Indonesia has seen no respite from its turbulent politics, faltering economy, and simmering conflicts since mass pressure forced President Soeharto from office in 1998 after decades of authoritarian rule. The International Crisis Group (ICG) has focused its Indonesian research on separatist conflicts in Aceh and Papua, communal violence in Maluku and Kalimantan, and the ongoing economic crisis, and has recommended specific military and judicial reforms. In Burma, which has known near-constant conflict since its independence in 1948, the Group has focused on ethnic antagonisms, regime policies, and needed reforms. ICG has also assessed the efficacy of foreign sanctions and engagements as alternative ways of inducing change, and suggested how the international community might help lower the potential for violent strife in a future political transition. Gareth Evans, during his long tenure as Australia's foreign minister (1988-1996), played key roles in bringing peace to Cambodia, founding the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, and promoting forms of regionalism reflecting his country's proximity to Asia. For his Cambodian work he was awarded the ANZAC Peace Prize in 1994. Writing of Evans' record as foreign minister, ex-Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten has observed: "High intelligence and principle added to a razor-sharp wit ensured that he was a controversial figure, but one who left the world better than he found it." Foreign affairs, human rights, and legal reform are among the topics explored by Evans in his many publications. Most recently he co-chaired the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. A long-time former member of Australia's parliament (1978-1999), Evans holds degrees in law from Melbourne University and in politics, economics, and philosophy from Oxford University.

American news from Indonesia has been alarming. "Asian Terror: Al Qaeda Seeks Niche in Indonesia, Officials Fear," headlined the New York Times on 23 January 2002. In the same issue, in a column ambitiously subtitled "What the Muslim World Really Feels," Tom Friedman described "an iron curtain of misunderstanding separating America and the Arab-Muslim world"--a world marked, in his view, by "enormous cultural resistance to believing anything good about America."

Indonesia is mainly Malay, not Arab, but it has more Muslims than any other country. How seriously should signs of jihadism there be taken? Ostensibly Islamist or jihadist movements include Darul Islam, HAMMAS, Laskar Jihad, the Islamic Defenders Front, the Islamic Youth Movement, Jemaah Islamiah, and KISDI. In Maluku and Sulawesi, Christians have killed Muslims and vice versa. Americans and their embassy in Jakarta have been threatened. How should such groups, events, and risks be described, explained, and responded to? In what specific ways are faith, politics, and violence intersecting in Indonesia--and with what implications for Indonesians and Americans?

Analysts have long portrayed Indonesian Muslims as exemplary in their openness and tolerance toward non-Muslims and, within the Muslim community, toward religious diversity, creativity, and reform. Were these observers naive? Or have jihadism and Islamism been grossly overdrawn, and for reasons that involve politics, prejudice, and sensationalism far more than actual conditions? In this volatile context, how realistic are current reformist projects to foster a "liberal Islam," a "moderate Islam," a "feminist Islam," or a distinctively accommodative "Indonesian Islam"--as against an avowedly "militant Islam" that would impose an "Islamic state"?

How was it that Afghanistan, a country that was often conquered and ruled by outsiders before 1800, became seemingly impossible to conquer and rule in the 19th and 20th centuries? An historical examination of Afghan history reveals that premodern Central Asian rulers looked upon war and conquest as the business of displacing rival elites, a process having little or nothing to do with the inhabitants of the territory. During the 19th century, this pattern began to change in Afghanistan where governments found themselves dependent on raising tribal armies to repel foreign invaders, such as the British, at the cost of sharing power with them in the postwar period. This pattern continued into the 20th century when during each period of state collapse drew an ever-wider part of the population into the political struggle for power. The Soviet invasion drew the widest possible opposition but upon their withdrawal no faction was able to create a stable government. Afghanistan fell into ten years of civil war that opened it up to extreme movements such the Taliban and its exploitation by outsiders such as Osama bin Laden. Since war alone has now proved incapable of solving Afghanistan's problems the current conflict in Afghanistan can only be won by a wider policy that makes Afghanistan's economic and political reconstruction a priority in a way that can end its cycle of anarchy.

While Islam is commonly portrayed as a Middle Eastern religion, the majority of the world's Muslims reside in Asia. Indonesia is home to the world's largest Muslim population, with India following close behind. Millions of Muslims are scattered throughout South, Southeast, Central and Northeast Asia. In the wake of the horrific terrorists attacks on September 11th, many non-Muslims have mistakenly identified Islam with political violence. The need to distinguish moderate Islam practiced by the Muslim majority in Asia and the radical extremism used by terrorists has never been greater. In an effort to create a more comprehensive understanding of these complex issues and address misconceptions linking Islam and terrorism, the Asia Society and the Shorenstein Forum will convene a panel of experts to explore Muslim thought and practice in several key Asian countries, namely Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and China. Among the questions that will be addressed by the panel is how recent events will impact the future of Islam in Asia and what role extremist and other groups may play in this process.

