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Commentary - Aceh's lingering aches

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Straits Times - May 21, 2005

Anthony Paul – At first glance, the latest news from Aceh seems promising: On Wednesday, Jakarta lifted the state of emergency declared a year ago, when the army stepped up its campaign against militant separatists. Peace talks between the government and GAM, the separatist movement, will continue. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told journalists: 'Aceh will revert to normalcy.'

Unlikely. As a new history of Aceh reminds us, its demand for a separate existence has very deep roots.

In An Indonesian Frontier: Acehnese And Other Histories Of Sumatra (Singapore University Press, 2005), Singapore-based historian Anthony Reid gives five centuries of reasons why the Aceh separatists' 'simple idea' – that Aceh's experience within Indonesia has demeaned rather than fulfilled Aceh's historical role – has spread 'like wildfire' throughout north-western Sumatra.

Says Mr Reid: 'It seems extremely unlikely that this (passion) will evaporate whatever the external conditions.'

For centuries, Acehnese developed a society more cosmopolitan and self-confident than much of the rest of the archipelago. Founded around 1500 by Sultan Ali Mughayat Syah, the Aceh sultanate united a wealthy Muslim merchant community that succeeded for many decades in driving their intruding Christian Portuguese business rivals out of northern Sumatra.

In the 16th century, spice dominated the global economy much as oil does today. By the 1550s, Aceh was supplying Europe with about half of its pepper, shipped directly to the Red Sea's Muslim ports. For the next three centuries, Aceh was a fully sovereign state. It sent tribute to the rulers of Turkey and China. With its ports servicing haj pilgrims, the sultanate came to be known as 'the verandah of Mecca'.

By the early 17th century, when Sultan Iskandar Muda was ruler, Aceh was, notes Mr Reid, 'one of the important powers of Asia'. Its authority stretched as far as what is now Padang in west Sumatra, Asahan in east Sumatra, and Pahang, Johor and Kedah in the Peninsula.

Later, Aceh declined in spice wealth and military power. But as a cultural centre, it had few regional equals.

Schools flourished. The upper classes spoke Arabic: Sultans sent correspondence in Arabic to England's Queen Elizabeth and later King James I. From the 17th century, it was the crucible of classical Malay literature.

In the late 19th century, when the Dutch escalated their efforts to dominate in the East Indies, memories of Aceh's former greatness were still fresh.

A British resident of Singapore, one William Henry Read, suddenly and briefly took centre stage. Without quite saying so – Mr Reid is, to a fault, a cautious historian – the author implies that this curious businessman buccaneer launched what would prove to be 'the most costly of colonial wars in South-east Asia'.

A Singapore merchant of occasionally dubious practices, Mr Read doubled as the colony's Dutch consul-general.

As the Dutch escalation loomed, the sultanate had launched a determined effort to find allies. An Acehnese emissary came to Singapore with letters to the French, American, Italian and Spanish consuls pleading for help.

Learning of this, Mr Read sent an 'alarmist message' to Holland, successively urging a pre-emptive invasion.

The fighting, which began in 1873, continued intermittently for the next four decades. It led to the deaths of at least 100,000 Acehnese and some 14,000 on the Dutch side.

Aceh's reputation for resisting intruders continued into the 1940s. Although the Acehnese first welcomed Japanese invaders in 1942, by 1944 they were fighting them too.

Despite this, when the atomic bomb forced Japan's abrupt surrender the following year, Mr Reid notes that hundreds of Japanese diehards 'chose Aceh to make a stand as the South-east Asian place most certain to resist the return of Allied control'.

When nationalist leader Sukarno mounted his revolution, Aceh's historical anti-Dutch warriors provided Indonesians with official national heroes and heroines. Aceh helped finance the embattled republican government and paid for two aeroplanes to run the Dutch blockade.

But the sultanate still kept its distance: Between 1945 and 1949, this was 'the only substantial region the Dutch could not or did not enter'.

In passages that sometimes read like a mea culpa, historian Reid, a 40-year veteran of Indonesian studies and visits, cautiously confesses that his views on Aceh have changed since he first went to Sumatra in 1967.

In those days he 'shared the view of most of my Acehnese friends and contacts that this was a part of Indonesia, albeit a restive and troubled part'.

Visits in 2000 and 2003, after president Suharto's fall in 1999 made it possible for a free press to publicise military atrocities in Aceh, 'obliged me to rethink my assumptions'.

Contemplating the emergency under way as he wrote his book, author Reid concluded that 'one window of opportunity for resolving a century-long problem of Aceh's place within Indonesia has closed'.

Perhaps the new President Yudhoyono is in a position to open yet another window? Perhaps. History, alas, is unlikely to be his ally.

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