As Indonesia celebrates 58 years of independence, Four Corners looks at south-east Asia's most brutal and unrelenting conflict ... the Aceh civil war.

Chris Masters, reporter: Two weeks ago, Indonesia celebrated its 58th anniversary as an independent nation. Two weeks earlier, another terrorist attack left questions looming large in the thick Jakarta air. How safe is this nation and where do the main dangers lie?

In the Indonesian province of Aceh, which has long struggled for its own independence, the death toll at the Marriott is repeated every day, the casualties largely hidden behind martial law regulations drawn tightly by the Indonesian Government.

Sidney Jones, International Crisis Group: There's nobody there monitoring what's taking place in the areas where the military operations are hardest.

Chris Masters: Asia's longest-running civil war is another Timor, but one in hiding. From a concealed jungle camp these Acehnese claim as one that the principal victims are civilians rather than rebel separatists.

Acehnese men in Malaysian jungle camp (translation): No not GAM. They were ordinary people. Civilians.

Chris Masters: Aceh's self-proclaimed prime minister in exile believes there is time to wait for Indonesia to destroy itself.

Mahlik Mahmud, GAM Prime Minister: They create more problems than they can solve. So, in our view, Indonesia will disintegrate by itself.

Chris Masters: The question now, on this 58th anniversary, is how safe is Indonesia from itself?

Acehnese man (translation): I saw three fishermen from Batee going by sea to pay for a boat. When they arrived in Meureudu, TNI soldiers were there. The soldiers called out to stop, but they did not stop. The soldiers opened fire on the boat. One of the fishermen was shot and killed. The soldiers brought the remaining two ashore, stripped them and forced them to frog jump. They accused them of being GAM and shot them dead. When their families came it was proved they were not rebels, they were civilians. Their families wanted to pay for the boat but no money was found in the men's pockets.

Chris Masters: Over the past 27 years, the story of arbitrary execution in Aceh has been repeated many thousands of times. Three months ago, Indonesian troops moved into Aceh in massive numbers following the declaration of martial law which forced outside observers to leave.

Lucy Carver, Peace Brigades International: In mid-June, there was a presidential decree, um, regulating the actions of foreigners within Aceh and that was followed by two further decrees. And, basically, these regulations meant that foreigners couldn't work in Aceh without special permits.

Ralph Boyce, US Ambassador to Indonesia: I think that it's a little troubling that there is no international media and very little international assistance or voluntary agencies operating up there at this time.

Chris Masters: Reporting on Aceh is strictly controlled, so getting behind the curtain is problematic. But witnesses can be found. Many Acehnese have fled the province, bringing with them fresh experiences of life and death under martial law.

Fitriani, Wife of GAM commander (translation): When the TNI soldiers saw young people sitting in the coffee shops they would ask them to produce identity cards. Even though they had done nothing, the TNI would shoot them dead. I have seen such incidents many times with my own eyes.

Major-General Syafrie Syamsuddin, TNI spokesperson (translation): According to prescribed standards, the military operation in Aceh is based on obedience to the law and on the principles of military operations and humanitarian operations. So accusations that we have behaved improperly are not true.

Chris Masters: For hundreds of years, before the Dutch finally conquered Aceh, it was a powerful Muslim kingdom known for its fierce resistance to colonial rule. Resistance in its present form is the Free Aceh Movement, known as GAM, which was formed in the '70s – about the same time oil and gas reserves were discovered.

Professor Harold Crouch, ANU: Here's this enormous wealth being dug out of Aceh or from the sea around Aceh, whereas people's ordinary ... ordinary people just lived in the same way. And it's precisely in that area where GAM has been the strongest.

Chris Masters: To find GAM's leadership requires an even longer journey to Sweden. The Tengku, the titular head of the independence movement, is Hasan di Tiro. 72 years old, and fragile, Di Tiro wants the reinstatement of something like the sultanate that prevailed before Dutch colonial rule. The GAM government-in-exile is run from this Stockholm flat with its spokesman, Prime Minister Mahlik Mahmud.

Mahlik Mahmud, GAM Prime Minister: For Acehnese, we always think we are a nation by ourself, by our right to be a nation. But before – long before the existence of Indonesia, even in this matter, Australia, Aceh was already an established, prosperous state in South-East Asia.

