy of infinite pleasure, a fantasy which is deeply embedded in economy, consumerism and the contemporary intensification of the body as sense. 32calling Lacan's conception of jouissance, by which pleasure exceeds itself as 'displeasure', drugs and drugs culture have assumed a complex imagining through the contemporary mediasphere.For many users, in fact, this imagining provides a pathway through the limits of consciousness or somatic constraint, leading to an intensification of pleasure.And yet, as for Coleridge's 'Xanadu', this 'transcendence' is conveyed within the spectre of its ephemera, as well as the crashing complexity and ordinariness of everyday life.
In this way, drugs are not merely an extension of the capitalist propagated fantasy of infinite pleasure: they might also be a reaction against it.Jean Baudrillard has noted that, in an economic system that is constituted around the perpetual arousal of desire and the impossibility of its gratification, social agents are trapped in a cycle of impossible materiality. 33To this end, the drug takers may seek to challenge this fatuous volition-even as they are seduced by its fantasy of infinite pleasure.Thus, just as the jihadists are seeking grace through the manipulation of the capitalist system, drug users and drug traffickers are expressing a sensibility of excess which generates its own highly negative consequences-social and personal.
The Islamist militants targeted the Kuta nightclubs in the 2002 Bali attacks largely as a symbolic reproach, a way of damning and denouncing the culture they believe is oppressing Muslims. 34And yet the clubbers and drugs culture that haunts the shadows of the Kuta night strip are also victims of the same implausible fantasy of pleasure and its volition to excess.To this end, both the attackers and the victims were assembled around the totem of this excess, even though their imagining of each other seems utterly divergent.Thus, as much as they abhorred the hedonism they attached to their victims, the Bali bombers were also entranced by its power and aesthetic.In a peculiar double helix the bombers and the clubbers were engaged in an invisible battle by which the violence of the attack and the indulgence of the pleasure were juxtaposed through a surge of human confusion.A war of terror being waged elsewhere presented itself as a fundamental contest of meanings over the territory of a nightclub.Spiritual grace and bodily ecstasy were entwined through the helix of bodies that left bomber and victim in an indistinguishable rubble.
While it may be simpler to see these bodies as divisible antagonists within a global war of terror, the conceptual conflation of 'narco-terrorism' suggests something more complex.We have already suggested that the force of privation and a broader sense of social disillusion is a common driver for drug traffickers and militant jihadists in Indonesia.And we are suggesting here that the culture of illicit narcotics and that of jihadism may be wrought through a common impetus to excess and a paradoxical relationship with the desire-dissatisfaction compound that mobilises capitalist consumerism and the dynamic of pleasure.In this context, Scott Rush's explanation for his engagement with drug smuggling-that he wanted a 'holiday'-becomes a metaphor for this same dynamic and for the broader culture in which 'the holiday' is imagined.
The sweaty journalist in Krobokan Prison entirely misses the point.His own industry-and indeed his own appalling narrative of the 'dead man talking'-is complicit with the crime of cultural excess.As with other popular media articles on the fate of the Bali Nine, this piece provides little genuinely considered analysis of the causes of the escalation in drugs consumption and trade in Southeast Asia, tending instead to trivialise the conditions of the prison, judicial corruption and the complexities of the global drugs culture.Nor is there an account of how the issue of national security might be underpinning the impotent responses of the Australian government.The perpetual invocation of 'national interest' and 'bilateral relationship' in order to appease Indonesia is symptomatic of capitalist pragmatism and the force of global economic integration.The Australian government prefers to present its bilateral relationship in terms of empathy, trade, security and stability, while abandoning its miscreant citizens to a fundamentally flawed narcotics law and corrupt judicial system.Australians must recognise, the government reminds us, that they are obliged to obey the laws of nations they choose to visit.
Yet the harm that is caused by drug abuse and trafficking is very similar in Indonesia as it is in Australia-and as we have argued, the causes are also very similar.While there are increasing debates in the more sensible realms of Indonesian narcotics management, there continues to be a tepid policy response to this significant source of social harm. 35Drugs, like crime more generally, represent a convenient political rallying point for the assertion of state authority.President Yudhoyono has stated that 'deterrence and the interests of justice justify the use of the death penalty for drug charges' and that those involved in the narcotics trade do not deserve leniency. 36He has also made it clear that he would not grant clemency to those sentenced to death for drug trafficking. 37Community vigilantes and conservative lobby groups (including Islamists) use the drugs issue as a focus for community action and political expression.As the Indonesian Narcotics Board itself has recognised, these groups tend to treat drug traffickers and users as a fundamental social enemy.The Australian government has failed to substantially engage with Indonesia around drugs issues, retreating once more into the national sovereignty, security and law-enforcement discourse rather than engaging in dialogue over the management of the health and social problems associated with drugs.
