Herb Feith's search for better mental road maps to a complex Indonesia
Jamie Mackie
One aspect of Herb's work on Indonesia that has attracted less attention than it deserved amongst the many tributes to him has been his creative role as a formulator of new ideas that throw a fresh beam of light upon the bewildering world around us. This role was especially in demand in pre-1965 Indonesia. Because Herb's lovable personal qualities have given rise to so many marvelous stories about his life, this more recondite side of his intellectual contribution to our understanding of Indonesia can easily be overlooked.
Much of his work on the nation's political and social turmoil since 1945 was devoted to hunting for new and better mental road maps that would help to explain the innumerable complexities involved. It was not just his unrivalled knowledge of Indonesian society and politics, both detailed and comprehensive, that made him so special, but also his passion for better explanations that would throw light on the obscure parts of it.
I recall a rather dismissive comment he once made about something written about an aspect of the Indonesian revolution which I thought was pretty good but which he waved aside as: 'Oh, that's just a piece of history'. He wanted more analysis, theorising and comparison with similar cases elsewhere - which weren't easy to find. I suppose he felt that 'mere history', or story telling, was too easy. Conceptualising was the real hard work we ought to be engaging in.
It was an odd remark from the author of The decline of constitutional democracy in Indonesia, which was such a fine blend of superb story telling about the course of events between 1950-57 and brilliantly illuminating analysis. The story will never have to be told again, apart from a few details, perhaps, because it was such excellent historical narrative. Yet what we all remember about it were his innovative ideas about relations among the elite, the political public and the newspaper-reading public, or the celebrated categorising of 1950s Indonesian political leaders into 'administrators' and 'solidarity makers'. (Years later he used to flinch whenever anyone mentioned those words in front of him. Not because he felt they were wrong, I think - which they patently weren't - or that he wanted to disown authorship of them, but because he thought they were often being used to oversimplify a more complex reality.)
Later he wrote a masterly account of 'The Dynamics of Guided Democracy' in the Ruth McVey-edited Indonesia, describing the power struggle after 1959 in terms of the Sukarno-Army-PKI triangle. Not long after that came an article modifying that picture, with the revealing subtitle 'The triangle changes shape', which hit the nail on the head exactly.
His celebrated exchange in the Journal of Asian Studies with the high-powered Harry Benda, after the latter's review of his book, became something of a classic. In reply to Benda's challenge: 'How could anyone have seriously expected democracy to succeed in Indonesia's circumstances?' Herb responded with an unusually 'historical' rather than theoretical answer: Indonesia in the 1950s had become a very different, more 'modern' place, he said, than the traditional Indonesia evoked by Benda. Surely he was right.
Most of us who heard him lecture will recall those ingenious diagrams he would scrawl across a blackboard as road-maps to the political manoeuvring (percaturan politik) relevant to the particular phase of the game he was talking about. Parties, groups and individuals were arrayed from left to right on the horizontal axis in more or less conventional class or ideological terms, and vertically according to more exotic alignments. (There is a good example on page 14 of Indonesian political thinking 1945-1965.) We used to argue endlessly about the details, but rarely about the general framework he had set before us, which was nearly always helpful to newcomers to the subject and old hands alike.
Marxist notions
One of the puzzles we talked about frequently in the early years of Indonesia's independence was that conventional Marxist notions of class analysis of society and politics did not seem applicable there, for reasons Sukarno had set out well in his 'Marhaen dan Proleter'. Most peasants were not landless, although generally poor. There did not seem to be a wealthy propertied class of landlords or a bourgeoisie. The Dutch and to a lesser extent the Chinese had played roles rather like that, but their political and economic power was crumbling in the 1950s in the face of the Indonesian revolution. So what had the revolution been all about, apart from merdeka (independence)? And what would be the social and political basis of the new Indonesia?
Wertheim had tried to give a more or less Marxist interpretation in his influential Indonesian society in transition, but it was less than fully satisfactory. Kahin sometimes implied a class basis to the political support he discerned for the main parties, but did not push the analysis very far. The PKI put forward some ingenious assertions about Indonesia's class structure, but they were questionable and left a great deal unexplained. Herb, on the other hand, took a more Weberian rather than Marxist approach to the problem, with greater success, in my view.
His previous study of political science at the University of Melbourne under Macmahon Ball and Hugo Wolfsohn had steeped him in the debates about Marxism and the Weberian alternatives to it, mainly in terms of European and Australian politics. He was far more impressed, he once told me, by Wolfsohn's deep knowledge of the Marxist classics than he was by Ball's Nationalism and communism in East Asia. But we were all preoccupied in those days with the question of how far theories and concepts appropriate to European conditions were applicable to the radically different circumstances of Asian countries. Hence the need to find alternatives, and the excitement generated by Herb's contributions to the search.
While he was at Cornell in the late 1950s Herb came under the sway of the new approaches to political and social analysis which became known as 'structural-functionalism', or more generally 'modernisation theory'. But he never really became a devotee of the latter, for he had already seen enough of the good and bad effects of Westernisation and modernisation in newly independent Indonesia not to be swept off his feet by any such panacaea. Yet he did adopt many of the concepts put forward by Lasswell, Shils, Pye, Wriggins and Arnold and Coleman, whose 1960 book on The politics of the developing areas he particularly admired. In his early years at Monash University he introduced a new wave of Australian students of Indonesian politics to these ideas.
When a reaction against modernisation theory set in later in the 1960s, leading towards a new emphasis on neocolonialist interpretations of Third World poverty, then dependency theory and later a revival of class analysis, Herb moved with it, although not so wholeheartedly and without turning away from those earlier ideas. He was very much impressed for a time with Huntington's Political order in changing societies, although far from being a disciple. In the early 1970s he was much attracted by the ideas of the maverick Ivan Illich and spent a semester at his centre at Cuernavaca. But by this time Herb's most productive phase as an ideas person was ending and he was drawing increasingly on the ideas of others (there were many more others by then, including the prolific and fertile-minded Ben Anderson), including his own graduate students, like Harold Crouch and Rex Mortimer who had a big influence on him in the 1970s. He shifted increasingly towards peace studies and theories of international order in his later years.
Dilemmas
The timing of the reaction against modernisation theory, just after the fall of Sukarno and in the early Suharto years when the New Order was taking shape, created painful moral and intellectual dilemmas for Herb. These partly explain why his stream of new ideas about Indonesia began to dry up in later years. He was impressed and initially cheered by Suharto's success in pulling the country out of the mire of economic stagnation of the mid-1960s towards on-going economic progress. Suharto had done this largely on the advice of Herb's old friends Widjojo, Sadli and Emil Salim. But he soon became increasingly opposed to the repressive aspects of the regime and its dreadful record on human rights, especially after the seizure of East Timor in 1975. His last piece on Indonesia with an innovative thrust was his influential 1980 essay on 'repressive-developmentalist regimes', an ugly but accurate piece of phrase-making which conveyed the essence of the unbeautiful Suharto regime all too well.
