For the past year, the simmering battle in Indonesia’s Maluku province–formerly known as the Spice Islands–has been virtually ignored. But not anymore. Over the past two weeks, a spasm of horrific violence has left more than 700 people dead–and perhaps many more–on both sides of the Muslim-Christian divide, doubling the number of people killed since the conflict erupted a year ago. (Although 90 percent of Indonesia’s 210 million people are Muslim, Maluku is more evenly divided, with about 54 percent Muslim and 44 percent Christian.) The bloodiest fortnight of fighting in recent Indonesian history has not only buried the islands’ image as a haven of ethnic and religious harmony; it now threatens to spill over into the rest of Indonesia. Parliamentary leader Amien Rais said last week: “If the violence spreads to Java and Sumatra, it could be the beginning of the death knell of Indonesia.”
The repercussions are already being felt. On Friday more than 300,000 angry Muslims marched in Jakarta on the eve of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival marking the end of Ramadan. Stoked by newspaper reports about a “genocide” of 2,000 Muslims–numbers that officials staunchly denied–protesters smeared goat’s blood on a cross, chanted “Jihad! Jihad!” (holy war) and vowed to join their brothers in battle. Some wanted to go to Maluku, but others threatened to wage war on the Christian minority at home. “If the Muslim genocide in Maluku doesn’t stop,” said one, “there will be a Christian genocide in Jakarta.” It’s not just an idle threat: three weeks ago, hundreds of white-clad Islamic youths set fire to a Christian complex outside Jakarta, killing one student and destroying a chapel, seminary and clinic. The complex was less than a mile from the military’s main headquarters, yet not a single soldier turned up to stop the violence. And last week Muslim riots against ethnic Chinese–many of whom are Christian–broke out for the first time in more than a year in both Java and Sumatra.
Tiny and remote as they are, the islands of Maluku have played a pivotal role in war and history before. When explorers found cloves and nutmeg here five centuries ago, the spices–more valuable than gold–led the Netherlands, England and Portugal to penetrate Asia and give birth to Indonesia. (In perhaps the best deal, the English gave the Dutch some of these islands in exchange for New York City.) Western influence turned this area into the only predominantly Christian zone in Indonesia. That started to change with the influx of Muslim migrants over the past 20 years. When the dictator, Suharto, fell in 1998–and with the Asian financial crisis, which exacerbated economic competition–tensions simmered between the two groups. The precise origins of the current conflagration are murky. Both sides point to a traffic incident a year ago, but they give opposing accounts (as they have about everything since) and they talk darkly about “outside forces.” The only certainty is that the fire, once started, had plenty of fuel: distrust, despair, discredited security forces, a weak civilian government and Suharto’s insidious legacy of divide and rule. Today the holy war feeds itself, as each new atrocity creates another wound to be avenged.
The violence in Maluku has baffled and bruised the new government of President Abdurrahman Wahid. Muslims are calling for the resignation of Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri, whom Wahid assigned to find solutions to the conflict. She has done little to address the problem. At the height of the violence, she flew with her entourage to Hong Kong for a lavish New Year’s Eve celebration. Wahid, a moderate Muslim respected by both sides, is still perceived as someone who could rise above the chaos. But when he visited Ambon on Dec. 12, he simply told local leaders they would have to work it out themselves. Two weeks later, after an accident in which a Christian motorist ran over a Muslim boy, the violence exploded again. Wahid’s decision not to declare a state of emergency angered his minister for Security Affairs, General Wiranto–and sparked rumors of the general’s imminent departure. But most observers agree that letting the Muslim-dominated Indonesian military impose martial law would have been perceived by Christians as a declaration of war.
The security forces have complicated the conflict. Not only have they been incapable of keeping the peace, they have been accused of taking sides–the military with the Muslims, the police with the Christians. Nobody says this is a matter of policy, and some of the accusations are simply wrong, but there is some evidence that both forces have fanned, rather than quelled, the flames of violence. Recent visitors to Ambon, for example, watched in astonishment as off-duty policemen lent their automatic weapons to young Christian gang members. The military, deployed only on the Muslim side, has fired into Christian crowds and engaged in direct combat with police. On one recent afternoon in Ambon, several Christian men with homemade weapons were listening to a nearby fire fight. “We can’t go there,” said one man. “That’s the military versus the police.” The military didn’t go into Christian areas until last week, when the regional military commander took operational control over the local Army and police–and sent in Christian troops to seize weapons.
Where will the violence end? The situation in Ambon calmed down last week, but fighting spread to the northern islands, swallowing up years of coexistence in a frenzy of ethnic cleansing. Confiscating weapons is not enough to stop such a war. “The hate and suffering of the past year will not be resolved in a generation,” says Tania Thennu, coordinator of a group of nongovernmental organizations in Ambon–and one of the few people who dares to visit both sides. “It will take more than five generations.” For the protagonists–mostly bored, disaffected youth–the crisis has given meaning, excitement, a sense of belonging. The gangs on either side are loosely organized, but their subcultures are well defined. These days, every “jihad” warrior seems to wear a gold star and crescent around his neck, while every young Christian soldier has a silver cross and a tattoo with messages such as i love mary.
This is an Old Testament war, and there are precious few voices standing up for peace. In one reconciliation effort, the United Nations Development Program helped Muslim and Christian leaders sign a peace agreement in December. But those leaders hold no sway over the street gangs, and the ceasefire lasted less than two weeks. When leaders go to their communities, they talk not about reconciliation but separation and survival. “I do not try to preach the Gospel now,” says Father Agus Ulahayanan, a Roman Catholic priest in Ambon. “I already see that it is useless. People are too emotional to listen.” It’s no different on the Muslim side. During a New Year’s Eve meeting at Ambon’s al-Fatah mosque, a moderate Muslim community leader encouraged the crowd to move toward peace and reconciliation–even recommending that some migrants move back home. On his way out, a group of Muslim youths taunted and threatened him. His car tires were slashed. He barely escaped in an ambulance. In Maluku these days, even “peace” is a dangerous word.
