Disarm militias, flush out military, says Maluku expert

Yogita Tahilramani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Flushing out military and police deserters while disarming warring militant groups in strife-torn Maluku should be the first steps in bringing an end to the three-year-old sectarian conflict in the area, an expert says.

Noted sociologist Thamrin Amal Tomagola said on Thursday that Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono needed to use the Indonesian Military (TNI) and National Police to track down military and police deserters from Maluku, long known for its ever-worsening feud between Muslim and Christian communities.

"Deserters are dangerous, they become one with the community that follows their religion ... like a Christian deserter who enters a Christian community," he said.

"The same happens with Muslim deserters; they provide the feuding communities with ammunition and training," Thamrin told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Thamrin, an expert in the social division of the Ministry of Research and Technology, said that most deserters in Maluku were locals who had witnessed the killings of their own families, and believe that they have an obligation to avenge their deaths.

Thousands of innocent people have been killed in Ambon and North Maluku since the religious conflicts first broke out there in January 1999. Last Tuesday, the warring groups agreed to end hostilities.

According to Thamrin, the government should deploy more troops from the Army Special Forces (Kopassus) in Maluku.

"The deployment of ordinary military and police, especially local ones, must be minimized since they are caught up in their own religious and economic interests," Thamrin said.

More Kopassus troops must be deployed to work with existing elite security forces to conduct regular "weapons sweeping" operations in Maluku to disarm militias, he added.

In addition, Thamrin suggested that the government bring back Battalyon Gabungan (Yon Gab), an independent team of selected elite security forces to police Maluku.

Yon Gab, he noted, contributed greatly to a reduction in the violence last year, even though Muslim communities in Maluku had mixed reactions toward the Yon Gab, claiming that most of its officers were largely Christians.

Thamrin said that a concentration of Kopassus and Yon Gab officers should be first deployed for the short "critical" term Maluku is currently facing, and again for the long term.

Once security conditions improve, he added, they should be gradually pulled out, and replaced with regular police and military officers.

There was an influx of largely Muslim migrants from Bugis, Makassar, and Buton (BBM), who arrived in Ambon in the 1980s, but they fled back to South Sulawesi during the conflicts.

In the end, the Christians represented a slight majority population over local Muslims.

Not a single person has been sentenced to jail over the course of the conflict, which has reportedly claimed over 6,000 lives.

By contrast, three Christians were sentenced to death last April in connection with the Poso conflict in Central Sulawesi.

The sentencing itself led to an outbreak of violence.