Was it his dismay over Indonesia's political trajectory under Suharto that caused Herb to write so little about Indonesia after 1970, or was it disillusionment with the ideas he had derived from modernisation theory which he had earlier found so stimulating and fruitful? A bit of both, I suspect, but that is too tangled and far-reaching a question to answer briefly here. The earlier unpredictability of Indonesian politics had given way to such a dominant, heavy-handed regime that there was not much scope for new ideas. But it was always ideas - and people, especially those who generated them - that really delighted him, right to the end.
Jamie Mackie (jamiemackie@hotmail.com) is professor emeritus at the economics department of the Indonesia Project, Research School of Pacific & Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
Bush, Osama and the planet
Bill Liddle and Herb Feith
These two scholars of Indonesia exchanged emails early November 2001 about the terrorist attack in New York on September 11. The exchange began with a draft article Liddle wrote for a newspaper. Extracts:
Liddle: 'Talking With Indonesian Muslims' (draft article for New York Times)
Indonesian Muslims, like Muslims elsewhere, are struggling with the meaning of September 11 and its aftermath for themselves, their faith, their country, and the world. After the bombing of Afghanistan began, some militants demanded that the government of Megawati Soekarnoputri break relations with the United States. A demonstrator publicly threatened the life of the American ambassador. The majority, who are normally moderate in their views about both international and domestic affairs, have been silent in public but concerned in private.
To some extent their concern reflects a lack of knowledge or wishful thinking, as in the still widespread belief that no Muslim could be guilty of such terrible acts. But many well-educated and sincere people believe that President Bush has not provided evidence of bin Laden and al Qaeda's guilt, that even if bin Laden is guilty the Taliban government of Afghanistan should not be targeted for destruction, that the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is not an ahistoric act of evil but instead the latest in a series of attacks and counter-attacks in the continuing struggle for power in the Middle East....
Feith: Rather an imaginative new twist in the historic struggle against foreign domination of the Middle East
My responses to this are mixed. I think it is good that you should write in these terms to the NYT, but I also disagree with several of your emphases. Above all, I am sorry for Americans like yourself, and wonder whether I am right to be so angry with the mainstream America to which you need to relate. As I see it, Bush and Bushism are more of a problem for the species and the planet than Osama and Osamaism. My preoccupation, for which I found quite a bit of sympathy in Indonesia - I got back from there on Friday after four weeks of UGM teaching and a week in Jakarta - is with fashioning mendayung antara dua karang [steering between two rocks] strategies.
Liddle: I'm not sure why you should feel sorry for 'Americans like myself,' on the assumption that I'm not mainstream America.
Feith: When I say I am sorry for you I suppose I see myself as fortunate not to be in your shoes. It is hard to be an Australian these days, but to be an American would, I think, be even harder. Anyway I am delighted that you feel you can associate yourself with a mendayung antara dua karang formulation. I read somewhere recently that people are peaceminded who prefer thinking in threes to thinking in twos. Interesting isn't it?
Whether you are or aren't mainstream America is semantics. What is clear to me is that your long-term political practice is mainstream, as indeed is mine, though more hesitantly.
Liddle: I'm genuinely torn. Sometimes late at night I turn on CNN and see a live picture of the World Trade Centre, still smoking, and I feel both terrible anger and a conviction that the perpetrators must be caught and punished. I don't know how to do that other than to invade Afghanistan and chase down bin Laden cs.
Feith: The perpetrators are Mohamad Atta and co and they are dead.
Another kind of American president could, i think, have appealed to American pride, saying that we will see to it that justice is done while refusing to lower ourselves to answering terror with terror. A Republican president could have talked that language more easily than a Democratic one. I guess Powell could have taken that tack if he were president.
Liddle: It may be that I am reacting this way because I am American, but I resist that conclusion. In theatres and other public events now, we are often asked to stand and sing the national anthem. Most people do, with their hand over their heart as we used to do in elementary school when saying the pledge of allegiance. I stand, but without singing or putting my hand over my heart. .... I think (with Bush? - although I am less certain about his sincerity than about my own) that it is humankind who were attacked that day, and it is humankind who should respond.
Having said all this, at the same time I recognise the force of your comment that the attack was 'an imaginative new twist in the historic struggle against foreign domination of the Middle East.' I guess that's what I mean when I say I'm torn.
Your comment on Bush and Bushism. I'm afraid that what Bush is doing is very popular.
Feith: So was what Hitler did, so is what Sharon is doing, and probably Saddam as well. I feel quite strongly that the popularity of a leader in his state is an inappropriate criterion for actions taken in a global arena.
Prof Bill Liddle (William.Liddle@polisci.sbs.ohio-state.edu) teaches at Ohio State University and has written widely on Indonesian politics. 'Inside Indonesia' thanks him for allowing us to publish these extracts of his correspondence with Herb Feith, who died a few days later.
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
The first volunteer
Herb Feith, who began it all 50 years ago, inspires a new volunteer
Rachael Diprose
My first memory of Herb Feith is of him peddling along on his trusty bicycle several years ago near the Gadjah Mada University campus in Yogyakarta. The sun was softly falling on his thinning hair, his glasses perched on the tip of his nose, as he sat straight-backed in a faded batik shirt, negotiating the potholes.
I thought, 'so this is the infamous Herb Feith', popular amongst Indonesian and Australian students alike, respected academic and Indonesianist, and exactly the picture of eccentricity I had envisaged. He was working as an Australian volunteer in Indonesia, teaching politics. I am now lamenting the fact that when I was an Australian student on exchange in Indonesia I considered my Indonesian language skills inadequate to attend one of his very popular classes. Missed opportunities.
Several years later, working as an Australian volunteer in Jakarta, I was lucky enough to meet with Pak Herb. He was the guest speaker at the opening of a photo exhibition held in Jakarta in November 2001, celebrating 50 Years of Australian volunteering. Pak Herb pioneered the Volunteer Graduate Scheme in 1951 when he came by boat to Indonesia to serve as an interpreter in the Sukarno government administration. At the time he received a small, local salary, working alongside the Indonesian staff under local conditions, with the objective of promoting cross-cultural understanding.
Several things stand out about what Pak Herb said that evening. He spoke of 'curiosity' and 'solidarity'. The curiosity that arises when one becomes a volunteer and moves to a foreign country, and the solidarity one feels with those who are suffering and who don't have the basic rights others take for granted. Pak Herb described the fascination of those first volunteers with the Indonesian community, their way of life, political system, and open friendliness. This same curiosity and solidarity has led many volunteers to become respected academics in Indonesian studies, human rights campaigners, researchers and policy makers back home.
Being there
In light of the September 11 tragedy, Pak Herb highlighted the dangerous and saddening divide developing between what some call Muslim and non-Muslim countries. He spoke for many Australian volunteers currently living in Indonesia, who believe that now is the most important moment to be in-country. In times of uncertainty, simply being in Indonesia is a significant contribution we can make to our workplaces or the communities in which we live, despite the pressure from some families and friends to return home. This makes a stronger statement about Australians and our personal commitment to Indonesia than any foreign news report.
