Tommy wasn't claiming false arrest. He wasn't suing for defamation of character. He just wanted his money back.

The 36-year-old heir to the multi-billion-dollar Soeharto fortune claimed he had given the middlemen a $2 million bribe that was meant to buy a Wahid pardon for an earlier conviction in connection with a real-estate swindle.

Since the pardon was rejected, Tommy argued, it was only fair that he get his bribe back. Besides, after the assassination of one of their own, the other supreme court justices had overturned the conviction anyway, even though Tommy was a fugitive at the time.

Welcome to Indonesia in the post-Soeharto era, a nation deep in the throes of political, economic and social transition punctuated by contradictions at every turn. On one level, the saga of Tommy Soeharto is a vivid example of business-as-usual in one of the world's more corrupt societies. On another level, though, it masks the fact that Indonesian society has changed in very fundamental ways.

For the architects of America's war on terror, the ability to penetrate the appearances and realities of the world's largest Muslim country will have a critical impact on the battle in the years ahead. In many respects, it would have been much easier for post-Sept. 11 US foreign policy if Soeharto had never been overthrown. The former general used a strong hand to hold together his necklace nation of 17,000 islands and 300 language groups. Any hint of rebellion in the provinces met with a violent response, as the agony of East Timor painfully demonstrated. Political opposition was bought off or silenced. Islamic sentiment was funneled into tame social movements. Clerics who raised the forbidden subject of Islamic rule were jailed or exiled.

Today, Indonesia is an ethnic quilt held together with fraying thread. Provinces at either end of the vast archipelago are in revolt, officials in oil rich Aceh have established religious police to enforce an Islamic dress code, Muslim-Christian clashes have claimed some 10,000 lives, and the country has had four presidents in as many years.

There have been rumors of Taliban and al Qaeda involvement in the anti Christian jihad; several Indonesian clerics and their followers have been implicated in regional terrorist plots; a shadowy group called the Islamic Defenders Front has threatened foreigners who hold the key to reviving the devastated economy ; and at least one suspected Indonesian militant has been directly tied to both the Sept. 11 hijackers and the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.

Against that backdrop, it would be easy for American architects of the war on terror to convince themselves that Indonesia's interests coincide with those of the US. History would seem to bolster their argument. President Megawati Sukarnoputri's own father, the nationalist Sukarno, fought to contain radical Islam, a job completed by the man who ousted him, Soeharto. Surely the woman leader of the world's largest Muslim country would do everything possible to prevent al Qaeda from fostering a fundamentalist resurgence that would oppose her very existence in office. Megawati seemed to confirm that when she stood beside President George W. Bush in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and signaled her country's support in the war on terrorism. But behind that façade is another reality: To overtly confront the forces that could threaten her is to strengthen the forces that do threaten her.

Within days of returning home, Megawati was adjusting her message to Washington in the face of criticism from figures like her own vice president, Hamzah Haz of the Muslim-oriented United Development Party, who said the bombing of the World Trade Center would "cleanse the sins" of the US. "Prolonged military action is not only counterproductive but also can weaken the global coalition's joint effort to combat terrorism," Megawati said in a speech before parliament.

Westerners looking at Indonesia today are likely to see a young democracy, a free press, billboards for Citibank, and to assume shared values. But the fact is that a few Western trappings have been hung on what remains a very Indonesian mannequin.

Indonesia has always been a culture in which most things are best left unsaid. Confrontation is anathema. The word "no" is rarely used. "Bapak," the father figure in business, the family or the nation, is always right.

Jakarta hotels in the late 1980s and early 1990s were jammed with Western businesspeople whose would-be Indonesian partners nodded sagely at their proposals and promised to get back to them. Few ever did.

But globetrotting salesmen aren't the only foreign visitors to Indonesia who have been tripped up by a culture in which appearances are far more important than reality. "Things were going fine until he saw that picture," a source in the Indonesian presidential palace told me in early 1998. "Then his attitude changed completely."

"That picture" was a photo showing IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus standing billion bailout package. In the stylized culture of Java, in which respect for the ruler is paramount and body language speaks as loudly as words, crossing one's arms is, at best, a sign of arrogance and, at worst, a conscious insult. Even to a Western eye, the picture begged for the caption: "Soeharto signs articles of surrender."

"If only Camdessus had knownS" IMF officials said when the media firestorm broke. Indeed. But the damage was already done.

The moment Soeharto saw the photo, according to the source, the deal was dead. Within days the Indonesia president was backpedaling. Within weeks the flag of nationalism had been waved. The photo gave him an excuse every Indonesian understood. "We are talking about dignity," said a senior government official of the incident. "We are talking sovereignty. We want help, but at what cost?"

