Once again political developments in Indonesia have reached a crisis point and once again President Abdurrahman Wahid is abroad – this time traveling to Qatar to attend an Organization of the Islamic Conference meeting, then to Brunei for the annual Apec summit photo-ops. Crises perhaps seek out Wahid absences or, given the frequency of both, there are bound to be coincidences. In any case, as the frequent flyer left for Qatar on Saturday, Indonesian lawmakers – 200 of the country's total of 500 – gathered at a central Jakarta convention center and, as has also become a frequent occurrence, called on the beleaguered president to resign, saying he was no longer capable of fixing Indonesia's ailing economy or stemming separatist and sectarian violence.

Such violence, blamed by Wahid on his own security forces, had reached another high point in northern Sumatra's Aceh province (with at least 21 killed) in the run-up to a Saturday rally of tens of thousands at the main mosque of the provincial capital of Banda Aceh demanding a UN-supervised independence referendum. The numbers were the more impressive as organizers of the rally had actually called it off on short notice, fearing that large-scale clashes with army and police might erupt if the rally attracted anywhere near the previous year's gathering of 250,000 demonstrators.

The Acehnese struggle for independence is not new. In 1873, the Dutch colonial masters ensconced in Java had declared war on the Aceh Sultanate and – to a point – subdued it a couple of years later. But only to a point: violence and occasional larger uprisings continued until 1942 when the Dutch were forced out of the Indonesian archipelago by the invading Japanese military. In 1949 when Indonesia gained its independence and the Dutch East Indies ceased to exist, Aceh joined – or was joined to – the newly independent nation on condition of being granted far-reaching autonomy. As the central government in Jakarta didn't stick to its part of the bargain, violence soon broke out again and in December 1975 Aceh leaders declared independence, only to invite military occupation by central government troops. Over the past decade at least 5,000 people have been killed there, thousands more have gone missing. This year's June 2 truce signed by the Wahid government with the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, or GAM) has had some effect, but only some: over 200 people have been killed since. More bloodshed is likely to follow.

Aceh wants its independence. Jakarta wants to keep its oil-and gas-rich province in the fold, clearly rather more interested in the substantial revenues it can extract than the fate of some 4.5 million Acehnese. It's a simple equation. Of the 29.8 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) Indonesia exported in 1999 to Japan, Korea, and Taiwan for US$4.5 billion, 38 percent, worth $1.7 billion, was produced in Aceh at the Arun LNG plant adjacent to the Arun natural gas field owned and operated by Mobil Indonesia, a joint venture of state-owned Pertamina (55 percent), America's ExxonMobil (30 percent), and smaller shareholders. As 28 percent of central government revenue is derived from oil and gas production and exports, it can readily be estimated that Aceh accounts for nearly 5 percent of total government revenues, or around 12 trillion rupiah. But by most counts, Aceh gets back less than 20 percent of that in budget outlays, or some $50 for every man, woman, and child. The people of Aceh regard that as a raw deal, and we agree.

The same sort of deal prevails with other resource-rich provinces. It's how it worked in Dutch colonial days, it's how it worked under Suharto's New Order, it's how it continues to work under Wahid. It's looting, pure and simple, to enrich a corrupt military, corrupt civilian officials and their favorite business cronies. And it's the best recipe for the fracturing of the nation. The challenge for someone, for an elected leader willing to face the challenge rather than running hither and yon on irrelevant junkets, is to devise an equitable solution – an Indonesian federation in which states, not provinces, with reasonable degrees of autonomy have an equitable stake. Failing that, break-up of the nation is only a matter of time – shorter rather than longer. And that could have the nastiest of international consequences: Given the fundamentalist outlook of the Aceh Muslim clergy, an Islamic fundamentalist republic of Aceh would likely result from the separation in anger of the northern Sumatra territory from Indonesia and sit astride the access routes to the world's most important shipping lanes of the Malacca Strait. That's not our idea of positive things to come for Southeast Asia.