Volunteers may be placed in large cities, or very remote communities, depending on where their skills are required. When a volunteer moves to their placement country, they are given some preliminary language training. But they still have to overcome the communication barriers, learn to understand the culture, adapt to the food and climate, and simply learn a new way of living. However, lifetime friendships and extraordinary personal growth are the rewards that volunteers take with them when they return to Australia.
Employed as a translator and English editor with an Indonesian research institute, I could communicate to some extent upon arrival. However, learning to speak another language and live in another culture is a constant process, no matter how long a volunteer has been living in-country. And it is a joint learning process. My friends and colleagues seem to delight in my Australian mannerisms and question me constantly about customs at home.
As an independent, somewhat assertive, unmarried female, I feel at times like something of an enigma. While this is not unheard of in Indonesia, at present I still fall into the minority. Taxi and bajaj (automated pedicabs) drivers are amazed that I have not had children. Learning to eat with my hands at the office, without rice ending up all over my face and clothes, took months of perseverance! Living in a densely populated city has been challenging for me after the wide, open spaces of Australia.
Yet, when I go home at the end of each day I am constantly amazed at the new experiences I have shared. In what once seemed so foreign, I now find peace and tranquility in the call to prayer. I have learnt to order my day around the monsoon rains. I can see lifelong friendships forming, and imagine my relationship with Indonesia continuing long into the future. I only hope that I can give back a fraction of the wonderful experience that my friends have given me, and carry on the legacy of Pak Herb.
Rachael Diprose (rdiprose@smeru.or.id) is an Australian Volunteer (www.ozvol.org.au) working at the Smeru Research Institute in Jakarta.
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
Antidote to parochialism
Herb Feith
It is delightful to see so many old friends here. Let me say a few things on behalf of the 1950s generation of volunteers. I think the most important thing to say is that we enjoyed ourselves enormously while we were here. It extended our curiosity fairly persistently, it stretched us, it empowered us, it gave us a sense of being able to relate comfortably to more than one culture. And some of us got a lot of career advantages out of it too.
We were young, we were a bit radical, so we also saw ourselves as engaging in a form of protest, staying with Indonesian families and hostels rather than European enclaves, riding our bikes when other slack people were being driven in cars. We saw ourselves as particularly against white colonial attitudes, against expatriate lifestyles and so on. In fact we had a pretty a strong sense of our own moral superiority towards them. And when we got back to Australia, we saw ourselves as being in the van of enlightenment on things like racism and parochialism. And when I speak of parochialism I don't mean merely Australian parochialism, I also mean Western parochialism, which is sometimes called first-world parochialism and which is, as you well know, well and truly alive.
There's a temptation on occasions like this to exaggerate the contributions that volunteers have made particularly to the Australia-Indonesia relationship. Obviously, people who came here as volunteers are only a part of the Australians who've been Indonesianised in the way they live. But it is true that a lot of meaningful friendships developed from all of those people living here, and those have survived the bad period. They survived the '63 to'65 bad period, and they survived the bad period of two years ago.
Looking at Australia today, it's certainly a lot more multicultural country than it was when our fifties group of volunteers came here, and it's a country which engages Asia in far more ways. But it's still a country in which first-world parochialism is a very powerful force. Australians who see themselves as citizens of a planet are still a pretty small minority, and that's become painfully clear to us, particularly recently over the asylum-seekers issue, over the people coming in tiny boats from long distances, and ultimately from places like Iraq and Afghanistan. And of course it's become clear to us as a result of the events of September the 11th in New York and Washington. The 'all the way with the USA' responses that have been so dominant in Australia have given all of us a great deal to ponder about and indeed a great deal to be anxious about. So those of us who believe in solidarity with Asians and people in other third-world countries still have an awful lot of battles to fight. But it's a happy thing that we've been empowered in relation to those battles by a lot of very valuable Indonesian friendships. Thanks for doing that.
From Herb's remarks at the 50th anniversary celebration for Australian Volunteers International held in Jakarta, 2 November 2001.
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
Australians volunteer
The history of Australian Volunteers International begins in Indonesia
Peter Britton
In 1950, at an international student conference (World University Service Assembly) in Bombay, India, the Indonesian delegation challenged the Australians with an interesting idea. The Dutch had departed. Their colonial educational policy had left independent Indonesia desperately short of skilled graduates. Indonesia, the students said, would welcome Australian university graduates to make their expertise available. They would live and work alongside Indonesian colleagues, deliberately crossing the barriers of expatriate life in favour of solidarity. This would allow genuine understanding to flourish.
The idea inspired a group of people at the University of Melbourne to develop it further. They wanted to share their skills on the same rates of pay as their Indonesian colleagues, whilst learning more intimately about the people and their lives. Herbert Feith was a member of the committee. He became the first Australian volunteer that same year when he sailed to Jakarta to work as a translator with the Ministry of Information. His assignment marked the beginnings of Australia's international volunteer program, now known as Australian Volunteers International. Indonesia became the birthplace of international volunteering.
In the last fifty years more than 5,000 Australians have volunteered to live and work alongside local people in nearly seventy countries across Asia, Africa, the Pacific islands, Latin America, the Middle East and in indigenous communities in Australia. Most go for two years. They work in an amazing range of occupational sectors. All are placed in response to specific requests from host employers.
During the 1970s, volunteer programs started to be seen as service providers to foreign aid programs, and volunteers as a source of cheap technical assistance. Many volunteer agencies reacted to this quandary by ensuring that their volunteers were better remunerated such that the distinction between volunteers and other expatriate experts became blurred. Australian Volunteers International sought a different remedy, recognising that volunteers were privileged in other ways. Living and working together is a powerful tool for experiential learning - to establish common cause and exchange skills and understandings.
For Australian Volunteers International, a volunteer is a person who, at some personal cost, moves outside the comfort zone of familiarity. Through their actions they make a commitment to connect to their new community and try to make a difference. They challenge fundamental ideas in their home society, eg that people will only act if there is a promise of financial reward. They help build true partnerships across cultures, breaking down stereotypes of nationality, profession, and gender.
What motivates a volunteer is a complex mixture of factors. Altruism and self-interest can be important, not in the narrow sense, but in that personal growth represents valid self-interest, an avenue to participate in a sense of global community that crosses borders. When receiving Life Membership of Australian Volunteers International (University of Sydney, 19 January 2001), Herbert Feith preferred to call it 'curiosity': 'Curiosity can also be mischievous, but I think it is a pretty healthy thing that people with one set of cultural "baggage" should learn about people with a different cultural, social and economic background.'
The Indonesia program has always been a cornerstone of Australian Volunteers International. The experiences of the first Australian volunteers in Indonesia have done much to shape the organisation's style. Perhaps in large measure because the Indonesia-Australia relationship is one between neighbours, it is subject to a great deal of scrutiny. Over the last fifty years there have been tense periods in the official relationship between the two countries. Despite these difficulties a vibrant people-to-people relationship has always continued, helped significantly by the Australian Volunteers International program.
