Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU
CONFLICT AND ANTHROPOLOGY: Some notes on doing
consultancy work in Malukan battlegrounds (Eastern Indonesia)
Jaap Timmer
State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
jaap.timmer@anu.edu.au
INTRODUCTION
In the conclusion to a collection of articles titled Fieldwork under fire which appeared
when the anthropology of violence and terror became a burgeoning area, Jeffrey Sluka
(1995) reflects upon the management of danger by drawing on his experiences in the
Catholic ghettos of Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1981-2 and 1991. He discusses some
of the practical methodological sensitivities of doing fieldwork among members of a
liberation organisation that has many enemies and is under threat from the security
forces. Sluka reminds us of ethical matters concerning the 'bargaining' with
participants in a conflict about the expected results of the research. In that respect,
he also remarks on the risks of becoming partisan in a conflict area. His main advice
to anthropologists doing fieldwork in hazardous conditions is, however, confined to
such issues as mediating threats through foresight, planning, and skilful manoeuvre
(ibid.:277). Sluka does not push this point further by aski! ng whether mediating
danger and negotiating the safety of anthropologists and informants who work in
distressing battlefields warrants a critical reflection on the conventional ethics of the
discipline.
The volume properly explores the everyday experiences of people who are the victims
and perpetrators of violence and the experiences and problems of ethnographers who
study situations of violence (Robben and Nordstrom 1995:3-4). The studies
demonstrate that violence is a dimension of living and confirm what is argued by
others, such as Feldman (1991) studying the formations of violence in Northern
Ireland, Tambiah (1996) bringing to life passionately the intricate realities of riots and
collective violence in South Asia, Malkki (1995) exploring refugees in Africa, and
Taussig (1987) exploring the nuances of terror in Colombia. Violence is a cultural
phenomenon, taught, remembered, transferred, exchanged, and mimicked within
groups and across boundaries and hence is dynamic and linked to power, status and
gender.2 But with respect to the practice of doing anthropology or being engaged in
processing anthropological knowledge amid extreme animosities during which hatred
become! s extreme, revenge comes in cycles, and hostilities have devastating
consequences, these works leave unanswered some fundamental questions about the
methodology and ethics of doing fieldwork under fire. The ethnographer is presented
as someone who, with a bit of skilful tacking between truth and lies, right and wrong,
and safe and dangerous, is unquestionably able to extract untainted and
representative data from fields that are tainted with violence.3
In the introduction, Robben and Nordstrom (ibid.:4) remark that anthropology on the
level of doing fieldwork under fire involves:
a number of responsibilities above and beyond those associated with more traditional
ethnography: responsibilities to the field-worker's safety, to the safety of his or her
informants, and to the theories that help to forge attitudes toward the reality of
violence, both expressed and experienced (op. cit.).
Some of the contributors discuss those responsibilities and allude to the ethics of
fieldwork but do not engage in a discussion of the methodology of the anthropological
discipline. Pieke (1995), for example, talks about responsibilities and personal safety
in his description of unexpected ethical dilemmas when he engaged in the protests in
Tian'anmen Square in Beijing in May 1989. The protests kept him from executing his
initial research plan. After having decided to switch attention to the protests, he was
likely to put his hosts - his colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences -
in a vulnerable situation. When he finally felt free to do research among the rallying
students, he was asked to become a human shield. Pieke shows that the exercise of
discussing and conveying the haphazard conditions under which fieldwork in locations
under siege is conducted is intriguing. However, his account fails to take notice of the
practical issues that emerge from doing fieldw! ork under fire and that challenge the
conventional ethics of fieldwork under fire.
Obviously, the ethnography of violence should not only be concerned with building
scrupulous theories about violence but should also be engaged in critical reflection on
the methodological problems of conducting research under violent conflict.4 Robben
(1995) discusses the risks of seduction in high-conflict research because the
informants, both victims and perpetrators of violence, have a personal and political
stake in making the ethnographer adopt their interpretations of the cause and
dynamics of the violence. This is not only part of what Robben suggests to be a kind
of impression management, but, as Feldman (1995:243) points out, also belongs to
memory management, the skilful editing out of painful truths about one's own or one's
group's behaviour. As with rumours, we are dealing here with practices of eulogising
one's own reason for being engaged in violence and negating the existence of the
victims or the enemy. Being such a major part of the fieldwork process, sedu! ction
and the danger of taking sides should lead us to ask what kind of methodological
measures should be taken in order to prevent partisan accounts from entering into the
reassuring information disseminations of the anthropological discipline. Indeed,
working in conflict areas involves ethical responsibilities which 'raises the question of
where research ends and personal involvement begins' (ibid.:19) and thus demands a
reflection on ethnographic ethics and the methods of processing knowledge.
In this article, I reflect on such methodological considerations by drawing on my
experiences as a consultant for international and local non-governmental
organisations (INGOs and LNGOs respectively) that were providing emergency aid to
the victims of the Malukan conflicts and attempting to provide service in the field of
peace-building and conflict transformation. In regions where security and trust allowed
refugees to return I also worked on so-called reconstruction and rehabilitation
programs. In all these situations, I was dealing with pain, suffering, and rapidly
changing realities, from belligerent to exile identities and the evolution of new ideas
about community among returning refugees. I processed anthropological knowledge to
make sense of what was going on in order to find solutions to distressing situations
and to think through approaches that would foster a better future for the Malukus.
