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_WORLD WATCH______________________________
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Jihad leader jailed
Arrest follows a period of calm
The leader of a radical Muslim group that vowed to wipe out Christians in Indonesia’s Moluccas region has been arrested, according to the government’s official Antara news agency.
Jafar Umar Thalib, commander of the Muslim Jihad fighters, had been accused of fomenting communal hostilities in the Moluccas islands. Ironically, the arrest came after several weeks of peace in the region, which has been marred by sectarian violence for months. Fighting between Christians and Muslims that began in January 1999 has left thousands dead and tens of thousands displaced from their homes; most of the victims have been Christians. Thalib’s followers entered the Moluccas last year with a plan to wipe out all Christians.
Indonesia, a chain of thousands of islands in southeastern Asia, is the world’s most populous Muslim nation. The Moluccas, however, had been a mostly Christian area until the economic crash of the late 1990s prompted thousands of Muslims to move into the region in search of jobs. The violence that followed has been attributed in part to the sudden change in the ethnic balance of the region, and in part to the deliberate attempt by some zealots to destabilize the Indonesian regime.