Many former volunteers, starting with Herb Feith, have gone on to influential positions in academia, government service, the corporate sector, the judiciary and the community sector. There they committed themselves to the relationship and became significant interpreters of Indonesian developments to the Australian community. Similarly, Indonesians who have worked alongside Australian volunteers have learnt that Australians do not fit the stereotypes as projected by the media and politically motivated opinion leaders.
The relationships have stood the test of time. In November 2001 a photo exhibition in Jakarta portrayed aspects of Australian Volunteers in Indonesia over fifty years. It was remarkable how many Indonesians, whose experience of the program was decades old, made the effort to attend the celebration.
Since 1951 nearly 400 Australian volunteers have lived and worked across the archipelago in most provinces. They have been engaged in education, health, agriculture, community development, environment and other sectors. They have worked in government departments and agencies, universities, schools and other educational institutions, as well as national level and local level non-government organisations (NGOs).
Recent changes
The post-Suharto era brought a whole new set of circumstances, including an abrupt break in the Australia-Indonesia relationship over East Timor. It became essential for Australian Volunteers International to take these changes into account.
Many central government functions have been decentralised to district level government. With the latter now delivering services to the people, this becomes an appropriate focus for Australian volunteers to share their skills, as well as learn directly about the communities they serve. Responses to this approach have been very encouraging. Several district (kabupaten) governments have requested volunteers to be with them.
Indonesian NGOs have changed as well. Vast increases in foreign funding saw many established NGOs abandon their traditional activities, and many new NGOs appear. Australian Volunteers International recognised a need to be even more selective, to ensure that the organisations we worked with were driven by values rather than simply business opportunities.
Many Australian aid activities have long been concentrated in the eastern part of Indonesia. We discovered during a review that there were growing misconceptions among some Indonesians about Australia's intentions. The view was that Australia wanted to see Indonesia 'break up'. To demonstrate our bona fide intentions, Australian Volunteers International has also sought opportunities for cooperation in western Indonesia.
The phenomenon was linked to assertions that Australians were anti-Islamic and only comfortable working with the predominantly Christian communities in eastern Indonesia. By seeking to work with Muslim organisations, Australian volunteers can demonstrate that not all Australians share the Western phobia of Islam, and are genuinely interested in the philosophy and ways of life of their neighbours. Just as importantly, the knowledge these Australians develop can inform their own community. We expect this component of our program to grow.
Indonesians have responded enthusiastically to the new strategies. They appreciate the intrinsic value of exposing Australians to Indonesian issues. Similarly, they recognise that Indonesians can learn from Australian outlooks and personalities. Each 'side' has the opportunity to make that leap of understanding that enables us to see through others' eyes.
Peter Britton (pbritton@ozvol.org.au) is a senior manager at Australian Volunteers International (www.ozvol.org.au). He first visited Indonesia in 1968, and has since then written widely about it (including 'Profesionalisme dan ideologi militer Indonesia', Jakarta: LP3ES, 1996).
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
Is reconciliation sleeping with the devil?
The dilemmas of negotiating an end to conflict
Vanessa Johanson
Reverend Benny Giay exemplifies the complexity of approaches needed to resolve Indonesia's conflicts. As well as being one of the founders of the Irian Jaya Forum for Reconciliation (Foreri), he is also a vehement advocate of justice for human rights cases, is writing a book about Papuan heroes to rectify the skewed history in the history books, and was involved in the early days of the pro-independence Papua Presidium Council.
His story demonstrates some of the many dilemmas of conflict transformation work in Indonesia's complex conflicts. How does one stay neutral in the midst of brutality? How does one deal with one's own political preferences when trying to encourage a negotiated process? How does one take a stand for justice, while at the same time insisting on a non-violent, non-confrontational process? And how does one do any kind of work for change in a situation where one's life and one's colleagues' lives are under daily threat?
Many human rights advocates see themselves as being involved in conflict transformation (or its sister concepts: conflict resolution, peace-building, conflict prevention, etc.) and vice versa. It is indeed possible to work in both human rights and conflict transformation at once, but the distinction between the two approaches to social change, peace and justice is quite stark. Conflict resolvers try to work with both or many sides on many levels, in order to bring long-term peace and justice through mutual acknowledgement of the other sides' interests and needs. Human rights advocates focus as a matter of principle on the state as culprit and as the party ultimately obligated to create conditions and institutions which guarantee human rights protection and peace. Rather than dialogue, they tend to carry out investigations, lobby and utilise legal systems to achieve change.
I write as someone who has worked as a human rights activist, a non-violence and peace campaigner, and conflict transformation practitioner in Indonesia and Australia. In my view, Indonesia's many violent conflicts, some involving the state directly, some very indirectly, need many nuanced approaches in order to resolve them effectively. And we need to be clear about the methods we are using and the reason for choosing these methods.
Conflict transformation
The choice to use conflict transformation methods is both a moral and a pragmatic one. The moral choice is in part a recognition that process is as important as outcome, and a belief that, put simply, a conflict transformation approach brings out the best in people, and can fundamentally change people and systems in a moral and not just a legal sense. It attempt to engage and accommodate as many interests as possible by means of activities such as multi-level dialogue based on open mutual recognition of conflict and a need to end it through non-violent means; education for pluralism; joint multi-ethnic, multi-religious activities of all kinds; negotiation and mediation; and media which report and demonstrate resolutions rather than focusing on violence.
Conflict transformation workers do their utmost not to take sides. In fact the only thing conflict resolvers 'advocate' as such is a process which is non-violent and promotes dialogue. Benny Giay expressed the difficulty of neutrality when he explained his involvement in the mediation with pro-independence kidnappers for the release of two Belgian hostages in Papua last year. 'The church was seen by everyone as the most neutral party possible to do the mediation. But some of the people in the community there condemned Christianity, and called on the heavens to open up and bring floods on Indonesia.' In another example, the Irian Jaya Forum for Reconciliation became swept up in pro- and anti-independence politics and is now relatively inactive.
The moral choice of conflict transformation practitioners is also based on a belief that an aggressive approach to ending aggression will ultimately lead to continued bad relations in the future, and ultimately to more aggression. Even conflict transformation's most ardent supporters have their limits, however. Some would draw the line at pursuing dialogue with violent husbands, others with the likes of vicious East Timorese militia leader Eurico Guterres, others would only draw the line at Hitler or military butchers like Benny Murdani.
There are many pragmatic reasons for choosing conflict transformation techniques. Sometimes it is simply a matter of survival, in which case arguments of principle are regrettably less relevant. Continued use of force or vehement argument for change in some situations only invites destruction or endless expensive military deadlock, and therefore dialogue is essential. It is a pragmatic choice of taking the long road of discussion rather than the short one of annihilation or political and economic bankruptcy. Sometimes the pragmatic choice is not so extreme, but dialogue is seen as the most effective technique in a particular conflict, in order to resolve it to everyone's satisfaction and prevent recurrence. Those choosing a multi-level dialogue approach may not deny that the problem was perhaps caused - by commission or omission - by one powerful party, often the state. Nevertheless, in most situations, maintaining sustained peace and justice is something in which everyone needs to be involved, not just the lead antagonist/s in the conflict.
