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Letter to the Editor
FrontLines - April 2009
As a former AID staff member (1967-1981), I enjoy reading FrontLines, even though my former colleagues are now long gone or retired. I did, however, want to offer a correction to a small item in your most recent edition, about which I happen to have first-hand information. You describe Secretary Clinton’s trip to Indonesia and her visit to USAID projects, which is terrific and well-deserved recognition (“Clinton Visits USAID Project in Indonesia,” FrontLines, March 2009). You then conclude with the following sentence: “She also announced plans to restart Peace Corps programs in Indonesia that were suspended in 1965 when volunteers were expelled after leftists accused them of espionage.”
As the former Peace Corps director in Indonesia, I both opened (in 1963) and closed (in 1965) the only program we ever had there. I am delighted with the prospect that after all this time some form of new partnership between Indonesia and the Peace Corps may actually happen.
It is important to recognize, however, that the Peace Corps was not “expelled after leftists accused them of espionage,” but we withdrew from Indonesia during “the year of living dangerously” because we considered the safety of our nearly 50 volunteers to be in jeopardy given the many tensions then in Indonesia-American relations. USIS libraries, AID and most other U.S. government agencies had essentially closed down already, and yet PCVs [Peace Corps volunteers] were continuing to work in their sites from one end of the country to the other. False accusations of CIA links had greeted the volunteers ever since their arrival, just as these attacks confronted all other U.S. agencies, but the Indonesian government, the Peace Corps, and the American Embassy all agreed we should continue to carry on until it became too difficult to do so safely and successfully any longer. In April 1965, by mutual agreement between our two governments, the Peace Corps volunteers gradually
and without incident withdrew from their locations around the country and were reassigned elsewhere to complete their tours.
As we enthusiastically welcome this possibility of a new Peace Corps program with Indonesia, I think it important that the now-ancient history not be distorted.
Sincerely,
Alex Shakow
★
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