ANU E Press - Anomie and violence

Non-truth and reconciliation in Indonesian peacebuilding

John Braithwaite, Valerie Braithwaite, Michael Cookson, Leah Dunn.

ISBN 9781921666223 $29.95 (GST inclusive)
ISBN 9781921666230 (Online)
Published March 2010

Indonesia suffered an explosion of religious violence, ethnic violence, separatist violence, terrorism, and violence by criminal gangs, the security forces and militias in the late 1990s and early 2000s. By 2002 Indonesia had the worst terrorism problem of any nation. All these forms of violence have now fallen dramatically. How was this accomplished? What drove the rise and the fall of violence? Anomie theory is deployed to explain these developments. Sudden institutional change at the time of the Asian financial crisis and the fall of President Suharto meant the rules of the game were up for grabs. Valerie Braithwaite’s motivational postures theory is used to explain the gaming of the rules and the disengagement from authority that occurred in that era. Ultimately resistance to Suharto laid a foundation for commitment to a revised, more democratic, institutional order. The peacebuilding that occurred was not based on the high-integrity truth-seeking and reconciliation that was the normative preference of these authors. Rather it was based on non-truth, sometimes lies, and yet substantial reconciliation. This poses a challenge to restorative justice theories of peacebuilding.

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U.S. Sends Weapons to Help Somali Government Repel Rebels Tied to Al-Qaeda

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 25, 2009

The United States has sent a shipment of weapons and ammunition to the government of Somalia, according to a U.S. official who said the move signals the Obama administration's desire to thwart a takeover of the Horn of Africa nation by Islamist rebels with alleged ties to al-Qaeda.

The shipment arrived in the capital, Mogadishu, this month, according to the official, who is helping craft a new U.S. policy on Somalia and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

"A decision was made at the highest level to ensure the government does not fall and that everything is done to strengthen government security forces to counter the rebels," the official said.

Still, the situation in the volatile nation continues to deteriorate. Somalia's government issued an urgent plea last weekend for foreign troops as the heaviest fighting in months has engulfed the capital and other regions, killing more than 200 people, including the minister for internal security and the police chief. Fighting since early May has displaced more than 120,000 people, with scores of legislators also fleeing the country, paralyzing parliament.

"We ask for and welcome any troops that can save this country from international terrorists," said Nur Ali Adan, the government's minister of religious affairs, echoing an appeal from the parliament speaker for Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Yemen to send troops.

The government has also tried to rally other foreign support, especially from the United States, which has long worried that Somalia could become a base for al-Qaeda to launch terrorist attacks such as the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

U.S. and Somali officials say that possibly hundreds of fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan and other nations are fighting alongside the Islamist rebel group known as al-Shabab, which the United States has designated a terrorist group. U.S. officials have accused Eritrea of sending weapons to the rebels, who have taken over much of Mogadishu and southern Somalia.

Besides sending weapons, the United States recently committed $10 million to help revive the Somali army and the police, who in the 1970s were one of the best-trained forces on the continent but collapsed when the last central government fell in 1991. The United States has been sharing intelligence with the government, according to the U.S. official, and a group of Somali political leaders from various regions of the country have been invited to Washington to develop a strategy for fighting the rebels.

"U.S. support is very, very firm," said the Somali foreign minister, Mohamed Omaar, speaking by telephone during a recent visit to Washington. "They are very clear that they are in support of this government politically, financially, diplomatically."

The Obama administration's approach is different in many respects from that of the Bush administration, which focused almost exclusively on targeting several suspects in the embassy bombings and other rebel leaders with alleged al-Qaeda ties.

The Bush administration paid a group of notorious Somali warlords to hunt terrorism suspects. But the policy backfired, giving rise to a diverse Islamist movement, including al-Shabab, which gained popularity by defeating the hated warlords. The Bush administration then tried backing an Ethiopian invasion in 2006 to overthrow the Islamists and install a transitional government, a move that triggered the al-Shabab rebellion that continues today. The Bush administration conducted airstrikes targeting al-Qaeda suspects, but only one of those targeted was ever confirmed killed.