In many countries - Indonesia included - where genocide or long-term abuses have occurred, there are far too many culprits, far too many victims, far too little hard evidence and far too weak a justice system to execute, jail or fine everybody involved. Therefore reconciliation processes are chosen as the best way of achieving a sense of justice without using time-consuming human rights or legal approaches. Unfortunately, in Indonesia, sometimes the mediation road is taken because there is no other effective mechanism - be it strong democratic institutions, reliable media or a functioning, clean justice system - to help solve conflicts.
Justice
Conflict transformation approaches, however, have a hard time taking effect unless there is some kind of a justice system, or at least an overall sense of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour within which they can operate. This is acknowledged in mediation theory through what is sometimes called 'legitimacy', or a mutually agreed, 'neutral and objective' set of standards. This 'legitimacy' may be a pact like the South African Peace Accord, it may be shared religious values, it may be a law itself like the Geneva Conventions or a national constitution, or it may simply be a shared agreement, for example, that killing is unacceptable whatever the reasons.
Some human rights advocates reject conflict transformation as an invitation to do deals with the devil, to water down hard-won standards, and to deflect the blame for violence onto the victims, or at least onto the 'foot soldiers' rather than the 'generals'. Indeed, conflict transformation acknowledges that there are different versions of 'truth,' 'right,' and 'just,' and that for example General Wiranto should be able to have his version aired (non-violently) just as much as East Timor's Bishop Belo or ousted refugees should. Conflict transformation avoids allocating blame or dwelling on the past, no matter how painful, in order to try to achieve shared futures.
Unfortunately, like many useful terms (such as 'development,' and 'empowerment'), 'reconciliation' has gained itself a skewed meaning in Indonesia, both during and since the New Order. In Pontianak, West Kalimantan, a Madurese community leader told me how he had been asked by the local government to sign a peace declaration with the Dayaks. He was picked up from his house by the military, he recounted, and led to the forum with an already-prepared declaration by two soldiers, and asked to sign. 'It's not what I call reconciliation,' he laughed, several years, and several violent inter-ethnic incidents later.
The recently negotiated Malino Declaration for peace in Poso, Sulawesi, brokered by a flown-in top-level delegation from the government in Jakarta, has attracted much praise as well as criticism. Many see it as shallow and imposed. Others on the contrary see it as providing much-needed political space and legitimacy for community follow-up which will provide lasting peace.
Conflict transformation is far from the answer to all conflicts in all contexts. Human rights advocacy is very much in synergy with the work of conflict transformation by providing the space for dialogue, particularly with difficult and powerful players, by demanding top-level responsibility for abuses and by providing a norm of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Activists like Benny Giay demonstrate this fact in their different choices of approach.
Vanessa Johanson (vjohanson@eudoramail.com) is an 'Inside Indonesia' board member.
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
Waiting for peace in Poso
Why has this Muslim-Christian conflict continued for three years?
Lorraine V Aragon
Poso district residents have lived with religious violence since December 1998. After three years of episodic fighting, death toll estimates range from 1,000 to 2,500, with thousands more injured. Scores of churches and mosques have been torched. Nearly 100,000 have fled their burning homes, leaving the capital of Poso district described at one time as a 'dead city', though some are now returning.
It began as a street fight between hot-headed young men, one Protestant and one Muslim, during a tense local political campaign. The brawl quickly deteriorated into a religiously polarised battle in this formerly quiet, multiethnic region. Police and military forces could not, or would not, stop the arson and attacks between the two communities.
The infrastructure of Poso city and surrounding towns is devastated. Refugees in holding camps suffer harsh conditions and burden locals - mostly Muslims in Palu and South Sulawesi, mostly Christians in North Sulawesi, Tentena, and the Lore Valley. Fear and vengefulness have made it difficult to stop the cycle of bloodshed. A recent peace agreement formulated in Malino, South Sulawesi, shows promise but faces challenges in its implementation.
Dutch missionaries from the early 1900s converted indigenous animist groups in the mountainous interior of what is now Central Sulawesi province. The colonial administration envisioned these Protestants as an allied population buffer against Muslim-influenced coastal kingdoms. Many of these slash-and-burn farmers were resettled in model villages and taught wet-rice farming by the Dutch. Most groups living around Poso Lake, between Poso and the mission center of Tentena, came to identify themselves ethnically as Pamona.
The Japanese Occupation and independence in 1945 was followed by a chaotic period when Muslim rebels from South Sulawesi attacked interior animists and Christians. Yet, once the Suharto regime took control, the majority population of the region still was Protestant ('Kristen' in Indonesian), and Pamona leaders exercised partial control over the local bureaucracy.
Much had changed by the end of Suharto's presidency. In 1973, Suharto designated Central Sulawesi as one of ten new transmigration provinces. The Trans-Sulawesi Highway was cut into the rugged mountain forests to ease the path for transmigrants. The new roads and settlements also attracted a flood of voluntary migrants, especially Muslim Bugis and Makassar people from South Sulawesi.
The financial crisis beginning in late 1997 spurred further immigration into the ebony-producing Poso area. Entrepreneurial Muslims arrived from South Sulawesi to cash-crop cacao, an agricultural export that maintained an exceptionally high value during the crisis. Pamona Protestants lost their religious and ethnic majorities in the district. Many also had been displaced from their ancestral lands through processes of land commodification that had nothing to do with religion.
Pamona Protestant Christians, like many interior groups in the outer islands, had also lost some of their indigenous political control. After the 1970s, much local authority was removed from customary councils of elders and transferred to a national bureaucracy. Modernist Muslims were installed in high-ranking military posts and Christians found it harder to get their leaders selected for local governance. By the end of his presidency, Suharto himself had become more pro-Muslim. Protestant mission funding became closely regulated. The government seized many schools and clinics originally funded by churches.
District mayor
When the Poso violence began in December 1998, the district mayor (bupati) of Poso was a Muslim named Arief Patanga. Patanga's term of office was due to expire in June 1999. His district secretary (sekretaris wilayah daerah, sekwilda) was a Protestant Pamona named Yahya Patiro. This type of religious power-sharing at the district level had been known in earlier New Order Poso. Many Christians hoped Patiro would succeed his Muslim predecessor. Muslim factions, representing Bugis-influenced ethnic groups along the coast and towards South Sulawesi, promoted Muslim candidates. The new economic stakes raised the election heat. The 1999 Regional Autonomy Laws promised a shift in control over resources from the national to the regional level. Both Muslim and Christian elites in Poso viewed this election as critical to their future access to government contracts.
The street fight that began in the heart of Poso city on the eve of both Christmas and Ramadan, 1998, fed into religious tensions promoted by inflammatory graffiti during the campaign. Soon, supporters from allied towns arrived to reinforce the Protestant and Muslim mobs. After a week of chaotic street fighting and arson, about 200 people were injured and 400 homes burned.