Below I reflect on the limited control over reliable information and the e! xtent to which
'truths' have to be continuously assessed. Such situations, as Simons (1995) points
out, are difficult for anthropologists who try to sift fact from fiction and truth from
disinformation. Questions about the origin, meaning and effects of rumours become
compelling for ethnographers who have to decide on the spot where to direct their
limited time and research attention. Under such circumstances it is easy to be led
astray or become paralysed by the sheer amount of confusing unclear 'facts' and
unknowns.
I ponder to what extent careful assessments are realistic in quickly changing and
continuously tense conflict situations in which the anthropologist is by default never
fully familiar with the circumstances (in contrast to 'traditional' ethnographical settings
in which the researcher is suggested to be able to report that she or he had acquired
ethnographic immediacy with the study group). How can one manoeuvre skilfully when
one often has to deal with information that never seems to be fixed, and when false
predictions are legitimate tactics, and false interpretations a necessary part of the
propaganda of groups in desperate struggles? In such a situation ethnographic
immediacies bring danger as the 'terrorists' and the 'wild men' situate a foreign
consultant as partisan in local disagreement. Below I will illustrate some of the
dangers of having to make quick decisions in unknown areas. I will also discuss the
virtues of ethnographies of conflicts and violence and suggest! that anthropologists
can play a distinctive role by bringing not over-sensational or over-erotic accounts of
violence to the reader, and deconstructing myths about terrorists, Indonesian Special
Forces (Kopassus), Muslim fighters, Sikh militants, Irish Republican Army (IRA)
activists, Euzkadi ta Azkatasuna [Basque Homeland and Liberty] (ETA) bombers,
al-Qaeda terrorists, and others who engage in acts of political violence.
THE MALUKAN WARS
The events that I discuss happened in the Malukus, Eastern Indonesia, while I was
working there for some fourteen months from November 2000 until February 2002. In
order to give a sense of the scale of the tragedy it is necessary to say that the
amount of suffering and destruction was astounding. Thousands were cruelly
slaughtered and hundreds of thousands sought refuge in safer areas, and mosques,
churches, whole villages and large parts of urban centres were destroyed during the
clashes. The conflicts in Maluku started in early 1999 and continue to the present in
Ambon and surrounding islands, while most other areas of the Malukus are enjoying
gradual conflict transformation, allowing refugees to return home and the
reconstruction of property to take place.5 Gruesome acts of collective violence
revealed the historical seeds of tension, in particular the effects of more than three
decades of New Order politics, but also from roots that go back to the colonial period
and ag! e-old tensions between groups. After the first clashes, outsiders were soon
successful in provoking people to attack those who were allegedly threatening them; it
quickly appeared that the area was ripe for strife.
There are many factors that can be identified in order to explain the highly volatile
situation in the Malukus and here I am not going to try to present a concise analysis.
However, some background information is necessary to sketch the complexity of the
conflicts and the risks involved in attempts to reconcile people. A crucial point in
understanding the sources and dynamics of the conflicts in the Malukus is the
comprehension of the fact that Malukans are involved in a variety of social, political
and cultural changes. The most significant among these changes relate to the
economic situation of Indonesia since the late 1990s and to shifts in power at the
centre of the state before and after the end of the New Order regime in May 1998. As
a result of changes in the outlook of society in general, alongside exposure to different
forms of modernity, Malukans have been going through changes of identity. These
identity changes have taken place increasingly fast during the last ! few decades.
In general, Malukans began to feel ever more marginalised in their own regions due to
New Order politics that linked most resource extraction directly to the elite in Jakarta.
Local people, in particular those not engaged in sizeable business ventures or the
bureaucracy, became increasingly disappointed in the promises of New Order
development. After decades of denial of Malukans' competence in learning and
performing in modern contexts, Malukans became more concerned with denied
identities and lost certainties. After the fall of Suharto, a good number of Malukans
became progressively more inclined to focus on political struggles instead of
organising their communities for economic and social development. Many started
praying a lot, and people became engaged in lengthy discussions on the future of
their country. In particular, youths began to seek quick money through gambling,
often illegal commercial ventures, compensations for land or resources exploited by
outsiders, or ! to join fanatic groups who promised a better future. The intellectual elite
began to put more effort into advocating their struggle and describing the violations of
their rights to a larger public, to foreign governments, the United Nations and to critical
national and international NGOs.
Around such basic issues as lack of access to resources, business opportunities,
and jobs, people began seeking scapegoats for the cause of their difficulties. For
example, Muslims accused Christians of limiting their freedom of movement and
Christians started blaming immigrants for taking jobs from autochthonous Malukans.
