INDONESIA: Sulawesi Bombs Cloaking Corruption?

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Fabio Scarpello

JAKARTA, Jun 13 2005 (IPS) - Tension remains high in Central and West Sulawesi, where greedy politicians and rogue Islamic groups – rather than a revival of sectarian violence or international terrorism – look to be behind the latest attacks directed against Christian targets in Tentena and Mamasa.

Two bombs exploded in the market of Tentena, a mostly Christian town in Central Sulawesi – which is among many provinces that share one of Indonesia’s largest islands – on May 28. The bombs killed 21, injured over 50 and left many more in tears.

Just over a month before, six people were killed and several houses torched in Mamasa, another predominantly Christian town in West Sulawesi.

Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population but also a sizeable Christian minority.

Following the attacks, many people feared a revival of the sectarian violence that left over 2,000 dead and many thousands internally displaced from 1999 to 2001. Others imagined Tentena as the latest target in the terror campaign waged by Jemaah Islamiyah, a terrorist group operating in South-east Asia and linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.

Jemaah Islamiyah is believed to be behind the bombings in Bali and on the Hotel Marriott and the Australian Embassy: three attacks that bloodied the Island of Gods and the Indonesian capital in the past three years.

Yet, neither of the two hypotheses seems accurate.

First, Sulawesi’s religious leaders have appealed for calm and, to their credit, tension has not exploded into open clashes between the two groups.

“The perpetrators of the bombing would like to provoke the people but locals are not interested anymore. Muslims and Christians have come together. It will not work this time; the provocation will not work,” Mona Saroinsong, coordinator of the North and Central Sulawesi Churches Crisis Centre, told IPS.

On the other hand, Jemaah Islamiyah appears to be focussed on high-profile targets linked to westerners, so it is unlikely that its associates would have taken the trouble to travel to Tentena, a remote town hardly known outside Indonesia prior to the bombing and one lacking a western presence.

Instead, “motives” taking shape from the murky scenarios floating about lead to a mixture of dirty politics and disconnected radical Islamic groups. However, the region’s scars of violence are still deep and observers worry the bombers could succeed in pitching one religious group against the other.

Central Sulawesi’s native Pamona people converted to Christianity following the arrival of the Dutch in 1892. Muslims started arriving when the area was opened to commerce soon after.

The flow of Muslims increased after Indonesia gained independence, with the government-sponsored ‘transmigrasi’ policy that moved thousands of mostly Muslim Javanese to – among others – the predominantly Christian Central Sulawesi.

Political power was the trigger that started the region’s main sectarian war in 1999. In that case, the spark was provided by the then Poso Muslim governor, Arif Patanga, who proposed that one of his family members succeed him instead of a Christian.

As a matter of social convention, for many years the practice had been to alternate a Christian and a Muslim as governor. The proposal heightened tensions, which exploded after a group of Muslims attacked Christian targets following a brawl.

Prior to 1999, the area had not experienced significant inter-religious fighting.

A look at the larger picture today reveals that Christians and Muslims indeed no longer want to fight. Tentena is a mostly Christian town, only 55 kms north of Poso, which is mostly Muslim. The towns were the strongholds of the two warring factions during the past violence, but have coexisted rather peacefully since.

Yet some radical Islamic groups are known to operate around Poso. The groups, which are not directly linked to the mainstream Muslim community, are aiming to stir up trouble in the region and to direct it along religious lines.

Regardless of any direct involvement in the Tentena attack, which is yet to be proven, the radical groups largely unchecked presence is a destabilizing factor to the region’s constant efforts of community building and interfaith dialogue.

But an even bigger threat to the region’s stability is posed by dirty politics, worsened by Indonesia’s decentralisation programme, which has devolved some authority from the capital Jakarta to the regions. In such a context, some local politicians, driven by greed and craving power, have stirred troubles to increase their influence or to gain financially.

Local governors in Poso, for example, were left to administer large funds allocated by the central government for the reintegration of the thousands of people internally displaced during the area’s past unrest. The flood of cash has given rise to widespread corruption, which has led to some officials being arrested.

Yet the story is not over. Most of the money is unaccounted for, and cases are still being investigated. According to some local NGOs, the disgraced politicians could have masterminded the bombings to divert attention from their troubles.

“It is believed that the bombs that exploded in Tentena are linked to an attempt to divert efforts to uncover corruption of humanitarian aid,” said Iskandar Lamuka, director of the Poso Foundation for the Strengthening of Civil Society (LPMS) during a press conference in Jakarta on May 31.

LPMS is one of the NGOs investigating the corruption cases.

The mix of politics and religion is clearer in Mamasa, where an Apr. 26 attack was the fourth bloody incident since the Polewali-Mamasa district was split into two regencies by the central government three years ago.

The partition meant that some politicians lost power, villages were divided into pro and con factions and violent clashes sometimes broke out after partition was proposed in 1999.

The two camps coincided roughly with the Christian and Muslim villages in the area.

A worrying late development in Mamasa is the role of some Poso-based radical Islamic groups, which have moved into the area to stir up trouble. Their presence increases the risk of sporadic fighting turning into a full-blown sectarian war.

“The possibility that young armed radicals from Poso are starting to come to Mamasa to exploit the conflict makes it imperative not only that they be stopped, but that the underlying dispute be addressed – and urgently,” wrote Sidney Jones, South-east Asia project manager for the International Crisis Group (ICG) in a recently released report.