Meanwhile, the rebels continued to advance across southern Somalia and eventually helped force the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops this year.

To cut off the rebels' weapons and supplies, the United States has stepped up pressure on Eritrea, and foreign warships patrolling Somali waters to combat piracy have begun blocking cargo ships heading to the rebel-held port of Kismaayo in southern Somalia.

African diplomats have also proposed a no-fly zone over Somalia to prevent weapons from being flown in from Eritrea to the rebels, but it is unclear whether that idea will gather necessary support at the United Nations.

A special correspondent in Mogadishu contributed to this report.

Bomb Blast Kills at Least 75 at Market in Baghdad's Sadr City Neighborhood

By Ernesto Londoño and Zaid Sabah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 25, 2009

BAGHDAD, June 24 -- A powerful bomb killed more than 75 people Wednesday night at a market in Sadr City, Baghdad's main Shiite neighborhood, casting doubt on the readiness of Iraq's security forces to keep a latent insurgency in check as U.S. troops pull out of the capital and other cities.

The blast, the second in Iraq in less than a week to kill more than 70 people, happened six days before the June 30 deadline for U.S. troops to retreat from urban outposts, the first of three withdrawal deadlines mandated under a security agreement.

The blast at the Mredi bird market occurred shortly after sundown, when the area was crowded with residents out shopping after the summer day's scorching heat had subsided.

The explosives were concealed under vegetables in the carriage of a three-wheeled motorcycle parked at the edge of the market, which is off-limits to vehicles, officials and witnesses said.

"I saw a big ball of fire," said Abu Ahmed, 50, who had been shopping. "We all dashed into the alleys, expecting another one to explode."

As the smoke began to clear, residents returned to the site to look for wounded people, who were loaded into vehicles and wooden carts. About 20 minutes later, Iraqi soldiers arrived and began shooting into the air to disperse the crowd, witnesses said. Residents hurled insults, stones and shoes at the troops.

"People were very mad because they were very late," Abu Ahmed said of the soldiers. "They only sit on their chairs and watch people and play with cellphones."

Hospital officials at Imam Ali and Sadr hospitals, the area's two main medical centers, said in telephone interviews late Wednesday that they had received at least 75 bodies. More than 100 people were wounded, hospital officials said.

The attack, the deadliest in Sadr City in more than a year, came just days after the U.S. military closed its small outposts in the area at the Iraqi government's insistence.

"This is one of the biggest mistakes the U.S. has made," said Kadhum Irboee al-Quraishi, a local leader in Sadr City who has worked closely with the Americans. "Assassinations will start again, and the terrorists are going to show that Iraqi forces are not capable of receiving responsibility."

Sadr City is the stronghold of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Militias loyal to Sadr controlled the area until the Iraqi army was deployed there in the spring of 2008 as part of a delicate negotiation between Sadrist leaders and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Maliki and U.S. commanders have said they expect the June 30 deadline to trigger an uptick in violence. Extremists, they say, are motivated by a desire to undermine the Iraqi government and to leave the impression that U.S. forces are retreating even as security deteriorates.

The bombing Wednesday, like scores of similar attacks this year, targeted a mostly Shiite area. But unlike similar attacks in 2006 and 2007, the latest wave of bombings has not provoked retaliation by Shiite militias, a cycle that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war in 2007.

"This is no longer a sectarian war," Quraishi said. "This is now a political war. They are trying to topple Maliki's government."

Maliki, who is widely believed to be seeking reelection, has tied his political future to restoring security and weaning the country from its dependence on the U.S. military.

Zainab Karim, a lawmaker from Sadr's parliamentary bloc, said the recent attacks are intended to widen political divisions ahead of national elections set for January.

"The message they want to deliver is that Iraqis are not capable of handling security in Sadr City," she said. "They're trying to pit the Sadr movement against the Iraqi government."

Earlier in the day, Brig. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the overall level of attacks remains low compared with other periods of the six-year war.

"There will be some challenges as we move out of the cities," he told reporters Wednesday afternoon.