Categories relating to differences in religious faith and precedence were increasingly
used in the process of distinguishing between 'the other' and 'us'. Since colonial
times, the population of the Malukus have been divided fairly evenly in numbers
between Muslims and Christians and this has been reflected in many fields of social,
cultural and political life; the central parts of the province, in particular the city of
Ambon, were separated into groups that had, for decades, been labelled 'Christian'
and 'Muslim'. There was also a growing consciousness of ethnic and cultural
differences between native Ambonese and people from South Sulawesi (Butonese,
Buginese, Makassarese), Java, and Sumatra. Christians have played a much more
significant role in the bureaucracy from colonial times and they stayed in control of
the service sector and dominated provincial politics from Indonesian independence
until the 1990s.
This social and economic status quo changed radically when Islamic military officers
and organisations such as ICMI (Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim se-Indonesia or
All-Indonesia League of Muslim Intellectuals) gained more influence at both the
national and the regional levels in the 1990s. ICMI, sponsored by Soeharto, has been
an important instrument in harnessing Islamic support for the government, often in
controversial ways (see Hefner 1999 and Kingsbury 2002). Established in late 1990
and headed by the then Minister for Research and Technology, B. J. Habibie, this
organisation aims to counter the economic marginalisation of the Islamic community.
It derives its popularity from the feeling that the devout Islamic community has lost out
in the competition with rich (Chinese) businesspeople and foreign investors. The rise
of power of ICMI also led to the division of the military into the so-called nationalist 'red
and white officers', opposed to 'green' Islamist officers. Abdur! rachman Wahid (Gus
Dur), then the leader of the largest and moderate national Muslim organisation
Nahdlutal Ulama (Revival of Religious Scholars) and a firm believer in keeping mosque
and state separate, consistently refused to play along with ICMI whose main purpose
seemed, to Wahid anyway, to be to drum up political support for Soeharto among the
leading Indonesian Muslims.
In the Malukus, Muslims gained increasing control of the governor's offices and other
posts in the mid-1990s. As a result, bitter jealousy arose in places such as Ambon.
Resentment and jealousy, in particular among youths, were also part of a much larger
picture that cannot be fully sketched here. I want to stress that a crucial point in
understanding the sources and the dynamics of the conflicts in the Malukus is the
comprehension of the fact that tensions began to rise due to shifts in power at the
centre of the state and augmented concerns over access to resourcs as a result of
decentralisation at the regional level, as well as a revival of optimism about demokrasi
(mainly in its understanding as a more equal sharing of resource exploitation benefits
and more equality between different religious and ethnic groups). A final spark came
when Jakarta's governor shipped a few hundred Ambonese preman (freeman, 'proxies')
from Jakarta to Maluku just after a riot in the notoriou! s Ketapang scene of narcotics,
prostitution, gambling and crime in North Jakarta in November 1998 during which
pribumi (autochthonous) Muslims and Christians clashed after an incident. These
preman joined frustrated groups in Ambon and inflamed existing sentiments related to
the political economy of being Christian and Muslim. They unleashed their
aggression, mainly against youths who had been preparing for violent clashes since
late 1998, following rumours of planned attacks by those of the opposing religious
camp.
In a situation with a virtual absence of law, a low presence of security forces, and an
inclination by some in the military and the police to take sides and profit from conflict,
local communities began to draw their own battle lines, using a spate of different
symbols ranging from ethnic characteristics and traditional boundaries to religious
labels and arguments that relate to conflict and struggles elsewhere in the world, such
as the Israel-Palestine conflict. Extreme bellicose identities developed quickly and
took on a radical outlook, colouring the battlefields with graffiti, headbands, flags,
signs, banners, and so on. In such a setting, passions run high and fear of retaliation
becomes a main motivation to remobilise and arm one's neighbourhood. On both
sides, fierce militias and warlords established positions and were able to secure
financial, moral and material support from the military, the police, and from Malukans
outside the province and abroad. Competing busin! ess interests, operated by genuine
parties, rogue elements of the military and the police, local politicians, local and
national elites, led to clashes between competing parties and opportunistic
mobilisation of frustrated and traumatised groups. On top of that, Christian laskars
(guerilla-fighters) enjoyed limited support from family members in the Netherlands and
the United States while Muslim laskars were gaining strength in the course of the
conflicts due to the effective mobilisation of Javanese who, in mid-2000, launched a
Laskar Jihad mission in order to defend Islam in Maluku. The arrival of thousands of
jihad fighters led to a devastating increase in violent attacks and put an end to the
processes of reconciliation which had continued to take place after every incident.
Tragically, the islanders of Central Maluku, in particular Ambon, continue to
experience horrific acts of violence. Ongoing tensions, bomb explosions, mortar
launches, church burnings and brutal killings of innocent people, woefully illustrate the
limited success of the peace agreement between Muslims and Christians that had
been signed in February 2002. Shortly after the so-called Malino II agreement was
endorsed in South Sulawesi, the returning Muslim delegation was attacked by Muslim
fanatics who felt that their interests had not been represented and who had been
mobilised in order to prevent successful reconciliation. This was soon followed by the
raising of the flag of the allegedly separatist RMS movement (Republik Maluku
Selatan or South Maluku Republic, locally also represented by the Front Kedaulatan
Maluku or Maluku Sovereignty Front). The attack and continuing opposition to Malino
II by fanatical Muslims and Christians relates not so much to local Ambonese sentim!
ents but more to military and elite interests and the fear among local groups that they
will lose support and see their sources of income drying up.
