Locals in the Indonesian province of Aceh are accusing forces they won't name of setting about destroying the island's very future, its schools. Hundreds have been torched in just one day, at the same time as Indonesia's military chief ordered his soldiers to exterminate the separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM.

Presenter/Interviewer: Tim Palmer, Indonesia correspondent

Speakers: Acehenese citizens in Bandeh Aceh; Indonesian soldier

Tim Palmer: A man picks at mathematics books in the corner of the still hot shell of a classroom, but they become ashes in his hands. What started with a few schools yesterday, has now become a phenomenon across Aceh. More than 200 schools burnt in a day.

It seems it must have involved hundreds of arsonists in scores of villages. There was almost no traffic on Aceh's deathly quiet roads for the attackers to move from one target to the next.

But at school after school, the question of who did it brings the same response. "OTK" is the answer, "orang tidak kenal," "unknown persons". If people know and some must, they're too scared to say. They do know that the intention is to scorch Aceh's future.

Question to locals: It looks here as though someone wants to ruin an entire generation. Is that what you think?

Acehnese people speaking: "They want to make all of Aceh stupid. They want to make the children stupid. If no students go to school, automatically the next generation will be stupid," said a woman living across the road from the charred stumps of a school near Pidie.

As we drove in darkness back on the province's main highway, we saw eight new fires. At one we could still see men in civilian clothes, torching the buildings. At another, villagers watching the blaze called out "merdeka," or "freedom", identifying themselves as sympathisers with the separatist cause and probably with the GAM rebels.

It's a confusing picture. The government says GAM rebels are the arsonists. GAM says it would never attack schools and that the government is running a propaganda operation.

In another village, heavily armed Brimob elite police units descend on the latest fire, a high school torched by men firing guns, but they miss them by minutes.

[Gunfire and sound of truck driving past]

Down the road five kilometres, the six tanks and APCs of a marine unit are rolling out of town. Today they were told by the Commander-in-Chief, General Endriartono Sutarto, to hunt down the rebels and exterminate them.

But while choreographing the parachute drop and missile fire that opened the war for the cameras was easy, the men here at Samalunga Village are finding the going tough. They were ambushed an hour earlier and a civilian was critically injured in the ensuing battle. The rebel gunmen just disappeared, the shape of the war to come.

Back at the marine's camp, 90 men sent here from East Java are already saying the order to separate civilians from rebel guerrillas is not so simple.

Indonesian marine speaking: "GAM are mixing with the civilians and have taken their uniforms off", says this senior officer. "Yes, it is difficult. Only if we are attacked do we know it's them".

Addressed to marine: Who's going to win this war?

Indonesian marine speaking: "No-one can win", he says, "because the rebels are also like our family".