Author: Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Publication: Washington
Post
Date: June 19, 2000
Armed Indonesian soldiers
restrain a man following fresh sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians
in which six people were killed in downtown Ambon, Indonesia. (AFP)
AMBON, Indonesia - Diponogoro
Street, lined with charred, bullet-pocked buildings that once housed the
biggest banks and shops in this sleepy harbor city, has been nicknamed
"Sniper Alley." It is bisected by the "Green Line," the avenue that separates
the Muslim and Christian business districts. Off in the distance, a no
man's land of demolished buildings several blocks wide is called the "Gaza
Strip."
To people in the picturesque
Indonesian archipelago once known as the Spice Islands, this is the world's
latest Beirut or Sarajevo. They now cower in constant fear of getting shot,
bombed or hacked to death with a machete in the ferocious war that has
erupted between Christian and Muslim gangs.
Muslim and Christian
villagers, who lived peacefully side by side for generations, have been
attacking each other with lethal homemade guns and bombs packed with nails.
They have torched scores of churches and mosques as well as thousands of
homes, forcing the population, which is almost evenly split between the
faiths, to regroup in religiously divided villages and neighborhoods that
are barricaded with sandbags and barbed wire.
The sectarian fighting
in this city and elsewhere in the archipelago, now called the Moluccas,
is driven not by ideology, but by a fanatical desire to avenge the other
side's most recent attack.
It all started with a
scuffle between a Muslim bus driver and a Christian passenger in January
1999. Since then, more than 2,500 people have been killed by snipers and
in confrontations between warring factions; 200,000 others have been forced
from their homes, according to the government.
In the past few weeks,
the violence has spread to new corners of the Moluccas, fueled largely
by the arrival of 3,000 Muslim fighters from other parts of Indonesia who
are committed to waging a holy war against Christians.
The escalating conflict
is raising questions about the ability and commitment of Indonesia's new
democratic government and civilian-controlled armed forces to contain religious
extremism, which threatens to further fracture a nation already being pulled
apart by several strong separatist movements. The crisis here also resembles
religious and ethnic insurgencies elsewhere in Southeast Asia, from Tamil
rebels fighting to carve out an independent nation in northern Sri Lanka
to Islamic guerrillas battling for self-rule in the southern Philippines.
In the case of the Moluccas,
local officials say that soldiers, perhaps fearful of a crackdown on human
rights abuses, have been reluctant to disarm villagers or use force to
break up fights. And the military is grappling with sectarian tensions:
In a battle on Ambon island last month, Muslim and Christian soldiers briefly
turned on each other.
Freed from 32 years of
dictatorial rule that enforced a policy of religious coexistence in the
predominantly Muslim nation, Indonesia is now facing an eruption of radicalism
throughout the country. On the resort island of Lombok, for instance, Muslims
destroyed and looted a dozen churches and scores of Christian homes earlier
this year.
Churches also have been
burned in Yogyakarta, a large city on Java. In Jakarta, the Indonesian
capital, a group called the Front for Protectors of Islam has brutally
attacked prostitutes and transvestites. And this month, more than 120 people
have been killed in Muslim-Christian clashes on the island of Sulawesi.
"The relationship between
Muslims and Christians in Indonesia has become very strained," said Azyumardi
Azra, a professor at the State Islamic University in Jakarta. "It is creating
serious risks for our stability."
In Ambon and the rest
of the Moluccas, in the Banda Sea 1,500 miles northeast of Jakarta, government
officials, religious leaders and ordinary people are convinced they are
pawns in a war that is incited and funded by outside political forces.
The locals cannot say with certainty who is responsible, but they have
theories.
Some here say it is people
close to former president Suharto. Others think it is Muslim fundamentalists.
Yet others contend it is disaffected soldiers who are arming and egging
on both sides.
"It is obvious that there
is an external influence that wants to break us up," said Soleman Drachman,
a Muslim leader. "The Ambonese would never justify violence among ourselves."
Indonesia's defense minister,
Juwono Sudarsono, said he believes allies of Suharto, who are being investigated
for corruption, fraud and other crimes committed during the dictator's
reign, have been instigating the fighting.
"It is forces who were
in power during the latter half of Suharto's administration, both civilian
and military, who face possible prosecution if the investigation into President
Suharto's misuse of power eventually goes to the courts," Sudarsono said
in an interview. "Because of their own interests, they want to thwart the
government's prosecution. They want to create unrest by projecting the
image that [President] Abdurrahman Wahid's government is unfocused and
unable to cope with social discontent."
Whatever the actions
of those outside the Moluccas, history also is playing a role. Arab traders
brought Islam to the region in the 15th century. A century later, Ferdinand
Magellan visited the archipelago on his around-the-world voyage and carried
back to Europe some of the islands' abundant nutmeg and cloves. The spices,
which were then worth more than gold, caused scores of European traders
to descend on the Moluccas, leading to Dutch colonization and the spread
of Christianity. The large Western presence in the area helped to make
the Moluccas the most Christian part of Indonesia.
