Uneasy peace in the Moluccas

According to Benny Doro, he was appointed commander of North Maluku's Christian army by God. He says he once saw Jesus Christ soaring like a bird above him while he was fighting Muslims. He caught a bullet in his hand. The 50-year-old commander, whose real name is Bernard Bitjara—his adopted name Doro is the name of his village—accepts that he is a sinner, although not, it seems, for killing so many people that he has lost count, but for having two wives. God punished him, he says: one wife and their four children were lost when a ship carrying Christians sank.

In 1999 and 2000 many people died in North Maluku, the northern province in Indonesia's Moluccas island group—several thousand, according to some estimates. Jafar Umar Thalib, leader of a Muslim militia called Laskar Jihad, wants Mr Bitjara to face trial for his role in the slaughter. Some Christians, though, would put Mr Jafar on trial. Laskar Jihad fought Mr Bitjara's army. It joined with other Muslim groups in a bid to drive the Christians out of North Maluku or annihilate them. They nearly succeeded.

Today there is a sort of peace in the province. Soldiers enforce a state of civil emergency. Can peace survive? It is hard to say. This is not simply a religious conflict.

North Maluku is one of Indonesia's newest provinces, created in 1999, ironically to isolate the region from religious violence in Ambon. The town of Ternate, on the tiny island of the same name, is its capital. Mudaffar Sjah, the 48th sultan of Ternate, is well-groomed and speaks impeccable English. A moderate, too: he says that Islam does not oblige women to cover their heads in public. He is married to a Christian. He long served as a legislator during the Suharto regime and wanted to be the first governor of North Maluku.

In 1999 a dispute was raging next door to Ternate in Halmahera, the main island of the province. In part it was a squabble between the people of the Kao district and immigrants from the volcanic island of Makian over the control of a gold mine. Though loyal to the sultan of Ternate, Kao is mainly Christian. It was at this point that Mr Bitjara, alias Benny Doro, moved in with his army of God on the side of the Kao. The fighting spread to southern Ternate, which is populated by an ethnic group close to the people of Makian. The sultan's forces intervened but were driven back by the southerners and their Makian allies. What had been a dispute over land and gold became, at least in Makian eyes, a war of religion. The Christians were pursued and their churches destroyed. Today the sultan is in danger in his own island.

At the end of 1999 and again in May and June 2000, a vast war between Christians and Muslims raged across Halmahera and all the neighbouring islands. Probably the worst fighting was around Tobelo, Halmahera's main town. Mr Bitjara's forces were in the thick of it. They killed hundreds of Muslims who had taken refuge in mosques around the town.

Laskar Jihad and other Muslim groups mustered their forces, and by June 2000 Mr Bitjara's Christians were close to defeat. The president of the day, Abdurrahman Wahid, imposed a state of civil emergency that is still in force. But not everyone is convinced that the peace it has brought is real.

Thousands of Muslim refugees remain in squalid lodgings in Ternate, camping out in churches or former nightclubs alongside paintings of Osama bin Laden. Thousands of Christians are in barracks around Tobelo or in Christian-dominated North Sulawesi, also scared to go home.

Christian leaders say this is not a civil emergency at all, but a military one. They are pretty cynical about the army. During the fighting in 2000, many Muslim soldiers and police joined the jihad forces. Others did nothing to stop the fighting. But removing the state of civil emergency too quickly could be disastrous. Thousands of people who have lost close relations in the violence, sometimes through beheading, could decide to take revenge.

Some issues remain unresolved, in particular, that of the governorship. The sultan is a non-starter these days, but an election was held last year in which a former Suharto minister defeated an ethnic Makian, with support from the sultan and Christian legislators. Almost immediately, allegations surfaced of bribery and the government refused to swear him in.

In Ternate, graffiti calling for Christians to be wiped out or beheaded can still be seen. Notices tell Muslims that spreading their faith is the duty of them all. Christians believe the truth is simple: the Makian leaders and their allies covet their land and want to control the local economy, using as tools religion and warfare by proxy. As long as they believe that, the prospects for peace are, at best, mixed.

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