Isolating Maluku?

At last, the government is losing its patience. Frustrated by 20 months of bloodshed and violence, President Abdurrahman Wahid banned all travel by "outsiders" to the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku yesterday.

The government's concern over what is happening in Maluku is entirely justified. Since January 1999, some 2,000 people are said to have lost their lives in the never-ending string of clashes between communities in the provincial capital of Ambon and elsewhere in the province, notably in the north.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and are living in miserable conditions in refugee camps in safer areas elsewhere.

A few months ago it looked as if it were possible to bring back peace to the troubled province. At the urging of civilian and military leaders, local religious and community elders met and agreed to try to keep their flocks in reign.

Unfortunately the peace didn't last. Only the day before the travel ban was announced, clashes left at least 11 people dead in Ambon. In one skirmish, thousands of people attacked a police barracks in Ambon with some of the attackers arriving in speedboats. By Thursday the violence had spread to the center of the city. Two Army soldiers and two policemen died in the attacks.

In the north, an armed mob attacked the village of Duma last Sunday and killed more than a hundred people, forcing hundreds of refugees had to flee riot-torn Halmahera Island for safer areas. There are no signs that the situation is going to get better anytime soon and unless drastic action is taken it probably has no chance of improving.

Obviously, all this violence has caused the complete disruption of all economic activity as well as most other normal activities of everyday life in the province. But how bad is the situation in Maluku actually?

Bad enough for old separatist sentiments to have been revived among an apparently growing number of people who feel that severing ties with the Republic of Indonesia is the only way to give them the safety umbrella they need.

The military, though still not openly advocating the imposition of martial law in the province, for their part regard such a step with favor as it could help the security officers to restore peace on the islands.

"Although martial law will not necessarily solve the problems in Maluku, it will provide a conducive situation for us to conduct operations to put an end to the unrest," military spokesman Rear Admiral Graito Usodo said.

As things stand at present, with no end to the conflict in sight, even the United States government has felt compelled to openly express its concerns over the situation in Maluku.

What especially troubles the U.S. government, according to the statement issued by State Department spokesman Philip Reeker in Washington on Wednesday, is "that the security forces have proven either unwilling or unable to stop the large-scale attacks on communities." So, the American government is asking the government of Indonesia "to take immediate and effective measures to prevent further bloodshed."

Coming so soon at the heels of the U.S. State Department statement, Friday's announcement by President Abdurrahman Wahid of the travel ban to Maluku may appear to be a somewhat overhasty response. But whether or not this is indeed the case, questions could be asked as to the effectiveness of the measure.

One may recall that a few months ago the President ordered the police and military to prevent any Laskar Jihad fighters from traveling to Maluku, where they had vowed to wage a holy war against the Christians. The ban was never implemented, as evidenced by the reported presence of thousands of Laskar Jihad fighters in Maluku. Military authorities have admitted that it does not have the means to control ship movements in the waters of Maluku's hundreds of islands.

In the meantime, Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono believes that the trouble in Maluku may be directed, or at least financed, by "elements of the old regime" in Jakarta. If this is true -- and, coming from the Minister of Defense, it must have been made on the basis of solid intelligence information -- it would seem that any "immediate and effective measures" such as the U.S. State Department has in mind should be taken in Jakarta, rather than Maluku -- by attacking the scourge at the source.