INTRODUCTION for Nine Years from 1998 to 2007, Poso District In

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

For nine years from 1998 to 2007, Poso district in Central Sulawesi province became the site of the most protracted interreligious conflict in post- authoritarian Indonesia. What started as a brawl between two local youths escalated first to urban riots, then to widespread killings and war-like violence, before a long period of sporadic shootings and bombings. Along the way, a little known and sparsely-populated district in the outer islands of Indonesia with no recent history of violence came to global attention as one of the most important theatres of operations for the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network. Overall, between 600 and 1000 people were killed out of a pre-conflict population of approximately 400,000 people, and tens of thousands more were displaced amid immense physical destruction. The extent of the destruction wrought during the conflict was captured in a wry local saying, ‘Win and you’re charcoal, lose and you’re ash.’ The onset of violence in Poso coincided with the democratic transition that followed President Suharto’s May 1998 resignation, ending more than 40 years of authoritarian rule in Indonesia. Poso was not the only site to experience large-scale communal fighting during this transition—four other provinces were also rocked by episodes of violence in which several hundred to several thousand people were killed. At a superficial level, this outbreak of violence was not a surprise. Indonesia’s own history and con- temporary circumstances contributed to pessimism that unrest would accompany the end of authoritarian rule. Even as the transition began, three of Indonesia’s then 27 provinces were already gripped by long-run- ning separatist insurgencies, each of which intensified as the central authoritarian regime fell. Moreover, the previous two instances of regime change, in 1945–9 and 1965–6, had been accompanied by periods of widespread social violence. In comparative terms, furthermore, countries in the midst of democratization are often observed to be particularly prone to communal violence (Snyder 2000; van Klinken 2007). Equally, however, no one had predicted that the pattern of violence during the transition would be defined by large-scale outbreaks of communal fighting in Indonesia’s outer islands. Indeed it is barely possible that such a prediction could have been made, given the unfamiliarity to that point

2 chapter one of both the forms and locations of large-scale violence. Communal fighting had been mostly absent under Suharto’s regime, with the two excep- tions of anti-Chinese violence and, at the very end of authoritarian rule, an episode of ethnic violence in West Kalimantan province in 1997. Each eventual site of communal conflict had also been wholly anonymous in national affairs. Even within Indonesia and well after fighting in Poso had commenced, mention of my research site often elicited a puzzled stare. Moreover, the situation in Poso and these other sites of violence in fact stood in stark contrast to conditions in most of the rest of Indonesia. The eight provinces that experienced large-scale communal or separatist violence encompassed just 7 per cent of Indonesia’s population (Aspinall 2008).1 Numerous other locations experienced localised low-intensity conflicts, crime like social violence or short-lived riots.2 Both Jakarta and Medan, two of Indonesia’s four largest cities, experienced massive anti- Chinese riots just weeks before the end of authoritarian rule, for example. Nevertheless, for the majority of Indonesia’s citizenry, rather than large- scale violence, the democratic transition heralded peaceful democratic participation, improved civil liberties, and a gradually recovering econ- omy following the 1997 monetary crisis. Even within Central Sulawesi province itself, circumstances in Poso differed sharply from other locations. No other district experienced significant communal blood-letting. Indeed, at the very moment that war-like violence raged between Poso’s

Table 1. Sites of large-scale violent conflict during Indonesia’s democratic transition. Communal Separatist Interreligious Inter-ethnic Central Sulawesi (Poso) West Kalimantan Papua Maluku Central Kalimantan Aceh North Maluku East Timor* * In 1999, East Timor province voted to secede from Indonesia, becoming present- day Timor-Leste.

1 Varshney, Tadjoeddin and Panggabean (2008:385) express this point at district level, observing that 85.5 per cent of deaths from 1990–2003 occurred in fifteen districts and municipalities comprising just 6.5 per cent of Indonesia’s population in 2000. (Their data- set excludes Papua and West Papua province.) 2 Barron and Sharpe (2008) provide one initial survey of localised violence outside of areas of high intensity violence.