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Wars and enemies of the
state
By Bill Guerin
April
26, 2002: Militant Muslim Laskar Jihad commander Jaffar
Umar Thalib told several thousand worshippers at the
Alfatah Mosque in Ambon, capital of the Malukus (Spice
Islands), "Our ... focus now must be preparing for war."
Thirty-six hours later, nearby Soya village was
attacked. Thirteen were killed, including two babies,
about 30 Christian homes were razed and the Protestant
church was left in ruins.
May 3: Thalib, in a
radio broadcast, told Muslims to "write out their wills
... get out all your weapons ... [and] fight against
them [the Christians] to the last drop of blood". He is
alleged to have said he would kill all the relatives of
former president Sukarno, including his daughter,
President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Thalib, 40, was
arrested a day later and charged on suspicion of sowing
religious hatred. Last week his trial on charges of
insulting the president and inciting violence started in
Jakarta.
In a different Jakarta court this week
Alexander Hermanus Manuputty, 54, head of the Maluku
Sovereignty Front (FKM), and Samuel Waeleruni went on
trial accused of plotting a rebellion and of subversion
linked to the raising of an outlawed Republik of South
Maluku flag in Ambon on April 25. An Independent
Republik of South Maluku (RMS) was declared in 1950 by a
breakaway movement, supported by Ambonese Christian
soldiers from the Dutch colonial army, but the military
soon crushed this brazen attempt to change their status
quo and the movement lay dormant for more than 50 years.
RMS is widely repudiated by the broader
Christian community but the Christian-dominated FKM was
formed in October 2000, in response to a failure by the
government to protect the province from violence. It was
meant to foster unity among the warring parties and
promote secession from Indonesia.
Almost 90
percent of Indonesia's 214 million people follow the
Islamic faith, but in the Malukus the split between
Muslims and Christians is more or less even.
Ambon, the capital, has been devastated by the
fighting, and a thin no-man's land separates the two
communities who signed a peace accord (Malino II)
brokered by the government on February 12. Thalib
denounced it.
The government claims it has tried
hard to enforce peace in a situation that is far from a
simple clash between Ambonese Christians and Muslims.
Government-sponsored Muslim migrants from densely
overpopulated Java were slowly but surely entrenched
into the senior echelons of the bureaucracy and the
balance of political power, as well as money and
business moved away from the Christians to the Muslims.
However, interference from outsiders is seen as
the prime cause of the prolonged conflict and the main
outside group accused of stirring up hatred is Thalib's
Jakarta-based Laskar Jihad.
Survivors of the
Soya attack recounted hearing the assailants, who wore
face masks, speaking in Javanese and shouting "Allah
Akbar" (God is Great).
The conflict in
Maluku escalated sharply when thousands of Thalib's men,
after undergoing military training on Java, arrived,
seemingly unhindered by the security forces, on a jihad
(holy war) mission. Jakarta and president Abdurrahman
Wahid himself stood on the sidelines as thousands of
Laskar Jihad militia - Holy War Troops - sailed from
Java to engage in avenging Muslim deaths.
The
Jihad storm troopers set about their work straight away,
moving from one Christian village to another, destroying
churches, burning down homes and killing on a large
scale.
Those who survived fled into the jungles
or to neighboring villages. Thousands fled the province
by boat and church organizations in the province say
men, women and children have been forced into Islamic
culture, circumcised, forced to go to the mosque, forced
to marry Muslim men and forbidden to practice the
Christian faith.
Christians accuse Laskar Jihad
of worsening the bloodshed while Muslims blame the
Christian separatist movements. However, Christians
militias are deemed to have acted just as brutally and
viciously as their Muslim counterparts and both sides
share the blame for prolonging the despair and
suffering. Thalib says Laskar Jihad's goal in Maluku is
simply to maintain national unity and insists that their
jihad is based primarily on humanitarian assistance.
While the group has carried out some humanitarian and
community work in Muslim areas of Maluku, including
building a hospital, Catholic priest Cornelis Bohm, of
the Crisis Center of Ambon diocese, however, said "their
image as killers and provocateurs of war is so deeply
rooted here that no Christian in Maluku will ever
believe their claim [of being] a humanitarian
non-government organization".
The
inter-religious issue is further clouded by Vice
President Hamzah Haz's seemingly explicit support for
Thalib, following the vice president's
one-and-a-half-hour "private" visit to Thalib's
detention cell. Haz, who also chairs the largest Muslim
party, the United Development Party (PPP), dismissed
claims of political interference into Thalib's case and
said his visit was based on "Muslim brotherhood".
Arifin Panigoro, co-chairman of PDI-P,
Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, was
furious and said Haz's visit to Thalib seemed to
"oppose" the president's efforts to end the conflict,
and added the obvious, that the vice president was
drumming up support from Muslim voters.
A few
days later Haz opened Laskar Jihad's national conference
once again raising deadly serious questions over the
political clout of Thalib and his violent followers. Haz
told the gathering of almost 2,000 Laskar Jihad members
that the fighters should only leave Maluku after FKM is
disbanded.
Haz was seen as only too ready to use
the arrest of Thalib as a chance to brandish his Muslim
credentials and analysts said his actions have had the
effect of legitimizing Laskar Jihad's actions.
