JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The Indonesian sociologist skimmed a finger across the map of this country's vast archipelago. As it darted from island to island, he repeated the single word: "violence, violence, violence."
With Indonesia erupting in religious wars and ethnic pogroms, "A central problem is a quest (by many communities) for independence," said Tamrin Amal Tomagola, a professor at the University of Indonesia.
"Basically, the root of the problem is a feeling of injustice by ethnic people. They feel they have been ignored, marginalized, neglected. This is all across Indonesia. The only difference is the degree of feeling."
Indonesia was the political creation of Dutch colonists aiming to monopolize the lucrative trade in the islands' spices, and later, their oil.
With its people -- now more than 200 million -- spread over 13,337 islands and speaking more than 600 languages, it always has been a precarious national entity.
For 32 years, a former general turned authoritarian president, Suharto, enforced Indonesia's unity -- and suppressed aspirations for independence -- with an army known for ruthlessness and human rights abuses.
Three years after widespread protests and a crippled economy forced Suharto to step down, Indonesia is wracked by ethnic, religious and secessionist violence. Some analysts here voice fears that it is on the verge of fragmentation.
President Abdurrahman Wahid, a Muslim cleric, won broad initial support at home and among foreign governments for his embrace of democracy and tolerance.
But in 20 months in power, he has proved stubborn, frail and prone to dozing through official meetings and parliamentary sessions -- and has alienated his allies to the point that he faces impeachment hearings in August.
Suep Didu is a leader of a radical Islamic group that is one of dozens of Muslim fundamentalist organizations that have waged attacks against Indonesia's Christians, leftist political groups and foreign aid agencies.
"We want one Indonesia," he said, "and we will fight for it."
Franz Magnis-Suseno, a German Jesuit scholar and author who has been in Jakarta for four decades, lays heavy blame for the current violence on Suharto's damming-up of political expression.
"Suharto depoliticized society," said Magnis-Suseno, who teaches political philosophy at a local university. "He said 'We'll do everything from above. Villages will have no political life.' But people began to feel that they were victims of bureaucratic development schemes created for the personal interests of Suharto's cronies.
"So within people grew anger and the feeling that 'we cannot do anything,' as well as the feeling that other people are profiting and we are not."
"And the other," he continued, "became (Indonesia's ethnic Chinese minority) ... the other village, the Christians. This made for a society ready to blow up. Now, all the injustices of 40 years are blowing up."
One such place is Aceh, the northernmost province on the island of Sumatra. A formerly independent sultanate with a particularly vibrant Islamic culture, Aceh resisted incorporation into independent Indonesia.
Rebels of the decades-old Free Aceh Movement say Indonesia's elite, led by people from the island of Java, have been sucking the profits from Aceh's vast natural gas fields. The rebels escalated their attacks in the 1990s and again after Suharto's ouster.
Soon after the province of East Timor voted for independence in a 1999 referendum, Wahid promised the 4.2 million Acehnese a similar vote, only to change his mind under pressure from nationalist politicians and hard-liners in the military.
Wahid has sent nearly 40,000 extra troops to reinforce a military crackdown. Villages in Aceh lie in charred ruins.
Rebel attacks forced Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp. to close its gas fields and pull out its staff in March.
"There doesn't seem to be any solution for the killing, the kidnapping, the terror that we see every day," said Abdul Rahman Yacob, an Acehnese lawyer who works on human rights issues in Aceh. "We have no idea how many people are under arrest," and detainees sometimes simply disappear, he said.
Yacob and 15 colleagues came to Jakarta recently to ask the government to lift its siege and restore at least minimal levels of civil justice.
"The main issue for the Acehnese people is justice, not just in the courts, but economic justice, political justice, civil rights, none of which has ever been protected," he said.
Nearly 3,000 miles east of Aceh, secession also rumbles through Irian Jaya, also known as West Papua, the Indonesian province on the island of New Guinea.
Many West Papuans, who are ethnic Melanesians of numerous tribes, have opposed Indonesian rule since Jakarta took control from the Dutch in the 1960s.
A resource in dispute there is copper, mined by New Orleans-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. As in Aceh, rebels and others say the profits have enriched the U.S. corporation and the Indonesian elites from Jakarta, but have bypassed the impoverished local people.
West Papua's rebellion has been less violent, but Amnesty International and other human rights groups say that, as in Aceh, newly reinforced troops have arrested and tortured nonviolent dissidents.
A central grievance -- in Aceh and West Papua, and in communal conflicts elsewhere -- is the Suharto policy of "transmigration," in which the government moved millions of people from the crowded islands of Java and Madura to other, less populous islands.
On Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo, native ethnic Dayaks have fought Madurese immigrants, most recently in March, when Dayak gangs massacred at least 450 Madurese, and forced thousands to flee.
In the Moluccas, fabled as the Spice Islands, Muslim-Christian fighting has escalated since 1999, with both communities forming armed militias. Gangs have destroyed churches and mosques and burned villages. An estimated 5,000 people have died.
Throughout Indonesia, violence is becoming more frequent and more savage, said Munir, the deputy chairman of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation. Munir -- like many Indonesians, he uses only one name -- is an outspoken critic of human rights abuses. A result of his outspokenness: His offices were bombed last year.
"For decades Suharto monopolized violence, not just official violence but community violence," Munir said. "Now, no one can monopolize violence," he added, but the military is a primary instigator of conflict.
"We in Indonesia have a problem with our military. They believe in what you might call a national chauvinist ideology. There can be no separation from Indonesia," Munir said. "You see what happened in East Timor."
After the province chose independence in its 1999 referendum, Munir said, "The army supported the militia gangs and they destroyed East Timor.
"Religious conflict is very strong," Munir added, "but the military and politicians use religious conflict for their own ends."
With Wahid's looming impeachment, tensions are rising. Last week, police fought crowds of stone-throwing youths who condemned a stiff increase in the price of fuel.
The government, out of cash, is lowering subsidies on fuel as part of an effort to win assistance from the International Monetary Fund. But just those moves helped prompt the riots that led to Suharto's overthrow.
"I've never been as concerned as I am now. Especially with the political crisis (around Wahid), that makes it worse," said Magnis-Suseno, the German scholar.
"Traditional relations within society are breaking down. ... With so many aggrieved people, violence seems to be the answer for many people. It's very hard to see where the country is going from here, even if it can hold together."