Fly

When the United States of Indonesia was born last month, a wave of forgive & forget sentiment swept over the archipelago. Most Dutch and Indonesian leaders recognized that their future interests ran parallel. Last week a formidable fly stuck firmly in the salve of cooperation.

The troublemaker was a part-Dutch, part-Turkish adventurer, named Raymond Paul Rocco ("Turk") Westerling, a professional soldier with a checkered past. Dashing Westerling fought with Australian troops in North Africa in 1940, later with the Dutch underground in Holland. After the war he helped organize a special Dutch force which was accused of murdering thousands of Celebes islanders during mopping-up operations. Kicked out of the Dutch army in 1948, he began to recruit an army of his own, now estimated at close to 10,000 Moslem extremists and deserters from the Dutch army.

One morning last week, Westerling's men rolled out of the mountains into Bandung (pop. about 150,000). Six hundred strong, they marched up the main streets, shot a few Republican soldiers, quickly took over the city. Thousands of Dutch troops garrisoned in Bandung stood by and did nothing. The Dutch garrison commander, Major General E. Engles, told Westerling's raiders to get out. They left quickly.

At Lake Success, an Indonesian spokesman charged that the Dutch were partially responsible for Westerling's raids. The Dutch stoutly denied the charges. Meanwhile, Turk Westerling blandly predicted that a new civil war was about to break out in West Java, from which he would emerge the winner. This was unlikely, but Westerling's bands could fan the dying embers of Indonesia-Dutch resentment and suspicion. First task of the U.S.I, army would be to finish off Turk Westerling.

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