If more money coming in as investment in real sector then it is a better prediction of Indonesia's future (at least economy-wise)than many so called "pengamat". The investors put their money where their mouths are.

It could be wrong but, stil, a better prediction.

And the last point is, there is something very strange about Indonesia's make up - the sheer fragmented improbability of the place - that makes it predisposed NOT to collapse.

It has undergone enormous structural stresses at several point in its history, not least at round the close of the last century. But with hindsight did it ever actually, realistically come within a mile of collapsing?

It did not and it will not.

Predicting Indonesia's collapse into "failed state", or into outright fragmentation through the kind of ultimately low-level thuggery that seems always to have gone on, is like trying to kill an elephant with an 4.10 shotgun. You can blast and blast and blast, and here and there the elephant might bleed a bit. But it just won't die...

DrDez, The communal wars involving pretty large scale killing in Maluku, Sulawesi and Kalimantan have faded from the scene. Aceh is no longer in a state of insurgency, and the loss of Timor Leste did not bring about the collapse of the nation.

There were churches burning ten years ago, and churches burning a decade before that.

In mainstream politics the Islamists have failed (and I remember pretty clearly the doom and gloom projections I was hearing from every beer-swilling bule (sorry enakajah) on THAT count when I arrived), and the economy is booming.

That, as you kind of imply, is the key. The world is a messy, chaotic place, but an economy moving forward does wonders to keep the lid on. India does indeed rest on a roiling foundation of sheer carnage (honestly, if you think Indonesia is bad you havn't got a clue), but there's enough cash flowing around that the ship just keeps sailing!

enakajah, I was in India for five years before I came to Indonesia, and I can tell you straight up that when it comes to "violent radical mobs" and "failing governments", and glaring gaps in "the rule of law" that country makes Indonesia look like a kindergarten.

You've got communal mob violence all over the country much worse than in Indonesia; you've got loads of insurgent groups, some of them controlling large rural swathes of the country,murdering policemen, and policemen murdering them in return and so on and so on.

When I was there, in my "woe is me" bule phase, I was inclined, just like the folks here, to predict that India was heading for the apocalypse, tomorrow, or the day after at the latest...

Only it didn't happen. The violence continued; here an insurgency fizzled out, there another one heated up. But the country rumbled along and is now being proclaimed a "superpower".

And incidentally the thing that sparked the riots that ended with the students getting shot then the country tearing itself apart was reduction of the fuel subsidies.....

It may not be the Islamic taking over, or Shariah law being implemented but more likely a mass explosion of people who have had enough and run Amok.

The signs are all there. The government is loosing its grip just exactly as Soeharto did. This time there are more organized violent radical groups out there just waiting and when or If ( and I sincerely hope it is IF) the results will be disastrous.