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