The remote Indonesian province of Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya, has been troubled by tension between indigenous secessionists and centralised rule in Jakarta ever since Dutch colonialists gave it up in 1962.

Indigenous peoples of the remote highlands and jungles of Indonesia's Papua province - an area almost as big as France or Iraq - have demanded autonomy for nearly half a century. The national government in Jakarta has wavered between heavy repression of any independence movement and ambiguous concessions to separatists.

Human rights groups say thousands of Papuans have been killed during military reprisals since the 1960s, in a low-intensity war against a small guerrilla movement.

Guerrilla warfare has largely subsided since 1998, and voices for autonomy are now heard through new bodies such as the Papuan Presidium Council (PDP) or the Papuan People's Assembly (MRP).

Nevertheless, there have been eruptions of violence on both sides and the U.S. State Department continues to criticise the behaviour of Indonesian military forces in Papua.

Analysts say Papua is politically unstable and will probably remain so as long as Indonesia wavers between accommodating and repressing Papuan interests. But they generally think that a major armed movement for autonomy is unlikely to emerge.

Separatists campaigners are small in number, fragmented and lack a unity of purpose. And the province is of enormous economic importance to Indonesia, so the government will keep a tight grip.

Papua's colonial past is at the heart of much of its troubles. Papua - the western half of the island of New Guinea - was formerly a Dutch colony. The island's other half became the independent state of Papua New Guinea.

When the Dutch handed their colonies to Indonesia in 1949, they kept Dutch New Guinea, the western half of the island, and began to prepare it for independence. But Indonesia's leader, Sukarno, with the help of the Cold War-motivated United States, waged a diplomatic and military campaign for the territory in 1963.

The Dutch were persuaded to hand the territory to the United Nations, which held a referendum - known as the Act of Free Choice - in 1969. Papuans voted to join Indonesia.

However, at least two academic studies have since found the referendum was deeply flawed. They say it was based on the vote of just 1,025 hand-picked tribal leaders who were under heavy pressure to vote for integration with Indonesia.

The Free Papua Movement (OPM) embarked on an armed resistance rout for Irian Jaya, as the province became known. Rights activists say the military tortured, terrorised and killed thousands of civilians in return. Among the reported atrocities, ones that stand out are Operation Tumpas in 1977, in which thousands of Papuans are thought to have been killed, and the bombing of the Paniai basin in the Central Highlands in 1981, when human rights groups say around 2,500 people died.

With the fall in 1998 of Indonesia's dictator Suharto, a broad-based civilian movement emerged and Indonesia's new President, Abdurrahman Wahid - who introduced progressive legislation across the country - decided to fund a Papuan National Congress. The Congress led to the creation of the Papuan Presidium Council (PDP), with the aim of leading the pro-independence movement.

Then, in 2001, the provincial government of Papua negotiated a Special Autonomy Law with the national parliament. Special Autonomy conferred important benefits, including provisions for Papua to control up to 80 percent of tax revenues from natural resources like its lucrative gold and copper mines. The province's name was changed to Papua, and granted its own flag and anthem, in line with other Indonesian provinces.

The Special Autonomy law also established the Papuan People's Assembly (MRP), an upper house with extensive political power, to be composed entirely of ethnic Papuans. It was finally set up in 2005.

However, the government has also sent out contradictory signals that it will not tolerate anything other than total integration with Indonesia.

From 2000, fearing it had given independence campaigners too long a leash, it began to send thousands of troops to Papua, and jailed five leaders of the Papuan Presidium Council - the body set up at the 2000 Congress.

In 2001, PDP leader Theys Eluay was abducted after attending an event held by the army's special forces branch, Kopassus. His body was found the next day, and his death is generally assumed to be a political assassination.

Today the PDP has a much diminished voice and many observers say that the government has also sidelined the MRP, failing to consult it on key issues.

The status of Papuan Special Autonomy has become unclear and contentious. The Indonesian government has been trying since 1999 to divide Papua into three new provinces, in contravention of the Special Autonomy deal. In 2003 it partially succeeded by hiving off the western third of Papua. This area is now known as West Irian Jaya. Reports that a third province would be created in 2007 in the far western region of Papua, have not materialised.

There were gubernatorial elections in March 2006 for both Papua and West Irian Jaya. The two elections were relatively peaceful and fair and many former independence campaigners participated.

"I think that Indonesian policy is a mess of confusion and contradiction," says Richard Chauvel, a Papua expert at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. Chauvel says Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has several times expressed his desire for a peaceful political solution to conflict in Papua.

"But he has done very little to resolve the contradictions in his own government's policy... The creation of West Irian Jaya province would suggest they are not serious about reaching a resolution of the Papua conflict on the basis of Special Autonomy law," Chauvel says.

Four major factors make Papuan independence, or even autonomy, unlikely.

