For centuries Christians were the majority people in the Moluccas. They fought alongside the Dutch during the 19th- and 20th-century colonial wars. In those days the pictureseque atoll was known as the Spice Islands because of its lucrative exports of clove and nutmeg. But starting about 30 years ago, the islands’ religious mix began to change–ominously. The Indonesian government encouraged hundreds of thousands of Muslims to leave the populous islands of Java and Sulawesi and move to the Moluccas. Ethnic and religious tensions slowly built, then exploded in January 1999. Fierce Muslim-Christian fighting broke out on Ambon, the most heavily populated island, and has since spread to Halmahera and its two satellite islands, Ternate and Tidore. About 4,000 people have been killed; more than 200,000 Moluccans have left their homes. Worse, the sectarian violence is beginning to spread to other parts of Indonesia, where Christians and Muslims live side by side. “If the violence is left unchecked,” says a senior Western diplomat in Jakarta, “then you can kiss Indonesia as we know it goodbye.”
Abu Bakar is not thinking much about the geopolitical picture. He wants only to fight for his religion. The determined FPI leader says that he’s already dispatched 20,000 young men to fight in the north Moluccas. At least a dozen other militant Muslim groups–among them, Laskar Jihad, Al-Fatah and the Islamic Youth Front–are also involved in conflict, sending men, arms, money, food and medicine to Muslim communities under threat. In Abu Bakar’s view, joining the battle is as important to young Muslims as Friday prayers. “Any young man who can hold a sword must join the jihad,” he declares. On the porch outside Abu Bakar’s office, a dozen tough-looking teens strain to hear him speak. The cleric’s goal is to recapture Muslim towns and villages on Halmahera, where Christian militias have expelled more than 100,000 Muslims from their homes. But he’s prepared to go further, if necessary. “If Christians refuse to let Muslims return to their homes,” says Abu Bakar, “then we will push them off the islands for good.”
That won’t be easy. In northern Halmahera, for example, Christian forces are better armed and more numerous than Muslims. Still, the cleric believes that religious ardor–and good knife fighting–can overcome all odds. Abu Bakar rolls up a sleeve to reveal about a dozen parallel white scars on the underside of each of his forearms–wounds he inflicted on himself with a sword. He made the cuts, he says, to teach his young fighters the importance of mental toughness and “dependence on God.”
The shadow of former president Suharto, whose 32-year dictatorship ended in 1998, hangs over the Moluccan conflict. Critics says Suharto never tried to solve the region’s ethnic and religious tensions, which were bubbling beneath the surface on the mountainous islands for years. Suharto’s transmigrasi policies, which sent large numbers of Muslims to the underpopulated Moluccas, upset the region’s delicate demographic balance.
Much of the recent fighting has been driven by an urge for revenge. Late last year Christian militias destroyed the Muslim town of Maliput, on Halmahera. About 70,000 Muslims fled to Ternate, which still has old British and Portuguese forts, and is still studded with clove and nutmeg trees that are the island’s chief export. Itching to settle accounts, thousands of Muslims attacked Ternate’s 20,000 Christians with machetes and knives. At least 31 people were killed; scores of Christian houses were leveled, and 10 churches were burned. Many local Muslims tried to protect Christian friends, but couldn’t prevent Islamic fighters from tying up several Christians, attaching heavy rocks to their legs and then dumping them into the sea. Within days Ternate had been “cleansed” of all Christians.
The tit-for-tat attacks have continued. Christians took their revenge in the Halmahera town of Tobelo. Wearing red headbands, they attacked Muslim villagers–at one point, according to Muslim accounts, herding scores of people into a mosque and then blowing it up with dynamite. Dozens were killed. Hasan Andimakulao, who was driven from Tobelo by the Christian onslaught, lost his left eye when it was hit by a Christian-fired arrow. He saw Christian gunmen capture his 20-year-old son and slash his throat. Hasan and his extended family fled to the forest without food or water. “I’ve lost my son, everything,” he says. He and his family now live in a badly damaged Christian house in Ternate, where they were taken by the Indonesian Army.
So far, the Indonesian government of President Abdurrahman Wahid has not been able to stop the escalating violence. One reason, assert Moluccans on both sides of the religious divide, is that allies of Suharto, including some Army cronies, may be provocateurs. What’s the motivation? That massive unrest will undermine the Wahid government–which is pressing a corruption investigation against Suhorto and many of his former associates.
Indonesia’s defense force, or TNI, has exacerbated the crisis. Some Army units in the Moluccans have defected to the Muslim side–and have even been caught on tape providing covering fire for Muslim gunmen attacking Christian neighborhoods. Some local police units have joined with Christian forces. “Members of the Army have become a major cause of the clashes,” says civilian Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono.
Jakarta has lately taken a tougher stance. In June the government declared a state of emergency in the Moluccas and slapped a ban on travel to the islands. An Indonesian naval blockade has helped limit the number of outsiders who’ve been slipping onto the islands to join the war. In early July the Navy stopped 17 fishing boats headed to north Halmahera and confiscated a cache of guns and ammunition. Such actions have forced Abu Bakar and other militant groups to use more stealth. The cleric dismisses as anti-Islamic and meaningless government efforts to foil the FPI. “Wahid can’t stop us,” says Abu Bakar. “Muslims are commanded by God, not by him. So we’ll continue to fight.”
Jainal, the 18-year-old son of Hasan Andimakulao, certainly feels that way. He’s just returned to the safe haven of Ternate after having fought in Tobelo for the third time. The angry-looking young man has come home to nurse a leg wound inflicted by a Christian booby trap. As soon as his leg heals, he says, he will take his weapon–a short sword called a parang–join with 10 friends and take a ferry to Tidore. There, they’ll pray at Abu Bakar’s mosque, then be smuggled at night back to the Tobelo region on Halmahera. “I want to fight to take back my family’s home, to avenge my brother and to save Islam,” says the boy. “I’m not afraid to die.” That, sadly, is the prevailing sentiment on both sides in this brutal religious fight.