Chris Masters: From here they direct operations of an armed wing estimated between 2,000 and 5,000 strong, a fraction of the 4.3 million population.

Sidney Jones: About a quarter of those people are not ethnically Acehnese, and within that non-ethnically Acehnese population there isn't that much support for GAM. There's a really hard core of support, but even within that hard core of support for independence, not everyone sees GAM as the vehicle for achieving their independence. There's some people who are unhappy with GAM, but who still very much want to be separate from Indonesia.

Harold Crouch: The local fighters are just, you know ... just local people who've taken up arms. They're not great philosophers. And often in the past when they've been interviewed, they often ... If they're asked a difficult political question, they say, "Well, our job is not to talk about politics – leave it to Hasan di Tiro in Sweden."

Chris Masters: In the 1990s, during President Suharto's last decade of office, there was a concentrated effort to close down the separatists. A military operation zone known as DOM was declared with the intention of eliminating the tiny rebel movement.

Harold Crouch: And the military came down very heavily on them and there was no concept of protecting human rights or anything. They were just killing people and leaving the bodies out on the street and that sort of thing to frighten other Acehnese. And that led to ... that seems to have led to a lot of alienation, naturally enough, in that part of Aceh.

Chris Masters: The DOM period ground on from 1989 to 1998. This man, who says he has no connection to GAM, was, through that period, repeatedly tortured in an effort to force a confession.

Acehnese exile (translation): Then they hit me, they hit me here, they hit me all over. I don't know how many times they hit me. Then they got a knife and stabbed me with it. When I saw the gleam of the knife, I fainted. [Displays large scars on his leg] These are all scars from being beaten. I didn't feel anything after the first six or seven blows. But when I started bleeding, I did feel it. I saw the blood, saw the blood spurting out when they stabbed me.

Chris Masters: When he was finally released and returned home, he learned other family members had also been targeted.

Acehnese exile (translation): They were shot in the village of Pulo Tambo in Tiro, in front of a crowd of people. According to lots of witnesses, they were tortured first. After being tortured, they were shot.

Chris Masters: When the DOM period finally came to an end in 1998, the mass graves were uncovered. But after nine grisly years, GAM was still alive and Indonesia had more enemies in Aceh.

Sidney Jones: Well, resistance has intensified as abuses have been carried out in the name of suppressing resistance.

Chris Masters: The end of DOM coincided with the end of the Suharto era. And in Aceh, "Reformasi" – the reform period – energised dissent. The Indonesian military moved to suppress a growing student movement who pushed for an East Timor-like independence referendum.

Acehnese student (translation): When I came home from Banda Aceh to my village during the school holidays, I was rounded up by the TNI and they asked me, "Are you a student?" I said, "Yes, I am," and they bashed me. So I was bashed just because I was a student.

Chris Masters: Student leaders went into hiding as one by one they learned their colleagues were arrested, and in some cases disappeared.

Mahmudal, student activist (translation): This is how the soldiers and the police treat almost everyone who is arrested. I mean, we were tortured and beaten. The second time I was arrested, I was even stripped naked in a room in the regional Parliament in Banda Aceh.

Exiled student leader (translation): People's houses in the town of Idi were burned down by the TNI and Brimob posted there. My house, my family's house, and my grandmother's house were all burned down by Brimob. Not only were houses burned down. When this happened people were frightened and ran away. Some of them were shot, including innocent small children.

Chris Masters: Events further south had given hope to the impossible dream. East Timor had achieved its independence after it took its struggle to the world.

Harold Crouch: In one way, it has had a tremendous impact – that is, "We lost East Timor. We didn't crush them hard enough. We ... we wanted to negotiate with them, and then it ended up with a referendum. So ... and then the foreigners came in and put pressure on us." So there was that sort of nationalist reaction.

Lesley McCulloch, research fellow, Deakin University: I think that for anyone who wants to understand what's happening in Aceh, they need only think of East Timor. It is a mirror image of what happened in East Timor, and some of the military who are responsible for the abuses and the terrible atrocities that happened in East Timor are now in Aceh.

Chris Masters: Three years after East Timor separated, a new effort was made to broker peace in Aceh. The mediator was a private institution – the Henri Dunant Centre – with the Japanese and Americans in the background. In December 2002, the Indonesians announced a ceasefire.

