Indonesian Armed Forces

The Indonesian Armed Forces are more than a background military institution in the novel: they shape the conditions under which former guerrillas find work, criminal groups operate, and violence is organized as both political force and popular entertainment. Through the history of the Kalimasada Silat Academy and the later fighting arena, the book traces how wartime relationships persist after the conflict, turning the boundary between military authority and civilian life into a porous one.

Civil War and the Academy’s Founding

The academy’s history begins with its founder, Kyai Abdul Kadir, a veteran of the twelve-year civil war between the republican army and Islamic rebels. During the conflict, he was described as the most elusive commander and controlled a stretch of jungle along Java’s southern coast. After the republican army captured rebel leader R. M. Kartosuwirjo and the morale of his militias collapsed, guerrilla commanders surrendered one after another. Some were executed; others were imprisoned and later pardoned. Their release did not restore a stable place in civilian life: some found neither work nor housing and turned to robbery, theft, or extortion disguised as market security.

The postwar transition did not sever the former fighters’ ties with the armed forces. Many remained friends with the soldiers who had captured them, and some relied on those soldiers for protection as they became criminals or petty extortionists. The novel presents this arrangement as a continuation of wartime relationships under altered circumstances: the same networks could shelter former combatants or enable their coercive activity.

Kyai Abdul Kadir founded the Kalimasada Silat Academy as a small attempt to redirect that inheritance. He gathered former guerrillas, including men who had served under him and boys who had joined the war while still young. The academy was meant to teach self-defense and religious wisdom, but also to provide practical means of earning a living. Its founder understood that men accustomed to guerrilla life would not easily adapt to civilian routines. The school’s purpose therefore extended beyond martial training: it offered a possible alternative to a livelihood built on violence and military patronage.

A Failed Route Away from Violence

Only a few former guerrillas chose the academy. Others made their own arrangements with soldiers, who sometimes used their manpower to maintain order and sometimes to disrupt it. The novel makes the instability of this bargain explicit: once soldiers no longer needed the former fighters, they might kill them. Kyai Abdul Kadir foresaw that danger and created the academy in part to prevent his former soldiers from meeting that fate, though he died of old age before the soldiers turned against and exterminated the ex-guerrillas.

After his death, the academy passed to his son, who had also been a guerrilla and had been born in the jungle. The institution’s mission narrowed under the son’s leadership. He discontinued the religious classes and did not continue his father’s instruction in sewing, cultivation, or managing loans for small businesses. The academy became a conventional martial arts school, attended by students who wanted to learn how to fight effectively and experience courage. The contrast marks a lost possibility: the founder had tried to join combat skills to moral teaching and economic independence, whereas the later school retained the fighting and let the livelihood program fall away.

Military Power and Organized Spectacle

The armed forces also appear behind the fighting arena where truck drivers settle disputes. The competitions are held by soldiers who informally own the venue; older gamblers say that soldiers bring fighters from places where military operations are taking place. The account reports gossip that some contestants are surrendered rebels or rioters, including people who have repented, yet are still sent to fight. Their participation is framed as proof of patriotism and a chance to earn money, but the fighters are also made into entertainment for gamblers. The arena converts military capture and political conflict into a commercial spectacle, with the soldiers retaining a share regardless of who supplies the combatants.

This system is not confined to people brought in from distant operations. When such contests are less frequent, truck drivers provide fighters from among their own ranks, and the soldiers accept the arrangement because they still receive a cut. The arena therefore connects military power to a local economy of wagers and public tests of toughness. Its rules and audience differ from those of a battlefield, but the institution behind it carries the reach of armed authority into civilian leisure.

The novel also emphasizes how blurred the uniformed categories can become. At the arena, only a few policemen or soldiers are allowed to use flashlights, and the narration notes that at the time the two groups were not much different, since both belonged to the Armed Forces. This detail places policing and military force within a shared structure of authority rather than treating them as clearly separate roles.

Narrative Significance

Across these episodes, the Indonesian Armed Forces are depicted through their relationships and effects rather than through a single formal account of organization. Soldiers protect former fighters, provide manpower for keeping or disturbing the peace, turn away from former allies when they are no longer useful, and profit from contests staged with people linked to military operations. The academy stands as an imperfect countermeasure to that cycle: it was designed to give former guerrillas skills, instruction, and a way to support themselves, but its founding vision diminished after its creator’s death.

The institution’s significance lies in this continuity between war and its aftermath. The civil war produces displaced former combatants; their ties with soldiers help organize both protection and criminal opportunity; and the arena makes coercive violence visible as entertainment and income. The novel does not present these episodes as a comprehensive history of the Indonesian military. Instead, it uses them to show how military authority and wartime networks remain active in local life, shaping what kinds of work, security, and public spectacle are possible.