During the colonial era,
the Dutch favored the Christians, giving them choice government positions.
But after Indonesia achieved independence, things swung the other way.
In the 1960s and '70s, the government encouraged tens of thousands of Muslims
from other parts of Indonesia to settle in the Moluccas under a policy
aimed at diluting the overwhelming Christian majority. Over the years and
with incentives from Jakarta, many of the Muslims became prosperous merchants
while Christians were relegated to farming and fishing. As the Islamic
population grew, local Christian officials were replaced with Muslims loyal
to Suharto.
Despite the reversal
of fortunes, there always was peace between the religious groups, enforced
by Suharto's brutal military. But in May 1998 Suharto was deposed, and
since then, old religious and ethnic hatreds have been bubbling to the
surface all over Indonesia.
"During the Suharto years,
the military put all the problems under the carpet. Nothing was solved
in an open or transparent manner," Azra said. "So when he fell, all of
these old problems that never were fixed, mixed with economic deprivation
and political struggles, started to erupt."
In Ambon, the tensions
reached the boiling point in January 1999 when a Muslim bus driver named
Salim got into an argument with a Christian passenger named Yopi. Within
an hour, buildings all over town were ablaze and bloody fighting had broken
out on the streets.
"It all happened so quickly,"
said the Rev. Max Siahaya, a top Christian leader. "There had to have been
a plan for the violence."
But thus far, nobody
has presented any evidence of a plan. What more likely happened, others
here say, is that a simple altercation flared out of control, fueled by
ages-old animosity and a lack of experience in conflict resolution. Then,
seeing the chaos, "the outside forces swept in," said the Rev. Janes Jambormias,
a Protestant minister. "They took advantage of us."
Today, the young toughs
who prowl Ambon's neighborhoods, armed with everything from slingshots
and machetes to assault rifles, have little idea what they are fighting
for other than to avenge the recent burning of a church or mosque. The
attacks, which have occurred with alarming frequency, have turned into
a deadly game of tit for tat.
"We're just trying to
get revenge," said Jacob Walalago, 34, a rifle-toting fisherman who is
part of a Christian gang. "The Muslims have burned hundreds of homes of
Christians."
The situation has grown
more tense in recent weeks because of the arrival of 3,000 young men who
are members of a group called the Laskar Jihad. The youths, who hail from
other parts of Indonesia, contend they have come here to rebuild mosques
and homes. But government officials say the members have been wielding
machetes and guns, not hammers. And some of them have been frequent participants
in the clashes.
"The Laskar Jihad has
made things worse," said Saleh Latuconsina, governor of the Moluccas and
himself a Muslim. "They are not helping the process of peace."
The Indonesian government
has come under fire for letting the group travel to Ambon, a move supported
by some fundamentalist politicians, including the speaker of the parliament,
Amien Rais. President Wahid and top military officials said they did not
support the Laskar Jihad mission. Officials in the city of Surabaya, from
which the group embarked, said they were powerless to stop the youths because
they were unarmed. Military officials now say the group shipped their weapons
to Ambon separately.
Local government officials
and religious leaders on both sides have criticized the military for not
attempting to quell the violence more forcefully. Soldiers rarely attempt
to confiscate weapons, and they often retreat when the fighting starts,
according to witnesses to the skirmishes.
Defense Minister Sudarsono
said recent human rights investigations into the military's tactics in
dealing with unrest in other parts of Indonesia may have spooked some of
the troops into taking a hands-off approach.
So today, armed gangs
rule the streets of Ambon and villages elsewhere in the Moluccas, while
local officials watch helplessly as the torching of buildings continues.
The provincial parliament no longer meets, because its offices have been
taken over by refugees. The recent flare-up in fighting even forced the
few international aid organizations working here to flee for a few weeks.
With residents segregated
by religion, all sorts of businesses, from banks to airline ticket offices,
have had to open two offices, one on each side. Or they have had to search
for one of the few neutral locations in the city. Mercy Corps International,
an Oregon-based aid organization, for example, has set up shop between
two military posts in a border area.
Traveling from one enclave
to another has become a harrowing experience. People arriving at the airport,
for instance, have to take a rickety speedboat because the road into the
city crosses both Muslim and Christian neighborhoods. Ferries that connect
the enclaves zigzag along the coast to avoid snipers and have replaced
buses as the primary means of transport.
"I haven't seen my Christian
friends for a year," said Nurhidayat, 30, a Muslim woman who like many
Indonesians uses only one name. "I can't go to their homes anymore. And
they can't come to mine."
Nurhidayat, who used
to work as a secretary in a Christian neighborhood, now is unemployed.
Sitting in her living room on a recent morning, sipping orange juice, she
quietly voiced the sentiments of a growing number of people here.
"We don't want to live
like this," she said. "We want to live together, like we did before."
Then, pausing for a moment,
she added, "But I don't think we'll ever be able to do that again."