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The Jakarta Post


The Jakarta Post, October 31, 2005

Communal conflicts and terrorism

Riwanto Tirtosudarmo, Jakarta

The intention of the Indonesian Military (TNI) Chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto to revive the territorial command is not a surprise at all. It is only a reflection of a long established self image of the military as the nation's sole protector against security threats. Putting it into the global context the announcement echoes the idea of war on terror propagated by U.S. President George W. Bush after the terrorist attack in New York in 2001.

Embracing Bush's fallacious ideology of the war on terror in the Indonesian context however could be a dangerous undertaking for Indonesia's current fragile democracy. To put it simply, the intention to revive the territorial military command will easily morph into the reinvention of state terrorism committed by the Soeharto regime. Reviving the military territorial command will only mean instituting a surveillance mechanism; which grossly overlooks the interconnectedness of domestic and global politics.

Conventionally, terrorism is a violent act seeking political recognition within a confined nation-state's border. Today's terrorism however is embedded within the currently celebrated globalize world. Terrorism should therefore be conceptualized in its new meaning within the vastly growing interconnectedness of the world.

Studies conducted by the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Indonesia indicates a loose connection between the communal conflicts particularly in Central Sulawesi and Maluku with the terrorist network in Southeast Asia that is likely also linked to the global terrorist network. Research on communal conflicts in Indonesia shows the important role of ethnic entrepreneurs -- in many cases local politicians -- in mobilizing the sentiments of people's attachment to ethnicity, religion and territoriality to achieve their short term political and economic goals.

These studies also confirm that such mobilization will only work in a society where horizontal inequalities exist between different culturally defined groups. While violent conflicts in Kalimantan might be different in the involvement of religion from what happened in Sulawesi and Maluku they share a common feature of the existence economic and political inequalities between different culturally defined groups.

The increasing violence and terror in the current unabated process of global capitalist expansion cannot be separated from the fact that there is more inequality between the rich-north countries and the poor-south countries.

Citizens of the rich countries in the north will be increasingly threatened by the fact that terrorist networks are embedded within the process of globalization itself. The feeling of insecurity is becoming a worldwide phenomena -- in the north as well as in the south -- although with not the same vulnerability and different reasons.

The 2005 Human Development Report released last month by UNDP in New York provides the hard facts on the need of genuine international cooperation to reduce the alarming global inequality. In this context, worldwide terrorism logically posits a possible causal-effect relationship with the increasing inequality at the global level.

Prof. Juwono Sudarsono, the Indonesian defense minister persuasively argued that "global security ultimately depends on broader-based social and economic justice, and peace and security depends on domestic distributive justice -- that should start with a greater commitment to social justice at home." (The Jakarta Post, Oct. 12-Oct. 13, 2005).

Social justice has indeed been the core political issue in Indonesia even before its independence. Social justice was the ultimate goal that drove our founding fathers when they decided to form the Indonesian nation. Social justice should therefore be among the top priorities of Indonesia's political platform where other immediate goals should be rendered.

Indonesia is a nationalist project that believes that all citizens are equal regardless of their ethnic or religious background. In this regard the mushrooming political and territorial claims based on ethnicity or religion in the guise of regional autonomy is a serious setback for the realization of national goals. These ethnic and religious resurgences reflect undercurrent of increasing inequality.

The peaceful political solution to arms conflict in Aceh evidently proved our ability to avoid military means alone in resolving the protracted problem of inequality and injustice experienced by the Acehnese. The problem that we are now facing with terrorism should be seen in the new light of what Prof. Juwono has succinctly voiced -- "a greater commitment to social justicee at home".

Previous experiences have given us a precious lesson on the counterproductive effects when military power is used to resolve the perceived threats that are actually rooted within the state's incompetence in providing distributive justice for the people.

Social justice should become the broader umbrella in which the crucial role of military and security apparatus can be proportionally conceptualized.

The writer is a researcher at the Research Center for Society and Culture, Indonesia Institute of Sciences.

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