CONSULTANCY UNDER FIRE
As a consultant and liaison officer for two Dutch donor agencies (Novib/Oxfam
Netherlands and CORDAID), I worked together with LNGOs who were committed to
assisting the victims of the conflicts, to reconciling the warring parties, and to
stimulating discussions about prejudices, racism, human rights, gender relations, and
civil society. Through extensive travelling and visiting of numerous refugee
communities and other victims, discussions with guerrilla-fighters, warlords,
government officials, militaries, church and mosque leaders, and LNGO activists, I
often felt myself confronted with issues that were hard to reconcile.
Most of my work consisted of evaluating proposals, managing bureaucratic matters
concerning funding and contracts between LNGOs and donor and relief organisations,
assessing the needs of refugee communities and other conflict victims, organising
training on community management and appraisal methods. Consequently, I
researched the dynamics of the conflicts mostly while travelling in speedboats, cars,
and planes, in the course of discussions about proposals and programs with LNGOs,
and during the often very limited periods that I spent with the beneficiary communities.
My interest in studying the Malukan conflicts arose from seeing that the world was
largely unaware of the human suffering in the area and that most donor organisations
did not hold clear views on how to intervene in the complex situation. These
observations challenged me to translate the cultural realities of the conflicts into
Western NGO program vernaculars without over-familiarising or over-exoticising them!
(cf. Mahmood 2001). At times this was a frustrating endeavour as most donor and
relief organisations as well as governments which contribute funds for the victims and
are in a position to lobby for neutral intervention, are reluctant to read and hear
thorough accounts of the situation. I felt competent to make sense of the conflicts
because I could draw on my experiences of working as an anthropologist in other
parts of Eastern Indonesia, in particular in the province of Papua (Irian Jaya), and I
could draw flexibly and critically on information from informants, my own observations,
and the relevant literature to assess the situation in the Malukus.
As mentioned above, during my travels through the Malukus I had many things to
worry about other than carefully researching and documenting the dynamics of the
conflicts. Much of the information I gathered on the background and the reality of the
war was forced on me, in the sense that I simply could not evade it. Horrifying events
intruded on me more often than I thought I could handle and, like most people living
under almost daily threats for nearly three years, frustrated me, as people were
brutally killed and houses torched, seemingly under the blind eye of the security
forces. Most nights in Ambon, for example, were characterised by bomb blasts and
shootings and often sleep came only in brief lulls. But after a while one gets used to
it, and often I only woke up when bullets hit the corrugated iron roof or when a mortar
exploded just a hundred metres away from my bed. Locals referred to the sound of
machine-guns, the buzzing of bullets and the blasts of grenade strike! s, as the
obligatory nocturnal songs.
Although I knew that the violence in the Malukus took place amid shifting state and
military policies, I still could not understand the sudden eruption of massive and
extremely brutal fighting among Malukans. What were the historical antecedents and
to what extent are the conflicts instigated by outsiders? What are the current social
tensions? What is the influence of external pressures? To what extent can brutal
murders, rape, intimidation and the massive destruction of property be related to the
force of religious adherence, cultural and ethnic inclinations, and the search for
identity in modern times? What are the outside interests and what are the human
limits of sacrificing innocent people's lives for the purpose of guaranteeing power and
access to natural, trade and industry resources? What about the role of the military
and the police about whom most Malukans talk as having significant business
interests, particularly in the field of resource extraction?6 And, perhap! s most difficult
to answer, how to speak about the horror of the wars that took the lives of friends and
at times threatened my own life? All these questions haunted me during my stay in
the Malukus.
In Ambon and other parts of the Malukus, it was easy to categorise and discuss
seemingly rational choices of leaders and their followers, both in 'Jakarta' and among
local communities. Dealing with these issues was largely a matter of trying to
disconnect far-fetched conspiracy theories ranging from international Judeo-Christian
conspiracies that intend to 'Balkanise' Indonesia so that Western power can grab
Indonesia's wealth, to a military operation aimed at obliterating all Malukans by having
them killing each other so that Java could take over the resource-rich region. Much
more difficult was trying to rationalise the irrational effect of the conspiracies,
presumed impact. As politics in Indonesia are shrouded in mystery largely because
elites make and announce sophisticated plans without looking closely at the effect on
situations that are more complex than they imagine, local people are very wary of any
promised peacemaking process announced in Jakarta.
At a more local level, I have heard stories about cannibalism and I remember vividly a
doctor telling how she had to cut human meat from the teeth of male warriors. I also
noticed lingering ethnic hatred that Christians held for Muslims and Muslims for
Christians. The Christian variety suggests that Muslims are primordially aggressive
because of the tradition and the lore of Islam. Muslims on the other hand say that
Christians with their stress on 'charity' are intrinsic hypocrites. A second level of
bigotry comes from outsiders, in particular Javanese, who believe that all Malukans
are by nature hard-line, unsophisticated, and aggressive.7
At the beginning of my work in the Malukus, I felt that the moral intelligence of most
Malukans would eventually prevail over the ignorance and malevolence of a few. But
when I started hearing NGO activists putting forward immoderate stories about the
religious 'other' and Catholic priests and nuns voicing extremist theories about
Muslims and Islam, I lost much of that hope. I began to realise the power of the force
within the anxious and anguished to cling to their own religion, a result of the priests,
ministers, Islamic prayer leaders (imam), Islamic teachers (ustad), and parents
teaching for decades that theirs is the only true religion. That power and process
spread and reproduced powerful labels which proved to have a devastating effect once
transformed into bellicose identities which grew to extremes in the course of the ever
more serious fighting.
