20000117

'Power struggle

fuel Maluku

unrest'

JAKARTA: The marginalisation of Christians and a power struggle among local politicatians are behind bloody year-long clashes in Indonesia's Maluku Island, 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 ingnited 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 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.ÑAP