Chris McCAll, Poso – Osama bin Laden's photo adorns sentry posts along the road into Poso, with the words "jihad post" scrawled on the wooden walls. Above them fly flags bearing Arabic calligraphy and sometimes the image of a sword.
Inside them the occupants may well be asleep. But a few weeks ago it was not like that. Traffic was stopped at checkpoint after checkpoint mounted by armed Muslims, carrying out ID checks. The identity card that all Indonesians must carry states their religion. There were reports of summary abductions and executions when that religion turned out to be Christian.
After a wave of international concern, Jakarta has now flooded the region with heavily armed riot police, whose assault rifles are stacked up neatly in front of the police station in Poso town. Riot police have replaced many of the jihad fighters on the sentry posts. Traffic can get through, at least for now.
The worn-out people of Poso have seen it before and remain to be convinced. The burnt-out houses all along the route are adequate testimony to their misery. The barricades could go up again at any time. And getting on with one jihad group does not necessarily mean getting on with all. They are a complex mix.
"There are a lot of small groups," said one police officer. "They do not co-ordinate between themselves. Each one has their own form of thinking."
The most prominent is Laskar Jihad Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah, which says it has 1,000 forces in Poso. But it is a relatively recent arrival. Others came in before, with names like "Mujahedeen" and "Matador". Some of the volunteers came from Java, others from Ambon.
Abu Umar, the provincial head of Laskar Jihad, blames the Christian so-called red forces for triggering the latest problems. It began, he said, on October 21 with an incident in the village of Mapane, just outside Poso. "The Muslims wanted to take the cocoa from the plantations. They asked for defence from the Laskar," he said, "and a group of his fighters accompanied them. While at the fields they met around 200 red forces with weapons. They pushed them out. They were separated by the security forces. But they were in their own plantation. It was not the red group's site." A police officer was killed in the incident.
Much of the lands on which the cocoa grows is now in the red zone, which Muslims dread to enter just as much as Christians fear to enter the Muslim white zone. The boundary runs right through these plantations. Little wonder that much of the fruit goes unharvested, despite its value.
The police and military say they are caught in the middle. The terrain is difficult, with few telephone lines. Even radio contact is not possible in many areas. They have been accused of bias by both sides. Now they are being sued by Laskar Jihad over the recent arrest of 29 Muslim "victims" of the Mapane incident.
But provincial police spokesman, Assistant Senior Commissioner Agus Sugianto, said now, with the central Government taking a greater interest, things should start to change – thousands of men have been promised to restore security within six months.
But he said reconciliation was the key and that seems a long way off. Laskar Jihad argues that the Christians started this conflict and should repent.
Earlier this year, Fabianus Tibo, a Christian, was sentenced to death with two associates for allegedly masterminding large-scale violence last year in which most of the victims were Muslims. Laskar Jihad said a further 16 people on a list provided by Tibo should logically also be sentenced to death. The list includes the head of the Central Sulawesi Christian Church's Crisis Centre, Rinaldy Damanik, a Protestant minister.
Many Christians also distrust the Muslim governor of Central Sulawesi, Aminuddin Ponolele, and believe he has deliberately allowed the jihad groups in, with weapons.
Along the route, a sign proclaims the area "a kitchen of suffering" as Muslims go about collecting alms.
For some Muslims elsewhere in Indonesia, the war has taken on a religious significance. According to Islam, they argue, they are obliged to help their fellow Muslims in trouble. And should they die in a holy war, according to Muslim doctrine, their soul will ascend directly to heaven. "The war is not over," reads the graffiti on a derelict house going into Poso.