Greg Sheridan – When in 1978 Dick Woolcott paid his last call as Australian ambassador in Jakarta on then Indonesian president Suharto, Suharto told him the real threat to Indonesian stability would eventually come from Islamic extremists, who already had a stronghold in Aceh, especially if they received outside support.
Woolcott recalls the meeting in his fascinating memoir, The Hot Seat (HarperCollins). Reading Woolcott's sobering account of Indonesia's escalating involvement in the tragedy of East Timor is a disturbing counterpoint to now.
For Indonesia today is sleepwalking once more into tragedy, this time in Aceh. The differences between Aceh and East Timor are vast and it is unlikely that Aceh will end up independent. But the basic pattern – of a massive but indecisive military campaign, accompanied by human rights abuses and lingering resentment and alienation among the civilian population, could well be repeated.
Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri, with an eye to exploiting nationalist sentiment in the lead-up to next year's election, has deployed into Aceh 30,000 soldiers from TNI and up to 10,000 Brimob, or mobile police personnel. That's a lot of fire power for a province of only 4 million people. The rebel movement, GAM, has about 5000 fighters. They will follow a classical guerilla strategy of fleeing to the hills, disappearing among the civilian population, launching lightning strikes.
Aceh is a beautiful, densely green province on the far northern tip of Sumatra. It is the one part of South-East Asia in which a fundamentalist Islam has taken deep root and is not a recent import from the Middle East. The Acehnese always resisted Dutch rule and were fierce in the fight for Indonesian independence.
The differences between Aceh and East Timor are fundamental. Almost all post-colonial states have question marks over their legitimacy. Indonesia derives its legitimacy in part as the successor state to the Dutch East Indies, of which Aceh was part. East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, was never part of the Dutch East Indies. Similarly, the international community has always recognised Aceh as an integral part of Indonesia, whereas, while 30 nations recognised Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor, it was never ratified at the UN. Similarly, the East Timorese are religiously and ethnically distinct from most Indonesians. Although the Acehnese also claim ethnic distinctiveness they are, like most Indonesians, Muslims and the real ethnic difference from their neighbours in nearby provinces is slight.
Most important, GAM does not have anything like the international support that East Timor's independence campaigners had. There are good reasons for this. GAM is a murderous and extremist outfit, involved in narcotics trade, protection rackets and a full range of human rights abuses. These activities sit uneasily with its religious puritanism, but sit with it they do.
There is no independent information on what a majority of Acehnese want but probably they feel alienation and despair with both GAM and the Indonesian military.
The International Crisis Group, in a recent report on Aceh, listed four possible options for the Indonesian Government. It could: negotiate with GAM; buy off GAM; marginalise GAM; or pursue military operations. For the moment it has chosen the last option.
There is plenty of blame to share all around here. Talks between Jakarta and GAM broke down last week because GAM would negotiate only for full independence. Jakarta has implemented a deep autonomy package that guarantees a percentage of resource revenues to the local provincial government and also allows it to implement sharia law.
International opinion is not going to come to GAM's rescue. Western opinion, especially the US, is preoccupied with Indonesia's co-operation on the war on terror. International Islamic opinion tends to support the territorial integrity of existing Muslim states. Some extremists want a pan-Muslim mega-state but separatism is not popular among Muslim extremists, though GAM historically got some support from Libya.
South-East Asian opinion is strongly opposed to separatist movements because each country faces potential separatist challenges at home.
Nonetheless, this does not give Indonesia a free hand to do what it likes in Aceh – nor should it. The danger is that the TNI will behave so badly that Indonesia will forfeit all these advantages in international opinion and end up producing what it most fears, a separatist movement with significant international sympathy.
Australia's interests are overwhelmingly served by the maintenance of Indonesia's territorial integrity. The process of breaking up Indonesia would be bloody and catastrophic, with profound economic and military consequences for us. However, we also need TNI's international reputation to be good enough that we can continue vital counter-terrorist co-operation.
It appears that GAM, like some Australian commentators, see Indonesia as a Javanese empire analogous to the old Soviet Union, which broke up into its constituent parts. I'm inclined to think Indonesia may come eventually to resemble India, with constant trouble in the provinces, a perennially sub-optimal economic performance and so many chronic problems that you can never quite see how it hangs together, yet an effective state that muddles through.
Australian politicians of both sides have been rightly cautious on Aceh. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer urges negotiation and moderation but constantly reiterates that this is an internal Indonesian problem. His opposite number, Labor's Kevin Rudd, calls for a UN mediator but readily repeats that Labor supports Indonesia's territorial integrity and accepts that Aceh is part of Indonesia. Defence Minister Robert Hill does not believe that the new military phase will hurt Australia's renewed co-operation with TNI and Kopassus in the war against terrorism.
If TNI behaves very badly in Aceh, this may be an unduly optimistic assessment. Labor for the moment supports co-operation with TNI but not Kopassus. It is an unpleasant irony that so many and such deep Australian interests are engaged, yet there is nothing we can do beyond keeping our heads, not trying to inject ourselves as a party principle and urging moderation on both sides.