Four years later, that sentiment was echoed again as Indonesian officials reacted to criticism from Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, who charged that Jakarta was dragging its feet in the war on terror. Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda called the comments "provocative" Lee also called Abu Bakar Ba'asyir Muslim cleric who had spent four years in jail under Soeharto terrorist ringleader. Ba'asyir filed a slander suit in a Jakarta court, and some politicians said Lee had done their country a service by sparking a new wave of Indonesian nationalism.

Indonesian security officials, meanwhile, maintained that Lee's criticism was unfounded. "We can't publish it yet, [but] Indonesia has been effectively working to combat terrorism," insisted Chief Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. But such assurances were undermined by the country's lack of credibility, the natural legacy of a business and political culture in which decisions are routinely made behind closed doors.

That culture of secrecy word no idea when I was here [last year] that there was $65 billion, or whatever the number is, of unhedged dollar borrowings, and I don't think the Indonesians knew," World Bank President James Wolfensohn admitted in early 1998.

The traditional Javanese shadow­ puppet play, in which the characters act out the story behind an opaque screen, is an overused but apt analogy for the veil of secrecy behind which business and government have long operated in Indonesia. Decisions are handed down without discussion or debate. Inside deals are common currency. For many years, that shadow play complicates America's conduct of the terror war in Southeast Asia extremely convenient for the US government and, in particular, American business. Long before the dot-coms, long before Enron, it was on the bourses of Jakarta and a dozen other emerging markets that Wall Street perfected its ability to look the other way.

Underwriters like Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley could make millions orchestrating public offerings for feudal conglomerates, without causing the loss of face involved in demanding real financial transparency. Western brokers could promise clients staggering returns on the Jakarta Stock Exchange without embarrassing Indonesian counterparts by mentioning rampant insider trading.

As long as no one asked too many questions, as long as everyone agreed appearance was reality, there were plenty of windfall profits to go around. But when the Asian bubble burst, and members of the newly created middle class suddenly found themselves without jobs, they began shouting that the emperor had no clothes; the Ponzi scheme came crashing down.

The child of that revolution is a nascent democracy grafted onto a culture of secrecy, illusion and contradiction.

When FBI Director Robert Mueller arrived in Indonesia in late March to discuss the war on terrorism, he must have felt as if he had stepped through Alice's looking glass.

The FBI director spent two days quietly meeting with the country's security minister, national police chief and the head of the national intelligence agency (in the safety of the Hindu-dominated island of Bali, far from potential Muslim demonstrators) as part of a regional tour to coordinate strategy in the war on terror.

As the meetings ended, the two sides issued all the usual public expressions of cooperation, but the Indonesians added one caveat: "We have explained that Indonesia is committed to fighting international terrorism," said Security Minister Susilo, "but with different methods."

The irony of Indonesia's emergence as an important front in the terror war is that today it stands as a model for the rise of a moderate brand of political Islam that gives voice to Muslim aspirations as part of, rather than in opposition to, the political process.

The foot soldiers of the anti-Soeharto revolt may have come from the universities. The coup de grâce may have been inflicted by the army's top general, but the field marshals of the revolution were men like Amien Rais and Abdurrahman Wahid, who flexed the newfound political muscles of the mass Muslim movements they headed. Soeharto's former vice president and successor, B.J. Habibie, further strengthened the political power of Muslim groups by cultivating them in a failed attempt to win legitimacy.

It was his position as head of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), or Religious Scholars organization propelled Wahid to the presidency.

Just as Nasser's Egypt did for young Arab intellectuals in the 1950s, Indonesia offers a model that gives vent to Muslim political aspirations that might otherwise surface as Islamic militancy. But where Nasser's one-man rule meant that mass participation was severely circumscribed, Indonesia's political free-for-all parties One example of how the structures of Islam are being used as a political base can be found in the emergence of Partai Keadilan, or Justice Party, popularly known by its Indonesian initials PK. Formed in July 1998, the PK seeks to add an Islamic spiritual dimension to political activism, but officially states that it is up to the individual to interpret the religious teachings of Islam. Party cadres are recruited primarily through local mosques, where students as young as 12 are organized into Koran reading and discussion groups and then, after a year of participation, encouraged to form groups of their own. Through this tiered system, the party is building a long-term strategy by tapping youth often ignored by other political groups in a culture where age is revered. The stated goal is "to use power to serve others," not to implement Islamic law.

"We want the party to become a pioneer in upholding Islamic values and we want to do that within the framework of democracy, national unity and integrity," party chairman Hidayat Nur Wahid recently told an interviewer. "Even if you are Muslim, if you are unjust and oppress non-Muslims, you should be punished. This is how we view shariah (Islamic law)."

But it was just such a network of mosques and Islamic schools in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan that funneled recruits to al Qaeda. Indonesia's homegrown terrorists seem to share similar roots.