THE NAIVETY OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD
In this situation there was not much to be done except to assist local organisations to
provide any possible form of support for those suffering from the conflict. Even more
frustrating was to realise how poorly the world read the situation. This became clear
when, in May 2001, the Dutch Ambassador and his retinue paid a visit to Ambon to
talk to leaders and representatives of all parties in Ambon. The Embassy was
obviously out of touch with reality. It thought that the regional government would
welcome the delegation, when it had not formally announced the visit and had failed to
grasp the sensitivity of the arrival of representatives of the former coloniser who was
widely rumoured to be backing the RMS struggle for a Christian, independent South
Malukan Republic. Moreover, tensions were very high due to intensifying rumours of
an upcoming attack.
After their visit to Papua (Irian Jaya), the delegation arrived in Ambon to find that the
top-level of government there did not want to meet them. For almost one week before
the visit there were rumours that Muslim fighters were planning to attack the Christian
areas of the town of Ambon. The fear of these attacks was mounting as the regular
shooting between the Muslim area of Galunggung and the urban Christian area of
Karang Panjang had suddenly stopped, leading people to think that serious
preparations for more severe attacks were in the making. While not knowing what
form they would take - as of Thursday, three days before the arrival of the
Ambassador - people were on high alert. When nothing happened, they were
convinced that the attack would be launched either on Friday or on Saturday night,
but nothing happened until the Dutch delegation arrived on Sunday.
When the delegation arrived LNGO activists, INGO colleagues and I quickly informed
them about the situation, but the Ambassador did not recognise that his arrival had
made things worse and might be the reason behind the delay in the attacks. That
night, while representatives of local and international NGOs updated the Embassy
delegation on the situation in the Malukus, all hell broke loose in Karang Panjang and
Soya. Some fourteen so-called Ninja fighters drove around in black, armoured cars,
broke into people's houses, raped and killed the inhabitants and threw hand-grenades
into the residences before taking off in search of other victims. The attacks slowly
mobilised the military into moving some of its armoured vehicles in the direction of the
border facing the Muslim area. This surprised and frustrated many Christians as it
was clear that no Muslims were trying to cross the border. Some bombs exploded
near the 'neutral' Hotel Amans in Mardika Pantai where the Ambassador! was having
his meeting. The military wanted to evacuate the Dutch delegation together with other
expatriates to a safer area, but the Ambassador insisted on continuing the meeting.
After an hour of increasing tensions, serious gunfire and loud bomb-explosions, the
Dutch delegation finally followed the advice of the military commander and allowed the
military to transport it through a dangerous area to the safer Hotel Mutiara.
The next day, after a horrible night during which a number of people were brutally
killed, some Muslims analysed the events as follows: preman had been holding off
with their assault until the Dutch delegation arrived in order to draw attention to the
beleaguered cause of the Christians' attempt to establish an independent Christian
RMS state. On the other side, Christians said that Muslims wanted to scare away the
Dutch delegation because they thought the Ambassador had come to review the
progress of the RMS state which is supported by the Netherlands Government. A
picture closer to the truth was that a cleverly instigated strategy was played out
involving both Christian and Muslim preman trained at a Laskar Jihad training camp.
Evidence for this third explanation came after the police arrested two of the Ninja
fighters who revealed their identities and religious backgrounds. Both were Ambonese,
one Christian and the other Muslim. They said that they had undergone terrorist
training by the Laskar Jihad in a camp near Solo and that they received money for
killing people. Who was behind the attacks was never publicised but rumours
suggested the Special Forces (Kopassus) of the Indonesian military. It became clear,
however, that this had been just another carefully planned attack launched to frustrate
the two warring parties by killing people and further fuelling existing sentiments and
radicalising bellicose identities. The timing was effectively adjusted to accommodate
the visit of the Dutch delegation and if the Ambassador had been sensitive to the
existing tensions and the opportunities provided to instigators to feed
RMS-sentiments by misusing his visit, he might have decided to postpone his visi! t.
The attacks, however, would have happened anyway. In fact, after the Ambassador
left, frustrated, on the next day, the Ninja attacks continued for another few days. The
military and the police refused to search cars or to undertake any other preventive
action.
