West Papua's future is still grim with Indonesia's militia now recruiting violent anti-independence forces.
Pro-independence supporters in the province which the separatists call West Papua are determined to assert their identity.
No more than four provinces Riau, Aceh, East Kalimantan and West Papua earn much extra income from natural resources.
The Free West Papua Campaign opened its headquarters in the city last month.
More than 100 people are now known to have died in flooding in the eastern Indonesian province of West Papua.
The Free West Papua Campaign wants a referendum on independence from Indonesia.
Certainly things don't look good in West Papua (formerly known as Irian Jaya, and home to extensive deposits of gold and other minerals).
This has even meant a resumption of training Indonesia's controversial special forces, accused of past human-rights abuses in East Timor, West Papua and Aceh.
Her supporters complain that she was given an impossible task when asked to oversee troubled regions such as West Papua and the Molucca islands.
Noken is a knotted net or woven bag handmade from wood fibre or leaves by communities in Papua and West Papua Provinces of Indonesia.
After East Timor won its freedom last year, the desire for independence grew in provinces such as Aceh and Irian Jaya (recently renamed West Papua).
With its many local languages and ethnic groups, the country's unity is threatened by various separatist movements, especially in the provinces of Aceh and West Papua.
He might even re-explore the idea of a Melanesian federation including West Papua, Papua New Guinea and Bougainville, ethnically a much healthier destiny than Irian Jaya.
It is hard to see Howard sending thousands of Australians into the dense jungles of West Papua, where they could get bogged down in guerrilla warfare for years.
This is aimed at cutting off what little international support there might be for separatist rebels in the Indonesian provinces of Aceh and West Papua (formerly Irian Jaya).
Exports from the field are slated to start in 2006 but the Tangguh project is not due to start generating revenues for the provincial government in West Papua for another decade or so.
It seems to be losing control of the army, which recently admitted that some of its men might have been involved in the murder of Theys Eluay, a politician from West Papua, another restive province.
So if it comes to all-out war in West Papua between the indigenous population (who want self-rule) and the militias (who will do anything to stop Indonesia losing another large chunk of territory), would Australia intervene?
Apparently acting on orders from the authorities in Jakarta, which this summer refused to allow the province to be renamed West Papua, the police forcibly took down some flags, shooting two people dead in the process.
The richest of these, East Kalimantan, receives ten times more money per inhabitant than the poorest province, Banten, while the richest district (Fakfak, in West Papua) takes in 50 times more per person than the poorest (Belu in East Nusa Tenggarah).
Separatist movements exist in Madura, Kalimantan and the Moluccas, though they are puny in comparison with the two best organised, in Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra, and, at the other extremity, in West Papua (formerly called Irian Jaya, and before that West New Guinea) some 4, 000km (2, 500 miles) away to the east.
Furthermore, the central government continues to try to undermine the provincial administrations and destabilise their security: for instance, it plans to carve up West Papua (formerly called Irian Jaya) into three parts, and recently sent the army's special forces back to the province, even though they had been implicated in the murder of a local separatist politician.
Both the Indonesian portion of the island in the west, and the independent country of Papua New Guinea in the east have infection rates of over 1%.
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