The Poso question
Jakarta Post, November 02, 2006

The government is setting up a fact-finding team for Poso to find a solution to the resurgence of violence in the Central Sulawesi regency. A number of Muslim organizations will be invited to join, including -- surprisingly -- Laskar Jihad as reported by Kompas on Tuesday.
Laskar Jihad is known as a hardline organization involved in past violence in the province, and the invitation must have raised some eyebrows. The team is tasked to tell local militants that killing people in the name of God is not right.
This policy of inclusion, however, should deserve the benefit of the doubt, with Laskar Jihad working together with Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's two biggest Muslim organizations known for their moderate religious views.
They will team up with representatives from the Indonesian Ulema Council together with others from several ministries, the police and the military.
Violence returned to Poso in late September following the executions of three Christian men found guilty of masterminding some of the sectarian violence that occurred in 2000. The execution was delayed twice amid protests from supporters, including some local Poso Muslims, who believe the Poso three, as they were called, were innocent.
A spate of incidents followed, including the Eklesia Church arson attack, gunfights between local residents and Police Mobile Brigade officers and the point-blank shooting of a Christian minister.
The scenic Poso regency that is home to an even split of Muslim and Christians has largely been peaceful after the 1999-2001 conflict that killed more than 1,000 people, thanks to the tireless efforts of Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who was then a member of president Megawati Soekarnoputri's cabinet.
In the absence of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who is in China, Kalla moved again early this week. He had barely finished celebrating the end of the fasting month in his home town of Makassar before flying into Poso on Saturday.
Kalla held talks with local Muslim and Christian leaders to find a solution and came up with the fact-finding team.
Under Soeharto governments, a number of conflicts were so persistent they aroused suspicion they were being staged. The war waged against insurgents in Papua dates back four decades, the conflict against the Fretilin separatists in East Timor lasted 25 years, the Aceh conflict almost three decades.
During the East Timor conflict, security authorities were fond of saying the number of the Fretilin fighters had been reduced to a few hundred, but the war continued. The same thing occurred during the fighting against the Aceh and Papua rebels.
These wars have defied logic as the government's troops always outnumbered those of the insurgents. They were also better trained and better equipped than the rebels. Yet the wars were never won. It was as if there was someone pulling the strings from behind, a kind of dalang or puppeteer in a wayang show.
Someone who made sure the country was in a state of perpetual war.
It is because of this legacy that suspicions about the reasons for conflicts are common today. It means the current government is finding it harder to solve longstanding violence because it has to go a long way to prove to people that the fighting is not centrally directed or sanctioned.
Unfortunately, the Poso conflict that erupted in 1999, a year after Soeharto fell from power, now looks increasingly similar to these past battles.
Some reports suggest "invisible hands" from outside Poso are at work stirring up trouble. It is certainly true that since the worst bloodletting four years ago, local Christians and Muslims now loathe any kind of conflict.
Poso's situation is not dissimilar to the Christian-Muslim conflict in Ambon, another troubled regency in the eastern archipelago of the country. Like in Poso, the security authorities were occasionally involved in this violence and like in Poso they were also accused of bias.
National Police chief Gen. Sutanto's remarks this week, that it is proving "difficult" to capture suspected Poso terrorists -- a police spokesman has said 29 people are still on the loose -- does not quiet these suspicions. But Sutanto is not mincing his words since Noordin Moh. Top, a Malaysian national and the country's most-wanted terrorist, has defied the police for years.
No war against terror could be waged without intelligence officers. The government acknowledged in December 2001 that foreign and local militants had a base camp in a remote Poso village, before strangely retracting this statement a day later.
Any conflict is also prone to exploitation, especially in a country with a weak judiciary. Interest groups with power are keen to exploit it for their own ends. They can also be used to divert attention away from corruption or land disputes.
In Poso, the government has its job cut out engaging the participants and untangling this complex web of conflict.