Jamie Mackie, Hong Kong – The ethnic violence that has flared up over the last two months on the island of Ambon, 2,000 kilometers east of Jakarta, has been horrifyingly brutal and intractable. The clashes have claimed the lives of around 200 people, and Indonesia's formidable security forces have been unable to stop the killing. It would be a mistake, however, to see the violence in Ambon as typical of other religious and ethnic tensions elsewhere in Indonesia.

Since the overthrow of President Suharto last May, Indonesia has been in a state of intense political mobilization leading up to the national elections in June. Not surprisingly, a number of groups across Indonesia are exploiting the old "primordial ties" of ethnicity, religion, language and kinship for political purposes. However, the political and socio-cultural dynamics behind these tensions are often fundamentally different.

The violence in Ambon, and last week's brutal attacks by the indigenous Dayak (mostly animist or Christian) tribesmen against predominately Muslim Madurese settlers in West Kalimantan, for example, should be regarded as very different in character from the ethnic and religious tensions observable in other parts of the country, particularly those involving Chinese-Indonesians in the major cities. To lump them together as if all "religious conflicts" or "racial antagonisms" are basically the same is a gross oversimplification. The intensity of violent outbreaks of rioting and of the antagonisms behind them vary considerably from one part of Indonesia to another – as do the all-important countervailing forces dampening them.

That said, the outbreaks of ethnic violence in Ambon, West Kalimantan and Indonesia's major cities certainly have common elements. The victimized groups often include relatively recent settlers who are perceived as threatening by the original inhabitants. In West Kalimantan and Ambon, for example, the recent settlers happen to be Muslims. These Muslim settlers are in the minority (an unusual situation in predominately Muslim Indonesia), hence vulnerable to attack if law and order breaks down at a time of great hardship.

The violence against the settlers lends itself readily to television reporting, providing images which seize attention but rarely are accompanied by deeper analysis. This can easily create a misleading impression that Indonesia is a seething cauldron of racial hatreds. The prospect of an independent East Timor and secessionist demands in Irian Jaya, Aceh and elsewhere also conjure up alarming parallels with Bosnia or the breakup of the Soviet Union. But the reality is very different.

While there are abundant grounds for concern about the possibility of ethnic and religious conflict in the run-up to the national elections in June, in fact there have been surprisingly few such outbreaks over the last few months. Even the total number of deaths from all the rioting and goon-squad killings during the turbulent first eight months after the change of government last May is considerably less than commonly imagined; it has been estimated at less than 600 by one well-placed Indonesian observer.

There is always a danger that tensions between rival groups might flare up into fights, rioting and looting, which can easily take on a highly combustible anti-Chinese aspect and flicker across the country. But the major party leaders are highly aware of that, as are the security authorities. They know they must try to restrain their more hot-headed followers in present circumstances, since any breakdown in law and order could have disastrously unpredictable results, which could also be electorally counter-productive for them.

The conflict in Ambon is not about whether the island should or should not be a part of Indonesia. According to Peter Mares of Radio Australia, who has covered Indonesia extensively for many years, what we are witnessing in Ambon is "a conflict between people who have lived side-by-side for centuries, people who share largely the same ethnicity, the same culture and tradition, and who are divided only by their religious beliefs." Yet a trivial incident on January 19, the Muslim holy day of Idul Fitri, involving a Christian bus driver and a Muslim who sought money from him, erupted into a clash of communal violence that has torn apart that society and the social harmony that once prevailed there.

Ambon, like West Kalimantan, is one of the few places in Indonesia where Christians (mainly Protestants) are in the majority, albeit now an increasingly narrow one. The Ambonese were Christianized in the 19th century when the Dutch colonial army recruited large numbers of the local population and provided access to missionary schools and a Christian education. Ambonese Muslims, on the other hand, are relative newcomers to the area. The conflict in Ambon is not a case where "Muslim fanaticism" – that hoary Western fantasy and cliche – is at the heart of the problem, but one where the Muslims have been very much on the defensive and are now fleeing in large numbers on any ships available.

The violence in Ambon cannot be attributed to any one underlying cause. Christians and Muslims have been living in close proximity and reasonable harmony for a long time, well over a century in the case of Muslim immigrants from Buton island and many decades in that of the (Muslim) Bugis and Makassar people from southern Sulawesi. But the latter have been arriving in increasing numbers in recent years and have taken over many of the island's more desirable informal-sector jobs, such as market-stall holders, pedicab drivers and laborers, which are the lower rungs on the ladder toward economic advancement.

During the boom years, Muslim immigrants posed no great problem. But resentment against them mounted when the economic crisis of 1997-98 began to hurt local communities. More seriously, senior jobs in the government service, which previously were dominated by the better-educated Christian elite of Ambon, have been taken over by Muslims, causing much anxiety among the Christian community. So a tinder box of resentments has been building up, while some of the traditional intercommunal bridging mechanisms which helped to maintain religious and ethnic harmony in the past have been eroding.

But that alone might not have been enough to provoke violence on the scale seen in Ambon since January had it not been for a serious clash between Muslims and Ambonese Christians in Jakarta last November in which a number of the latter were killed. According to a survey conducted by Sidney Jones of Asia-Watch New York, who recently visited Ambon, last November's violence against Ambonese led to a sharp build-up of tensions on the island. It was then, says Mr. Jones, that Ambonese Christians and Muslims began strengthening their communications networks through their churches and mosques in anticipation of any repetition of such outbreaks locally.

The Indonesian army has sent additional troops to Ambon, but they face a difficult task in convincing the local population that they will be even-handed in maintaining order under such volatile circumstances. Ultimately it must be the Ambonese people who restore peace, but that will not be easy. The greatest danger is that localized fighting will trigger a chain reaction of further ethnic or religious violence in other parts of the country. Viewing attacks on Muslims as solely religious in nature, extremists in other parts of the country may begin calling for revenge against Christians.

Fortunately, payback attacks on Christians in Jakarta, which many had feared soon after the Idul Fitri violence in Ambon, have not occurred. But with so much highly combustible tinder scattered around Indonesia, sparks of any kind could lead to an explosive situation.

James Mackie is professor emeritus at the Australian National University and a visiting professor at the Melbourne Business School.]