Yutaka Iimura, Japanese Ambassador to Indonesia: The Acehnese could enjoy the peaceful life, although it was short-lived. And, secondly, for the first time in the history of Indonesia and in the history of Aceh, the international community, uh ... showed their readiness to support peace process, and also their readiness to assist a reconstruction, rehabilitation in the region of Aceh.

Chris Masters: The mediators had a tall order bringing together parties with fixed and opposing goals. The Acehnese would not give up on independence. The Indonesians would not surrender sovereignty. What the negotiators hoped for was that by degrees both sides would get used to the idea of peace. Of at least getting a delayed settlement?

Ralph Boyce: Of getting into a process where confidence and trust could be created by the process itself. I think both sides recognised they were a long way from that. Unfortunately, they didn't get that process really going.

Chris Masters: Australian-based academic Lesley McCulloch watched the disintegration of the peace process from behind bars. After the ceasefire began, McCulloch and an American nurse were locked up on suspicion of supporting the separatists.

Lesley McCulloch: We saw people being kicked in the face and in the ribs, hit with rifle butts, hit with planks of wood and batons, hit with large books, water being thrown at them – just abused, actually, basically, in any way that you can think of. We saw people whose faces had been completely smashed open. We saw people whose ribs were bust and legs were broken. It was ... That was the most distressing experience and time of the whole episode ... the five months I was detained.

Chris Masters: In March this year, Joint Security Council monitors were attacked and, in April, withdrawn. Observers mostly blamed TNI. Both GAM and the Indonesian military were suspected of breaches, with GAM using the time to build its strength and the TNI unwilling peacemakers.

Sidney Jones: On the army's side, they never wanted to negotiate in the first place. They regarded negotiations as a sign of weakness. They regarded it as a mistake for the administration of Abdurrahman Wahid to agree to negotiate with rebels, and they were forced to the negotiating table by the international opinion and the force of 'Reformasi' or reform, but they really weren't interested, and when it got to the agreement called COHA – the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement – in December, you had two parties who didn't trust one another.

Chris Masters: When the talks were due to recommence in Tokyo in May, Indonesian police arrested five GAM negotiators.

Mohammed Nur Djuli, civilian negotiator for GAM: The fact that they held up our ... half our team in Aceh, what does it mean? That's to, uh ... you know, bulldoze the ... you know, to, uh ... make the meeting fail. How could anyone negotiate with half of the team being held hostage?

Ralph Boyce: I think that a lack of trust on both sides ultimately doomed it.

Lesley McCulloch: It was quite clear, well before the talks in Tokyo, that Indonesia had come to the end. There had been the creeping internationalisation of the issue of Aceh, and it was too much for Indonesia.

Chris Masters: On May 17, the talks broke down. The following day, martial law was declared and the troops rolled in. The navy, the air force, armoured vehicles, and 40,000 soldiers and police arrived, giving themselves six months to eliminate between 2000 and 5000 GAM guerrillas. An early victim of the destruction was the Acehnese education system. In three months, almost 600 schools were burned down, sending the aspirations of a generation up in smoke.

Village woman (translation): They want to make Acehnese people stupid.

Chris Masters: As is the way with this conflict, both sides appeared to fan the flames.

Legal aid worker (translation): The schools were burnt down by both TNI and GAM. I think GAM burns down schools to show that with the state military emergency, community activities will grind to a complete halt. But the TNI also burns down schools because they want to isolate GAM.

Chris Masters: JARI Indonesia, a non-government investigator, sees corruption at the heart of the tactic, with the military taking a cut of the rebuilding budget.

Fakhrulsyah Mega, JARI Indonesia (translation): By using military engineering personnel to rebuild the schools, they keep costs down but still receive all the money allocated. The scheme is that it's a civilian contractor but it's the military that does the work.

Chris Masters: The Indonesian Army, the TNI, shares with its opponents a need to live off the countryside. Up to 70 per cent of its operating budget is obtained through local enterprise. Aceh, a comparatively wealthy province, provides rich pickings.

Lesley McCulloch: I have, over the last four years, documented from all around Aceh evidence of all these levels of illegal business activities. Um, I've seen the logging and the fishing and the trade in wildlife, the drugs economy, the gunrunning, and the petty economic activities such as helping themselves from the shops, etc.

Chris Masters: Insecurity gives rise to extortion, with both sides seeking payment for protection. The US ExxonMobil natural gas plant – closed down for a time because of the fighting – is in all likelihood TNI's richest customer.

