Damien Kingsbury – The arrival in Aceh of militant Islamic fundamentalist groups has raised the prospect of conflict with foreign aid workers and troops, including Australians, who are helping the tsunami relief operation. Indonesian and Australian authorities have claimed the Islamist organisations do not pose an immediate threat, and that the Indonesian military (TNI) can provide sufficient security.

But this was the claim made in East Timor in 1999, when the TNI actively supported militias. There are some parallels with Aceh.

The leader of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) has already threatened foreigners by saying un-Islamic behaviour in public, such as drinking alcohol, will not be tolerated. The even more militant Laskar Mujahidin (LM), which is also in Aceh, has engaged in sectarian warfare against Christians in Ambon and Central Sulawesi.

The presence of these organisations in Aceh has disturbed many Acehnese, not least the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), which has rejected them as corrupting Islam. While GAM members are devout Sunni Muslims, GAM itself is not an Islamic organisation and it rejects Islamic fundamentalism.

Radical Islamist organisations have attempted to work in Aceh in the past, in particular the Laskar Jihad and, more recently, Jemaah Islamiah. GAM rejected their advances and they found no support among local Acehnese.

For a province that has suffered almost three decades of conflict, the presence of TNI-backed militias is not new, and many see the FPI in particular as just another imported militia organisation. The FPI began life in August 1998 as a civilian militia, organised by military leaders to attack pro-democracy protesters.

Under the leadership of a Saudi educated Arab-Indonesian, Habib Rizieq, the FPI took on a more explicitly Islamist hue, smashing up bars and nightclubs it claimed offended Islamic faith. The FPI also operates "protection" rackets in Jakarta and elsewhere, and is comprised mostly of street thugs.

LM is a much more disciplined and focused organisation, being the military wing of the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI), which was established and headed by alleged Jemaah Islamiah leader Abu Bakar Bashir.

LM fielded the most highly trained and well-armed militia in the Ambon and central Sulawesi conflicts. The TNI retains active links with the FPI, and although its association with LM is far more murky, being through military intelligence, the LM was armed with standard issue TNI weapons and uniforms during combat in Ambon.

There is an increasing view in Aceh that these organisations have not been brought in to help, but to act as a third force in the conflict between GAM and the TNI.

This view is supported by official Indonesian Government financing of the organisations to travel to Aceh. The strategy of introducing militias has proven effective where predominantly Javanese militias operate in central Aceh. But the Javanese have not been welcomed in the more populated coastal areas.

Hence the arrival of groups that some believe can appeal to the Islamic faith of the local population. Meanwhile, the TNI is trying to present GAM as the only security threat to the aid program. It has claimed that GAM guerillas have dressed as TNI soldiers and redirected refugees and aid. The TNI has a history of being less than frank about its own activities and it is unlikely that GAM has the capacity or interest in dressing as TNI, especially when it is currently under sustained TNI attack.

GAM declared a ceasefire the day after the tsunami struck, and says it has stuck to that despite being attacked (the two TNI losses have been acknowledged as being from "friendly fire").

The deteriorating security situation, therefore, appears to be largely of the TNI's making. The question is why at this time of great disaster?

Outsiders have had limited access to Aceh for many years and after May 2003 it was effectively closed off during the TNI's bid to finally crush GAM.

The TNI was initially reluctant to allow in foreign aid workers and it has been clear that it wants them to leave as soon as possible. As it did when the UN was bundled out of East Timor after the ballot in 1999, a deteriorating security environment provides the perfect justification to achieve that.

The TNI cannot conduct its campaign against GAM and many ordinary Acehnese with the eyes of the world fixed on it. Nor, under such scrutiny, can the TNI rake off a large share of the aid that is currently flowing in to Aceh, although even with their presence some TNI personnel are selling food aid to refugees. It has been a rule of thumb in Indonesia that only about 10 per cent of aid arrives where it is intended.

There are various unofficial "taxes", and inflated construction and transport costs by TNI companies. Aid officials in Aceh are hoping they can keep losses down to about 30 per cent.

Access to some of the hundreds of millions of dollars of aid money would, however, help fund the TNI's campaign in Aceh, which ran out of money in mid-2004. As a largely self-funded institution, the TNI has a quick eye for a dollar.

The TNI is also committed to containing GAM, at least to the extent that it only provides an excuse to maintain a military – and business – presence in Aceh. Therefore, if Aceh's security is now an issue, one need not look far for the principal cause.

[Damien Kingsbury is director of International and Community Development at Deakin University and author of Power Politics and the Indonesian Military (RoutledgeCurzon) and The Politics of Indonesia (third edition, Oxford). He recently completed an Australia Research Council project on TNI business activities.]