Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2019. xiii, 280 pp. (Tables, graphs, figures, map.) US$49.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-5017-3544-8.
This is the first comprehensive book on post-conflict violence in Indonesia. “Postconflict violence” in the title refers to violence that occurred after peace agreements were reached between warring parties in Indonesia, ending the large-scale extended violence (civil war and ethnic violence) during the democratic transition around the turn of the millennium.
The title perfectly describes what the book accomplishes. Author Patrick Barron eloquently explains when violence works by systematically identifying two local actors (local violence specialists and local politicians) and their involvements in violence. The book explains why, how, and in what circumstances different scales of post-conflict violence emerge. Additionally, it sheds some light on why post-conflict violence does not turn into episodes of extended violence as Indonesia saw during the early phase of democratic transition. For this to happen, the involvement of a third actor is needed: national elites. Barron provides readers with a fresh new perspective on the overall cases/episodes of collective violence in Indonesia since the late 1990s.
The book’s argument centres on mapping three sets of actors in violence: local non-state violence specialists, local politicians, and national/central state elites. The presence or absence of post-conflict violence as well as its scale (small, large, or reaching the scale of extended violence) are subject to the involvement of the three sets of actors following their calculated costs and benefits. This argument clearly falls within the rational choice approach despite how myopic is the horizon of those actors.
Barron’s compelling argument is supported by examining different trajectories of post-conflict violence in three Indonesian provinces previously devastated by the severest extended violence in the early years of democratization: civil war in Aceh and ethnic violence in Maluku and North Maluku. These examples are then complemented with a macro assessment on why none of these post-conflict violence cases descended into a scale of extended violence these regions had experienced before.
The presence of small-scale post-conflict violence in Aceh was due to the fact that it was supported only by local violence specialists. The relatively large-scale post-conflict violence in Maluku was because it received support from both local violence specialists and local politicians. In contrast, the absence of post-conflict violence in North Maluku was due to the fact that there was no support from the two local actors.
When and whether or not the actors have incentives to use violence in a post-conflict context is determined by the following factors: (i) the ways in which resources are distributed and power is divided in the early post-conflict period, (ii) the expected costs of using violence in the post-conflict period, and (iii) the degree to which peaceful opportunities exist.
Furthermore, the absence of support for violence from national elites has been credited for the reason why none of these three examples of post-conflict violence reached the extended scale that was the case during the early years of Indonesia’s democratic transition. Indirectly, this logic implies that the episodes of extended violence were due to the complete involvement of the three groups of identified actors, emphasizing the role played by national elites as explained in chapter 7.
The argument on the mapping of local actors is convincing for these three cases (Aceh, Maluku, and North Maluku provinces), which experienced three different levels of post-conflict violence. The systematic analysis offered here would be very helpful for policy makers (local and national), peace building activists, and civil society at large to avoid the recurrence of post-conflict violence. To a large extent such an avoidance would depend on local configurations of incentives and dis-incentives to become involved in violence despite the largely similar circumstances at the national level. In short, local context matters.
Therefore, policies related to post-conflict power-sharing arrangements, resource distribution, rehabilitation and re-development, and how these are all implemented, would have to seriously take into account the unique local socio-political settings in each region. Such policies would have to minimize the incentives of becoming involved in violence, and at the same time provide more avenues for peaceful opportunities. While the book has provided very powerful insights—backed by sound theory supported by narrative evidence on post-conflict violence in an ethically and geographically diverse young democracy—the book’s central argument, however, is less convincing when it steps further toward trying to explain why none of the post-conflict violence descended into extended scales of violence. Barron argues that this is due to the non-involvement of the third set of actors: the central state/national elites. Yet this seems to be an overly simplistic assessment.
The last episode of extended violence that accompanied the Indonesia’s transition to democracy was a rare moment as opposed to the more regular nature of post-conflict violence observed in Aceh and Maluku. Indonesian history tells us that cases of extended violence were closely related to certain major shifts in the country as a whole. The last episode of extended violence was in the context of transition from the Suharto’s autocratic and centralized regime to a democratic and decentralized one. This has been referred to as “a critical juncture” by Bertrand (Jacques Bertrand, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), and during a period of uncertainty when boundaries were being re-negotiated, as argued by Nordholt and Klinken (Henk Schulte Nordholt and Gerry van Klinken, Renegotiating Boundaries: Local Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia, Leiden: KITLV Press, 2007). Extended violence occurred when the weakening of the central government authority reached its nadir.
Prior to this latest occurrence, Indonesia witnessed two other episodes of extended violence. First was the war of independence after the 1945 unilateral declaration of independence, followed by episodes of regional rebellions in the 1950s when the country was in the early stages of nation building. Second was the purge of suspected communists in the 1960s, in which at least half a million people were killed during the transfer of power from Sukarno to Suharto.
The post-conflict violence examined in the book occurred after a critical juncture had been passed with new boundaries having been renegotiated and more or less agreed upon by both factions and regions. A further incidence of extended violence would require another critical juncture and shifting boundaries, which one should expect not to see in the near future. Democracy has been accepted as the only game in town; the military has submitted to civilian supremacy and decentralization has more or less reached its balance.
Mohammad Zulfan Tadjoeddin
Western Sydney University, Sydney