A
week later Laskar Jihad in Ambon said, after their
surrender of a small amount of arms, "These weapons are
only part of what we have, and the rest will be
surrendered when the TNI [Indonesian armed forces] and
the national police have met their promises to
comprehensively investigate the RMS."
They said
that the move was in response to a call by the vice
president.
While the vast majority of Indonesian
Muslims are moderates, Laskar Jihad's militancy appears
to consistently intimidate all levels of officialdom.
Thalib is clearly a steaming hot potato politically.
Political pressure from his numerous contacts
among the elite and the military have undermined police
authority. One example is the arrest of Thalib, who has
four wives and 10 children, a year ago on charges of
killing one of his laskar (warrior) members by
ordering his public stoning. This was in accordance with
syariah (Islamic) law for committing adultery.
Numerous Muslim groups linked to the Suharto
regime demanded Jafar's release, his detention was soon
downgraded to house arrest and within weeks he was
freed.
Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil
deemed it necessary to say the police had consulted
government ministers before arresting Jafar. "I am as
certain as anyone can be that the police did the right
thing," he said.
Military spokesman
Major-General Sjafrie Sjamsuddin has said Laskar Jihad's
actions cannot be classified as threats to national
unity.
Thalib, a veteran of the Afghan-Soviet
war, has admitted to several visits by al-Qaeda
representatives, but denies reports of any assistance
from them in the Malukus. He and his followers were
greatly angered by statements from intelligence chief
Lieutenant-General A M Hendropriyono last December 12,
which confirmed reports that al-Qaeda had established a
training camp in Indonesia and was assisting jihad
fighters in Maluku and Central Sulawesi.
The
next day the defense minister publicly announced that he
had "full confidence" in the veracity of Hendropriyono's
comments. Court documents provided to Indonesian
authorities and related to the arrest in November of
al-Qaeda agents in Spain included photographs and
written reports of what were said to be al-Qaeda camps
in Indonesia.
However, in the face of fierce
criticism and little support from the corridors of
power, Hendropriyono three days later claimed he had
been "misunderstood" and insisted he had never said
al-Qaeda had a cell in Indonesia or that Laskar Jihad
was linked to it. His formal retraction was splashed all
over the lead page of the Laskar Jihad website but
analysts saw the incident as an abject failure of
Hendropriyono and Matori to generate support among the
military, police and political elite for a crackdown
against radical Islamic groups.
Thalib says the
violence was largely the fault of the RMS separatists,
who, with support from elements of the local government
and had been using violence in an attempt to follow in
the footsteps of East Timor, which won independence from
Indonesia in 1999.
While it is widely believed
that rogue military officers have ensured that the
conflict continued, by engaging in battle with the rival
factions as mercenaries, in East Timor the military was
involved in creating the violence, but in Ambon they are
seen more as letting it get out of hand.
Hamzah's visit to Jafar in prison outraged
Christians, confirmed doubts about the government's will
to enforce peace, and was a blow to a government seen as
slow to act in its follow-ups to the Malino agreement,
including setting up an independent national commission
to investigate the killings.
Continued
vacillation by the government over the issue of radical
Muslim militants added to the bold and dangerous
political moves from a vice president looking to the
2004 elections and growing ever more distant from his
boss, mark a new dimension of danger for Indonesia.
With the long arm of Washington scrutinizing
Indonesian-linked terrorist activity in the region,
proper handling of the radical Islamic militants issue
in Indonesia is likely to remain high on the US wish
list.
Talib and Laskar Jihad have operated with
backing from elements in the armed forces and from key
political figures some of whom are believed to aspire to
see Indonesia's once-admired religious tolerance
replaced by an aggressive commitment to an Islamic
state.
Indonesians in all levels of society have
for long had a common fear - that religion could become
the ultimate divisive parameter. The level of fear is
enhanced when the question is no longer are you a
pribumi (indigenous Indonesian) but are you a
Muslim pribumi?
Lasting peace in the
Malukus, where some 9,000 people have perished and three
years of bloody combat has spawned more than half a
million refugees, is crucial to rebuilding the shattered
islands and to strengthening religious tolerance in the
rest of the country.
The deep-seated social
divisions and envy and hatred that succor and nourish
those who falsely fly the banner of religion and bigotry
to justify their inhumanity will be little touched by
peace efforts from Jakarta.
A complex mix of
cultural factors combined with a real fear of the
potency of Islam fundamentalism, go some way to explain
why the government and the police tread softly with
Islamic radicals. But allowing the more radical and
extreme leaders to gain "moral" high ground from a
secular government raises the ugly specter of more in
sectarian violence, hatred and radicalism, the rise of
even more extremist movements and a breeding ground for
recruits for the Osama bin Ladens of the world.
At the other end of the archipelago, the people
of Aceh wait and watch as leading politicians and
generals run down to D-day for "crushing" the Aceh
separatist movement GAM, blamed for a "war" that has
caused more than 10,000 deaths there since 1976. It is
highly unlikely, though, that Megawati will sign a
presidential instruction declaring Laskar Jihad an enemy
of the state, as she did this year with GAM.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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