Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – Over the past week, Irian Jaya has witnessed two lightning attacks by unknown rebels. One last Thursday on a police station and a regional government office and another on Indonesian logging camps.
Were they really conducted by pro-independence guerillas or one of their splinter groups, as police claim, or were these attacks conducted by rogue elements linked to the military?
Groups such as Elsham, a non-government group documenting the attack, suspect the latter because the group attacking the police station gave indiscreet warnings of its attacks. "If these are really independence fighters why are they attacking civilians?" asked leading non-government activist John Rumbiak.
Mr Rumbiak, Elsham's director, believes these attacks are part of a worrying pattern indicating that the government has resorted to using an East Timor-style plan to staunch the independence movement.
Under this plan, hatched by the office of Home Affairs, intelligence operatives would infiltrate the independence movement in order to minimise violence and village-style militias would be created in the province, now known as West Papua.
Mr Rumbiak and other foreign observers, however, fear the infiltrators will not be staunching violence but whipping it up, so that pro-independence groups oppose pro-Indonesian groups.
Security experts said Satgas Papua, the pro-independence militia headed by Yorrias Rawiyai, an army-trained thug with connections to the Golkar party, appears to have been set up for just such a purpose.
Like the pro-Indonesia militia, which numbers around 5,000, Mr Yorrias' men have benefited from military style training. They have been recruited from the unemployed and their members appear to have no clear idea of what they are fighting for apart from operating as loyal body guards for their leaders.
So far both the pro-Indonesia and pro-independence militias are unarmed, but the pro-independence militias have already probably been infiltrated by army intelligence, security experts said.
With the number of migrants in West Papua numbering about 30 per cent of the population, most of whom are concentrated in a few towns, it would not be hard to quickly enlarge and mobilise the pro-Indonesia militias.
And as one foreign observer pointed out, unlike in East Timor, it would not take much provocation for real clashes between the opposing militias. "We're extremely worried it has all the makings of an East Timor," said the observer.
Mr Rumbiak said some militant pro-independent groups had already resolved that the only way to attract much needed global attention was "the pouring of blood in West Papua".
Ironically, while Jakarta's generals have warned ominously that Irian Jaya is in danger of going the way of East Timor, foreign diplomats and observers are also concerned this conflict has the ingredients of an East Timor but for entirely different reasons.
The generals, hardliners and nationalists in the Cabinet, fearing that West Papua's independence movement will become as vociferous and well supported as East Timor's or Aceh's, favour a civil emergency in the territory and an end to dialogue with independence leaders.
But foreign observers say it is not the fractured independence movement that poses the danger, but Jakarta's tough stance as its crackdown may result in more and more disturbing incidences of unarmed or primitively-armed Papuans being shot by heavily-armed troops. Foreign governments will then find it increasingly difficult to justify their support for Indonesia's control over the territory.
As Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew pointed out last month in Australia, a repeat performance of East Timor would be extremely damaging for Indonesia.
"They ought to be telling the President just how risky such unthoughtful acts can be for the reputation of the country," Mr Lee said. "I hope they have learnt from what happened in East Timor and don't allow the same syndrome to develop in West Irian."
In fact, while army-backed militias might pose serious concerns for Irian Jaya's security, the guerilla arm of the independence movement or OPM is no match for East Timor or Aceh's guerilla army.
Security experts say the OPM, which consists of just a few hundred highlanders, lacks the arms, organisation and sophisticated intelligence to launch anything more than sporadic hit and run attacks on the security forces.
And unlike East Timor's Falantil, which co-ordinated and launched attacks across East Timor, OPM is split into two main bands based on tribal groupings which operate in two strips along the PNG border.
A sign of the desperation is that unlike other guerilla movements such as GAM in Aceh or Falantil in East Timor, instead of bragging about the number of weapons they have, they even ask foreigners how they can buy guns.
But the government's hardline position might just produce another East Timor-style effect. If military force is used increasingly, moderates will be sidelined and Papuan's opinion will harden. And, as in East Timor, independence will be seen as the only way to end the violence.