Secessionist Challenges In Aceh And Papua

This study investigates if special autonomy can resolve the secessionist challenges in Aceh and Papua. The analysis covers the background of the decision to grant special autonomy and the shifting dynamics that resulted in Jakarta ultimately backsliding on both laws. Without linking concessions to dialogue, Aceh and Papua are likely to represent a continuing source of conflict and secessionism for the Indonesian state.

The ongoing conflict in Western Sahara is one of the more intractable legacies of European colonization in North Africa. Following the withdrawal of Spain, this territorial dispute escalated in 1975 into a war of independence between the Sahrawi people of the Polisario Front, who were backed by Algeria, and the states of Mauritania and Morocco. In 1976, the Polisario Front established the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which was not admitted in the UN but won recognition by a few states. After multiple peace efforts, the conflict reemerged in 2005 as the “independence Intifada.” Today, the Polisario Front controls about 20% of Western Sahara. At the heart of the conflict lie geopolitical interests and incompatible claims aggravated by the use of military force and decades of mostly unproductive diplomatic maneuvers by international bodies and regional or foreign powers. This thorough, impartial survey brings together some of the best experts on the Sahara question to provide a broad-based analysis of the problem, from a range of perspectives. Featuring new research, the chapters examine the roots of the conflict, its dynamics, and potential solutions. This groundbreaking text also addresses questions of law, human rights, natural resources from an analytical point of view. Contributed by scholars from North Africa, Europe, and the U.S., it is an essential contribution to the literature of Middle East and African studies.

Chairullah investigates how the political, social, and economic interests of national and local elites were negotiated in the formulation and early stages of Special Autonomy in Papua Province, Indonesia. The Papuan case lends support to the current conception of elite theory, which considers the influence of actors and dynamics beyond power elites in the decision-making process. The failure of the policy implementation as a conflict reduction strategy in the Papuan case can be attributed to the dynamics of elite configurations during the negotiation and early implementation stages. Chairullah presents two significant new findings for research on Papuan Special Autonomy. Firstly, that secret negotiations were held between Papuan and national elites during Abdurrahman Wahid’s presidency, and these were crucial in reducing separatist sentiment in Papua. Secondly, that the United States, through Freeport McMoRan, strongly influenced the Special Autonomy negotiation process. The actions of national elites in Jakarta led to widespread disappointment about the policy at all levels in Papua and the subsequent escalation of separatist sentiment based on Papuan ethnic identity. An important book for scholars of Indonesian politics and society, and especially those with a particular interest in the Papuan conflict.

The 1998 Reform has paved ways for the reconfiguration and improvement of Indonesia's institutions to support economic growth. For the last 20 years, however, indonesia is facing the challenges of uncontainable urbanization and rising inequality. During the period 2008-2015, Indonesia's economy grew by more than 4 percent annually, the highest steady rate in Southeast Asia. Indonesia is now transitioning from a lower-middle income country to an upper-middle level one. Meanwhile, Indonesia faces a number of challengesto strengthen its democratic institutions. This book brings together 12 original chapters to discuss the achievements and challenges of Indonesia's transformation after 1998. it exa mines how state institutions and civil society manage the complexities of indonesia's transformations to develop common ground upon which to reach a national consensus.

Tadjoeddin uniquely explores four types of violent conflicts pertinent to contemporary Indonesia (secessionist, ethnic, routine-everyday and electoral violence), and seeks to discover what socio-economic development can do to overcome conflict and make the country's transition to democracy safe for its constituencies.

Armed separatist insurgencies have created a real dilemma for many national governments of how much freedom to grant aggrieved minorities without releasing territorial sovereignty over the nation-state. This book examines different approaches that have been taken by seven states in South and Southeast Asia to try and resolve this dilemma through various offers of autonomy. Providing new insights into the conditions under which autonomy arrangements exacerbate or alleviate the problem of armed separatism, this comprehensive book includes in-depth analysis of the circumstances that lead men and women to take up arms in an effort to remove themselves from the state's borders by creating their own independent polity.

This study examines the enormous variation and complexity that characterize relationships between the national state and locally-based, often non-state actors who negotiate and compete for political authority in Burma’s ethnic minority-dominated states along the borders. Three patterns of relationships are explored: devolution by the national state to warlord-like local authorities; occupation by the Burmese military; and coexistence (with varying degrees of cooperation and understanding) among actors from the national state and local stakeholders. Throughout these border states, leaders of the Burmese government’s armed forces and of past and currently-active armed opposition forces operate within a context that is neither war nor peace, but instead a kind of post-civil-war, not-quite-peace environment. To understand the complex political arrangements that have arisen in this environment, this monograph employs the concept of “emerging political complex” — a set of adaptive networks that link state and other political authorities to domestic and foreign business concerns (some legal, others illegal), traditional indigenous leaders, religious authorities, overseas refugee and diaspora communities, political party leaders, and nongovernmental organizations. All of these players make rules, extract resources, provide protection, and try to order a moral universe, but none of them are able, or even inclined, to trump the others for monolithic national supremacy. Conflict resolution strategies have to recognize that these emerging political complexes are not simply unfortunate bumps in the road to peace but instead constitute intricate and evolving social systems that may continue to be adapted and sustained.

This cutting edge book considers the question of Islam and commercialisation in Indonesia, a majority Muslim, non-Arab country. Revealing the cultural heterogeneity behind rising Islamism in a democratizing society, it highlights the case of television production and the identity of its viewers. Drawing from detailed case studies from across islands in the diverse archipelagic country, it contends that commercial television has democratised the relationship between Islamic authority and the Muslim congregation, and investigates the responses of the heterogeneous middle class towards commercial da’wah. By taking the case of commercial television, the book argues that what is occurring in Indonesia is less related to Islamic ideologisation than it is a symbiosis between Muslim middle class anxieties and the workings of market forces. It examines the web of relationships that links Islamic expression, commercial television, and national imagination, arguing that the commercialisation of Islam through national television discloses unrequited expectations of equality between ethnic and religious groups as well as between regions.