JAKARTA— The war between Christians and Muslims in the Moluccan Islands is two years old this month, with no resolution in sight. Some 500,000 people have lost their homes and are now refugees. The death toll stands at around 5,000.
The bloodletting has been overshadowed by conflicts in other parts of Indonesia. Yet if there is one conflict that challenges religious tolerance, the central pillar of national unity in the world's fourth most populous country, this is it.
Foreign governments that provide large loans and aid to Indonesia are alarmed at evidence of occasional military participation in deadly attacks in Ambon and other parts of the scattered Moluccan chain.
But there is little that foreign governments can do other than urge Indonesia to enforce its laws and protect its citizens. Stronger intervention would undermine the struggling civilian government of President Abdurrahman Wahid.
Foreign intervention would strengthen the hands of those in the military who resent their loss of influence since President Suharto was forced to resign in 1998 and are trying to regain power. But if Mr. Wahid continues to fail to take even the most basic steps toward law enforcement and justice in the islands, both he and democracy will suffer a damaging loss of credibility.
There are local roots for the conflict almost everywhere in the Moluccas, but the dominant cause is a Muslim militia, the Laskar Jihad, from outside the region. It arrived from Java in May 2000. It says it has 3,000 well-armed and trained fighters in the Moluccas.
The Laskar Jihad has taken responsibility for a series of massacres of Christians, which it portrays as operations to protect Muslims from repression. It now drives the conflict. There were as many Muslim victims as Christians before the group's arrival, but Christian fighters have since been routed, and the Laskar Jihad forces operate more or less unopposed.
Jaffar Umar Thalib, the group's leader, has vowed to remove all Christians and has had the apparent support of factions in the Indonesian military. He is not in hiding. He regularly takes commercial flights between Java and Ambon, the capital of Maluku Province. He gives occasional interviews to reporters.
The government, the military and the police have not tried to stop him. Mr. Wahid apparently fears that he will make good on a threat to bring anti-Christian violence to Java if his men are removed from the Moluccas. Aides also say that Mr. Thalib has supporters in the military who are blocking efforts to bring him to justice. The message from the presidential palace has been "Don't blame us."
Mr. Wahid, a Muslim preacher known for his tolerance, is acutely aware of the support for the Laskar Jihad in overwhelmingly Muslim Indonesia. Many Muslims are convinced that the group is in the Moluccas only to protect Muslim interests, and that followers of Islam in the islands will be slaughtered if the militiamen are removed. Action would leave Mr. Wahid's religious flank badly exposed to his opponents in Parliament.
But his appeasement strategy is backfiring, as the coordinated bombings of Christian churches across Indonesia on Christmas Eve should make clear.
People in the Moluccas want justice and a halt to the violence. Yet no one, civilian or military, has been tried in connection with the communal conflict since it began. A message of impunity is being transmitted throughout Indonesia, feeding lawlessness and violence in other areas and undermining the country's still fragile economic recovery.
Mr. Wahid evidently does not believe that the conflict in the Moluccas, home to less than 1 percent of Indonesia's 210 million people, is a threat to his government. But continued violence there, particularly now that the bulk of the victims are Christian, could be seriously damaging.
Within Indonesia, the Laskar Jihad's success is a beachhead for fundamentalist Islam. Abroad, Mr. Wahid's friends will be pushed, however reluctantly, to curtail their support. Policymakers in Washington and elsewhere are, after all, beginning to wonder what a democratic government is worth if it is too weak to arrest Mr. Thalib, a man who openly flouts the law and is proving one of the biggest threats to Indonesia's tradition of religious tolerance.
It is time for Mr. Wahid to make a stand against the violence.
The writer, a journalist based in Indonesia, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.