Reply #1: Indonesia is a Mess

[LoneStarLiberal]

Not just a mess, but a big, smouldering, festering, mess. Of course it has oil (as every other smouldering, festering mess on this planet does), it is the largest Islamic country in the world, and it is a chaotic hodge-podge of ethnic groups heaped on top of one another exacerbated by land scarcity (habitable land and arable land, that is) and disasterous resettlement policies from prior central governments who didn't care about Indonesia's peripheral minorities.

Once you take all that in, then you move on to considering that the Indonesian government only got around to grudgingly admitting that they had an al-Qaeda spinoff problem (Jemmayiah Islamia (sp)) after they blew a bunch of partying tourists to pieces on Bali. Even now JI runs rampant in places like Ambon and even Aceh, fanning the fires of communal strife.

Bad, bad mess.