The toughest question to answer

The toughest question to answer

By Budiman Moerdijat

JAKARTA (JP): Some three months after clashes between Muslims and Christians first broke out in the Maluku capital of Ambon in mid-January, a local Muslim leader told The Jakarta Post that the hardest question to answer was "how to put the pieces back together?"

Some eight months later, the very same question is still being asked as violent communal clashes have only intensified in a province once dubbed by former president B.J. Habibie as a model of interreligious harmony.

Almost 1,000 people have been killed this year in a series of religious and ethnic clashes in the province, while tens of thousands have fled to other provinces.

Not withstanding underlying friction which may have been simmering before, the tragic conflict was sparked by what people can consider today a trivial argument between a public transportation driver and a youth in the Ambon main market of Mardika during the Idul Fitri holiday on Jan. 19.

Arguments are commonplace in everyday life, but the fact that people in Ambon underline that the driver was a Christian and the youth a Muslim demonstrates the simmering feelings.

Strange as it may be, this side-issue degenerated into a full- scale riot in the city on Jan. 20, and since then Ambon has intermittently become a war zone.

The government said the first wave of riots in January in Ambon and on other nearby islands claimed at least 61 lives and left over 758 houses, 12 mosques, 13 churches and hundreds of shops and kiosks burned or damaged.

Habibie in early February ordered the immediate reconstruction of Ambon and sent his ministers to the area.

But the tension did not cease, and renewed religious clashes erupted not only in Ambon but also on the nearby islands of Kairatu and Seram in mid-February and early March.

The continual clashes prompted former governor of the National Resilience Institute Lt. Gen. Agum Gumelar to call in early March for the establishment of a demarcation line to separate conflicting parties in the province.

At almost the same time, former military chief Gen. Wiranto set up and sent a team of 19 Maluku-born officers, led by then Wirabuana military commander Maj. Gen. Suaidi Marasabessy, to forge peace in Maluku.

A brigade of troops was also deployed to Maluku and another battalion of riot troops was sent to quell renewed clashes in the Southeast Maluku capital of Tual and other nearby islands.

Wiranto made these decisions only days after he fired former Maluku Police chief Col. Karyono and extended indefinitely the tour of duty of Suaidi's team in April.

By then, more than 350 people had already been killed.

There was a glimmer of hope when 10,000 people attended the signing of a peace accord by dozens of local religious and community leaders in Ambon on May 13.

The ceremony took place in front of the governor's office in Merdeka Square, and Wiranto and a number of high-ranking military officers from Jakarta were among the attendants.

Wiranto at the time announced that Maluku would be given a separate military command for the first time in 15 years. In 1984, Maluku and Irian Jaya were brought under the supervision of the Trikora Military Command.

Wiranto said the reestablishment of a Maluku military command was expected to help promote peace in the province.

But hopes were dashed when fresh violence erupted just two days later.

The violence, in which seven people were killed, broke out when former Army chief Gen. Subagyo Hadisiswoyo was in the city to preside over the inauguration of the new military command.

A second wave of violence resumed in late July and local police said in September that more than 200 had been killed in the two-month period.

This second wave of violence was worse than the previous incidents as warring parties were seen using military-issue weapons and ammunition.

The House of Representatives working commission on Maluku, which was set up earlier this month, has urged the Indonesian Military (TNI) to investigate the source of the weapons used in the clashes.

The protracted Maluku violence finally compelled newly elected President Abdurrahman Wahid and Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri to visit Ambon on Dec. 12.

The two leaders then issued a joint appeal to the Maluku people to stop the bloody clashes.

Speaking in front of about 300 representatives of various groups at Governor Saleh Latuconsina's office, the President insisted it was up to local people to end the conflict.

However, hopes that Abdurrahman's visit to Ambon would usher in an era of peace quickly faded when renewed violence broke out the next day on Seram island. Three people were killed and four were injured in this episode.

"Nobody wins in this madness," Yusuf Elly, a local Muslim leader, said in April, adding that "the hardest job now is putting the pieces back together".

But even before that, people must somehow figure out how to make sense of the escalating tension in which more than 60 have been killed within 72 hours. (byg)