Potential Hot Spots: Unresolved Indonesian Insurrections
31st August 2018
Indonesia continues to cope with violence caused by religious and ethnic disputes which have both resisted permanent solution. Islamic conservatism and radicalism are largely under control but Islamic terrorist groups still survive. Ethnic unrest and separatism are a more serious problem. This is mainly about Papua (the western half of New Guinea, the fourth largest island in the world) , and bitter memories of losing nearby East Timor to a separatist uprising that, after more than 20 years of unrest, resulted in East Timor becoming independent. Indonesia is trying to avoid a similar fate for Papua. There have long been periodic outbreaks of ethnic violence in Papua, but now it is getting worse. Papua was long seen as less of a problem, and a more distant one, than Islamic terrorism.