The journalist in Krobokan Prison scoffs at this notion.Nevertheless, the media he represents are part of the economy of desire which lies at the heart of these issues.Having surrendered much of its role as 'fourth estate' and agent of public interest, the networked commercial media almost entirely engages its audiences and readers through various forms of entertainment.To this end, the contemporary, commercial media is largely constituted around images and narratives which stimulate emotional, as much as cognitive responses.As we noted above, these images and narratives are formed as 'simulacra' which is designed to provoke desire.Thus, the popular media's account of Scott Rush and other cause celebres of the Indonesian prison system is typically voyeuristic, constituted around the emotional condition of the convicted drug smuggler and social responses to his crime.Under the guise of an honourable commitment to the public's 'right to know' the article presents a ghoulish image of the condemned man, creating a dramatic rendering of cultural depravity (Indonesia) and personal disgrace (Scott).
But the article offers no explanations.It is an account of the fallen and of a form of social calumny that reaches as far as the tourists who now come to the prison to visit Scott and other well-known inmates like Schapelle Corby.But our journalist demonstrates little understanding of these visitors and their motives.
They bring their gifts and encouragement-a simple gesture of community care.And despite the ridiculous fantasy created by numerous Australian journalists who have now gained access inside the prison, Krobokan is a hideous place, seething with menace and misery. 38As with all prisons, there is constant harassment, theft and the threat of violence by officials and other inmates.The prison environment is dense with illicit drugs, sexual brutality and a clandestine economy supported by gang leaders and prison wardens. 39Here, the state imposes its own authority through a vicious and cruel process of violence and de-humanisation.But the journalist experiences none of this.He feels superior to the tourists because he is a professional.He flies in and flies out again with his illegally obtained interview.He has his holiday, but he gives back absolutely nothing. -CONCLUSION In the affluent quarters of the great global economy, everyone is promised a holiday.
The common root of drugs trafficking and terrorism in Indonesia resides somewhere outside these zones of affluence though within the same ideology and accretion of desire and disappointment.The Bali bombers and the Bali 'Three' have been conditioned by the same encounters with legitimate and illegitimate social deviance.They are criminals, rather than revolutionaries; they have sought to usurp the orderly project of consumer capitalism, and both have sought some kind of liberation through a clandestine attack on the imposed morality of Indonesian society.The emergence of narco-terrorism in Indonesia expresses, above all other things, the momentum of this convergence of two clandestine global movements.The state's imposition of the death penalty, however, is a capitulation to its own desperate failings.In an act of simple vengeance, the Indonesian state, supported by a complicit Australian government, obfuscates its own culpability through its decree of sanctioned murder. 40State-authorised killings, that is, seem perversely to validate the broad range of socialised horrors-social hierarchy, inequity, poverty, desperation-which are themselves the base conditions for Islamic violence and the narcotics trade.And while drugs policy in Indonesia is moving toward a greater acceptance of harm-reduction approaches to the management of drugs, the government remains fixed in an enforcement model which merely fortifies the power and authority of the state over the vestiges of its fallen.And, indeed, the confluence of political and narcotics crime must be understood as a part of the global momentum; it is a shared problem requiring a shared response.Retreat into flaccid pronouncements of national sovereignty is both bizarre and delinquent.The Australian and Indonesian governments need to work together to resolve these problems, many of which are directly embedded in Indonesia's extreme and entirely unacceptable levels of poverty, a poverty which, in turn, is directly related to corruption and an endemic incompetence in public institutions.If Australia is to provide any real support, then it must be related directly to Indonesia's transition to civil society.

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Jeff Lewis is a professorial research fellow in the Global Cities Institute, School of Applied Communication, RMIT University.His recent books include Cultural Studies, second edition (2008) and Language Wars: The Role of Media and Culture in Global Terror and Political Violence (2005).His most recent book, Bali's Silent Crisis: Desire, Tragedy and Transition, written with Belinda Lewis, was published in 2009.Belinda Lewis is a specialist in international and community health in the Faculty of Medicine at Monash University.She has published numerous papers on crisis and recovery in Indonesia and Sri Lanka and associated public health issues.Her most recent book, Bali's Silent Crisis: Desire, Tragedy and Transition, written with Jeff Lewis, was published in 2009.In the past decade, five Asian states have done away with the death penalty (see M. Fullilove, Policy Brief: Capital Punishment and Australian Foreign Policy, 2006, <http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=433>, accessed 10 January 2010).Both the Australian Government and the Opposition are opposed to capital punishment.The Lowy Institute presents powerful arguments for Australia to 'accelerate our efforts on comprehensive abolition'.In order to achieve universal abolition of capital punishment, more committed and comprehensive political action is required (see Fullilove).