Lanza said some U.S. combat soldiers will remain in urban facilities past the June 30 deadline, although they would be engaged in "stability" rather than "combat" operations. He declined to say how many soldiers would remain.

Maliki's government has hailed the U.S. withdrawal plan as a "victory" and has shown little flexibility when U.S. commanders have hinted that they would like to keep combat troops in certain restive urban areas. It is planning festivities Monday to mark the urban withdrawal and has declared June 30 a national holiday.

"The national holiday is really about them celebrating their sovereignty," Lanza said. "This is a tremendous, tremendous event for the Iraqi people."

Iraq's Maliki Issues Clear Message on January Vote: Cooperate or Risk His Wrath

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 25, 2009

BAQUBAH, Iraq -- At 11 a.m. one day in May, eight Iraqi army Humvees barreled into government headquarters of fractious Diyala province, clouds of dust billowing behind them. They had orders to arrest a council member who belonged to a party that had run afoul of Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's increasingly assertive prime minister.

Shouts rang out as the man's colleagues heckled the captain who served the warrant. The council chairman frantically called lawmakers in Baghdad and pleaded with the provincial security chief to intervene. Desperate, he then ran after the captain as he led the council member, Abdel-Jabbar Ibrahim, to the waiting Humvee.

The captain promised to return Ibrahim in an hour, no more than two. Chosen in the January elections to represent the province, he has remained in custody since May 18.

"This is a message," said Amr al-Taqi, a colleague of Ibrahim's on the council.

Although Iraq's parliamentary elections are not until January, the campaign has begun, and Maliki has shown a determination to fight with a tenacity and ruthlessness borrowed from the handbook of Iraq's last strongman, Saddam Hussein. From Diyala, where men under Maliki's command have arrested and threatened to detain a host of his rivals, to Basra, where security forces have swept up scores of his opponents since January, the message is: cooperate or risk his wrath.

Although Iraq's sectarian war has largely ended, and the Sunnis feel they lost, another struggle for power, perhaps no less perilous, has begun in earnest. Maliki has resorted to a more traditional notion of politics in which violence is simply another form of leverage. His goal is simple -- to ensure he emerges as prime minister again after the vote.

To allies, he is what Iraq needs, a proponent of law in a state still without order.

"Is Maliki a strongman, personally and through the constitution? Or is he a dictator?" asked Sami al-Askari, an aide to the prime minister. The former, he answered. "Maliki has a strong personality. The constitution gives him great powers, but if he was not a strongman, he would not have done what the constitution allows him to do."

Opponents, some of whom decry the arrests as "a systematic campaign," warned that the strife unleashed by the jockeying could soon spiral beyond control.

"These political tensions are undermining the security of the country, and I'm worried about it," said Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister and a Kurdish leader.

The Instruments of Power

Maliki's ascent has become a familiar narrative in Iraq. In 2006, a reputation for weakness helped secure him the post. Opponents deemed him malleable. Since then, buoyed in part by his success in the provincial elections, he has concentrated power in the hands of what critics call "the impenetrable circle" and taken command of military units that delivered him and his Dawa party what they had lacked since 2003: men with guns.

But the narrative still tells only part of the story of how complicated Iraq is these days. Everyone seems to be looking for an angle, in pursuit of the coalition they think can triumph in the January elections. Everyone has a grievance, no less pronounced.

Maliki's Shiite rivals -- followers of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq -- have fought for primacy in the southern province of Qadisiyah. Another group, known as Sahwa or Awakening, filled by former Sunni fighters and long backed by the U.S. military, is hopelessly divided. Maliki has cracked down on some of its leaders, especially in Baghdad.

Others in Anbar, Salahuddin and even Diyala provinces profess loyalty to Maliki, wagering he will eventually come out on top. Another Shiite faction outmaneuvered Maliki's party in Diyala in negotiations over leadership positions there. But there remains a sense that Maliki wields the initiative, now more than ever, as he tries to hone a mix of patronage and coercion, a proven combination here.

