These days it’s so easy to look back at the past decade and marvel at
Indonesia’s transition to democracy.
But there are lessons to
be learned from the successes and the failures of the reform era. One
of the stand-out successes has been the country’s ability to manage and
resolve
conflict.
The end of the authoritarian era under President Soeharto unleashed
violent centrifugal forces that resulted in the deaths of thousands in
places like West Kalimantan, Maluku and Poso in Central Sulawesi, and
displaced more than a million people. The reform era also resulted in
the ending of a long-running separatist conflict in Aceh.
There
is much to be learned from the methods used to manage these conflicts.
Although the case of Aceh is much trumpeted because international
mediation was employed, there were homegrown political initiatives that
ended the conflicts in Poso and Maluku, as well as significant but
largely unsung contributions made by civil society.
Countries
plagued by violence stemming from communal or separatist causes could
learn from Indonesia’s experience. Equally, it is important that
Indonesia reflects on its own experience in order to deal with
contemporary conflict situations, such as Papua, as well as anticipating
conflicts that may arise in the future.
One of the lessons is
that ending the violence is only the start of a process of resolving
conflict. In the case of both Poso and Maluku, successful mitigation of
the conflict resulted in promises of compensation and resettlement that
were not properly implemented, which has resulted in continued
discontent. The proportionate and judicious use of force is a key
variable that Indonesia hasn’t always managed well.
To this end,
the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue teamed up with Indonesian academic
experts and civil society activists to examine three different
conflicts with a view to distilling lessons from the approaches to their
management and resolution.
One of the key lessons derived from
this study is that Indonesia’s homegrown approach to conflict resolution
has tended to be top down. Both the Malino I and Malino II agreements
that ended violence in Poso and Maluku consecutively were not
participatory processes in which local communities were involved, either
in the planning or the implementation of the agreements.
Instead
of identifying root causes and addressing the longer-term drivers of
conflict they focused on physical recovery, reconstruction and the
provision of emergency aid. This left them open to criticism as top
down and short-lived efforts that ended the violence but left the legacy
of violence — issues of displacement, compensation and justice —
largely unaddressed. The danger is that leaves seeds of future
conflict.
Civil society, and women in particular played important
roles in informal reconciliation in Poso and Maluku, but these roles
have been either missed or misunderstood. As a result formal peace
processes in Indonesia have tended to marginalize civil society and the
role of women in particular. For example, in negotiations that led to
the Helsinki Agreement on Aceh, there was only one woman, and advisor to
the Free Aceh Movement, involved in the process.
The
under-estimation of the role of women, and the capacity of informal
community organizations, means that preventing violent conflict at an
early stage is more challenging.
There’s an irony here.
Indonesia is proud of the resilience of its community networks and
structures, grounded in cultural traditions of cooperation and
tolerance, yet with something so critical to social harmony as conflict
management, there is a tendency to defer to centralized imperatives and
bureaucratic procedure — and all too easily resort to the use of force.
The
conflict that poses the biggest threat to peace in Indonesia today is
in Papua, where the indigenous Papuan community doesn’t just dream
unrealistically of independence from Jakarta, but sees its own existence
threatened by encroaching demographic and environmental pressures. One
of the opportunities that stems from the past decade of conflict
management in Indonesia is the chance to avoid repeating past mistakes.
Peace
in Maluku and Poso is less secure than it could be because both the
Malino I and Malino II agreements were elite arrangements made without
public participation. In the case of Papua, the careful, dedicated work
of Papuan Pastor Neles Tebay and researcher Muridan Widjoyo in Jakarta
offer a corrective. Through intensive public consultation on the ground
in Papua, they have persuaded restive Papuans to accept peaceful
dialogue with Jakarta. In response, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
has assented to a “constructive communication” to discuss political
issues that fuel discontent in Papua.
Building on valuable
lessons from the management of past conflicts, hopefully the conflict in
Papua will be addressed through peaceful dialogue leading to a
political solution that doesn’t need the glare of international
publicity. As a maturing democratic country, Indonesia should be able
to settle its own conflicts — and help others to resolve theirs.
The
writer is the Asia Regional Director of the Centre for Humanitarian
Dialogue. The report on the conflicts in Maluku, Poso and Papua can be
downloaded at http://www.hdcentre.org/projects/peacemaking-research