Vaudine England, Jakarta – Fighting between Christian and Muslim villages has flared again in the provinces of Maluku and North Maluku, as experts forecast an eventual partition of the islands with communities of displaced persons.
Weekend violence left a death toll of at least eight in Uraur village, Kairatu district. Residents found seven bodies garbed in the white long-sleeved robes commonly worn by members of the Muslim group Laskar Jihad.
Witnesses said 146 houses were burned during the incident, and reports were coming in of similar violence in the neighbouring village of Waimital, which was used to host migrant settlers until it was taken over by Laskar Jihad forces as their base.
Although there has been little fighting on the North Maluku island of Halmahera since July, local witnesses said the area remained a tinderbox. The navy had managed to control shipping between the island of Ternate and the Halmahera town of Jailolo until one month ago, when small boats came through and took pot-shots at displaced Christians huddled on Halmahera.
Not surprisingly, when a group of Muslims was to be returned to the Jailolo area from Ternate soon afterwards, the Christian communities which had recently been shot at rejected the Muslim returnees en masse.
The United Nations launched an appeal yesterday to raise US$12 million for the victims of conflict in the area. The appeal came after a recent assessment of North Maluku which resulted in the lowering of its security rating from Phase Four to Phase Three, which in UN parlance means an improved ability to deliver humanitarian aid. UN aid staff have re-opened their office in the Maluku capital, Ambon, and will return to Ternate next week.
The money is intended to assist the internally displaced persons (IDPs), which number about 207,000 people in North Maluku and 250,000 in Maluku. Their continued displacement reflects the process of partition along religious lines which has been evolving over almost two years of conflict.
Although fighting in the Maluku islands initially broke out over economic competition and local squabbles, it soon took on religious overtones in a country where ethnicity, faith and opportunity are inextricably intertwined.
"The Government wants the IDPs to return home, which is a good idea probably, but sadly not implementable," one expert said. "Even if we managed to put people back where they fled from, what then? The fighting would only start again."
Helping IDPs to survive where they are may not suit Government objectives, but is the immediate humanitarian response required, the source said.
Steps are being taken by some neutral police and military men in the Maluku to get rid of the militant Laskar Jihad gangs which fuelled this year's continual conflict.
But it is clear the Government feels unable to move directly against thugs in Muslim garb, at least partly for fear of what retaliation might evolve from other parts of an increasingly Islamist political landscape.
"Following the arrival of significant numbers of Laskar Jihad warriors in April the conflict has escalated very seriously," said Baroness Caroline Cox, president of British-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide, speaking in Hong Kong this week.
"Evidence suggests that Laskar Jihad receives assistance from elements in the Government and the armed forces as well as from international Islamist movements." She claimed that some 700 Christians on Seram Island have received an ultimatum from the militants to convert to Islam by the end of November, or face being killed.
"They [Laskar Jihad] have threatened that 'there will be no church bells ringing in Ambon by Christmas'," Baroness Cox added. As for the IDPs, the subject of the UN appeal, "they have no permanent shelter, inadequate food and virtually no medical supplies. Their conditions really are dire and acute", she said.