Indonesia's terrible bloodshed has been much in my mind in recent days. Watching the images on television and reading Conor O'Clery's reports in this paper have brought back to me very vividly the time I lived in Jakarta some 30 years ago. It has been almost possible to smell the intense scents of the evening air, tropical spices mixed with heavy tobacco, and to see the wild courage of the student demonstrators confronting the armed police with their bare hands.
At that time we were living through the slow and tedious business of the fall of President Sukarno, whose daughter is now a rallying point for the voices of opposition. Waiting in the wings was the clean-cut young military officer Suharto, who promised to bring political reform and ease the brutal poverty in which most people lived.
Inflation was completely out of control and students, civil servants, anyone who lived on a fixed income had been pushed to the edge of despair. A young university lecturer who came to our comfortable suburban house to give me Indonesian language lessons hesitated in an embarrassed way and then asked in a rush if I would mind paying her in rice rather than rupiahs, since nobody could know from day to day the value of the Indonesian currency.
Everyone said that if only Sukarno could be persuaded to go without bloodshed, then the reforms would come and Indonesia would, at last, be set on a new course. But equally they agreed that this must happen slowly, so that the old man and his allies did not lose face. The country had just emerged from a terrible civil war in which over half a million people had died.
Now, the hope was to effect a period of transition which would give everyone a little space and dignity to prepare for a better future.
Why these somewhat maudlin memories of events long ago in a distant country? Because, watching the scenes in Jakarta on television, listening to academics explaining how things will be different when Gen Suharto finally resigns, I am made more acutely aware than ever of how difficult it is to escape from the burden and habits of history.
The hand of history does not rest lightly on the shoulder, as Tony Blair suggested, coaxing us to go forward. On the contrary, its terrible weight drags us backward to repeat the patterns and mistakes of the past. The challenge to impose our will to reshape history requires vision and commitment, and success cannot be guaranteed.
Yet this is what we are being asked to do tomorrow, North and South, in the referendum on the Belfast Agreement. Given the scale of the changes envisaged, it is not surprising that many people prefer to cling to the familiar landmarks of the past rather than look forward with hope to the uncharted territory that lies ahead.
Many people, including myself, who have observed closely the progress towards the signing of the agreement and the referendum campaign have been surprised by one development. This is that it is not the large constitutional changes, the principle of consent, cross-Border bodies, Articles 2 and 3, which seem to offend those who are minded to reject the accord. Instead they have been angered by issues that are certainly highly emotive, but relatively peripheral to the major changes that will be brought about in the relationships between these islands.
The release of prisoners, decommissioning, sitting in government with former terrorists, it is understandable that these should provoke reactions of intense anger. But it is almost as though it is easier and less frightening to react instinctively on these issues, which are essentially symptoms of the conflict, rather than consider as a whole an agreement which, with a lot of hard work, just might move us beyond it.
Both communities in Northern Ireland, unionist and nationalist, are being offered the opportunity to create a different history. Nationalists may feel that the political tide is running their way, that progress towards a united Ireland is now a matter of time.
But this is not inevitable. If unionists choose to work the agreement, they have the chance to help create a community where Catholics can feel at ease within the Union or, more likely, in a broader political context where it is possible to have links with all the diverse communities living in these islands.
Intelligent unionists know this, which is why many of them are close to despair at the possibility that only a minority of their community will vote Yes. That is why the Northern Ireland-born Labour MP Kate Hoey, who has in the past been a fan of Bob McCartney's, was in Derry with the former Tory cabinet minister Viscount Cranborne to rally support for David Trimble's campaign.
Last weekend, in an article in the Sunday Times, Paul Bew, perhaps unionism's most cogent advocate, laid out the political gains which his community had made from the Belfast Agreement. Equally, he warned that if this community rejected the "Stormont compromise", it would also forfeit its last real chance to shape its future.
In recent days I've heard complaints from republicans in particular that "everyone" in the Republic seems to be obsessed with getting the unionists on board. But there is a very good reason for this preoccupation. The Belfast Agreement, carefully crafted as a bridge to allow us to move forward to a more benign space, will not succeed unless Northern unionists are prepared to make it work.
This is not to say that a return to widespread violence is inevitable. We know that the republican movement is committed to its political strategy as offering the best way forward. But a rejection of the agreement by any sizeable section of the population will mean a return to the politics of sour recrimination, and the loss of that wonderfully inclusive momentum which has drawn so many politicians right across the world to support the parties in their search for peace.
Against this background, is there anything that can be done to convince the wavering "don't knows" in the unionist camp? In recent days Bertie Ahern has tried to offer reassurances on such issues as decommissioning. Until this week the SDLP appeared to be lying deliberately low, apparently in the belief that too much enthusiasm for the agreement on its part would alienate unionist voters. This may have been discreet, but the effect has been to leave the running, and the media, almost entirely to Sinn Fein.
There is still time, even at this late stage, for nationalist Ireland to make a direct appeal to the broad unionist community. If Bertie Ahern really believes that the war is over, he should say so loud and clear. Even better, he should ask Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to say so with him.