Indonesia

Involvement in violent campaigns against vice and religious deviance has become one pathway to terrorism in Indonesia.

The government needs to quickly answer questions about an outbreak of violence in Ambon on 11 September that has raised communal tensions and may have been the motivation for the 25 September bombing of a church in Solo, Central Java.

A spike in violence in Indonesian Papua over the last two months underscores the urgency of exploring new ideas to address conflict there.

Indonesia should put the passage of a controversial intelligence bill on hold until there is a more comprehensive assessment of its security needs.

Five years after the first post-conflict elections in Aceh brought  former guerrillas of the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) to power, local elections scheduled for November 2011 are turning into a bitter intra-GAM battle.

A suicide bomb at an Indonesian police station last week fits a pattern of “individual jihad” aimed at local targets undertaken by small groups acting independently of large jihadi organisations but sometimes with their encouragement.

The government of Indonesia needs to strengthen the management of local elections in order to minimise the risk of violence.

The Indonesian government needs a strategy to address growing religious intolerance, particularly in areas where hardline Islamists and Christian evangelicals are competing for the same ground.

The Indonesian government could reduce the circulation of illegal firearms by improving procedures for guarding and monitoring police and military armouries, conducting regular audits of gun importers and enforcing controls over the “airsoft” industry.

The Indonesian government needs urgently to address discontent in Papua, its easternmost region, and recognise that the root of the problem is political, not economic.