The tsunami that devastated South-East Asia has taken a particular toll on Banda Aceh, on the northernmost tip of the Indonesian province of Aceh. To Western audiences, the suffering of those living in Aceh has been a difficult, yet perversely novel and voyeuristic, spectacle.
News outlets framed pictures showing the force of the tsunami as a stark, yet curious, reminder of nature’s power. It is also useful to remember that political zealotry has just as much power to take life expediently, and none more so than in battered Aceh.
The Free Aceh Movement – under the acronym GAM – has conducted a long-running battle against the TNI, Indonesia’s military, in a bid to have the province recognised as independent from the rest of the Republic. Whether the onslaught be from Dutch colonialists, who had tried to take the area by force before 1945, or the modern Indonesian Government, the people of Aceh are sadly unsurprised at the false bargaining of those in power.
Aceh was formally incorporated into Indonesia after the Dutch left, despite the fact that it had never been colonised by the Dutch. When Aceh was granted special status by the Indonesian Republic following the handover in 1949, optimism faded to bitterness as Jakarta reneged on its promises.
The unfair distribution of revenues from Aceh’s gas reserve since the early 1970s – around 70 per cent in favour of Jakarta – has left Aceh impoverished. Since GAM’s inception in 1976, conservative estimates indicate that at least 10,000 Acehnese civilians have been killed. An area that has come to international attention following a horrific natural disaster also possesses a bloody man-made conflict, fanned by Jakarta’s brutal project.
The genesis of Aceh’s eventual state of martial law and ‘civil emergency’ is depressingly familiar, and stems from the same kind of dogmatic political posturing that is enacted so familiarly by those who hold high office in Western administrations.
Following the deposition of Indonesian dictator General Suharto in 1998, no ‘dream’ successor was immediately available. BJ Habibe’s installation as president lasted mere months before Gus Dur Wahid succeeded him. At this time, there was much talk of limiting the power of the TNI, in what appeared to be a watershed in Indonesia policy. During Wahid’s rule, a future leader of the Republic spelled out his desire to limit the pervasive influence of the military in the general lives of ordinary Indonesians.
In an interview with Business Week, published 11 September 2000, Defence Minister Bambang Yudhoyono spoke persuasively of his desire to end the “dual-role” of the military, to “move them away from politics systemically” and ensure there would be “no so-called social political mission in the military”. He spoke of “establishing a conducive climate . . . in order for our economic-recovery programs to move well” in the context of ‘restoring security, law and order . . . [to provide] a good climate for business.”
This plan was part of a new mechanism where cabinet ministers actively supported Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri – the daughter of former president Sukarno, who, in his weakened state after the Communist purges of the mid-1960s, handed emergency powers to General Suharto in 1967, with bloody consequences. In turn, Sukarnoputri would refer matters of key policy to President Wahid. The stumbling block was Sukarnoputri’s resistance to military reform, which arrested any hope of effecting positive change for the citizens of Indonesia and, in particular, the threatened communities of Western Papua (Irian Jaya) and Aceh.
Despite the talk of open and accountable government, corruption allegations dogged President Wahid’s reign and sapped him of influence. Sukarnoputri took over in July 2001, to much fanfare from a Western media. A full and reasoned analysis of Sukarnoputri’s policy was not readily available. The TNI’s hold over the lives of the Acehnese tightened as Sukarnoputri pushed a more militaristic line.
She continued her resistance to wholesale changes in the running of the military. According to Kontras Aceh, “she ordered the troops to ‘hold the country together’ regardless of whether this means violating human rights”. A golden opportunity for key institutional reform in Indonesia was wasted, with the citizens of Aceh being one of the communities to suffer, as units of the Indonesian army continued to target human rights workers, activists and journalists.
Meanwhile, the military sabotaged the Aceh ‘peace process’, and arrested five GAM members that were in active negotiation with the central government. Most were later released in, what appears to be, a cynical attempt to disrupt the dialogue between GAM and Jakarta.
The irony is that many of the citizens in Aceh that have been abused by the TNI actively oppose GAM, an organisation that has been criticised openly by several human rights organisations. Many communities have suffered at the hands of the military and police for not subscribing to Jakarta’s nationalistic fervour, not because of links to GAM.
The military’s current employment of a cynical ‘hearts and minds’ tactic is ideal for the TNI, being as it is so bound in the dogma of the ‘Islamic threat’ propagated by the US administration – and thus a position that can only earn brownie points for Jakarta. This is despite GAM’s insistence that it seeks a secessionist outcome and not the radical Islamicisation of the region.
The continued use of force against villages and towns in Aceh was always going to occur considering that, historically, central administrations have reneged on various promises to fully licence ‘special territory’ status to Aceh in recognition of both its history and an Islamic background that is comparatively less secular than other provinces in Indonesia.
The failure to grant ‘special’ status conflates with a continued policy of transmigration of workers from the Indonesian island of Java. Transmigration has weakened the cultural and religious heritage of the province in the eyes of its people. Indeed, during Sukarnoputri’s presidency, Kopassus, the most brutal wing of the TNI, trained transmigrants from Java.
As a further example of Sukarnoputri’s militaristic policy, around 6,000 automatic weapons were shipped to Aceh to assist Kopassus’ strong-arm tactics. The punitive security policy for Aceh continues to provide ample opportunity for the continued mining of its natural resources by Exxon/Mobil, which has been of direct benefit to both Jakarta and, of course, the energy company itself.