Harold Crouch: Somehow or other, the payments are made to the military. Now, they ... Exxon, the officials of the company, say, "Well, we ... the military provides us with security services. And we, of course, have to pay for that." But by the looks of things, the amount seems to be rather more than you would expect to pay for security services.

Chris Masters: Corruption is hardly confined to the military. The civilian administration also comes with a poor reputation for siphoning wealth to itself and Jakarta.

Lesley McCulloch: Well, Aceh is the most corrupt province in Indonesia. And the Governor Abdullah Puteh and his Vice-Governor and many of the local elite politicians are, um ... known to be creaming off huge amounts of money from the various aid budgets that are given from central government for funding – for humanitarian relief, relief when there has been flooding, etc. A lot of this money never makes its way ... finds its way to the villages and to the people for whom it's intended.

Chris Masters: Roadblocks – and there are plenty – are common collection points.

Harold Crouch: But one of the problems here is, of course, you've got two institutions – the police and the army – and sometimes they overlap in the areas they're trying to raise money from. And from time to time in Indonesia, not just Aceh, you actually get shoot-outs between these people.

Fakhrulsyah Mega (translation): Aceh is like a supermarket: a supermarket for weapons, a supermarket for careers, a supermarket for political office, a supermarket for all sorts of activities, including a supermarket for corruption.

Chris Masters: Does Jakarta not take seriously the need to confine corruption?

Sidney Jones: No, Jakarta doesn't see any, uh ... Jakarta has not only no program to fight corruption, and has done nothing in any way, shape or form to get at this rot throughout the political system, but the Megawati administration itself, from the top down, is a corrupt and venal administration.

Chris Masters: The first victims of the corruption are the weak. Small farmers and villagers are vulnerable to a military strategy of cleansing the countryside. The soldiers move in, the people move out, the theory being that anyone left behind is GAM.

Harold Crouch: They just go and look for anyone and shoot anyone who's in the village. These people are put into a camp for a few weeks while this campaign goes on. Now, the village are, of course, concerned about their goats and their chickens and things like that and if they have a TV set or whatever in the house. So the military say "No, we guarantee it will be secure." And sure enough, the people come back to the village and there are no goats, there are no TV. Now, who knows who took it?

Chris Masters: Conscious of the poor reputation of TNI following abuses in areas like Timor, the army has made efforts to improve its image. This promotional video shows the army in its idealised form protecting villagers against a rapacious GAM.

Syafrie Syamsuddin (translation): One very striking development of the military operations, of the integrated operation currently being implemented in Aceh, is that the atmosphere in the community has become safe and peaceful as evidenced in the lead up to August 17th 2003. A second development is the people's enthusiasm for playing a part in creating security by providing information to the security forces concerning the whereabouts of GAM rebels in Aceh.

Chris Masters: Typically, when people return to the villages, they find the dead. Typically, if the dead are civilian, TNI blame GAM. And they're not always wrong. GAM, often poorly controlled and barely cohesive, has its own history of extortion and reprisal killing.

Mohammed Nur Djuli: They are guerrilla forces. They are not 100 per cent in control of their units. There are even members, individuals who went to Malaysia, worked for a couple of years, get some money, bought a gun and return [to Aceh] and call themselves GAM. Probably he saw his father being killed and he wants revenge. So have there been human rights violations by GAM? I'm sure.

Mahlik Mahmud: On our part, we welcome the international, er, investigation team, especially the reporters from the United Nations to conduct the, er ... human rights abuses for both sides.

Chris Masters: The witnesses we met said Indonesian soldiers were the worst abusers, with lesser-trained units such as the police mobile brigade, Brimob, conspicuous offenders. We were told of one group of women who claimed Brimob officers raped them. Soon after, police arrested the women along with their legal aid worker who then witnessed the intimidation and its outcome.

Legal aid worker (translation): We were arrested in the morning and interrogated in separate rooms. That night, about 11 o'clock, they brought us all back together. I met the five victims and suddenly they'd completely changed their statements. They said they hadn't been raped by Brimob, but by GAM.

Chris Masters: Another witness released from a cell containing two severed heads says he was taken to a room and forced to watch two women being raped.

Acehnese man (translation): They raped her. I was shocked. They raped her and she screamed for help. I couldn't help her. They said, "If you've got guts, there are guns on the table. Defend her." I was really weak. I couldn't do anything but watch as she was raped in front of me.

