Banda Aceh and Lhokseumawe – Neat rows of red and white flags around Banda Aceh's historic Baiturrahman mosque are the Indonesian government's way of saying that, despite a truce signed on December 9th, Aceh is and always will be its sovereign territory.
Banners outside military installations declare that the Acehnese love their local military command, which loves them back. The question on everyone's lips is whether this truce can last longer than earlier ones.
The deal is a de facto admission by Indonesia that it cannot win the 26-year separatist war against the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) by military means alone.
It is certainly a lot clearer than arrangements previously brokered by the Switzerland-based Henry Dunant Centre since 2000. It uses the words "cessation of hostilities" instead of euphemisms such as "humanitarian pause". International monitors will be allowed in alongside those of the government and GAM. The deal includes some details of how remaining political issues can be thrashed out.
Yet the distance between the two sides remains enormous. Abu Sofyan Dawod, a local GAM commander, insists the rebels have not abandoned their goal of independence. They see this agreement as a way to get it without so many Acehnese dying along the way.
They remain distrustful of the Indonesian military and the police. The deal nearly fell through at the last minute over where the rebels' guns would be kept. Mr Sofyan says GAM will not hand over its weapons to anyone. Indonesia wants people to believe that it has gained a victory, that GAM has on paper accepted special autonomy within Indonesia, at least as a sta! rting po int. But GAM's Sweden-based leadership accepts Indonesia only as a geographical term.
The paramilitary "mobile brigade" of the Indonesia police, for years accused of widespread extortion, has been ordered back to barracks, but soldiers and police with bandannas and assault rifles could this week still be seen patrolling in Lhokseumawe. This is an industrial city whose giant foreign-invested PT Arun gas plant is a source of simmering resentment in Aceh, and is one of Indonesia's largest taxpayers. Since the signing of the peace deal 15 civilians are reported to have been killed.
For all that, both sides realise this may be the best chance for peace they will get. With a team led by a Thai general, the Henry Dunant Centre will be responsible for running the entire peace operation, probably the first time any group other than the United Nations has taken on such a role. GAM wanted monitors from western countries, because they have shown concern about Aceh, unlike Indonesia's neighbours. A 150-member "joint security committee" will choose "peace zones" where GAM weapons will be stored. A democratic election is proposed for 2004.
The holes are clear for all to see. A delegate-to-be was killed a few days before the signing ceremony. Rumours abound of an intelligence unit operating death squads. According to human-rights groups, more than 1,300 people have been killed in Aceh this year alone. Since the first truce in May 2000, the violence has got worse. Most independent monitors blame the Indonesian forces, involved in extortion rackets of one kind or another.
Aceh's mineral wealth is substantial and a new special-autonomy law has brought hundreds of millions of dollars into the hands of the regional government. Extortion by the police and military is a fact of life for the foreign companies who mine much of Indonesia's vast mineral wealth, in Aceh as in every other region. The real answer is getting the money to be used in the way it is intended, but in Indonesia that is never an easy matter.
Nevertheless, donors at a meeting in Tokyo have agreed in principle to help Aceh if the peace process works, probably to the tune of at least several million dollars.
There has been considerable international pressure to do a deal. An under-employed American envoy to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni, has been taking an interest in Aceh. Human-rights abuses in the territory have been an obstacle to military ties between Indonesia and the United States, which is keen to have the world's most populous Muslim country on its side in the war against terrorism.
Indonesia's Major General Djali Yusuf has publicly admitted that the government cannot defeat GAM by bullets alone. The GAM's 3,000 or more fighters can strike anywhere in Aceh. The army has been barely able to control the main towns and the roads that link them. Were Aceh ever to get an East Timor-style referendum, few people doubt that the independence option would win. Even if this deal succeeds in halting the violence, the question of independence will remain.