President Megawati Sukarnoputri's declaration of martial law brings to an end a six month cease-fire. The Free Aceh rebels say they are ready to return to war and Indonesian troops have already begun military attacks against the rebels. But does President Megawati's decision have the solid backing of the Indonesian people? Elements within the parliament say the cease fire should have been given more time to work. They fear the imposition of martial law in Aceh will result in large numbers of civilian casualties.

Presenter/Interviewer: Sarah Gibson

Speakers: Mohammad Hikam, co-chair of Indonesia's National Awakening Party; Ed Aspinall, Lecturer in Southeast Asian Studies, University of Sydney; Professor Yusny Saby, an advisor to the Henri Dunant Centre in Aceh

Gibson: The announcement at midnight last night that martial law would be imposed in Aceh province came as a blow to Professor Yusny Saby. Based in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, he has long been involved in monitoring the peace process – most recently as an advisor to the Henri Dunant Centre – the Swiss-based group that since last December has been the official peace broker between the two sides. Professor Yusny Saby says the military build-up was immediately apparent.

Saby: "Immediately this morning we saw some planes, military airplanes flying around the city and we heard also some kind of bombs being around, but not in the city of course, in the suburbs. That's what we heard and aeroplanes roaming around."

Gibson: And what's the general feeling in Aceh with this announcement there would be martial law and that the peace talks have failed?

Saby: "Yes of course this is a fear; a scare is there immediately with the people, what is the limit of this kind of martial law that is being implemented? How much casualties, can we prevent it, and what's the target? How much a target can we fix indirectly, people are steeling themselves and they are frightened of the situation because even adhering through the martial law, this is really a problem of itself, because so far no one's heard the martial law, even in Maluku you know, there's no martial law. They call it civil emergency, civil law. Well now here the first time in my life, I got this emergency law. Today I do not know what's going to happen, the people are still feeling like that, they are really scared and afraid."

Gibson: The target of the Indonesian government's military offensive are rebels belonging to the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM. But, as Ed Aspinall from the University of Sydney explains, the strategy is risky and he fears civilians will be caught in the middle.

Aspinall: "Military officers are insistent that they have learned the lessons of the past, that they're not going to repeat the kind of gross violations of human rights, which took place during the most recent round of very severe military operations in Aceh they did during the early 1990s when many thousands of civilians were killed."

"However the difficulty they face of course is that they're facing a rural insurgency, which is deeply rooted in the local populations in part of the Acehanese countryside, so that they face this tremendous difficulty of going into rural areas where the insurgents are really part of the local population. And if the past is any guide any attempt to root out the separatists from the local population many, many civilians will also be killed."

Gibson: The launch of the military operation in Aceh marks the end of attempts to reach a negotiated peace agreement, under the auspices of the December 9th peace accord brokered by the Henri Dunant centre. But attempts to find a peaceful solution to the long-running Aceh conflict started well before then – a process that, as Ed Aspinall explains, the military has at best, tolerated.

Aspinall: "See this negotiation process was really begun in early 2000 during the presidency of Abdurrahman Wahid, and at that time the military was really on the retreat politically at the national level in Indonesia, and although many of the military leaders at that time didn't favour negotiations, the President Abdurrahman Wahid did indeed favour them very strongly, he had a kind of philosophical commitment to the idea of negotiation, dialogue as a means to resolving conflict."

"And right from that period it was very clear that certainly elements in the military leadership had no truck with the idea of talking with these people who they'd always viewed as their mortal enemies, but at that time they weren't in a position to successfully resist. And this process has really been going on for the last three years, the kind of to and fro between political forces at the national level over whether a military or a dialogue are the most appropriate means to resolving the Aceh conflict."

Gibson: The National Awakening Party of former President Abdurrahman Wahid is still opposed to the tactic of using the military to pressure GAM. Party co-chair Mohammad Hikam says the Indonesian government has not exhausted all options to achieve peace.

Hikam: "I think there is still some room to talk with GAM, and also involving many, many society and also members of the elite in the society, including the Ulamas or the religious leaders, in order to put GAM into rest and not using violence in forcing their demands."

Gibson: And what do you think that this offensive that's being launched says about the role of the military in Indonesian society now?

Hikam: "Well obviously the military's goal is to make the military appearance and the military presence in Indonesian politics is still very much indivisible, by using the Aceh situation then the military at least sending the message that the people still depend on the military's presence in order to maintain security and national integrity. And then by doing that I think the political gain would be quite tremendous in the future if the military succeeded in using this kind of approach."

Gibson: What do you think will happen next? I mean how do you think it's going to end?

Hikam: "Well what I'm afraid is not the success or the failure of the military option, but the impact on the society in Aceh, I think the history of Aceh shows us that people in Aceh will never give up. And you know on the other hand we will face tremendous amounts of sacrifice in terms of life, property and dignity of the people of Aceh, and that's going to be very, very expensive to pay for the nation in the future."