Max Lane, Jakarta – A report issued on May 9 by the conservative Brussels-based International Crisis Group, headed by former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, declared: "The Indonesian military is not using the phrase 'shock and awe', but the stream of reports on the number of troops, tanks, and weapons being prepared for Aceh is designed to have the same effect."
The report quoted Major-General Djali Yusuf, chief of the regional military command based in Banda Aceh, as saying that the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) troop strength in Aceh had reached 26,000 in late April. The report stated that this figure included 2000 soldiers who arrived in Aceh in mid-April, among them a company of army special forces (Kopassus) troops.
Sudi Silalahi, secretary to chief Indonesian security minister General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, told the Indonesian press that the TNI was planning to conduct operations aiming at "separating civilians" from Free Aceh Movement (GAM) guerrilla fighters by first asking women and children to come out from their homes, then unarmed men. This, he said, "would finally leave those with guns".
This kind of operation, known as "sweeping", is the most feared military operation in Aceh. It inevitably brings with it many civilian casualties and widespread violation of human rights, including torture.
The presidential decree ordering the military offensive in Aceh, in combination with "humanitarian", "law enforcement" and "governance" operations, has been postponed at least three times since it was first mooted in late April. The delay in issuing the decree has been a result of both domestic and international resistance to a military escalation in Aceh.
The possibility of a renewal of warfare in Aceh was first mooted after it became clear that the ceasefire agreement reached between Jakarta and GAM in December was breaking down.
In February and March there were attacks on the offices of the ceasefire monitors by demonstrators claiming the monitors were too sympathetic to GAM. There had also been an escalation in armed clashes between GAM and the TNI.
Finally, Jakarta seized on a request by GAM for a two-day postponement of negotiations in Geneva scheduled for April 25 to call off talks altogether. GAM was given until May 12 to agree to lay down its arms and renounce its goal of independence for Aceh.
Since April 25 there has been growing criticism of the prospect of a military solution to the Aceh situation by politicians and media commentators. The essence of their arguments is that using the TNI against GAM will only further Acehnese popular sentiment against Aceh's integration within the Republic of Indonesia. There is, in fact, a widespread understanding in Jakarta political circles that the growth of GAM in the 1980s was a direct result of TNI operations and further military repression will only fuel Acehnese support for the guerrillas.
However, while aware of this fact, none of the mainstream Indonesian political parties and figures wish to go against the TNI on an issue which the military brass sees as crucial to continuing its role in politics.
A desire to have the TNI as an ally in the lead up to the April 2004 general elections means that most parliamentary politicians will support the government-TNI position on Aceh. They may even vote in a six-month period of martial law which would end any role for the predominantly Acehnese civil service and police in Aceh's political life. It would also give the TNI total control over all the media and suspend all civil rights.
There will be another "last minute" meeting between GAM and Indonesian government representatives in Tokyo on May 18. This meeting was agreed to after the ambassadors of the US, Japan, Italy and Switzerland as well as the representatives of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank had a late night meeting with the security committee of the Indonesian cabinet on May 15.
The next day, however, Indonesian police arrested the GAM negotiators on their way to the Banda Aceh airport to fly to the Tokyo meeting. Under the terms of the December 9 ceasefire agreement, GAM representatives must report to the police if they want to leave Aceh.
Two axes of conflict
The Acehnese people endured a double burden of oppression during the period of General Suharto's dictatorship in Indonesia. In addition to having to endure the same conditions of repression, the rest of the Indonesian population, they were subject to an extended period of counter-insurgency warfare by the TNI after the formation of GAM as a guerrilla organisation in the late 1970s.
Originally a tiny and marginalised group, GAM was able to rally support as resentment among the Acehnese population at the TNI's brutality and corruption turned into a desire to secede from Indonesia.
After the fall of Suharto in 1998, the space opened up for more open political organisation across Indonesia and many more Acehnese national rights organisations developed. GAM is not an umbrella organisation channeling all these sentiments but represents one political tendency within the Acehnese national movement. Jakarta negotiated with it because it has an effective armed wing.
The first axis of conflict in Aceh is around the issue of Aceh's relationship to the Indonesian state and how the Acehnese people liberate themselves from the TNI's repression.
A second axis of conflict, the real basis of the current developments, relates directly to the role of the TNI in Indonesian politics more generally, and which has greatly been weakened since the fall of Suharto.
The police force has been taken out of TNI. This threatens the whole rationale of the TNI's territorial structure, which is based on the deployment of troops throughout the country to ensure domestic security. The TNI is desperate to prove that it is needed to solve major political problems, thus giving justification to its representation in parliament.
The TNI brass has been running an all-out open campaign in the media to get support for a war in Aceh, which is now central to their strategy for moving back to the centre of political power. A failure to get what they want in the next few weeks could create a political crisis around the role of the TNI.
On the other hand, if the TNI does get its way, an explosion of anti-TNI, pro-independence sentiment in Aceh could also lead to such a crisis.
So far significant sections of the Acehnese society – the civil service, the established social elite, the police and even the Acehnese members of TNI – have continued to support integration into Indonesia. These forces may very well switch to supporting independence – although not necessarily GAM – if Jakarta does go ahead with a war despite their pleas not to do so. If this happens, the TNI will be held responsible.
Either way, Aceh will not only be the site of tumultuous politics within its own society in the next year but also a key factor in generating a political crisis in Jakarta itself.