Jakarta – The marginalization of Christians and a power struggle among local politicians are behind bloody year-long clashes in Indonesia's Maluku islands, analysts say.

Most agree that demographic changes in Ambon caused by the influx of Muslim migrants, including some from other islands in Maluku, has enabled politicians to fuel the conflict. But the other factors are complex.

Commentators have struggled to explain the bitter fighting between Muslims and Christians, who once lived together peacefully in the former "Spice Islands" and disagree on the causes of the conflict.

One analyst said the army, threatened with a shrinking role in the nation's politics as it is called to account for past human rights abuses, is cashing in on the unrest to strengthen its territorial grip.

"The feelings among Christians of being treated unjustly has ignited the unrest," Thamrin Amal Tamagola, a Maluku-born sociologist of the state University of Indonesia told AFP. "If you pour fuel on dry hay, it will suddenly burn to ashes," he said.

But noted historian Ong Hok Ham dismissed accusations that the military had a hand in the bloodshed. "I don't think the military is involved. The fact that the military is unable to end the violence has already tarnished its image," Ong said.

Tamagola maintained that the army's "hidden agenda" has driven the conflict, which has left at least 1,700 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced since January last year.

"Unrest is used as a tool by the military to justify their stronger presence in provinces so that the wind of reform does not blow too hard on them," he said.

Reforms were introduced after the 1998 fall of president Suharto, under whom the military was all-powerful in Indonesia.

Traders from other Indonesian provinces began to flood into the Maluku capital of Ambon in the early 1970s and the migrants, mostly from neighboring Sulawesi island, quickly prospered.

Before the influx Christians made up 52 percent of Ambon's population but the Muslim community expanded to become the majority, Tamagola added.

He said the appointment of a Muslim governor, Akib Latuconsina, in the 1980s further fuelled the unhappiness of local Christian politicians.

Latuconsina is accused of sidelining Christian officials and preventing a former Ambon mayor from running for a second term despite his acclaimed success in running the city.

Ong agreed that tension between the Ambonese and Muslim migrants had contributed to the violence, but rejected political or religious motives. "It seems to me like brawls among high school students," he said.

Muslim-Christian violence on the Malukus, a former Dutch colony, has left more than 700 people dead in the past few weeks alone, many shot by security forces caught between the warring sides.

Despite the presence of some 10,000 troops, the clashes have raged unabated into the new year with both communities accusing the military of backing the other side.

The Indonesian Communion of Churches (PGI) has said it believes the violence is aimed at exterminating "the indigenous Maluku people along with their social institutions" and has been wrongly labelled as a religious conflict.

The church group has called for the deployment of international peacekeepers and said the military and police must be held accountable for their role in fanning the conflict.

"We, as a religious institution, can only facilitate efforts for reconciliation through churches. But that cannot be done well in the current circumstances," PGI chairman Sularso Sopater told AFP.

Tamagola said the government must replace governor Saleh Latuconsina (no relation to his predecessor), a Muslim, with someone more neutral, reform the whole administration and replace the army with the navy.

Calls for a jihad, or holy war, have been aired by Muslim groups following the deaths of Muslims on Halmahera island at the hands of Christians angered by the burning of a Protestant church in Ambon.

President Abdurrahman Wahid, who attended a gathering of both Christian and Muslim Maluku residents of Jakarta on Saturday, has warned he will take action against Muslims travelling to the islands to wage a jihad.