Across the late 1990s and into the new millennium, Indonesia has come to be seen as a land of violence, awash with machete-wielding militias and marauding jihadic warriors. Instead of a serious recognition of the complexity of these conflicts, they are continuously drawn back into a reductionist framework of anarchy, perpetual revenge, and the reassertion of primordial identities as expressed through the violence of one ethnic grouping against another.

Understanding the background to the Bali bombings of 12 October 2002 entails more than simply finding out who was part of the terrorist network. Two key reports have suggested that weaknesses in the central Indonesian government have contributed significantly to the conditions that framed the bombings.