Tim Blair links to an

Tim Blair links to an article in todays Age by Mark Forbes and John Silvester. It deals with how the AFP and the Indonesian police got onto the Bali Bombers. It’s a great piece of reporting and you should read it in full. I have included the direct link below to save your mouse finger. Over the years I’ve had a lot of comments from people that are against training Indonesians in our military and police institutions. I’ve always argued that if we train them then we know how they are going to react in any given circumstances and this is important if we ever have to fight them. However, presuming this is unlikely to happen, a real and obvious advantage of letting Indonesians into our colleges is that a certain rapport will develop between Police and Army Officers from both countries as they get to know each other. Never understimate how important this is. When Gen Cosgrove or Leah have an Indonesian based problem they can pick up the phone and talk to their counterparts. When Gen Lewis, Director of Special Forces and Bahasa Indonesian speaker has a problem then he does the same but in Bahasa. All these officer will have done a lot of courses with Indonesians of similar rank over their respective careers. Keelty, AFP Commissioner has a similar network. The week after the attack, President Megawati Soekarno-putri signed an agreement in Jakarta for a historic joint investigation into the tragedy. Luckily for the Australians, the straight-talking officer General I Made Pastika was named as chief investigator. He had become friends with Keelty after the pair did a police management course in Canberra in 1993. and; Ashton, the Federal Police liaison officer in Jakarta between 1995 and 1997, spoke Bahasa and was friendly with senior Indonesian police. Go read the article in full and then thank your lucky stars that we have people like this working diligently and professionally to track down the terrorists.