Ron Moreau – Soldiers dressed in combat fatigues and black hoods would normally inspire fear in an Acehnese village. But not these commandos. As nearly a dozen fighters approach the edges of a hamlet some 30 kilometers southwest of the town of Bireun, their hoods are revealed to be jilbab-the Muslim head scarves worn by women.
"I have no fear of fighting or dying. All that matters is our freedom." They display gold costume jewelry and very real AK-47s. They wear both red lipstick and red shoulder patches that say live together, die together in Acehnese. They are a reconnaissance force from the all-female Cut Nyak Dhien unit of Aceh's militant Free Aceh Movement (known by its Indonesian acronym, GAM), and they are not just playing soldier. "I have no fear of fighting or dying," says a preternaturally cool 21-year-old named Rosmiati. "All that matters is our freedom." Those are tough words-and familiar ones in Aceh, where a decades-long separatist movement has led to more than 10,000 deaths and the destruction of countless homes and villages. In the heavily Muslim Indonesian province, though, they would normally be spoken by the men who lead and fill the fighting ranks of GAM. Women have too often been silent victims in the struggle, either widowed by the bloodshed or targeted themselves. (Two human-rights activists and their driver were killed last week after lodging a complaint about rapes allegedly committed by police officers.) The fact that some of them have taken up arms underscores how few alternatives Acehnese feel they have left-how thoroughly violence has come to dominate life in the province. "We Acehnese women have seen so much death, rape, kidnapping, arson and looting that we feel like fighting back," say Siti Maria, 35, a teacher in the capital of Banda Aceh.
GAM commanders claim, fancifully, that they have hundreds of women under arms and 10,000 more women reservists ready to respond at a moment's notice. (They also purport to have several thousand armed male combat soldiers in the field, but experts put their numbers at not much more than 1,000. The women's combat wing, known as Ingong Bale (children of widows), more likely numbers around 100.
Despite their small numbers, however, the female soldiers are critical to certain operations. "My men are stronger and better fighters. But our women are more versatile," says a mustachioed, broad-chested guerrilla commander named Darwis, who oversees all GAM forces in the Bireun district, including the Cut Nyak Dhien unit. When Indonesian soldiers conduct village sweeps, he sends one or more of his female soldiers dressed in civilian clothes into the area to collect intelligence. They are also used to plant mines and booby traps.
Some female recruits sign up with GAM after their families are caught up in anti-guerrilla operations. Rosmani Dar was 12 back in 1991 when Indonesian soldiers burst into her family's hut at 4 a.m. and dragged her father away. She found his corpse the next day. "His eyes had been burned out of his head," she says. Aswan Nanda, 23, says her grandparents were executed in her village by troops in the early 1990s. Eka Susanti, a painfully shy 20-year-old who nervously rubs her AK-47 as she talks, says she saw soldiers kidnap her 16-year-old brother in 1992. He was never seen again.
Many other volunteers are being driven to take up arms by the violence directed against women in Aceh. When Indonesian soldiers raid Acehnese villages, most able-bodied men quickly flee into the jungle. Women are left alone and vulnerable, and ill-disciplined Indonesian troops tend to shoot at anything that moves.
Many Acehnese feel that women are targeted deliberately. "Indonesian soldiers shoot and rape our women to terrorize and humiliate us," says Aswan. Rosmiati joined up with GAM after a unit of paramilitary police came into her village in the mid-1990s and forced all the women to strip naked, including her grandmother, her mother, her sisters and herself. One of her cousins was raped by the troops.
Such experiences have not only alienated and traumatized the Acehnese. They have forged a generation of men and women for whom violence is the only answer-both to their fear and to their aspirations for autonomy.
The women who volunteer for GAM in effect remove themselves from "normal" society: they undergo three months of rigorous physical training, including shooting firearms, running through burning barriers and scrambling over exhausting obstacle courses. Comforts and supplies are scarce, and they frequently move between crude encampments.
Aswan says that by now she treats her AK-47 better than she does her boyfriend, who lives in a nearby village. The harshness of the life, though, is testimony to just how much harder life has become outside of uniform.