Chris Masters: He was released, he says, and told to keep his silence for fear of the same thing happening to his family. Not that all is covered up. Indonesia has put on trial in Aceh some of its soldiers for abuses such as rape.

Syafrie Syamsuddin (translation): We admit that there have been excesses during the operation. Violations committed by soldiers both as individuals within the community and as soldiers during operational activities. But immediate action has been taken, so the operational deviations cannot be called violations because the court has already taken legal action.

Chris Masters: But too much has not changed. A look into the dark heart of Aceh reveals the resurrection of the failed strategies of East Timor. Here, out-of-uniform militia fight alongside TNI.

Lesley McCulloch: They're not disciplined at all, and the problem is in Aceh and elsewhere in Indonesia that many of the military and also the police don't wear uniform, so it's very difficult to know who, for example, burned the schools, who shot this person, who raped the women and who is responsible for the extortion, because it is common practice for them not to wear uniform, for them to come in unmarked trucks, for them to travel on motorbikes that they've often stolen from locals. A lot of the military and a lot of Brimob, the mobile police unit, are very young. They're badly trained. Of course, they're underpaid, they're afraid, they're nervous, and this causes people to behave in a very dangerous way. And they're armed, which makes them even more dangerous. So they're young, badly trained, nervous and armed. That's a lethal combination.

Harold Crouch: Now, maybe you can maintain discipline with troops like that in a campaign for a few months. But the longer that goes, the less disciplined they become.

Sidney Jones: The fact that while some changes may have been made at the very top, no fundamental changes have been made in the training structure, or the ideology, or the image that the army has of itself as this guardian of national unity and anybody who doesn't subscribe to that view is an enemy.

Chris Masters: There is another inescapable conclusion – that the longer this drags on, far from crushing GAM, Indonesia creates more recruits for GAM.

Faisal, farmer (translation): There is not a day in Aceh without TNI brutality and excesses. The TNI search for GAM soldiers, who they claim are rebels and traitors. But when they can't find GAM soldiers, they turn on ordinary people and kill them.

Haji Ibrahim, trader (translation): I realised Aceh was lawless, people were being killed, arrested, arbitrarily tried and punishments arbitrarily decided. Because of that we could not defend ourselves, we had nothing to defend ourselves with. I am old but they still ask questions about me, they want to treat me as they wish.

Acehnese exile (translation): I have absolutely no connection with GAM. But to tell the truth, perhaps I would like revenge, because I've had relatives killed, and my brother has been kidnapped.

Legal aid worker (translation): I think that villagers are in an extremely difficult situation, because they are unable to distance themselves from GAM. This can be because their husband, child or relative is a member of GAM. Then, on the other hand, when the TNI carry out operations in the villages, they force people to tell them the whereabouts of GAM members.

Chris Masters: On the streets of Jakarta on Independence Day, there are signs of resurgent nationalism. But for the majority of the 220 million population, independence for Aceh is not an option.

Edward Aspinall, lecturer, University of Sydney: There's very few people who would, uh ... could even tolerate the suggestion that Aceh would one day separate from Indonesia. Therefore, since the recent military operations began there have been many opinion polls, you know, radio talkback programs, and so on, which, almost without exception, suggest that, you know, a very, very large majority of certainly the active political public are very strongly in favour of taking a hard military line.

Indonesian news bulletin (translation): The military operation in Aceh has had a significant effect on people's lives...

Chris Masters: Jakarta reports progress in Aceh with the war and the peace.

Syafrie Syamsuddin (translation): One of the principles in Aceh is that we must gain the hearts of the people. This is an operation to win the people over and persuade them so they are not trapped or misled by propaganda or caught in a trap laid by GAM.

Chris Masters: In Aceh, nationalism is stage-managed.

Edward Aspinall: The Indonesian authorities often have this very odd, almost bizarre means of judging whether they're winning the hearts and minds of the population. That is, they almost measure it quantitatively – how many red-and-white flags, Indonesian national flags, are flying in the towns and villages, how many Acehnese citizens are participating in these ceremonies pledging loyalty to the Indonesian state.

Mahmudal, student activist (translation): It's just something they've been forced to do. They haven't raised the flags out of love. The flags are something frightening for the Acehnese. The priority for Acehnese people at the moment is to keep themselves safe. I mean, if they don't fly the Indonesian flag and all that, they'll be intimidated. They could even be shot.

