While the United Nations agreement to give East Timorese a vote over their own future is a great achievement, assigning the Indonesian military the job of providing polling security undermines it.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan claims the arrangement is unavoidable, but this partnership between the UN and Indonesia's military is bizarre.

The last time the UN supervised an act of self-determination in an area under Indonesian jurisdiction was 30 years ago, in Irian Jaya. This former Dutch colony came under Indonesian control in 1963, with the proviso that its Papuan citizens should be asked six years later if they agreed.

That 1969 ballot was a travesty. Even though UN supervisor Ortiz-Sanz complained about its conduct, the international community meekly accepted a rigged 'vote' by the inhabitants favouring full integration with Indonesia.

The UN agreement this time is a vast improvement over that earlier one. Whereas then the Indonesian president opposed the ballot, this time President Habibie initiated the UN process that will lead to it. It is a better agreement in every other respect too, except one: this one too will be conducted under the dubious security umbrella of the Indonesian armed forces.

The problem is not that the military are incompetent. Offering them training and advice, as the US and Australia are doing, is patronising and probably misplaced. Nor is the main problem that they feel peeved about having lost so many soldiers in the war for East Timor.

Nor is it that they are plagued by 'rogue elements' beyond the control of the armed forces commander. The main problem is that the military are historically committed to be political players themselves.

The military, no longer named Abri but TNI after the police were split off recently, claim they exercise a 'dual function' (dwifungsi) - in external defence and in domestic politics.

'The army does not have an exclusively military duty but is concerned with all fields of social life', says a seminal 1965 army document.

One scholar points out that it actually has only a single function: maintaining national stability.

Everything else comes second. Stability is a political concept, not a military one. Dwifungsi turns the army into a political party with guns. It blesses organised political violence.

Dwifungsi is not written into the constitution (the name itself only goes back to a law of 1982), but the concept behind it has a long history. Already during the struggle against the colonial Dutch in 1945, the armed forces developed a suspicion of civilian politicians, whom they thought were corrupt and divisive. Whenever they have had to knuckle under to civilians, they have done so reluctantly.

After General Suharto, one of their own, became president in 1967, the army moved to strengthen its political role in three ways. First, it sat soldiers on a big block of seats in parliament, unelected. Second, it seconded thousands of soldiers to key positions within the bureaucracy - from governors to village chiefs.

Third, and most important, the army elaborated a military bureaucracy that paralleled the civilian one at every level of government from the nation's capital to the village. 'Socio-political' officers trained in intelligence spent their days interfering in everything they thought was 'political'.

When Suharto resigned in May last year, part of the public's anger against him was also directed at this heavy-handed military interference in politics. The military responded by releasing some of their seats in parliament and pulling soldiers out of civilian jobs.

General Wiranto, who commands the armed forces, promised recently that the doctrine of dwifungsi will be 'phased out'. But so far the true heart of dwifungsi remains intact, namely the parallel military bureaucracy with its myriad intelligence officers.

What does this have to do with the UN ballot in East Timor? A great deal. The UN made Indonesia's apparatus responsible for security there. But 'security' in Indonesian army language has a highly political meaning. It does not mean guarding the physical safety of every citizen, but guarding the state from ideological attack by enemies within society.

The military's crude political engagement, for so long captured in the term dwifungsi, requires it to treat pro-independence East Timorese as enemies of the state. It is an intelligence-driven concept that easily suggests the use of pro-Indonesian militias to 'secure' the place. To put it with brutal simplicity, the Liquica massacre last April, in which more than 50 East Timorese were butchered in church grounds while soldiers stood by, was for them not a breach of security. It was all about providing security.

UN failure to understand the Indonesian military's deeply ingrained self-image will create other problems too. First, it makes the 'autonomy' option meaningless.

The UN agreement says that if the East Timorese should choose autonomy within Indonesia (instead of independence), then the Indonesian armed forces will remain in East Timor only for 'external defence'.

But that would require a revolution in military thinking, moreover one that starts and ends only in East Timor, Indonesia's most militarised province. We've seen little evidence of it so far.

Second, it might make UN policemen, sent to East Timor to help guard the ballot, worse than useless. Apparently for their own protection from the East Timorese, they will be teamed up with Indonesian military or police 'buddies' during the ballot process. The 'buddy system' might lead inexperienced Australian police to see the Timor situation through the dwifungsi eyes of their Indonesian minders, who are used to conducting guided tours for foreign visitors.

Wiranto has claimed that dwifungsi would be phased out, which is a hopeful sign for the future. But it will take more than the few weeks we have left before the East Timor ballot. The UN Secretary General should not gamble on a revolution within the armed forces in such a short time.

Kofi Annan has to decide before 13 June whether the ballot process continues or not. While a largely unreformed Indonesian military remains in charge of security, the ballot must be in grave peril.

[A slightly edited version of this article appears in The Courier Mail (Brisbane), 15 May 1999]

Gerry van Klinken, editor, 'Inside Indonesia' magazine.