ETHNIC CLEANSING                                                       July 2003 The horror of ethnic cleansing and religious wars defies general logic. We cannot understand how communities, who have lived side by side for generations, suddenly exterminate each other in the most cruel and vicious ways. The forces behind these acts of barbarity are usually 'imported', part of an agenda by people far removed from the very communities they target. Their aims are either economic gain or political power. The communities they target are no more then puppets in their selfish schemes. The greater the massacres the more likely the chaos required to achieve their perverse ambitions. The phenomenon of ethnic cleansing and religious war has surfaced in the Balkans, Africa, Asia - even in Europe where Irish Catholics and Protestants have fought each other for decades.                      I have reported on these conflicts in all of these regions, except Africa, and found a common denominator in all of them: The ignorance and gullibility of people. The more uneducated and poor people are the more easily they can be inoculated by fear of 'the other' and made to believe their own misfortune is really to be blamed on 'the others." I have selected this report from the Sulawesi Islands, a report I wrote in July, 2000, as perhaps the most characteristic how easy it is to inflame such a conflict in a backward society. The more backward a society the quicker it can be roused to anger, governed by fear. But in our 'civilized' societies we are not immune to these same fears, galvanized by our leaders who invent enemies - like communists and terrorists - to make us support their 'just' wars in the name of 'liberty and democracy'. Before we realize it we are also massacring 'the others' and justifying it with the same arguments peddled to us by our politicians, by our clergy and by our media.                       Report:          PALU, Sulawesi Island, Indonesia - As Suratman tells the story the sectarian massacres on this tropical island of rainforests escalated after provocateurs on both sides argued: "If we don't kill them first they'll kill us."          Now squatting in a refugee camp at the local football stadium, a camp run by young Moslem toughs, Suatman whispered: "We Moslems lived in peace with the Christians for generations until outsiders came and told people we were all going to be murdered."          In turn the Christians - a small minority in Indonesia - were told by the same troublemakers: Moslem "outsiders" have come to take away your land, burn your homes and rape your women.         Mutual fear has turned a peaceful island paradise into a killing field and made these threats come true.          "Both sides have behaved badly," whispered Suratnam, a teacher at Poso.          Mass graves are now coming to light near the 27 Muslim or Christian villages clustered around Poso and Tentena towns. Over the last six weeks mobs from both religions burned down the villages in sporadic reprisal attacks.         Churches and mosques are gutted and splattered with blood.  Indonesia soldiers on a mission to contain the violence find skulls and decomposing bodies.          A gallows stands outside Tagolu, a mainly Moslem village where soldiers this week found 63 "chopped up" corpses in a mass grave at the bottom of a ravine.           Locals claim the victims, among them two women, were taken away and killed during a raid by an allegedly Christian militia known as the "Ninjas" because they wear black shirts, black trousers and black ski masks and identify each other with the code words "I.N.R.A." and "Salib" (Cross).           Christians believe the bodies are victims of ethnic cleansing by Moslems.          So far soldiers and police in the Poso and Tentena region have recovered hundreds of mutilated bodies or body parts from other mass graves, their hands tied behind their backs. Badly decomposed skulls and limbs are scattered near killing sites. Headless, bloated corpses float down rivers and out to sea like driftwood.         Today the stench of death and rotting corpses permeates the spectacular ebony forests that provide the precious wood from which local artisans carved the ebony figurines coveted across Asia and the world.          At the heart of the ebony trade was Poso, now a ghost town.          Over a thousand Poso homes were torched and looted over the last weeks. Every day some ten trucks, piled with survivors and their salvaged belongings, head towards the regional capital of Palu over a twisting mountain road through thick jungle. The road is often cut by landslides and sometimes barricaded by armed men who have turned to banditry.         Of the 40,000 inhabitants of Poso only a few have remained. They wander like lost sheep through debris-strewn streets, along burned homes. White crosses marked homes to identify them for the Christian militia or condemn them to the torch of Moslem raiders. Signs scribbled on walls say: "This is my land of birth!" and "Poso belongs only to Christians."          "Almost every day we are finding more bodies and more mass graves, " said Colonel Hamdan Z. Nasution, the military commander of central Sulawesi. "But we have only managed to identify about 300 so far.           "Hundreds of people are still missing. It is difficult to make identification when the dead have been chopped up with farm tools. Now we are confiscating all farm tools and homemade guns," the Colonel added.           Three of his infantry battalions - some 2,200 men - have been deployed to stifle the sectarian violence which the Colonel says was motivated by envy over the wealth of Moslem settlers from Java rather then by religious intolerance.          Police at Palu airport have confiscated 50 automatic submachine pistols sent without documents from the state-owned Eindad arms factory in Bandung on Java and destined in subsequent documents for the Sulawesi Forest Guards, who, so officials say, have no need for such lethal weapons.         The arms have fueled growing suspicion dye-in-the-wool sympathizers of ousted strongman Suharto are encouraging sectarian violence on the Molukka Islands and Sulawesi to destabilize the country's fledgling democracy and pave the way for a military takeover.          Fueling ethnic and sectarian violence has become a trademark across Pacific island nations from Indonesia to the Philippines, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.         Some officials here fear more than a thousand people may have died since the end of May in central Sulawesi, victims of brutal and baffling massacres among communities that knew only local squabbles previously.          Raiders separated men and women. The women were stripped naked and searched for "magic charms" hidden in their genitals, the men bound and taken away - never to be seen again.           Alone 200 Moslem men are missing from a religious school near Tentana.         "The trouble was engineered. Religion was used to stir people up. First it was a drunken Moslem kid who got into a fight with Christians and went to his village for help. Then it was a truck driver who was supposed to have been murdered by Moslems but was later found to be very much alive. Then there were the first reprisal raids and of course religion was always being dragged in," the Colonel said.