Chris Masters: In the areas where the cameras can travel, there are signs that martial law is working. But the camera is no more free than the people. These GAM suspects have been captured by TNI.

Prisoner (translation): I don't want independence. We've already joined Indonesia, haven't we?

Chris Masters: Across the Straits of Malacca in neighbouring Malaysia, Acehnese refugees from the fighting hide in a makeshift jungle camp. They say that where the camera cannot travel the brutality is even worse than during the hated DOM period.

Faisal, farmer (translation): I, as an Acehnese man, had to leave my wife and my two-year old child. I had to leave because they (TNI) accused me of being a terrorist, a separatist.

Haji Ibrahim, trader (translation): I have erased all traces of my past. The TNI called us dirt, while in reality I have never committed any wrongdoing in my life. What I did was the right thing. But today I can't live in my own home. I moved my wife to East Aceh and I am here seeking refuge in Malaysia.

Chris Masters: But even in Malaysia, the Acehnese are not safe. Right outside the United Nations High Commission for Refugees office, we observed what, for the Acehnese, was a heart-stopping moment. Between them and accreditation stood the Malaysian Police. One by one, with the UNHCR helpless onlookers, they were stopped and taken off to prison. The following day, the Malaysian Government declared the 250 Acehnese would be deported to Indonesia and an unknown fate.

Mohammed Nur Djuli: Many people have been killed who return there, but how many, I have no idea. Maybe I would put it as high as 30 per cent – 40 per cent of those returned have been detained. And then what happened after that can only be termed as 'disappeared'.

Chris Masters: The Indonesians are now halfway through the six-month program they set themselves to clear the province of GAM. There have been subsequent revised estimations that it might take years.

Sidney Jones: Right now, the military is talking already about extending it, and not just extending it for six months. There's no end in sight and no exit strategy in the works for how they get out.

Chris Masters: Do you think that TNI can achieve a military solution? Can there be such a thing?

Ralph Boyce: I think even the Government of Indonesia expresses publicly that this is not a problem that will be solved by military means alone. This is going to have to have a durable political solution. There are going to have to be concessions and negotiations made. So I guess the answer is no, this is not something that can be resolved by a military campaign.

Chris Masters: On the other side of the world, the GAM leadership has its own blind confidence that independence will come.

Mahlik Mahmud: This is our national struggle. So that makes us very strong. We know what each of us doing. And we can feel it. The people in Aceh can feel it. We can feel the people in Aceh, even ... they've suffered. We are here, OK. Nobody touch us, alright. When they got killed, they got, uh ... tortured, we feel it, we cry. We feel it, and that doesn't mean that make us weak – we make us more stronger.

Chris Masters: GAM is now admitting what was formerly suspected – that its tactic is to wait for its enemy to destroy itself.

Mahlik Mahmud: Because Indonesia, in fact, it is a fabricated nation. It is a nation being imposed on us.

Sidney Jones: I think that's a complete illusion on the part of GAM. I don't think it will happen. And I think if that's the ultimate strategy of GAM, it's going to fail. The problem is that every time you have a new emergency taking place or a new military operation, what you're doing is sowing the seeds for a new generation of rebels.

Chris Masters: Despite the poverty, despite the terrorism, despite the separatist movements in Aceh and West Papua, our northern neighbour is holding together, despite the organisation that is supposed to provide the glue. It was in the vacuum of the current leadership that TNI was allowed its mission to Aceh.

Sidney Jones: If you take the period of the Suharto Government and you look up through 1998, it's clear that the TNI, in many ways, was a destabilising force, because the areas that broke out in violence, particularly after Suharto fell, were areas where abuses by the TNI had led to real grievances on the part of the population. So far from being the glue that binds this diverse country together, as many like to portray it, I think, in many ways, the TNI did just the opposite.

Harold Crouch: It's precisely in places where the military has had a big presence that you've got the biggest problem for people wanting independence. So the glue's not working all that well, I would say.

Chris Masters: The Aceh mission will be a test of the TNI. The military emergency has already descended into misery. The true emblem of this struggle is the red of the blood and the white of the bones. In six months, in twelve months time, when the curtain obscuring Aceh finally comes up, who would be brave enough to say they won't be digging up more mass graves?