Exxon/Mobil is not purely benign in all this. PT Arun, the company that sells Aceh’s natural gas, is a cosy partnership between the Indonesian national energy company and Mobil – with a further interest from a Japanese company. Allegations have been made of Exxon/Mobil’s employment and subsequent direction of a TNI wing as ‘security’ for its sites in Aceh, whose actions have had inevitable and predictable consequences for the people of the province.
New president Yudhoyono is an inheritor of a military-social dynamic that is dyed in the wool. Previous Presidents Habibe and Wahid failed in their attempt to loosen the TNI’s grip over Indonesian politics and society, while Sukarnoputri strengthened the military’s power during her reign, abetted both by rhetoric – the War on Terror – and circumstance – the Bali bombing in October 2002.
Aceh was in a state of martial law when Yudhoyono took over in September 2004, and he promised to review the ‘civil emergency’ status in November 2004. Arguably, this was at least a small step forward in attempts to cool down a conflict that, militarily, has hardly been emphatic. Since the imposition of martial law in March 2003, only approximately half of GAM’s armed fighters have been captured or killed according to the TNI, and most of these ‘fighters’ are innocent villagers.
As many Acehnese villagers are overwhelmingly against the central government’s desire to incorporate the province, it is fair game for the TNI to treat those same civilians as enemy combatants. The ‘them and us’ nature of the dispute has also seeped into the diplomatic route, with Acehnese legislators left out of the November 2004 decision to extend the state of civil emergency. Traditionally, promises made to Aceh by Jakarta have been found to be mere bluster in the fullness of time. Many Acehnese community leaders view the President’s ‘progressive’ plan as part of a war of attrition.
The independent journalist Allan Nairn sees the curious logic in the intractable nature of the conflict. “The Indonesian military actually encourages the armed conflict that is going on between them and the GAM. The Indonesian military likes this war because one, they cannot be defeated militarily, and two, because it gives them a rationale for their political existence,” he wrote earlier this year.
Corruption is endemic in the military, and squares with the aforementioned moral rhetoric of winning ‘hearts and minds’, copied wholesale from the coalition’s project in Iraq for the benefit of the few Western observers that got past the restrictions in Aceh before the tsunami.
It is difficult to see how the central government’s aggressive control of the region can be stopped. In its very essence, the horror of the tsunami is a political gift for the military. It gives a precise justification for the continued imposition of brutal military and police units in Aceh, under the guise of the provision of ‘security’.
This is a further irony for a community that has directly suffered from the TNI’s excesses. Human rights organisations have raised concerns that the US offer of spare parts for Indonesia’s air force will be used to strengthen efforts against GAM rebels and Acehnese civilians alike, under the guise of the TNI’s ‘humanitarian’ project following the tsunami.
The TNI’s humanitarian stance is further shown as mere window-dressing in the light of reports that the TNI has prevented civilians from gathering food. They have also cynically controlled the flow of aid supplies to the province. According to Allan Nairn, “these supplies are being piled up . . . and either resold by the Kopassus and SGI intelligence people, or . . . used as a political instrument in the villages. They go out to the villages and first demand that villagers present their special ID card issued by the police, given only to people who are certified as not being opponents of the army, and they demand they swear allegiance to the state of Indonesia and collaborate with the army”.
The military’s relocation of more 100,000 people affected by the tsunami to camps and barracks, without the option to have other living arrangements, also hints at an ideological programme. Human Rights Watch reports that “while some internally displaced persons [IDPs] currently living in crowded tents may prefer the option of relocation to barracks, the government registration form omits other options. Other options could include a return to one’s own home area, staying in the current location, or resettling to another part of the province or country”.
Indeed, the very process of IDP registration is a powerful tool for the Indonesian government and TNI, according to Brad Adams, director of Asia Human Rights Watch, who believes that “this information could be used to target alleged separatist supporters and deny them humanitarian aid”.
The lack of consultation with the Acehnese community on the direction of the area following the tsunami speaks volumes. What appears to be the altruistic rebuilding of Aceh by the central government could be a ‘cover’ for a Jakarta-organised homogenisation of Aceh. Civil leaders have been restricted at the consultation table as the central government designs a Westernised Aceh attractive to foreign investors and contractors. This is a potential money-spinner for the TNI who, given their dubious history, will doubtless cream off various funds earmarked for the reconstruction programme.
At present, the medium to long-term future appears to hinge on the outcome of peace talks between a Jakarta-led delegation and GAM representatives. The first round of talks in Finland ended early, with GAM looking to formalise a ceasefire. The Indonesian government will not offer any more than what it calls ‘autonomy’ to Aceh – a historically hollow offer that carries little weight for the people of the province, who overwhelmingly support a referendum.
Victim to the abuses of both the TNI and GAM, it appears that the people of Aceh are being written out of the political script, with Jakarta refusing to discuss the possibility of referendum. Despite Yudhoyono’s professed desire to circumscribe the pervasive power of the military, the offer of autonomy is surely just a convenient screen for the continuance both the TNI’s occupation of the province and the mining of its energy reserves for the benefit of the central administration. To this end, it would be naive to expect any real positive change for the people of Aceh just yet.
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