Indonesia Sends 1,500 More Troops to Borneo as Wildfires Burn 200,000 Hectares

Indonesia is throwing more troops at a wildfire problem that's outgrown its usual firefighting playbook. President Prabowo Subianto ordered 1,500 additional soldiers, pulled from three military battalions outside Kalimantan, into Borneo starting Saturday, August 22, according to Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya. Six helicopters are also headed in for water-bombing operations.

The numbers behind the order are ugly. Fires between January and July burned more than 200,000 hectares of land, an area three times the size of Jakarta, according to the Indonesian government's own count, cited by Al Jazeera and the South China Morning Post. That's already worse than the El Nino fire seasons of 2019 and 2023, though it hasn't caught up to the catastrophic 2015 season, according to Al Jazeera.

Prabowo didn't send the order from a desk in Jakarta. He flew to West Kalimantan himself, chaired a coordination meeting at Supadio Air Force Base, and then visited fire-hit Limbung Village in Kubu Raya District to look at the damage firsthand, according to Antara News, Indonesia's state news agency. "We're taking mitigation measures. The important thing is to immediately stop the spread of fire spots," Prabowo told reporters in Palangkaraya, the Central Kalimantan provincial capital, according to Al Jazeera and the Associated Press's Southeast Asia wire partners.

Beyond troops and helicopters, Indonesian authorities are running cloud-seeding operations timed to rain forecasts in West Kalimantan, according to Antara. The West Kalimantan Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) says fires have burned more than 38,310 hectares in that province alone from January through August. Separately, Indonesian officials are investigating four companies over the West Kalimantan fires, per an Antara headline, though no charges or findings have been announced.

The fires are bigger than Borneo

This isn't confined to Kalimantan. The Manila Times reported that Indonesia's Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in East Java has lost roughly 743 hectares, including protected edelweiss flowers, forcing the park to shut down to visitors. More than 50 hectares of peatland burned in Jambi province on Sumatra, destroying oil palm plantations belonging to local residents near the village of Sungai Gelam, according to the Manila Times.

Indonesia's Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysical Agency (BMKG) says August and September will be the most dangerous months, since dry vegetation and strong winds create ideal conditions for fires to spread fast. The worst may still be ahead.

Smoke doesn't stop at the border

The haze has crossed into Malaysia. Six areas of Sarawak state on Malaysian Borneo are recording "unhealthy" air quality, according to Al Jazeera and The Star (Malaysia). Local governments across Indonesian Borneo have told residents to wear masks and stay indoors.

The cause, per every source in this story, is dry conditions driven by a strong El Nino weather pattern, which typically brings drought to Indonesia. Al Jazeera and The Star both note that climate change can amplify El Nino's effects because warmer oceans and atmosphere carry more energy and moisture, feeding more extreme fire and drought conditions. Indonesia's fire seasons also stem from a well-documented human cause: land-clearing burns set illegally by plantation operators and farmers, a practice both the Manila Times and Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni flagged directly. Antoni urged the public to stop discarding cigarette butts and clearing land with fire.

The Washington backdrop

The wildfire emergency landed in an odd week for Indonesian diplomacy. While smoke choked Borneo, Prabowo was in Washington earlier this month for the first meeting of President Donald Trump's "Board of Peace," where Indonesia and the US announced a reciprocal trade agreement, according to the Associated Press. Under that deal, Indonesia will drop tariffs on 99% of American goods while the US keeps a 19% tariff on most Indonesian goods, the same rate set for Cambodia and Malaysia. Indonesian and American companies signed 11 deals worth $38.4 billion, covering soybeans, corn, cotton, wheat, critical minerals, oil field recovery and computer chip joint ventures, per the White House statement cited by the AP.

Prabowo also reaffirmed a pledge to send 8,000 Indonesian troops, "or more if necessary," to join an international stabilization force in Gaza under Trump's postwar plan, the AP reported. None of that trade or Gaza news is connected to the wildfire response, but it puts Prabowo's government in the position of managing a domestic environmental crisis and a high-profile foreign policy push in the same week.

What happens next depends largely on rain. BMKG's own forecast puts the worst of the dry season still ahead in September. Indonesia's investigation into the four companies flagged over the West Kalimantan fires is unresolved, and no results or penalties have been announced.