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Why Terrorism Varies in Indonesia

2024
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Thesis / Dissertation Description

This dissertation studies when, why, and how local religious conflicts escalate to campaigns of terrorist violence. To do so, I examine two most-similar cases in Indonesia: Ambon and Poso. Each experienced significant local conflict between Christians and Muslims in the early 2000s. But while a peace treaty in Ambon in 2002 was largely successful, a similar treaty in Poso failed, and violence actually escalated into an organized campaign of terrorism against Christians. To understand why violence escalated to terrorism in one case, but not the other, I conducted six months of field research, including 98 interviews with original interviews with experts, police officers, government officials, MUI (Majelis Ulama Indonesia, Indonesian Ulama Council), religious leaders, journalists, NGO activists, peace activists, women activists, radical activists, youth leaders, victims of violence, and former combatants. I find that traditional explanations of terrorism that focus on group ideology or local grievances fail to explain the difference between Poso and Ambon. Instead, I argue that social ties between local Muslims and organized armed actors in Poso were crucial in the escalation of violence. The absence of similar connections in Ambon meant that even triggering events, such as the killing of a co-religionist and a village attack, did not escalate to a terrorist campaign. This argument stands in stark opposition to prevailing relational theories of conflict that presume that closer relations between armed actors and civilians might reduce violence. It therefore has important implications for the management of local communal conflicts, not just in Indonesia, but in similar cases from India to Palestine.

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