ABSTRACT
Rampant illegal logging in Indonesia's borderlands has drawn the attention of Indonesia's policy-makers and national media for the last decade. Despite current research showing that ‘timber smuggling is of least significance within the overall framework of the illegal logging problem in Indonesia’ (Obidzinski et al, 2006, p37), the accusations of criminal activity in the border regions continue unabated within public and government discourses. The contraband of both round and sawn logs from the West Kalimantan borderlands into the Malaysian state of Sarawak has resulted in renewed calls for an increased security approach towards the borderlands and its Indonesian inhabitants, who are also accused of disloyalty to the state (see Kompas, 2005). It is a common practice of the Indonesian government and the media to blame Malaysian timber companies for interfering across the border in cahoots with their Indonesian borderland accomplices. Because the Indonesian government cannot act on the Malaysian side of the border, authorities have long focused their interventions on the actions of borderlanders. They also assume that the complicity of Indonesians in illegal logging is provoked by economic underdevelopment, coupled with the strong pull of the robust Malaysian economy.