Delegations from governments, human rights organisations, aid donors, and
journalists seemed also to suggest that no real desire in the outside world existed to
understand the conflicts in the Malukus. Or perhaps the situation was too confusing
and too demanding, as most locals who spoke to the observers readily pointed to the
military and Jakarta as the root causes of the conflicts. Many outsiders did not see
that most of the local militias did not possess the logistics to continue the
increasingly sophisticated attacks. Few of the Malukans had firearms other than
those handed out or sold by the military and the police. Most of the fighters in the
early stages of the conflict were unemployed or underemployed teenage and
adolescent males armed with machetes and imbued with the assurance they were
defending their communities.8 The local fighting gangs could have been neutralised
easily by the Indonesian military with little or no loss of life on the part of the army. On
the contrary, what happened is that the gangs received support from elements of the
armed forces and from Muslim jihads, Christian fighters, and (often Ambonese) thugs
from Jakarta, particularly after the above-mentioned gang war between young Malukan
migrants in Ketapang, Jakarta. Most delegations only incidentally asked why there
was no clear action from the well-equipped Indonesian intervention force, the local
security forces and the police.
More unsettling than the oblivion to the dynamics of the conflicts, was the tendency of
outsiders to believe, alongside the general stance among Indonesian authorities, that
Malukans engage in acts of violence because they are fierce by nature, and often
behave irrationally and barbarically. This kind of 'wild man' notion of Malukans would
not turn up in mission reports but, during discussions in the field, regular allusions
were made to these kind of explanations for the continuation of the conflict. In that
sense, foreign observers did not differ much from local people. Most of the foreign
observers were Western Christians and would have the Christian area of Ambon as
their base camp. As a result, they collected more information on the situation among
Christians than among Muslims. Considering that in the contemporary Western
imagination Muslims are quickly associated with terrorism, it is not surprising that
many of these observers were soon convinced by local people tha! t they and the
foreigners could not safely venture among Muslims because they are all fierce
warriors. That a similar notion about Christian Malukans is held among Muslims was
less often noticed. Frequently when I returned to the Christian areas after long visits to
Muslim communities, Christians could not understand how a White foreigner's life
could be safeguarded by Muslims. They would agree that there are also hostile people
in their midst, but they were sure that most, if not all, Muslims were barely
suppressed berserk warriors. Because most Muslims suspect Westerners, and the
Dutch in particular, of supporting the Christian struggle it was sometimes very hard for
me to focus on both sides' stories and to make sure that both communities would
receive the necessary attention from LNGOs. In order to sketch these limitations let
me recount the threatening state of affairs in West Seram where I formed a religiously
mixed team of LNGO activists to investigate the possibilities of br! inging the
separated parties together.
ATTEMPTS AT CONCILIATION AND THREATS IN WEST SERAM
In August 2001, after running a week-long NGO training program on community
management in Manado, North Sulawesi, I rushed back to Ambon to investigate a
new attack on a village in western Seram. While in Manado I was called by friends in
western Seram saying that the village of Alang Asaude was again being attacked by
Muslims and I wanted to find out what was going on, because I had been dealing with
the region earlier, in April that same year. This was the fourth attack and, just after
the third attack, I had visited the area and discussed the possibilities of reconciliation
or support for activities that would stimulate the getting together of Muslims and
Christians. I noticed enthusiasm for conflict transformation but because of mutual
distrust some persuasion and coordination from outside was necessary.
The problem, however, was that the only NGO active in the area was a very
inexperienced organisation based in Ambon, ignorant of the history and the details of
the relations between the Christian community of Alang Asaude and its neighbouring
Muslim villages such as Waessala. Even more unsettling was that the NGO did not
dare visit the Muslims let alone discuss programs and reconciliation with them as the
staff considered Muslims to be treacherously aggressive people. With financial
support from several uncritical donor organisations, they did nothing more than hand
out pots, pans, kitchen utensils and rice to the Christian community. In the
meantime, the many refugees in the neighbouring Muslim villages did not receive any
attention. Despite my warnings, the NGO did not change its policy and the frustration
among the Muslims increased and came to a head when, a few months later, Laskar
Jihad fighters from a base in or near Luhu came to Waessala to plan an attack.
The August attack appeared to be well organised. The military post in Alang Asaude
was regularly contacted by the smaller post in Waessala which was armed by four
soldiers, including one Papuan from Nabire. During these conversations, the Alang
Asaude post provided information to Muslims who were ready to attack. In the
meantime, the people of Alang Asaude did not know what was going on. A few nights
before the attack one man who heard voices near his house, got up and saw that
people from Waessala were being guided around the village by the military.
Astonished and scared, he ran to the military post to ask the commander to do
something about what he thought was an invasion. The commander was not at the
post but a Papuan soldier from Merauke acted immediately upon the report. He took
his machine gun, walked into the bushes and pointed his rifle at anything that was
moving. Because of fear he almost shot his superior who, caught in the very act of
exploring the village with! the Muslim attackers, told him not to talk about this with
anyone or he would kill him.
Three days later, the village was attacked and when the Papuan learned that the
Muslim Jihad had murdered his Papuan friend from Nabire because he resisted the
attack, he wanted to burn the military post and kill his colleagues. Later, while
drinking palm wine with him he told me in detail about the nightly conversations
through walkietalkies between the commander and the war-leaders in the two
neighbouring Muslim villages. The Papuan soldier suggested that all the attacks are
orchestrated; I think he was right.