Anand Patwardhan's latest film, a work in progress (180 min.), shot in India, Pakistan, and Japan The director will be present for discussion after the screening. Starting with the outbreak of jingoism that marked the 1998 series of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, Patwardhan creates a road movie that vivifies the human and historical realities of this new leap in the world's nuclearization. We visit test sites with politicians, watch urban sound-and-light spectacles glorifying the military, hear the stories of suffering villagers near the test site, travel with peace marchers who confront furious pro-bomb crowds, join a conference of Indian and Pakistani peace activists, and go to Japan to hear testimony from survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks. In the style that has distinguished his earlier films, Patwardhan brilliantly captures individual voices, gestures, facial expressions, and public dramas that simultaneously reveal intimate human experience and the sweep of history. India's most controversial and renowned documentary producer, Patwardhan has won numerous Indian and international prizes during his career as a filmmaker, which spans more than a quarter of a century. While his films cover a wide variety of subjects, regions, and social groups, his central interests have been human rights, communalism, and violence. For information, see . Further questions? Contact , , or 650-725-9732.

Separatism and terrorism, demonstrations and scandals, elite conflict and economic malaise ... With so much trouble on its hands, why should the Indonesian government willingly open up the Pandora's box that is the legacy of violence from the Suharto regime, especially since many of his associates remain politically active? Or is the risk of focusing on the past worth takingÑto administer justice and foster a humane consensus strong enough to ensure that such abuses do not recur? These difficult questions cannot be answered without taking local conditions into account: the sense of uncertainty and stagnation that hangs over the reform process; the widespread perception that in mysterious and powerful ways Suharto is still controlling events; and the apparent inability of Indonesian society to transform its recent history into a set of lessons that could generate momentum toward a better future. Mary S. Zurbuchen was based until recently in Jakarta, as the Ford Foundation's chief representative for Southeast Asia (1992-96) and Indonesia (1996-2000). She is the academic coordinator of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA, where she is teaching a course on Indonesia while continuing her research on the intersection of history and memory in that country. Her many publications on cultural and social change in Indonesia include The Language of Balinese Shadow Theater (1987).

In 1975Ð76 the fall of Saigon was followed by national reunification and the establishment of the Socialist Republic. Access to the Mekong Delta was widely expected to facilitate rapid neo-Stalinist industrialization and the appearance of a powerful military threat to capitalist SEA. But this did not happen. By 1981 partial reforms had permitted all state enterprises to operate in markets and some degree of agricultural decollectivisation. In the second half of the 1980s there was a clear de-Stalinization of everyday life. And by 1989Ð90 a recognizable market economy had emerged. Since then the Vietnamese Communist Party has, with some success, negotiated a major opening-up of the country to foreign contacts. Vietnam has joined ASEAN, and has seen the emergence of land, labor, and capital markets, and the confused processes by which classes form. Fundamental economic and political change has therefore occurred. Growth has been rather fast and the use of state violence minimal. Politically, for the still-Leninist VCP, the shift from Plan to Market has been a great success. What is the political economy basis for this? Despite emergent capitalist classes and a market economy, the political economy of "post-transition" Vietnam is heavily marked by its recent history, and remains very different from other ASEAN members. Notwithstanding revolutionary change, dualities common to both the traditional and modern political economies have offered great potential for political restructuring. In this sense "development doctrines" are perhaps less exotic and more indigenous than elsewhere in SEA. This facilitates relatively harmonious political adaptation and is the key to understanding change. For example, wide rural land access, with a collective tinge in the most densely populated areas, has a strong and pervasive effect upon the macro political economy. "Voice and exit" are enhanced. Thus we see rather high levels of migration, and risk bearing be farmers. Rural GDP has grown fast through the 1990s. Also, real wages in urban areas tend to be higher and the labor regime less brittle. What are the political implications of such a land regime? At the end of the day, one reason for the lack of extensive state violence against the population seems to be that the party/state has sufficient sources of support and power for tense economic issues in the rural areas to be fought out without property rights needing violence to enforce them. These issues are fought out locally (within cooperatives and communes) and in macro contexts (access to world markets). But in the rural areas the state does not, apparently, need to support particular economic interests for its survival. One reason for this is that the "land issue" has been addressed through the adaptation of socialist models, so that large-scale land property is not (yet?) a major issue. Dominant groups in the rural areas do not depend upon land access for their incomes. Adam Fforde is a development economist. He holds an Oxford MA (Engineering Science and Economics), a London MSc (Economics) and a Cambridge PhD (Economics). He studied Vietnamese in Hanoi during 1978/79 and was a visiting scholar at the National Economics University (Hanoi) in 1985Ð86. He lived in Vietnam from 1987 to 1992 while working as an advisor to the Swedish aid program, and in Australia from 1992 to 1999, where he was a visiting fellow at the ANU and Chairman of Aduki Pty Ltd (Consultants). He is now senior fellow at the SEA Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He has published on topics including the economic development of north Vietnam prior to 1975, agricultural cooperatives, and the transition from plan to market. He is currently working on class formation and the emergence of factor markets in the 1990s, industrial reform since the early 1960s, and Vietnamese development doctrine.