But the national nightmare is all about race. That accounts for the government's grave reaction to the recent outburst of violence. Hundreds of people have been arrested, the majority of them Malays. Daily life has returned to normal in communities such as Kampung Lindungan and Kampung Medan, where much of the violence occurred. But the government isn't taking any chances.
Helicopters clatter overhead at night.
Some 700 security personnel patrol the settlement. Locals don't want to discuss it, and no wonder. Two people have already been arrested for rumormongering. Indians are rapidly becoming a permanent underclass, riven by drug addiction, prostitution, alcoholism and a range of other social ills. But the country's convulsion of unrest is less a flashback to the ethnically restive past than a wake-up call to fresh social problems.