LOS ANGELES -- What country has the largest population while probably remaining the least known among Americans? It's Indonesia -- an awesome archipelago of maybe 13,000 islands and some 220 million people. Most of them are moderate Muslims, and there are more of those in Indonesia than anywhere.
Its leader is Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Sukarno, founder of modern postcolonial Indonesia. She may not be the second coming of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the steel-nerves department, but she's no dishrag diplomat when it comes to quashing terrorism and separatism. She has ordered her military -- known as the TNI -- to contain rebel forces in Aceh, the resource-rich westernmost province which is now, by her decree, under martial law.
The line in the sand has been drawn: Aceh will not become independent like East Timor because, if it does, Megawati and many others believe, Indonesia will violently shatter as one aggrieved province after another disintegrates, in the manner of the former Yugoslavia.