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But in Banda Aceh, where military oppression was less severe, confusion creeps back in. Outside the town's big Baiturrahman Mosque, Faisal Jamil, 23, a history student, says that in the fight against Dutch colonialism, "Aceh's heroes saw themselves as Indonesian. I could be proud of being Indonesian if all the bad things stopped. But deep down, I probably don't want to be Indonesian any more." Otto Syamsuddin Ishak, a sociologist in Banda Aceh, says people "are trapped within two identities" and don't know how to get out. "To me the issue is not about being Acehnese or Indonesian. It is about humanity."
The simple claims of humanity have all too often fallen through the cracks of the great Indonesian ambivalence. In the village of Salatiga Mandor two hours north of Pontianak in West Kalimantan, Johannes Sone, a Dayak, talks with bracing frankness about the brutal ethnic cleansing of Madurese immigrants from his area. "It's true we killed Madurese--and ate them," says the 49-year-old schoolteacher. "But we regarded them as animals." Madurese have been driven out of Dayak areas in West Kalimantan in increasing numbers since the end of 1997--not coincidentally since the onset of the economic crisis. Sone grins as he recites his personalized litany of prejudice: "The Madurese are bad. They are thieves, killers, cheats. They take your coconuts, steal your chickens. It is impossible to live together with Madurese." Sone says the "unity in diversity" concept that underpins Indonesia's national coherence is "rubbish if the Madurese don't respect our customs." Customs that extend, apparently, to the eating of their flesh.
"Of course it is inhuman, and it is beyond my understanding," says Marsaid, 40, a Madurese farmer from Sambas who was forced to flee with his wife and six children to a refugee camp in Pontianak two months ago when the ethnic cleansing reached its height. He was shot in the hip while helping to evacuate some women; one 17-year-old relative was beheaded. Marsaid worries about his children's future--and the future of Indonesia, which he likens to a broken-down car. "It feels like we small people are all pushing the car. But if the engine starts again, it will drive off and leave us behind."
The real grievance of the Dayaks is that the Madurese are more economically aggressive, monopolizing the minibus transport business, expanding their farming onto disputed land and managing to make more money than others. "The cultural differences were a cover for disputes over ownership of land and business," says Syarif Ibrahim Alqadrie, dean of social and political science at the University of Tanjungpura in Pontianak. The economic downturn has affected everything, he says, and as a result "the autonomy debate is growing stronger all over Indonesia."
The optimists assert that economic antagonism, by itself at least, won't turn Indonesia into a Yugoslav-style nightmare. "There is no inevitable trajectory to Balkanization," says Marzuki Darusman, deputy chairman of the ruling Golkar party, in Jakarta. He points out there are no active leaders in Aceh or Irian Jaya like Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. "It is more of a social unraveling than national disintegration."
Pessimists say that with about half the population now below the poverty line, many are prepared to exploit economic hardship for political ends. In East Timor, where Maros Tilmau of the pro-independence Conselho Nacional de Resistencia Timorense estimates that "85% to 90% of the economy is controlled by Javanese or armed forces-related interests," the military has openly armed militias to fight the independence movement, playing on fears that those with ties to Jakarta would lose their livelihoods if East Timor became independent. Here the "social unraveling" has turned lethal.
Provocateurs are also widely reported to have stirred up communal violence between Christians and Muslims earlier this year in Ambon, where more than 200 people have been killed. In Ambon the two communities have lapsed into an uneasy apartheid. After the main indoor market, Pasar Lama, was burned to the ground during rioting four months ago, locals now shop at pasar kaget, or temporary markets, segregated by religion. "This way we are together and can at least watch over and protect each other," says Je Tomahu, 42, a Christian woman selling beans, chilies and cassava. "It is better to be separated. Who wants to die a silly death over religion?"
This is far from Indonesia's founders' dream of uniting people of all religions and ethnic groups under the red and white flag. The "empty feeling" of being Indonesian is spreading ominously, as the very idea of nationalism comes into question. Donald Emmerson, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, believes Indonesian nationalism has been a negative impulse for too long--founded on anti-Dutch resistance and stoked by Sukarno's tirades against the West and his 1950s konfrontasi with Malaysia. Suharto made economic development the center of his nationalist credentials, but the economic collapse of 1997 has removed this positive nationalistic aspect--and Indonesians are again looking for enemies: international currency traders, ethnic Chinese businessmen, people of a different faith. For the outlying provinces it also means "the center." Says Golkar's Darusman: "People outside Java openly resent being ruled by Javanese. There's a sense of identity politics."