Trust in police key to ending Poso conflict: Analyst
Ary Hermawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
7 nov 2006

The sectarian conflict in Poso will continue to smolder unless the police manage to win back the trust of locals and prevent militants from entering the region, an analyst says, while the police continue to hunt down 29 militants.
Samsu Rizal Panggabean, director of the Center for Security and Peace Studies, said Sunday that the real conflict in the Central Sulawesi regency had ended and what was now needed was maintenance of peace.
"What we call intercommunity conflict no longer exists in Poso, what remains there is terror waged by criminals," he told The Jakarta Post.
He said the police needed to focus more on gaining trust by sending in Mobile Brigade officers trained to deal with post-conflict communities.
The situation, he added, has been aggravated by the poor quality of intelligence collected in the area. "The police must coordinate with local residents to seize terror suspects," he said.
Relations between Poso residents and the police have been problematic since a bloody clash on Oct. 22 in which a Muslim man and a toddler were killed during a police raid in search of militants. Local Muslim groups have since demanded the police withdraw from Poso.
The naming of 29 Muslim militants police believe instigated a series of violent acts in the region has also added to the strain between locals and the authorities. Vice President Jusuf Kalla met with Muslim leaders on Oct. 29 and asked them to help the police arrest the suspects, whose photographs have been made public.
Poso Islamic Struggle Forum chairman Adnan Arsal, who claims to have been in contact with the pursued militants, told Kalla that he would cooperate with the security authorities only if police dropped the charges against the 29.
The police refused the deal, saying they would search for the militants despite people's objections.
University of Indonesia sociologist Thamrin Amal Tomagola said he believed Adnan was under pressure when he expressed his conditional support for the police.
"The commitment to helping the police was made under pressure. The police are looking for trouble," Thamrin was quoted as saying Saturday by Detik.com news portal.
Rizal said the police should not randomly raid houses, mosques or Islamic boarding schools to seize terror suspects and that the Oct. 22 incident clearly indicated lax intelligence gathering in the region.
He added that security in Poso had not yet recovered and that militants from Java could still enter the region easily.
Local Muslim leaders believe the individuals encouraging new outbreaks of violence come from outside the region. National Intelligence Agency chief Syamsir Siregar has said that the group that orchestrated recent violence in Poso had planned the action in Central Java.
National Police chief Gen. Sutanto said Monday the police were still hunting down the 29 suspects and called on anyone who might have information to assist the police.
"We are asking for help from the public ... don't sacrifice law enforcement for other issues. We guarantee that (informants) will be protected," he said after a Cabinet meeting at the president's office.
Sutanto added that Adnan would not be charged for harboring criminals.
"It was we who asked for help. If he can't, we still have our own intelligence data to trace the suspects," he said.
Central Sulawesi suffered through an on-and-off sectarian conflict between Christians and Muslims from 1998 to 2002. More than 1,000 people died over the course of the fighting.
Tensions in the province flared again last month after the execution of three Christians convicted of masterminding a massacre in a Muslim village in 2000.