I was rather frustrated by these insights and annoyed by the continuing insulting
behaviour of Javanese soldiers who wanted the Islamic female members of my mixed
team to wear headscarves otherwise they threatened to rape them. The subsequent
visit to Wassaela the next day was much more relaxed and there we found that only a
very few young men had joined the forces from outside during the last attack on the
Christians. The adat-leader told us that it would be a good idea to talk with the raja
(customary leader) in Luhu who, according to tradition, should be able to settle the
problems and bring all parties in the customary region of Hoamoal together again.
Though I knew that due to the concerns of the military any attempt at reconciliation
would be pointless, my team and I found that we had to collect as much information
as possible in order to develop a sensible intervention strategy under whatever
circumstances. So we decided to travel to Luhu the next day.
Due to high tension among the people of the Islamic village of Luhu we were not able
to collect much information. In fact, fanatical Muslims who wanted to clear their
territory of 'dirty Christian pigs' and RMS supporters from the Netherlands held us in
custody for one whole night. Around us, tense and frightening debates as well as
violent clashes between the many factions in the village broke out. Almost every hour
a new faction took over command in the house and pointed guns at our heads and
threatened to kill us. In the meantime, the other factions were throwing stones at the
building and exploding bombs.
The gangs consisted largely of youths who did not want to join forces in Ambon town
anymore but did not know what to do back home. Their choices included leading a life
as a fisherman or a farmer taking care of a family, joining the moderate Muslim faction
that wanted to rehabilitate relations with Christians, or taking up arms with one of the
many gangs in the village that was either supported by the Laskar Jundullah, Laskar
Mujahidin, Laskar Hitu, Laskar Jihad, Mujadin Kompak or another local fanatical
group. Most of these different fanatical Muslim groups have their roots in Java and
established bases in the Malukus after early 1999. Their aims range from moral and
religious support to Malukan Muslims, to destruction of churches, assassination of
priests, Christian political leaders and Christian business people, and attacks on
Christian villages and speedboats. Some of them, like Laskar Jihad and Laskar
Mujahidin, have links to the army in Maluku. Soldiers of certain battalions fought on
their side and many soldiers were willing to rent out their guns and sell bullets. Local
youths following ethnic or descent lines would organise themselves in opposition or in
competition with the existing laskars and often it was not very hard for them to get
access to weapons. All these groups, with different backgrounds and a variety of
styles of leadership, presented different political and religious agendas to the villagers
of Luhu.
In a state of confusion and stress, the different factions of outside fighters and their
ideologies wormed their way into the fibre of the public psyche and disrupted the
whole community. Suddenly, people wanted to kill the raja who had always been a
symbol for the unity and identity of the people of Luhu, who in the eighteenth century
fought against the Portuguese to keep Catholicism out and who had effectively
resisted the Dutch.9 Now, these xenophobic ideologies were related to the United
States and Israel, while the first Dutchman to enter their village since the beginning of
the communal wars was accused of spying for the Jewish-Christian-Western
conspiracy. We had come to Luhu at an awkward time when most of the villagers
were listening to too many instigating voices that, in fact, everybody feared. Bigotry
had set this village up against itself. My mind raced for hours and my body trembled
and was seized with cramp. I tried to be invisible but couldn't. We tried to disappear
and run to the beach but were afraid of being trapped and shot.
Finally, in the morning, when everybody was exhausted and the raja had cooled the
heads of the fanatics by saying that he would solve the problem the next day, things
went quiet. Fortunately, there were more level heads among the leaders which could
still prevail and resolve crises without bloodshed, but it should be noted that due to
internal struggles more than twenty people have died in Luhu since the beginning of
the riots in the Malukus. In the early morning, I was able to walk around the village
and sit down with some of the boys who had pointed their guns at my head just a few
hours before. By having tea with them and taking time to hear their stories, they
eventually opened up. They wanted me to understand they were all very vulnerable
because of the many opposing factions in the village. They said that, in fact, they did
not want to engage in violent conflict but that they were frustrated because Ambon
was still experiencing attacks from Christians who were support! ed by the Dutch and
Americans.
Back in Ambon, the team started reflecting on what had happened. After contacting
people and organisations which could detail the social and cultural situation in Luhu, a
Muslim NGO returned. It was received very well and many of those who had
threatened my life conveyed their apologies. Following several visits and careful
assessments, the NGO started sporting and economic activities in Luhu and has
reportedly been able to reduce much of the internal tensions.
CONCLUSION
As the amount of anthropological writings and analysis on communal conflicts,
violence and terror grows, there is also more discussion on the anthropologist's
experience of violence in the field. As I indicated in the introduction, many of the
existing reflections on the role of the anthropologists in areas which are violent
suggest that, despite unsettling circumstances, the anthropologist can still work in
ways which are considered normal, that is, once the potential risks are negotiated the
reward will be significant knowledge. Many authors discuss the problems and
strategies of survival, but at the same time put forward the possibility of engaging
effectively with informants to illicit impartial data.
This is, in fact, the way I initially approached the situation in the Malukus, thinking
that by doing the kind of anthropological fieldwork that was taught during my
anthropology studies and which I had previously applied during fieldwork in Papua
New Guinea and Papua (Irian Jaya), I would be able to gain objective insights into the
backgrounds, dynamics and effects of the violence in order to develop, in collaboration
with local organisations, sensible intervention strategies. Moreover, besides being very
careful not to end up in violent situations, not putting my interlocutors and my local
NGO colleagues in vulnerable situations, my main approach was showing the
aggressors and the victims that my colleagues and I were as vulnerable as they were.