Reportedly, Christians suffered most of the damage in what became the conflict's 'first phase'. A Pamona Protestant leader of the political campaign, Herman Parimo, was jailed for heading a group of fighting Christians. No Muslims were prosecuted. This apparently partisan response by the authorities increased Protestant resentment.
A second escalating street fight occurred in mid-April 2000. By that time, a Muslim (although not the prior incumbent's favourite) had been installed as the new district mayor. When a Muslim youth reported being knifed by a Protestant, a Muslim posse began a retaliation campaign that the police could not handle. Supporters with homemade weapons again arrived from allied Muslim and Protestant towns. Army personnel followed from Makassar, South Sulawesi, but the fighting continued for over two weeks. By early May, over 700 homes had been burned, mostly belonging to Christians, along with several church buildings and a police barracks. Thousands of refugees, mostly Christians, fled.
The 'third phase' began only three weeks later when a group of Christians made a night-time raid on the Muslims they considered responsible for the earlier destruction of Christian neighbourhoods. The masked 'ninja' group of about a dozen men is alleged to have included both Protestant Pamona and Catholic immigrants from Flores who resided in the Poso district.
Fighting then intensified throughout the region, abetted by teams of local Christian militias. This third phase culminated in a massacre of Javanese men who fled to a Muslim boarding school in a transmigration area south of Poso. Over a hundred were executed with homemade weapons, their bodies tossed in the Poso River and mass graves. The fighting continued until the end of July 2000, when three Catholic ringleaders were captured. These Flores immigrants were tried between December 2000 and April 2001, when they were sentenced to death. To date, their appeals have been rejected and they await execution by firing squad.
Despite a few high-profile reconciliation efforts in late 2000, many criticised the lack of government aid and biased processes of law enforcement. Sporadic fighting continued and most refugees were too scared to return home. Instead, the population underwent an increasing de facto religious segregation - Muslims in Poso city, Protestants in the highland towns.
During the first months of 2001, violence worsened again. In addition to surprise attacks on farmers, disgruntled factions planted bombs in religious buildings and police posts. After the three Catholics were sentenced to death, attacks on Muslims increased. This began to be called 'phase four.' Then in July, the Laskar Jihad group, based in Yogyakarta, sent emissaries to meet with senior religious and government leaders in Central Sulawesi.
Violence surged again at the end of 2001 when thousands of well-armed Laskar Jihad troops were added to the volatile mix of local fighters. Over a hundred more persons were killed in what we can call 'phase five'. By mid-November, desperate pleas emerged from Protestant towns. Christians reported invasions by Muslim militias who threatened to rule the area by the end of Ramadan. At least half a dozen churches and 4,000 houses in thirty villages were burned, seemingly under the blind eye of security forces. Roughly 15,000 more people fled their homes. Muslim militias seized control of fuel stations and roadside checkpoints, where some displayed posters of Osama bin Laden.
In the aftermath of September 11th, these reports caught the attention of government officials and human rights workers in the United States and elsewhere, and led to pressure on the Indonesian government to control radical Muslims.
Peace agreement
On December 4, 2001, Indonesia's chief security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, traveled to Sulawesi to meet with Muslim and Christian leaders. Jusuf Kalla, the Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare (Menko Kesra), was assigned as mediator. Roughly fifty delegates, half Muslim and half Christian, met separately with Kalla in Malino, South Sulawesi.
On December 20, 2001, a ten-point bilateral peace agreement was announced. With the arrival of 4,000 military and police, as well as national and international attention on Central Sulawesi, Christmas proceeded peacefully. At New Year's, four Protestant churches were bombed in the provincial capital of Palu, but implementation of the accord continued.
The Malino Agreement includes some unarguable points: both sides should stop fighting, obey laws, expect security forces to be firm and fair, reject unauthorised 'outside' interference or militias, stop slander, and promote apologies and respect for all traditions and religions. Problems likely will come in implementing points such as weapons collection and the return of property to 'pre-conflict' status. It will be difficult to divide rehabilitation funds fairly and resettle about 90,000 refugees, who may claim land now occupied by other mobile citizens. Finally, there is the lingering issue of power sharing at the political level, an issue raised by the Christian delegates, but not included in the final peace agreement.
Lorraine Aragon (aragonl@mail.ecu.edu) teaches anthropology at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, USA. She has published several articles and a book on highland Sulawesi ('Fields of the Lord', University of Hawai'i Press, 2000). Her longer article about the Poso conflicts appears in Cornell University's journal 'Indonesia', vol. 72, October 2001.
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
Aceh negotiation ups and downs
Mar 1998 - Acehnese students join anti-Suharto protests by highlighting military abuses in Aceh
7 Aug 1998 - Armed Forces Commander General Wiranto announces the lifting of Aceh's Special Operations Area (DOM) status, apologises for human rights abuse
4 Feb 1999 - Large Acehnese student congress (Kongres Mahasiswa dan Pemuda Aceh Serantau) demands referendum on Aceh's future. The call is taken up by religious leaders
Jun 1999 - Aceh military commander Col Syarifuddin Tippe offers GAM ceasefire negotiations
4 Nov 1999 - New President Abdurrahman Wahid says the Acehnese have a right to a referendum, but immediately 'clarifies' this
27 Jan 2000 - Negotiations begin in Geneva between the Indonesian government and GAM, facilitated by Henry Dunant Centre (HDC)
12 May 2000 - Humanitarian Pause agreed in Geneva. Not quite a ceasefire, it emphasises humanitarian cooperation
Sep 2000 - Humanitarian Pause extended till 15 January 2001
Jan 2001 - The Joint Forum in Geneva agrees to negotiate about 'substantive issues' to 'seek a formula for a lasting and comprehensive solution to the conflict in Aceh'
15 Jan 2001 - The Humanitarian Pause, renamed a Moratorium, is extended for only one month amid hardened rhetoric and growing violence from both sides
Mar 2001 - Exxon closes its three gas fields in Aceh after GAM attacks. They reopen in July
12 Mar 2001 - Indonesian cabinet declares GAM 'separatist'
11 Apr 2001 - President Wahid issues a presidential instruction (Inpres 4/ 2001) that permits redeployment of more troops to Aceh
20 Jul 2001 - Arrest of six GAM negotiators at Kuala Tripa Hotel, Banda Aceh
23 Jul 2001 - President Megawati Sukarnoputri installed. Her Foreign Minister, Hassan Wirayuda, was the chief Indonesian negotiator in Geneva
5 Feb 2002 - Military Area (Kodam) re-established in Aceh, amid determined push by TNI to defeat GAM insurgency
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
Between war and peace
An insider speaks about peace negotiations on Aceh
Otto Syamsuddin Ishak
Dialogue was first discussed late 1999, but the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) was reluctant. The great service of the Swiss-based organisation the Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HDC) is that they were able to sit the two sides down at one table. The first HDC mission came to Aceh early in 2000. HDC had to decide which Acehnese resistance faction they would deal with - GAM or MP-GAM. Each was led by exiles in Sweden who had fought in Aceh in 1976. Indonesia preferred MP-GAM, but GAM had the biggest presence on the ground. The choice fell on GAM, and they formed a delegation with representatives from the Swedish leadership as well as commanders from Aceh.
