No easy answer for Aceh
With the escalation of violence in Indonesia's oil-rich province of Aceh, a negotiated peace settlement between Jakarta and the secessionists might prove more difficult than ever, writes Damien Kingsbury
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Kyllie Moon of Australia is arrested at a demonstration protesting against Indonesia's military offensive in Aceh, Indonesia
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In trying to justify the actions of the Indonesian military in Indonesia's northernmost province of Aceh, Indonesia's foreign minister, Hassan Wirayuda, says that nothing less than the future of the state is at stake. Wirayuda may be right, but not in the way that he thinks.
The behaviour of the Indonesian National Army (TNI) in Aceh has been appalling since it started its most recent campaign.
A flood of private reports coming from non-governmental organisations that detail horrific events, including an escalating rate of murder -- sometimes by locking civilians in their homes and burning them -- the destruction of villages and rape are disturbing, to say the least. The situation looks not so much as a military campaign against a rebel force, but an invading feudal army intent on destroying an enemy people.
The TNI's current clampdown on the media's reporting of the situation is a further sign that it wishes to conduct this campaign unhindered by poor publicity.
The clearly stated aim of the TNI is to "exterminate" the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). However, based on the army's previous track record in Aceh, this operation will not be quick. TNI soldiers are poorly trained, the terrain is difficult and GAM are experienced guerrilla fighters with a long history of surviving seemingly tight situations.
Beyond the immediate military outcome, there is also the likelihood that rather than bring Aceh back into the Indonesian nationalist fold, the TNI is in the process of creating a new generation of GAM, as it has done before.
Wirayuda and other Indonesian leaders are fearful that if Aceh does manage to achieve independence, Indonesia might fall apart. But the only other area in Indonesia with a substantial claim to independence is West Papua. Indonesia could survive without these two provinces; it would be poorer, but it would still be viable and much less violent. Yet without external recognition and some form of diplomatic intervention, which seem unlikely, independence for Aceh is all but impossible.
Since 1962, Aceh has been under "special autonomy" status. But most Acehnese believe the experience has been a failure because it was subverted by Jakarta, not least through ravaging the province's economy. Added to long-standing human rights atrocities perpetrated by the TNI, there is a profound sense of distrust of Jakarta and its intentions.
As a consequence, a new "special autonomy" status proclaimed last year is regarded as neither substantial nor sincere. Negotiations have to be reopened and a new offer needs to be put on the table that would involve Aceh being offered the chance to vote for a far more extended form of autonomy, external to Indonesia in nearly all but name.
With agreement for the disbursement of a nominal percentage of revenue, Aceh could otherwise be self-governing in effectively all areas but for foreign affairs and communications. Under such an arrangement, the TNI would have to leave Aceh entirely, which it would be loathe to do because of its lucrative business interests there. Such a move would also challenge TNI's self-defined "territorial structure", by which it is located throughout the archipelago as a kind of uber-police.
Because of the parallel role the national police have played alongside the TNI in Aceh, not least through the paramilitary Mobile Brigades, Hunter battalions and BKO units in which elite soldiers are technically accredited as police, they too would have to end their presence in Aceh. A local police unit would then have to be built up and run under a local administration.
Such a settlement would take a huge amount of good will on both sides, a high degree of honesty and transparency and international monitoring for several years at the least. Although the TNI would certainly reject such a settlement, it could receive some support among civilian politicians in Jakarta who know how unpopular the war in Aceh is. Such a solution could also attract the backing of countries such as Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, the Netherlands, the US and even Australia.
Indeed, GAM has said privately that it would have accepted such an offer until a couple of years ago, before the military campaign escalated in early 2001. With the latest events, however, it would take a superhuman effort to get back to this point of negotiation.
Wirayuda is right; the future of Indonesia is at stake. But what is at risk is less the geographic shape of Indonesia than what sort of state Indonesia wants to, or can, be.
The writer is head of Philosophical, Political and International Studies at Deakin University, and is author of Power Politics and the Indonesian Military, Routledge-Curzon, 2003
