Sian Powell – A rusting billboard greets visitors to Jantho, in the forested hills southeast of the provincial capital of Banda Aceh. "Let's make Jantho a tourist area," it says.

These days, though, few tourists are brave enough to visit the war-zone of Aceh. A few years ago, the nearby villages of Jalin and Jantho Baru were full of Javanese migrants; there was a bustling nightlife and restaurant scene.

Now the villages are all but deserted, and the migrants have been forced out by a spate of shootings and house-burnings.

Between Banda Aceh and Jantho is a so-called black area, said to be a stronghold of the separatist rebels from the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM. But no one wants to talk about it.

Villagers pretend not to know about an anonymous rebel shot dead in Lamsi only two days earlier. In Kemireu, a dusty hamlet on the main road, Ismail, the village chief, remembers four men were shot dead within half a kilometre of his house a week ago, but he doesn't want to go into detail. "It's very difficult at this time," he says. "It's very difficult to support ourselves."

As he talks to a foreign reporter, everyone else in the primitive coffee shop gets up and leaves. It's not healthy to be seen dallying with the press.

The military crackdown launched in May 2003 to crush the separatist rebels has succeeded in part, the Indonesian military says. Military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Asep Sapari said clashes between rebels and the military still happen almost every day, but GAM rebel forces have been reduced to 40 per cent of their former strength.

The death toll of more than 2000 since the operation began continues to edge upwards, even though martial law was downgraded to emergency civil law earlier this month.

An estimated 40,000 troops are still stationed in Aceh, and the rebels have declared they will fight to the last man to resist, Vikram, a 33-year-old trader from the black area around the Selimeum district, says he lives in fear.

"I'm afraid of GAM, I'm afraid of the TNI (Indonesian military) as well," he says. "In the evenings GAM comes to the villages, and sometimes there's shooting. I have seen it happen with my own eyes – the village secretary was killed by GAM. I don't know why, maybe he was a spy. Right now there are many decent men dead in Aceh."

Armoured personnel carriers, armoured trucks and tanks still rumble through the streets of the province, where the military has control of the urban areas.

The rebels live in the mountain forests, and sweep down on the villages at night to get food and other necessaries.

Talking from the Peurelak district by satellite telephone, GAM leader Cut Kafrawi says the rebel forces are still equal to the Indonesian military and vows they will keep fighting, come what may.

"Whatever the kind of operation in Aceh, whether a civil emergency or a military emergency, it's only a political discussion for Indonesia," he says.

Regardless of the fine words, Indonesia's purpose was to eliminate the people of Aceh, he claims. "What's happening now is the torture of women, oppression, looting and terror towards non-combatant civilians who they say support GAM. "The people of Aceh are being used by the army and the police for intelligence operations, but the Acehnese people don't want to be involved in the conflict."

Apart from living in fear of battles, of army searches and rebel food demands, ordinary Acehnese people are hungry. Vikram says there is a lot of pain in the hills, where farmers have been afraid to plant their crops.

They could move to another province in Indonesia to wait it out. But Vikram says that's no option. "For me, if I die, it's better I die in my own place."

[Sian Powell is The Australian's Jakarta correspondent. Additional reporting by Sandra Nahdar.]