It was difficult. GAM feared being deceived by Indonesia, while the Indonesian government thought of GAM as intractable. I went to Geneva for the first meeting on 24 April 2000. The atmosphere was tense. As a resource person, I had to provide information about human rights after 1998 that might help lead to a peaceful resolution.
HDC took a humanitarian approach. GAM accordingly stressed Indonesian human rights abuses. Indonesian representative Hassan Wirayuda, by contrast, said little about the situation on the ground and wanted to discuss a special autonomy solution like the one he helped broker in the southern Philippines. He was accompanied by the military attache from the Paris embassy, so the Indonesian delegation tended to ignore human rights.
However, the agreement signed on 12 May 2000 was fairly good in that it did revolve around humanitarian issues, and it called on both sides to show restraint. A Joint Forum was established in Geneva, to meet once in three months. In Aceh there were two joint committees, for security and for humanitarian action, as well as an independent team to monitor implementation of security aspects - of which I was secretary. Four district monitoring teams were formed in December 2000 as well.
In order to create a conducive sense of security, the agreement stipulated that all troop movements whether GAM or Indonesian should be reported to the joint security committee in Banda Aceh. However, President Wahid was unable to control his military, and the TNI just ignored that provision. After the agreement was signed, Indonesia unilaterally put in place a set of 'permanent procedures' (prosedur tetap, or protap). But GAM rejected them because they made no allowance for reporting troop movements.
Chivalrous
For me it was the first time I had met many of the top Acehnese in the resistance. They struck me as chivalrous. They were so committed. But I felt nervous that upon my return to Aceh I might be intimidated by both sides. So I asked HDC to guarantee my security. They produced a letter signed by GAM and by the Indonesian Foreign Affairs Department. Foreign Affairs picked me up at the airport. But the differences between them and TNI Headquarters became obvious when we went out to the field. Foreign Affairs had no authority there. I was often intimidated. Police Colonel Ridwan Karim, Indonesian delegation leader on the joint committee for security, and former commander of the force sent in to Aceh following the troop withdrawal in 1999, said in public that I was pro-GAM.
In Jakarta, President Wahid was under attack. Parliamentary speaker Akbar Tanjung of Golkar blamed Wahid for initiating the Aceh dialogue without consulting parliament. The TNI, meanwhile, made it clear it was not about to acknowledge GAM as an equal negotiating partner because GAM was 'not a state'.
Nevertheless, the 12 May agreement was unprecedented in Indonesian history. Unlike the final resolution of the Darul Islam revolt in 1962, which was a personal affair between Acehnese leader Daud Beureueh and Indonesian military commander LtGen M Jasin, this was an institutional agreement not dependent on personalities.
Its big weakness was that HDC was unable to guarantee the security of its partners in the peace process. For example when Tengku Al Kamal, a member of the monitoring committee for security, was killed by Indonesia in South Aceh on 30 March 2001, HDC did not even do anything for his family. Yet he had been killed while on duty as a partner with HDC.
The HDC negotiations of early 2000 did offer a new alternative for the conflict, but after it was signed HDC was no longer the engine of transformation. Instead, the initiative passed to GAM and the Republic of Indonesia. GAM took advantage of it to recruit new fighters and to establish a new village structure in areas it controlled. Indonesia meanwhile sent in even more troops, who set up new posts and, under the cover of providing humanitarian assistance, conducted counter-insurgency intelligence operations in the villages.
Nor was HDC able to create a new common understanding of the conflict, as its mission statement indicates it wanted to do. HDC used none of the abundant human rights information (which had strong humanitarian relevance) to create a new consensus. Instead, Jakarta dominated the media, leaving HDC with no room to build on the agreement that had been reached. That reduced the credibility of HDC especially within Indonesia. Indeed, HDC's influence declined sharply as one moved from the international to the grassroots level.
For example, the agreement made provision for regular meetings between GAM and TNI field commanders. And these did take place. But GAM was suspicious that TNI would use these meetings to capture senior commanders, so they only sent second or third level commanders. When Indonesia withdrew from the meetings, complaining that GAM was not sending its top commander Abdullah Syafi'ie, HDC again had nothing to say. This was followed by the arrest of the entire GAM negotiating team in Banda Aceh in July 2001. Of course HDC had no troops to enforce any agreement, but it might have been able to save its principles if it had brought in other mediators with more clout such as US-AID.
Lessons
I thought 12 May was a moment of great hope. I felt excited, but also anxious about attitudes on the two sides - GAM stubborn as Acehnese generally are, and Indonesia cunning and always ready to use violence. Considering the generally negative Indonesian response to the agreement, the enthusiasm with which countries like Norway and the US greeted it was perhaps naive.
We can draw two lessons from the HDC process. The first is that this cannot be resolved as a domestic Indonesian problem. Within Southeast Asia it has a negative impact on Malaysia and Singapore because of the Acehnese refugees. And more globally the massive American investment by Exxon is under threat of insecurity. These concerns should lead to more international involvement.
Second, the loss of HDC's credibility in Indonesian eyes led to a spiral of violence. That is why I am excited about the latest development, in which the United States is supporting the HDC process with an additional initiative known as the Four Wise Men. The American idea, conceived before Megawati became president, is that she can work together better with the military and may be able to control them. One of the four individuals will be an influential American, one a Japanese (they buy a lot of gas from Aceh, but are not keen to be involved), one from Yugoslavia who is a friend of Megawati, and Surin Pitsuwan, former Thai foreign minister who is Muslim.
TNI think they can resolve the Aceh issue alone. Shooting dead top GAM commander Tgk Abdullah Syafi'ie on 22 January 2002 encouraged them. But GAM immediately appointed a replacement, Muzakkir Manaf. They are well organised. And the Acehnese now have two new martyrs - Abdullah Syafi'i and his wife (who died with him). To them he was a model of humanism, unpretentious, simple, and devout. That he will become a legend is obvious even from the Indonesian press reporting of his death, which was positive about him and did not describe the soldiers who shot him as heroes.
Otto Syamsuddin Ishak has published two books on Aceh. The Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue website is: www.hdcentre.org.
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
We are all one
How custom overcame religious rivalry in Southeast Maluku
P M Laksono
Southeast Maluku has been neglected not only in the story of the fighting throughout Maluku from early 1999, but also in that of its end. The district capital Tual is located in the Kei Islands, just 800 km to the north of Darwin in Australia. Indonesian newspapers reported hardly any details about the outbreak of fighting on 31 March 1999, except to suggest that hundreds died and tens of thousands became refugees. Almost nothing has been written about why the fighting stopped and what brought the community together again.
Like chocolate melting from the edges in, so the Indonesian state in Maluku experienced structural melt-down after Suharto resigned in 1998. Its ability to bind groups together vanished. The dominance of Golkar, of money, of the values of developmentalism, and of the military, which had held Indonesia together, evaporated and left people disoriented. They lost their trust in the system. When religious fighting broke out in Ambon in January 1999, it created enormous confusion in Southeast Maluku. People lost their grip on reality and a kind of anarchy broke out.
