The players behind the Maluku madness

By George J. Aditjondro

NEWCASTLE, Australia (JP): Thousands of people have died in Maluku, once known as the Spice Islands, in what seems to be a religious war between Christians and Muslims.

Official estimates have put the death toll at 3,000. However, Rev. John Barr from the Uniting Church of Australia has put the death toll at around 10,000, a figure that has been confirmed by this writer's sources in Maluku and Australia. It includes the nearly 500 refugees whose boat capsized in the stormy waters between North Maluku and North Sulawesi last month.

Unfortunately, this tragedy has not attracted much concern in Australia, despite the fact that Maluku played a similar role to East Timor during World War II. At that time over 1,100 Australian troops were sent to Ambon, the provincial capital, to protect Australia from the Japanese invasion.

The Australian war cemetery in the city of Ambon, near Pattimura University, is a silent testimony to the sacrifices of hundreds of Australian diggers that were killed in battle over Ambon.

Pattimura University itself, however, has recently been burned to the ground by a new invasion; namely the invasion of reportedly up to 10,000 Laskar Jihad fighters who sailed to Maluku with, it is alleged, the tacit support of top ranking officers who seem to be still loyal to the disposed Gen. Wiranto, supposedly to "liberate" their brothers and sisters in Maluku from "religious cleansing" by Christians in Maluku.

Despite the state of civil emergency decreed by President Abdurrahman Wahid, the killings have still continued. Therefore, it is important to dissect the forces that are behind the violence and explore ways for the Indonesian government and its friendly neighbors to rescue the remaining people of Maluku from further extermination.

Early this month, Minister of Defense Juwono Sudarsono said in public that "based on our intelligence reports there are strong indications that former cronies of Soeharto are supplying arms and personnel to areas afflicted with conflict, particularly in the Malukus, East Timor, West Irian and certainly in Aceh."

Later army officers and civilians linked to both Soeharto and B.J. Habibie were mentioned. He said the aim was to undermine the credibility of the President and the government.

As was the case in the postreferendum violence in East Timor, the inter-religious riots in Maluku, which erupted in January 1999, were reportedly well-planned and prepared by officers and politicians loyal to Soeharto with, initially, two goals.

First, to destabilize one of the strongholds of Megawati Soekarnoputri, who was then the strongest presidential candidate to replace Soeharto's hand-picked successor B.J. Habibie.

Secondly, to create unrest in places where the then armed forces commander Gen. Wiranto wanted to revive regional military commands (Kodam) abolished by his predecessor, Gen. Benny Moerdani.

Indeed, four months after the inter-religious violence began in Ambon, the old Pattimura Military Command was revived, covering the entire Maluku archipelago. Similar attempts to revive regional military commands in Kupang, Pontianak, and Padang have not been that successful.

While the violence in Ambon and on the nearby islands continued, and with more troops flown in from Java and South Sulawesi, the old Maluku province was soon divided into the predominantly Muslim province of North Maluku with its capital in Ternate and the religiously balanced province of Maluku, with Ambon as its capital.

After initially using Ambonese gangsters as a smokescreen, paramilitary forces close to Soeharto and troops loyal to Wiranto, sources say, maintained the momentum of killings and destruction by continuously inflicting casualties on both sides that cried out for revenge.

Exhausted and saddened by the killings, Christian and Muslim leaders in Ambon repeatedly tried to make peace between the two groups. Repeatedly, however, two intelligence officers in the Pattimura Military Command, allegedly made sure that peace could not be restored.

Sources say one of the colonels maintains links with the Christian militia in Ambon, while the other maintains links with the Muslim militias, who are currently strengthened by the Laskar Jihad fighters from Java and South Sulawesi.

When Maj. Gen. Max Tamaela, the Christian Ambonese Pattimura Military commander, was recently replaced by the Hindu-Balinese Col. I Made Yasa, those two intelligence officers were kept in their place by the powers that be in Jakarta.

In fact, the two men probably know Maluku better than the new Pattimura Military commander, since they were both stationed in Ambon before the Pattimura Military Command was revived under Suaidy Marasabessy, a Muslim Ambonese officer close to Wiranto.

Currently, two other interest groups are allegedly involved in maintaining the violence in Maluku. The first group are radical Muslims who oppose Gus Dur's presidency and are allegedly financially backed by a former finance minister under Soeharto.

The second group consists of Indonesian business conglomerates who benefit from the troubles in Maluku to escape from their obligations to pay trillions of rupiah of debt to Indonesian banks.

The first group reportedly sent the Laskar Jihad to Maluku. The bulk of these fighters are naive villagers who believe in the existence of an international Christian plot to dismantle the Indonesian Republic, which, in their eyes, began with the liberation of East Timor.

They are assisted by soldiers and deserters from the Indonesian Military and police.

It is alleged the second group consists of several conglomerates which have close links to the Soeharto family.

With officers loyal to Wiranto deeply entrenched in the armed forces, Gus Dur and his deputy have their hands and feet tied in trying to end the violence in Maluku.

In fact, the ongoing violence is basically being maintained by their opponents, who continue to play political football with the lives of the Maluku people. It has been said that every time Soeharto or Wiranto are interrogated, a new wave of violence flares up in Maluku.

Therefore, Australia and the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should seriously lobby friendly nations without predominantly Muslim and/or Christian populations, such as India, Thailand, South Korea and Japan, to play a more active role in ending the violence in Maluku.

Australian military cooperation with Indonesia should be postponed until the Indonesian Military can prove its impartiality in domestic disputes such as in Maluku. A trade embargo with Indonesian companies which benefit from the violence in Maluku is also recommended.

Certainly, Australian military cooperation with Indonesia should not be normalized as long as the perpetrators of human rights violations in East Timor are not taken to court and are allowed to foment unrest in Maluku and other parts of the Indonesian archipelago.

Dr George J. Aditjondro teaches at the department of sociology and anthropology at the University of Newcastle in Australia. He specializes in the cultures of Papua, Maluku, Timor and Flores. He carried out extensive interviews with sources in Jakarta, Maluku, Germany and Australia regarding the unrest in Maluku.