Communal conflicts and terrorism

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
justice 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.