The Iron Witness

 

They called her KRI Irian, a steel behemoth born in the cold shipyards of Saint Petersburg. Once, she had sailed under another name—Ordzhonikidze—cutting through icy waters as part of the Soviet Red Fleet. Now she sliced through tropical seas, her massive hull a floating testament to one man’s obsession with keeping his country whole.

And on May 21, 1963, she became a honeymoon suite.

Sukarno—the man they called Bung Karno, the father of the Indonesian nation—stood at her rail, his new bride Haryati beside him. The sea breeze played with her hair as the waves crashed against the hull. If you’d asked Haryati later what she remembered most about that day, she might have told you about the salt spray, or the way her husband’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.

But she wouldn’t have told you what he was thinking. Nobody ever really knew what Sukarno was thinking.

(Except maybe the dead. The dead know everything, don’t they?)

They’d met when she danced the Menakjinggo at the State Palace, her movements graceful and hypnotic. Something in her performance had caught his eye—or perhaps it was something in her. Sukarno had that way about him, of seeing into people, of knowing what buttons to push. It was what made him such a powerful leader. And now she was his fifth wife, sailing aboard Indonesia’s mightiest warship, cutting through the same waters where, not so long ago, Dutch warships had prowled.

That’s the thing about honeymoons. They always end.

***

The purchase of the cruiser had been a desperate gamble, the kind of move that keeps men awake at 3 AM, staring at hotel room ceilings, wondering if they’ve doomed everything they’ve built.

Four hundred and fifty million dollars. With interest.

That’s what it cost to keep the Dutch at bay. That’s what it cost to show the world that Indonesia wouldn’t be pushed around anymore. Not by the former colonial masters, not by anyone.

(Money well spent, some might say. Others might disagree. The dead don’t care about national budgets.)

The Netherlands had been preparing to install their puppet state in West Irian—what we now call Papua. They’d already set up a council, designed a flag, composed a national anthem. All the trappings of nationhood, like props on a stage. The director? The same Dutch who had colonized the East Indies for centuries.

Sukarno wasn’t having it. Not one goddamn bit of it.

On a December day in 1961, standing in the North Square of Yogyakarta with sweat beading on his forehead under the tropical sun, he delivered the words that would become known as Trikora. His voice boomed across the square, bouncing off ancient stonework, seeping into the soil of his homeland.

“Hey, all Indonesian people! Raise the Red and White flag in Papua, in the country of West Irian!”

The crowd roared. They always roared for him.

“I firmly give this command, thwart that Papua state… and be ready for the coming general mobilization!”

His words hung in the humid air like a promise. Or a threat. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

***

The thing about Cold War politics is that nobody’s hands stay clean for long. Sukarno knew this when he flew to Moscow in 1956, hat in hand but pride intact, to meet with Nikita Khrushchev.

Khrushchev—barrel-chested, bald, with those fleshy jowls that quivered when he spoke—took an immediate liking to the charismatic Indonesian leader. Both men understood power, both understood the game. And both understood that every alliance comes with a price tag.

Four years later, Khrushchev made the return trip to Jakarta. State dinners, cultural performances, motorcades through streets lined with cheering crowds. The kind of pageantry that makes for good photographs but conceals the real conversations happening behind closed doors.

General Abdul Haris Nasution didn’t like it one bit. He wanted American weapons, American support. The best technology money could buy. But Sukarno had other ideas.

“No,” the President had said, his voice flat, final. “The Americans represent everything we fought against. Imperialism. Colonialism. We go to the Soviets.”

(The dead don’t care about East or West. Communist or capitalist. The dead just are.)

And so, in December 1960, Nasution found himself in Moscow, shaking hands with Soviet generals, inspecting tanks and planes and guns. He came home with a shopping list that would make any military man drool: destroyers, patrol boats, missile boats, fighter planes, helicopters.

And one cruiser, soon to be renamed KRI Irian.

***

When the Dutch aircraft carrier HNLMS Karel Doorman approached Indonesian waters, its captain might have felt confident. After all, what could this new nation, barely a decade old, do against such firepower?

Then he saw it—KRI Irian, flanked by Tu-16KS Badger bombers, each armed with AS-1 Kennel missiles.

Just one bomb. That’s all it would take to send the Karel Doorman to the bottom of the sea, its crew joining the ranks of the silent dead in the crushing dark of the ocean floor.

The Dutch ship turned around.

(Smart move, Captain. Smart move.)

***

The negotiations dragged on through the UN, through American mediation. Ellsworth Bunker, the US diplomat tasked with finding a solution, proposed a two-year transition period. The Netherlands would hand West Irian over to UNTEA—the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority—and then to Indonesia.

On August 18, 1962, Sukarno ordered the Mandala Command to cease fire. The infiltration stage was barely complete, nowhere near what Major General Soeharto had planned. But diplomacy had succeeded where military might had only just begun.

In 1963, West Irian became part of Indonesia.

And in 1969, after what many would later call a fraudulent referendum—the so-called “Act of Free Choice”—the international community officially recognized Indonesia’s claim to the territory.

Eighty-one UN member countries. The United States. The Soviet Union. Australia. All looked the other way, accepting the outcome of a vote where tribal chiefs spoke for their people under the watchful eyes of Indonesian officials.

(The dead know what really happened. The dead always know.)

***

Years later, when Sukarno was gone and Soeharto ruled with an iron fist, KRI Irian still patrolled Indonesian waters. An old iron witness to political maneuverings, to honeymoons, to the fragile boundaries between nations.

The waves still crashed against her hull, just as they had on that day in 1963 when Sukarno and his new bride stood at her rail, looking out at a horizon that seemed limitless with possibility.

The sea breeze still blew, carrying with it the salt spray and the whispers of history.

And in the distance, if you listened carefully, you might hear the faint echoes of a speech given in a Yogyakarta square, words that changed the destiny of a nation.

“Raise the Red and White flag in Papua!”

The dead remember.

And sometimes, so do the living.