Firstly, migration. Thousands of Indonesians continue to migrate to Papua, making it harder for Papuans to argue that as Christians or animists of Melanesian ancestry they are culturally distinct from other Indonesians, who are predominantly Muslim. Nearly half the population are now "migrants", and many second- and third-generation migrants regard themselves as Papuan. The leader of the PDP, Thaha al-Hamid, is a Muslim, while the winners of the March 2006 gubernatorial elections are all indigenous Christians.

Secondly, economics. Indonesia relies massively on revenues from Papua, with a large chunk of income coming from the gold and copper mine operated by Freeport McMoRan in the centre of the province. British energy giant BP is planning to open a liquefied natural gas facility in the Bird's Head region of West Irian Jaya province, giving the area even greater national significance.

Papua also has vast forest reserves.

Thirdly, tribal rivalries. There are hundreds of sub-ethnic groups who speak only Indonesian in common. The government appears to have exploited their rivalries with the creation of West Irian Jaya province. Tribes around the Bird's Head region of the new province did not want revenues from the new BP project to go to the Papuan provincial capital, Jayapura, hundreds of miles away. This rivalry helped popularise the creation of West Irian Jaya amongst locals.

Fourthly, there has been a huge influx of troops into Papua over the past five years.

"The Indonesian military have far, far more people in Papua than they need to control the populace," Chauvel says. "It's a show-of-force exercise".

The military argues that Papua is so large - it's almost as big as Iraq or France - and its terrain so difficult that large quantities of troops are necessary.

Several major demonstrations in 2006 appeared to reflect Papuan frustration with the ambiguous status quo.

Early in the year, illegal miners who glean a living from land that Freeport McMoRan has finished mining protested that the military and Freeport were preventing them from working on the site.

A month later, in March 2006, demonstrators in Jayapura killed five security personnel while demanding the closure of the gold mine and the departure of Indonesian troops.

Afterwards, up to 1,200 students from the capital fled into the surrounding hills, afraid of revenge attacks by members of the Indonesian Police Mobile Brigade, according to the Australian public broadcaster ABC.

The same month, Australia granted temporary protection visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers who claimed they were victims of persecution and genocide. Indonesia recalled its ambassador in protest. The issue was only resolved in July, when Australia assured Indonesia it would not support groups promoting Papuan separatism.

In December 2006, flag-raising incidents and the killing of two army officers led the military to deploy as many as 3,000 extra troops in the Puncak Jaya region, mostly in the town of Mulia. Since journalists and aid workers have had severely restricted access since 2004 it is not easy to find out what happened. But there are several reports of thousands of local people fleeing into the forests in January 2007, without food or medical supplies, as a result of the operation.

By February, the government said that there were only about 2,000 "seeking refuge" and that the military and police were preparing to help them.

The West Papua Report of January 2007 said that during the "new offensive" of December/January Jakarta authorities also seized the central offices of the second largest church in West Papua, after allegations that church leaders were linked to the pro-independence movement.

Despite the simmering tension, regional analysts predict Papua is unlikely to be the next East Timor. Francesca Lawe-Davies of Belgian-based think tank International Crisis Group points out that while Indonesia's claims to East Timor were never recognised by most of the international community, its ownership of Papua is acknowledged by every country but the small Pacific island nation of Vanuatu.

In addition, the resistance is small and fragmented. There are only about 50 Papuan guerrillas armed with guns - and perhaps 2,000 if those armed with bows and arrows are included.

"But the Indonesian government needs to put more effort into engaging Papuans to resolve their grievances through dialogue," Lawe-Davies says. "Failure to do so will only result in more instability in the province."

At the moment, analysts don't think there's a humanitarian crisis in Papua, although there are certainly plenty of allegations of human rights abuses. But the situation is hard to gauge because journalists and international staff from foreign aid agencies are usually denied entry. As a result, activists' reports on Papua can be inaccurate or misleading.

Papuans are very poor, and the lack of infrastructure in their province means that local crises can easily become fatal -- for example at least 55 people died from diarrhoea in a remote region in 2005. Papua has the highest HIV/AIDS rates in Indonesia.

Ad hoc resistance and armed rebellion continue. In September 2008, a series of bombs exploded near the Freeport mine. OPM claimed responsibility and called for the closure of the mine, which has been a focus of ongoing tensions over the distribution of wealth from Papua's natural resources.

An International Crisis Group report in June 2008 warned that there is a growing risk of conflict between Muslims and Christians, partly fuelled by migration and a growth in fundamentalism.

Indigenous Christians feel threatened by ongoing Muslim migration from other parts of Indonesia, while Muslims are concerned about discrimination or even expulsion, the report said.

An influx of mostly Muslim migrants from mainland Indonesia means as much as half the population of some provinces is now non-Papuan. Communal tensions almost erupted into violence in 2007 over perceived injustice from both sides.