With its PK's seven seats in parliament, success to date underlines both the value of such Islamic political organizations stated mission within them, draw on those infrastructures to plot a more violent course. And given that the PK was founded as an extension of the Arab grandfather of Muslim resistance organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood, such a possibility cannot be ignored. For Jakarta in 2002 bears one other similarity to Cairo in the 1950s: the threat from a cross-border movement seeking to create a pan Islamic nation. Just as the Muslim Brotherhood sought to overthrow regimes across the Middle East and replace them with a single Islamic nation, so the militants of Jemaah Islamiyah seek to establish an Islamic state incorporating Indonesia, Malaysia and portions of the Philippines.

The goal of preventing that is shared by officials in Washington and Jakarta. But that does not mean they necessarily agree on tactics. A recent Gallup poll of sentiment in the Islamic world revealed that only 27 percent of Indonesians viewed the United States favorably, 89 percent said the US military action in Afghanistan was unjustified, and 74 percent said they did not believe Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

Given those numbers, any government would hesitate to side overtly with the United States. That is doubly true of a president in a shaky coalition government that depends on several Muslim parties for its survival, including a vice president who once opposed the very idea of a woman in the country's highest office.

Further complicating the situation is a historic love-hate relationship between Indonesia and the United States, viewed through a prism of nationalism, culture and religion country's leaders for their own ends. Suspicion of the West particular A tendency toward conspiracy theories runs deep in Indonesian society, illustrated by the widespread belief that the devaluation of the rupiah in the early 1990s was the result of a conspiracy between financier George Soros and the country's ethnic Chinese. Many Indonesians believe the West wants to break up the country or otherwise prevent it from becoming a regional power.

American criticism of Indonesia's human rights record is widely seen as hypocritical in light of a US foreign policy that is perceived as exploitative and biased, particularly when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, a subject that sparks anger at every level of society.

While there exists a voracious appetite here for things Western Coke cultural backlash that fueled Osama bin Laden's rise, reflected in a spate of attacks on bars earlier this year and the increased popularity of Islamic attire, even among the upper classes.

Moderate Muslim leaders almost as much to lose as Megawati from the rise of fundamentalism. If such a scenario ever showed signs of manifesting as reality, it is likely that all the power centers would close ranks against the threat. In the meantime, though, Muslim politicians will seize every opportunity to exploit public suspicions of the United States as a powerful weapon in their maneuvering toward the 2004 presidential elections.

"Everything that gives the impression that Indonesia is serving the American interest in its drive to fight terrorism will be opposed by the [House of Representatives], the press and the public," Lt. Gen. (ret.) Zen A. Maulani, a former intelligence chief, recently told an interviewer. "This means that they will also oppose Megawati if she allows this impression to gain credence."

As always in Indonesia, it is the "impression" issue. Most Indonesian Muslims are willing to look the other way as extremist elements are neutralized, but they don't want to be seen doing so. Indonesians are proud of their role as the world's largest Muslim society. They are not prepared to puncture the illusion of Islamic solidarity. To expose the reality of their quiet support for the neutralization of extremists is to cause a loss of face across the breadth of Indonesian society. Such miscalculations by American policy planners tactics by the terror warriors anti-terror effort and potentially creating precisely the kind of instability upon which radical Islam breeds.

Which is why Indonesia's culture of appearances could yet prove a valuable tool in the terror war. The key is whether American terror warriors can simultaneously understand, deftly utilize and judiciously penetrate the shadow play.

Seated beside a smiling Megawati Sukarnoputri just eight days after Sept. 11, President Bush indelicately stripped the Indonesian president of her veil of deniability as surely as if he had yanked off the Islamic head cover she sometimes wears.

"Some nations will be comfortable supporting covert activities, some nations will only be comfortable with providing information," Bush told reporters. "Others will be helpful and will only be comfortable supporting financial matters. I understand that."

Whatever the US president intended, the appearance sent much the same message as the crossed arms of the IMF's Camdessus as he loomed over Soeharto back in 1998. Bush might as well have said, "She's going to do our bidding but deny it."

Bush's wartime presidency thrives on bold headlines spotlighting dramatic action. In Indonesia, all the news is not necessarily fit to print. Nor does much appear in neat black and white. Some elements of the Indonesian security services cleric, for four years under Soeharto go-slow directive, but they are no strangers to operating in the shadows. Even as they were being criticized for their failure to arrest Ba'asyir move that would have set off a political firestorm picked up another suspected terrorist and deported him to Egypt, where that country's intelligence service and the Americans were waiting with open arms.

It was a reminder that while the terror war may be played out with B-52s in Afghanistan, special-forces troops in the Philippines and an overt political crackdown in Yemen, to succeed in Indonesia it must abide by local rules. A shadow war gives a weak government deniability, the security apparatus flexibility, and the moderate Muslim majority the chance to pretend that appearance is reality.