"Whoever controls the instruments of power can keep himself in power," said Jawad al-Hasnawi, a leader of the Sadr movement in the sacred Shiite city of Karbala.

Diyala, a fertile land of citrus and dates, watered by the Diyala River and stretching to the Iranian border, remains a battleground, with its Sunni majority and Kurdish and Shiite minorities. In the elections in January, Sunni candidates allied with the Iraqi Islamic Party, a foe of Maliki, took the greatest number of seats in a province where Sunnis had been disenfranchised after largely boycotting the vote in 2005.

An Iraqi official said Maliki had ordered the arrests of at least six of the party's candidates a week before the January elections. The official said he was stopped only after Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, personally intervened. American and Iraqi officials said warrants were again issued after the vote, in which the Islamic Party won nearly a third of the seats, prompting another intervention by U.S. officials.

A spokesman for Odierno declined to comment on the report. "It would be categorically inappropriate to discuss private conversations between Gen. Odierno and the Prime Minister," Col. James Hutton said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Ibrahim's arrest was not the first. In November, Hussein al-Zubaidi, a former council member from the same party, was arrested. He is still in custody.

Provincial officials said Ibrahim was detained by the Baghdad Brigade, which, along with the Counter-Terrorism Task Force, reported directly to Maliki. (After an outcry in parliament, the Baghdad Brigade has at least formally returned under the purview of the Defense Ministry.)

"Why the Baghdad Brigade? This is my question," said Taqi, the council member.

Officials with Maliki's Dawa party in Baqubah and Baghdad defended the arrest as legitimate. Indeed, some of them describe the Islamic Party as only a step removed from the insurgency. Askari, Maliki's aide, said Ibrahim's name had surfaced during interrogations of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the reputed leader of the group al-Qaeda in Iraq whom officials said they arrested in April. Baghdadi's arrest has been met with skepticism, as has his true identity.

The Islamic Party seems an implacable foe of Maliki, leading a campaign against government corruption that may prove Maliki's greatest vulnerability in the election. The position of the Sadr movement, though, is more ambiguous. It helped secure Maliki's election as prime minister but was a victim of a crackdown he launched in Baghdad and Basra, and now complains he is trying to browbeat it into a new alliance on his terms.

Sadr officials say scores of their followers have been arrested in southern provinces as a way to pressure them.

"Maliki has given them the green light to do it," said Salah al-Obaidi, a Sadr spokesman in Najaf, another sacred Shiite city. "He has always wanted to use our movement for his benefit and the benefit of his government."

'A New Equation'

Basra, once beholden to militias, is a compelling illustration of the shifting struggle in Iraq. Iraqi forces, with the decisive assistance of U.S. troops, restored a semblance of order last year. In the provincial elections, Maliki's party won a majority of seats. Since then, Sadr's followers complain, they have endured a wave of arrests they deem political.

Naseer al-Musawi, the head of the Sadr office there, put the number of arrests at 70. Others who were released have complained of torture.

Aqeel al-Musawi, a security adviser to the governor in Basra, denied there was any crackdown. "Outlaws," he called those arrested. The rest, he said, were remnants of the militias. But as the Sadr official noted, "You can arrest anyone and call them a militiaman."

The creation of the coalitions that will stand in the election is still thought to be months away. Even now, though, virtually every party, faction and personality is involved in some level of negotiation, and officials with Maliki's party speak with confidence, deemed arrogance by their opponents, about their ability to forge the most inclusive one.

They believe they can reconstitute the Shiite alliance that competed in the 2005 elections, but draw in elements of Sahwa and other Sunni factions in northern Iraq as well. Notable is whom they omit: the Iraqi Islamic Party and the leading Kurdish parties.

"There's a new equation of power," said Fayad al-Shamari, the head of the provincial council in Najaf who was elected as part of Maliki's list.

Others put it more bluntly. "I will not be surprised at all if there is a lot of brinkmanship to bring people back into the tent," an Iraqi official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to cross the prime minister. "Politics is getting rough."

Correspondent Nada Bakri and special correspondent Qais Mizher contributed to this report.