Anatomy of conflicts in post-Soeharto era

Anatomy of conflicts in post-Soeharto era

Sidney Jones, Indonesia Project Director, International Crisis Group,
Jakarta

Since President Soeharto resigned in May 1998, violence and
conflict seem to have become part of Indonesian life. We have
seen bitter sectarian strife, now on the wane, in Maluku and Poso
and attempts to provoke it elsewhere. We have seen an escalation
of violence in Papua and Aceh, and it's going to take enormous
good will on all sides to make the new agreement on cessation of
hostilities in Aceh hold. We've seen horrendous outbreaks of
violence between the Dayak and Madurese ethnic groups in West and
Central Kalimantan. We've seen mob violence against suspected
criminals; physical clashes between student groups, gangs, and in
some cases, whole neighborhoods; and a proliferation of
unofficial security organizations run by thugs who extort,
intimidate, and provide protection in the name of political
parties, religious organizations, and businesses. Finally, we
have Bali and likely links to international terrorism.

It's no wonder that nostalgia for Soeharto is on the rise.
From Jakarta to Medan to Makassar, the man whose fall was so
welcomed at home and around the world in 1998 is now seen as
being tough and decisive: One man said Indonesia never would have
had a terrorist problem under Jakarta -- Didor Saja! (He'd just
shoot them!).' "He was bad, but he was good," another person told
me." "At least we felt safe." The worst thing people are willing
to say about the man now is that he spoiled his children.

But we need to remember that much of the turmoil we're seeing
now has its roots in the authoritarianism and political controls
of the Soeharto years. We complain bitterly about the woeful lack
of leadership in this country, but we have to remember that
Soeharto deliberately emasculated political parties, nipped any
threat to his leadership in the bud, and discouraged many of
Indonesia's best and brightest from even thinking about going
into government.

We have been shocked by some of the communal and ethnic
violence that has erupted. But the tensions that fueled these
outbreaks didn't just suddenly appear in 1998. They were simply
kept out of sight by rigid insistence on acceptance of Pancasila,
and controls on freedom of expression that prevented open
discussion about the seriousness of the problem.

And they were exacerbated by some of the development policies
that Soeharto pursued, particularly with respect to poorly
thought -- through transmigration projects, allocation of land-
use rights, and the granting of forest concessions, all of which
took place with a colossal insensitivity to local cultures.

We bemoan, or we did until the Bali investigation, the poor
performance of the police in maintaining law and order, and the
lack of military accountability. But both are a direct
consequence of the Soeharto government's use of the military as
its internal security apparatus. It left the police with little
to do except collect money. And it left a military trained to see
its own compatriots as the major threat.

I was in Cambodia in late 1992 when an Indonesian battalion
was stationed there with UN Peacekeeping Forces. They and the
Bangladeshis were probably the most popular battalions with
ordinary Cambodians. They didn't drink or womanize, they were
extremely polite, and they went out of their way to help the
local community. It was an ABRI Masuk Desa program that worked.
Why? Because Cambodians weren't the enemy, and the soldiers
didn't perceive them as such. One consequence of using the army
in an internal security role is that the enemy becomes your own
people.

Soeharto left the justice system in a shambles, and even if
there were the political will to reform it now, which there
isn't, it would take decades to build up a truly professional
cadre of judges and prosecutors. The lack of credibility of the
courts has several consequences for conflict resolution:

* It weakens the legitimacy of government institutions more
generally

* It encourages people to take justice into their own hands

* It encourages people to look for alternative legal systems.

The press here has given much attention to wav in which some
aspects of Islamic law are increasingly being applied across the
country. But almost more worrisome is the growth in demand for
application of hukum adat, customary law, by ethnic groups that
are dominant in particular subdistricts or districts.

By definition, hukum adat is exclusionary; it privileges
members of one ethnic group against another. On the one hand, it
is seen by many in the Outer Islands as an instrument to redress
the arbitrary land seizures of the Soeharto years. On the other,
its application could serve to heighten inter-ethnic tensions or
tensions between indigenous groups and migrants. If there were a
credible national legal system for resolving disputes, the demand
for adat law would not be so potent.

The proliferation of "civilian auxiliaries" to the security
forces, quasi-official organizations that get very close to goon
squads, and other organized but nongovernmental armed groups is
another worrisome legacy of the Soeharto years. The New Order
made systematic use of civilian militias in East Timor and in
Aceh, during the DOM period. It may have been a standard
counterinsurgency tactic, but the result was deeper polarization
of society in troubled areas, and less accountability of the
government. It created Pemuda Pancasila, Pemuda Karya, and other
youth groups to mobilize on behalf of the ruling party, Golkar,
against the political opposition at election time.

These groups added to the culture of violence in Indonesia and
set a precedent for the proliferation of laskars and satgas after
Soeharto fell. The problem was that before, they all answered to
Cendana. Now they answer to a host of different officials and
entities at all levels of society, making it all the more
difficult for a weak central government to rein them in.

The notion of civilian auxiliaries to the security forces,
whether it's called Pam Swakarsa (military back militia) or Kamra
or a host of other possible names, is so ingrained that in
discussions of police reform, the most common suggestion for
building a bridge to a particular community is to create a Pam
Swakarsa. Not only do these organizations act as buffers between
the police and the people instead of bridges, but they also
quickly degenerate into simple proxies of the police- only with
less training and no accountability. It's the police themselves,
not their proxies, who should be bonding with communities.

The article was as speech presented on Tuesday at the 2002
Panglaykim Memorial Lecture in Jakarta