I thought that by showing one's vulnerability and not by becoming a hero or in any
other way an outside observer, I would be able to get the true story. In most situations
that worked very well.
For example, realising that much of the instability in the region related to Dutch
colonial politics in which, broadly stated, Christians had better access to the
bureaucracy, business, and the armed forces, I usually went to great lengths
discussing rumours about the Netherlands Government supporting the Christians and
being in favour of the RMS. Among belligerent Christians who thought of Muslims as
primordially aggressive and intolerant, I often tried to make people understand what
certain Muslims groups were fighting for, however difficult that was in the complex
situation of shifting identities, shifting alliances and fluctuating fanaticisms. The 'real
story' was inherently elusive in this context. In the Luhu case which I described above
this did not work, as all the parties that intimidated us were convinced that the only
reason somebody from the Netherlands would visit their village was to spy for the
Western Christian anti-Muslim conspiracy. My team and I were thou! ght to be
collecting data in support of the Ambonese Christians' attempt to wipe out the
Muslims from the Malukus, or at least to revitalise the Christian hegemony in the
bureaucracy, education and business. Being transparent with them did not work, and
it became clear that the team and I had not seen all the risks involved in going to
Luhu. We thought we had made a good assessment but it appeared that we should
have taken even more time talking with knowledgeable people about the foreseeable
risks involved in working in conflict areas. Going to Luhu was perhaps not a good idea
and I would argue that in some cases not doing research at all is the best option.
What helped in the Luhu case was keeping silent, which is a technique that is not
part of anthropology's methodological strategies (cf. Green 1995:118-19). Being very
threatening, the situation demanded some very clever posturing in order to survive and
the women on the team advised me to 'shut my mouth' and let them do the talking.
With respect to the Christian Ambonese on our team, we successfully disguised their
identity. I avoided misrepresenting myself in order to safeguard my well-being and, in
fact, in most instances people were received well who were liaison officers for donor
organisations collecting information to develop programs which would assist people in
vulnerable situations. At times, however, those in refugee camps were reluctant to talk
because we were the umpteenth NGO coming along collecting data for programs,
never actually materialising anything in support of local initiatives.
The Luhu case also indicates that doing research or consultancy work in a war zone
can have grave consequences for assistants or local NGO workers. It is normal in
ethnographic fieldwork to come across information which cannot be revealed because
it would increase the chances of the informant or someone else being physically
attacked or sent to jail. It is also obvious that in times of shared danger, tension and
excitement - or soon afterwards - people are going to tell the researcher things that
are different from the things they are telling as an informant. This means that the
social scientist as researcher and consultant has to know enough about the context
in which information is collected and about the possible consequences of what he or
she makes public. This increases obligations on those collecting data under fire.
Given the limited responsibility that a consultant for a donor organisation can take for
local NGO activists eager to run programs to assist victims of conflicts or to reconcile
warring parties, there is an additional issue. This relates partly to the fact that local
NGOs can be overly enthusiastic and optimistic and sometimes strive to outdo their
rivals in competing for the attention of donors. Risks also increase because many
local NGOs are eager to convince potential donors that their proposed intervention
strategy is worth funding, inclining them to present situations as safer and more
workable than they in fact are. Because I found it crucial to assess local
circumstances myself, some NGO activists and community representatives would
take the risk of venturing into dangerous areas for the sake of satisfying the donor.
Kovats-Bernat stresses the important ethical point that assistants and informants in
dangerous fields 'are entitled to negotiate equally and exclusively with ethnographers
concerning matters of exposure to risk and research priorities' (2002:215), but I would
add that with respect to humanitarian aid work! the situation is more complex.
Both the Luhu and the Dutch delegation cases show that however difficult situations
may have been, the data they provided and the critical reflection they stimulated were
invaluable. Through such experiences and the stories gathered, the researcher and
the consultant are eventually able to disclose crucial aspects of the complex nature of
the violence, and its perpetrators and victims. Anthropologists can contribute
significantly as they are used to hearing and taking seriously people's stories, which
prevent them from concluding that militant groups or parts of the military such as
Kopassus are necessarily 'irrational', 'twisted', 'dangerous' or 'wicked'. As outsiders to
conflicts, anthropologists can carefully assess what violence means and why people
engage in aggressive deeds. It is equally important to know how those in
governments, international organisations and INGOs think. With respect to the
Malukan conflicts, international donors generally wanted to hear about pe! ace without
carefully reading reports from the battlegrounds and without carefully listening to
radical voices and powers which do not see peace as something positive. To
understand what they want and how to comply with their wishes requires thorough
ethnographic insight and a strong will to get one's message across to the bureaucrats
in governments, LNGOs and donor agencies. In order to establish what all parties
wish, it is not only important to work through the right channels and do the right
things, but also to fight against prejudices among other outsiders in order to prevent
dangerous interventions. Though dangerous, and emotionally and physically
exhausting, I found it rewarding to be relevant in a world fraught with violence and not
to decide hastily to depart when things were getting rough.
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