atimes.com, August 24, 2002
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 Muuslim 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.
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