Martin Regg Cohn, Pusong – As Muslim worshippers ambled toward the onion-shaped domes of the village mosque, truckloads of combat troops moved into position. For the soldiers lying in wait, the noon call to prayer was their cue to attack.

They charged across a dusty field, sweeping past the mosque's white colonnaded arches in pursuit of fleeing worshippers. Their target: suspected members of Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh), a guerrilla movement seeking independence from Indonesia.

Yet the raid, like the past decade of counter-insurgency operations, only increased grassroots support for Aceh's separatists.

"I feel pure anger inside me," said Anwar Jalil, who endured three weeks of beatings in a detention centre, emerging with a fractured skull, broken hand, bruised ribs, gashes across his body. And a burning desire to separate from Indonesia.

"I thought I was going to die," the 31-year-old recalled. "God gave me a longer life. Now, I think Aceh must be independent, so we won't be colonized and tortured."

Indonesia has been on the brink of social chaos and political collapse ever since the currency crisis invaded Southeast Asia's biggest country a year ago. A moribund economy is dragging millions into poverty and despair, turning Indonesia into a breeding ground for incitement and anarchy. Regional tensions are straining Jakarta's attempts to keep united a country of 200 million, 90 per cent of whom are Muslim.

Aceh is perched on the northwestern tip of Indonesia's sprawling archipelago, which spans three time zones and more than 17,000 islands. The dream of many Acehnese to sever their ties with Jakarta, 1,750 kilometres away, is being closely watched by other secessionist movements in Indonesia's eastern hinterlands: East Timor and Irian Jaya.

The brutal nature of the conflict in Aceh has been hidden from the eyes of the world for a decade. Only recently were foreign diplomats and journalists allowed back in, lifting the veil on rampant Indonesian army atrocities.

Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim nation – a fact it has used to cynical advantage. Jakarta has raised the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism, with its attendant terrorist stereotypes, to ward off Western criticism of its tactics in Aceh. But horror stories are emerging of brutality by Indonesian troops.

At a secret meeting in the village of Kandang, Aceh Merdeka member Ismail Sahputra showed pictures of Hamzah Daoud, 38, who was tortured to death by the army last January.

An autopsy showed the flesh had been pulled off his mangled arms, his lungs collapsed, his back crushed, and a traditional Acehnese dagger thrust into his rectum, says his half-brother, Burhanuddin Ilyas.

Another torture victim, Ibrahim Hanafiah, 43, described how soldiers dragged him from his house on the same day and brought him to a youth centre, next door to military headquarters, for physical and psychological torture.

Hanafiah says they slashed his back, broke his nose, smashed his index finger, and made him watch as they sliced off the ears and gouged out an eye of a dying man beside him.

"Everyone was screaming to death, asking for help, but the more they screamed, the more they were brutalized," he says. "All I could think of was asking Allah for help, to release me." Now he asks Allah's help in releasing Aceh from Indonesia.

One senior diplomat says the excuse of Islamic extremism is no longer silencing Western diplomats. "For 10 years, the army did what would be grounds for an international war crimes tribunal: they brutalized their own people," he said. "They turned it into a war zone, and got away with murder."

Aceh's relentless cycle of violence and retribution has turned coffee plantations and rice paddies into killing fields.

The government itself estimates that more than 1,000 people have been killed over the past decade. Researchers have documented many hundreds of rapes, sexual assaults and house burnings. The home base of many guerrillas hunted down by the army, Pidie Acehnese, is known as a "village of widows."

Beyond the repression, there is economic exploitation. The central government siphons off profits from Aceh's lucrative natural gas exports, further alienating a fiercely proud people. Now, even the most moderate students are openly campaigning for a referendum on independence. Alongside them, hardline Aceh Merdeka activists are waging a war of attrition with the army.

There is little evidence in Aceh of stereotypical Islamic fundamentalism. An atmosphere of languid tolerance, not militancy, pervades the area. Instead, the fanaticism in Aceh emanates largely from the army's declared strategy of "shock therapy."

Army commander Gen. Wiranto apologized last August for the army's human rights violations, and declared an end to the Military Operations Area that had terrorized Aceh since 1989.

But the army's abuses resurfaced in recent months: Bloated bodies in rivers, dismembered corpses dumped from military torture centres, mass graves dug up. The raid at Pusong's mosque and the torture of dozens of worshippers was only a recent example of the continuing shock therapy.

Softyan Issa was the mosque's muezzin that day, summoning people to prayers, his voice wafting from the minaret's loudspeakers. He still seethes over the army's attack.

"All these years, we have been tortured and brutalized," he says softly, surrounded by Koranic plaques on the turquoise walls of his home. "I don't want to see my people treated like this."

The military raid came a day after an explosive confrontation on the streets of Pusong. Hundreds of villagers converged on government buildings in response to leaflets dropped from military helicopters calling for reconciliation.

They walked into an ambush. Army snipers perched on rooftops or riding in cars fired on women and children in the crowd, mowing down as many as a dozen people.

Sairah Ismail, 70, said a bullet went through her right arm. She says she walked from the mosque in search of peace, only to be cut down by a hail of bullets. Now, she too has given up on reconciliation, and is waiting for a chance to cast a ballot for independence.

Against this backdrop of raw hatred, referendum banners and graffiti have sprung up across Aceh.

Five students were arrested last month after painting a referendum sign on the bus terminal in Lhokseumawe, where multinational corporations pump liquified natural gas into supertankers that ply the trading routes to Japan.

The rising tide of political resistance is a resounding defeat for an army that thought it could eradicate support for the insurgency movement.

Regional military commander Col. Johnny Wahab acknowledges he is losing the war for the hearts and minds of Acehnese, even if he has Aceh Merdeka on the run.

"Their [rebels'] military power is now small, but their influence is considerable," Wahab concedes. "The problem now is that people are asking for a referendum and independence."

The wild shooting spree by Wahab's troops earlier this year shocked local Acehnese, who believed the fall of Indonesia's dictatorial President Suharto last year would usher in reforms.

The commander denies human rights violations by his men, insisting the army cleaned up its act after he took over late last year.

He acknowledges the soldiers were also "motivated by revenge" after seven of their comrades were slain by hostile crowds late last year.