Why should the state be so important in a remote place like Tual? We have to understand that the classic liberal concept of the state - one that doesn't interfere in the market or in people's lives except to provide security and perhaps welfare - has never applied in Maluku. There has never been a free, independent economy. Instead, there is close collaboration between the state, capital, and the values of modernisation and development. Everything has been a monopoly of the state - from rice to petrol.
Southeast Maluku is actually not a remote area. In the early 1960s, the district head (bupati) was a big man. He had to be inventive to fulfil the area's budgetary needs. But by the mid-1980s, with the New Order at its height, all the money came from Jakarta, without any effort at all on the part of the district head. The district had gone from self-sufficiency to an extreme degree of dependency. Human development had actually regressed - the opposite of what the development program intended.
Instead of eating food made from the local sago and poisonous cassava, the civil servants in town now ate rice and instant noodles - all imported by the state and by big capital. Civil servants are the backbone of urban society. By the end of the 1980s nearly all the rupiah flowing into the district came from civil service salaries. Almost no rupiah came in outside the government budget. Agriculture is just subsistence. There is practically no export - just a little copra and marine products. The big fishing trawlers that frequent Tual harbour are Taiwanese and pay their money to Jakarta. The whole of society depends on the state - even if only as a labourer at a school building site.
Segregation
Even now it is not clear who started the conflict in the Kei Islands in 1999. There was a rumour that Islam had been insulted, and a fight broke out on the border between Tual town (Islamic) and neighbouring Ta'ar (Protestant). Every village is relatively homogeneous in religious terms. Even those few villages that are mixed have exclusively Protestant, Catholic and Islamic neighbourhoods. There is thus very little social interaction between people of different religions - just a memory that they were once one.
This kind of social segregation dates back to the introduction of the world religions in Southeast Maluku at the end of the nineteenth century. This was also the time when the highly extractive and bureaucratic colonial state of the Netherlands Indies was first established here. Religion is a state concept. Its introduction and maintenance has always been a policy of the state. Throughout the New Order, anyone who was not religious was an enemy of the state - a communist.
Religion invokes political issues. For Kei Islanders it is not just an inspiration for peace but also a political inspiration. The political institutionalisation of religion takes on fearful forms - it is the institutionalisation of fear. The communist issue is taken very seriously.
They do believe in religion, but in practice it becomes too serious and heavy. Religion is an initial barrier that must be overcome before Kei Islanders can interact more deeply. Religion is competitive. In colonial times power was distributed according to religion. Under the New Order the rhetoric was secular, but in reality religion remained important in determing who became district head or chairperson of the local assembly.
The moment that central power experienced melt-down was therefore also the moment when competition spun totally out of control. Everyone knows everyone else in a small community. But rumours immediately began to circulate of impending attacks from another community in a neighbouring village or island. As long as the Big Brother state was in charge, such outside attacks were impossible to imagine, although they did happen. There are always long-standing problems between neighbouring villages - whether it is over land or an unpaid bride price. Indonesia provided a kind of imperial peace that dampened inter-village warfare.
Ambon, the provincial capital 600 kilometres to the west, had always been the model of statecraft. No village head could be appointed without the approval of the governor in Ambon. The social segregation in Tual was very like that in Ambon too. So when Ambon descended into chaos, so did Tual. Suddenly people lost confidence in the 'guarantees of security' provided by the village head to protect those belonging to a minority faith. If someone heard a rumour that the village would be attacked, they just fled.
Everyone was suddenly on the stage, acting out a script of Christian-Muslim warfare that had been written in Ambon. Of course they all knew what inter-religious tension was, but they never imagined it could come to war. There was a kind of stage fever driven by extreme fear, as well as by a sense of exhiliration, that turned into real violence.
Kinship
However, the conflict did not sever all social relationships. It did not make a complete break in history. There were still some relationships across the religious divide, and especially within local communities. In that sense the conflict was a superficial one, although it had a big local impact.
It really wasn't 'themselves' up there on the stage. After a time they came to their senses, and got down to become spectators again. It became a kind of game once more - even if things were not the same because of the refugees and the dead. I don't believe there were hundreds of dead. In 'my' village of Ohoitel there were just eight dead. Talking numbers was part of the escalation of war. Even one is too many. There were also many stories of people helping one another across religious barriers. They said 'we are all one' - 'Ain Ni Ain'.
When Kei Islanders remember their golden age of enlightenment they do not mean the coming of religion, but the creation of their customary law, the larvul ngabal. The historical watershed for them was not the coming of the Dutch, or of the Republic of Indonesia, or of religion, but much longer ago than that.
They have long regarded Tanimbar Kei, a small island in the south, as the last stronghold of Kei custom and beliefs. During the conflict, this island became a sanctuary for refugees of all religions.
The resurgent belief in the efficacy of custom led to a revived interest in the remaining customary leaders who had not been coopted by the New Order. The key role in turning back to a history of customary kinship was played by Bapak Raja J P Rahail, the customary king of Watlar. Raja Rahail began by preventing any rioting in his own kampung. In the hierarchy of local raja he was the most junior of the twelve in the Kei Islands, but he was able to approach the others and start a movement of customary reconciliation.
Throughout the New Order, Raja Rahail had always been outside the system. He was something of a symbol of opposition to it. He revived the customary community known as the ratskap (from the Dutch 'raadschap'). Raja Rahail was close to the NGO community - being one of the chairpersons of the archipelago-wide customary association Aman (Asosiasi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara), as well as of an Asia-wide association since the early 1990s.
The 1979 law on village government (no 5/1979) had totally destroyed village autonomy. But Raja Rahail had succeeded in retaining custom in his ratskap of Maur Ohoiwut, and this was an inspiration for the community that lived there. The ratskap consisted of several villages, with different religions.
So there were two models of community in Southeast Maluku. One shaped by Indonesia, which bound together religions through the distribution of patronage in the form of official appointments. This experienced melt-down and violence in 1999. As a consequence, people once more began to look to another model, one based on custom and local autonomy.
Even though Raja Rahail was only relatively junior - not in age, he was about seventy years old and in fact died in November 2001 - but his statecraft became a model for the others when they saw how he was able to manage conflict.
Raja Rahail had only his authority and his prestige to offer. He was an expert in creating consultative mechanisms. Every year he held a great debate, a musyawarah, in his ratskap. This had been running since the early 1990s assisted by various non-government organisations (NGOs). He inspired Kei Islanders with the idea that they belonged to one community, and that peace depended on the people's initiative. This played a significant role in ending the conflict in Southeast Maluku.
P M Laksono (laksono@ugm.ac.id) teaches anthropology at Gadjah Mada University. His book 'The common ground in the Kei Islands' (Yogyakarta: Galang Press) appeared in March 2002 (see Bookshop page).
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
More than six decades after being inspired as an undergraduate in Sydney, Ron Witton retraces his Indonesian language teacher's journey back to Suriname