New Delhi, July 2 -- Nicholas Gosselin flew the route from Wamena to Yahukimo for PT AMA the way he had done it before, low above the canopy of Highland Papua, where the ridgelines run so steep and close together that visual navigation is the only kind that works. On Thursday he landed in Balinggama district for the last time. Fighters from the West Papua National Liberation Army were waiting on the airstrip.

his killing, spokesperson Sebby Sambom said, was "a message to the United States and Indonesia."

It is the first time an American national has been killed in West Papua's armed independence struggle, a conflict that has ground on, largely invisibly to the outside world, for more than half a century. Indonesia has fought to keep it ...