As police engage in a shootout with rebels nearby, villagers whisper solemn advice over the crackle of distant gunfire. When enraged, the police are blind, so don't venture further or the police will shoot you, confides food-vendor Ruslini. Then she disappears into her home, resigned to the fact that, in the bloody battle for independence, the innocent are the victims. I ndonesia is a vast archipelago with over 13,000 islands inhabited by hundreds of ethnic groups, and for 32 years, Suharto defied the sceptics by ruling over a country that many regard as ungovernable. But the struggle to define nationhood has been tumultuous.
Separatists now tug at opposite ends of the country.
Sectarian and ethnic violence threaten to rip apart communities. Yet Indonesia is not another Yugoslavia. Just as the country's complex melange of cultures defies simple analysis, the insurgencies which seemingly threaten to destroy the republic are more layered and deceptive than they appear to be. Aceh and Irian are not the next East Timor, which seceded from Indonesia last year after an independence vote. Yet the fate that awaits them may be as tragic.