USINDO Open Forum

Update on Aceh
Sidney Jones, Indonesia Project Director, International Crisis Group
June 11, 2003
Washington D.C.

The following are abridged remarks of Sidney Jones prepared for a USINDO Open Forum on June 11, and edited questions and answers.

The Indonesian government’s military actions in Aceh are rapidly turning into the disaster that many predicted, but you would never know that from living in Jakarta. Indeed, looking at the gulf between international and domestic reaction on Aceh is rather like seeing the millions of people around the world protesting the war on Iraq while President Bush's popularity at home remained stratospheric.

Megawati has dramatically revived her flagging political fortunes by going forward with the most Draconian form of action. She has tapped into nationalist sentiment in a way that plays extremely well with the Indonesian public: for the first time ever, it sees her as determined and forceful.

No politician with presidential aspirations has challenged the decision to use force or the conduct of the operations (again, parallels to the Iraq war). I asked someone in Amien Rais's party if he couldn't use the fact that he had so forcefully backed the emergency to raise concerns about some of the abuses going on, and he said, "Some of us aren't happy with our chairman's stance, but Pak Amien needs army support."

The Indonesian broadcast media, with some very brave exceptions, have rolled over and played dead. What you see on television news is video footage taken by embedded journalists of soldiers storming GAM strongholds, of tearful children standing around burned schools, of soldiers distributing rice to needy villagers, or of wounded soldiers being visited in hospitals by their proud commanders.

So, while international concern mounts, domestic support is high, and Indonesia is stepping up its campaign to have the GAM declared a terrorist organization. From the Indonesian point of view, the US is particularly poorly placed to lodge any protests. This is a war that was very consciously modeled on Iraq, from the dropping of paratroopers and the use of sonic booms in the Indonesian version of "shock and awe," to the use of embedded journalists, to the assumption that massive force will deliver a quick victory. Indonesian officials have made clear references to Iraq, pointing out that they are on far stronger ground sending troops into Aceh than the US was in invading Iraq.

The Cost to Aceh

But in the display of nationalism Indonesia seems to have totally lost sight of is the goal of winning back an alienated Acehnese population. The only objective one hears about is "crushing GAM" -winning hearts and minds seems to have totally gone by the wayside. And this is where I'm convinced that the operations are turning into a disaster. I get no sense that there is any real understanding of how deep the resentment goes, or how much deeper these operations are making it.

I want to underscore here that in principle, I don't challenge the Indonesian government's decision to use force. They are facing an armed rebellion; GAM is a serious security threat; negotiations had failed; and other options were limited. The problem has always been the conduct of the troops in the field, and to judge from the rhetoric and tactics used by the commanders, their main reference point is not East Timor but the crushing of the Indonesian Communist Party in 1965-67. They are using words like "ganyang" and "basymi" – crush and annihilate. They are making no distinction between GAM fighters and GAM sympathizers. Indeed, “GAM sympathizer” has now become the political label for students, human rights monitors, journalists, and virtually anyone who does not accept the army's version of the truth. Human rights monitors are in particular danger, because the TNI has stated outright, in the defense White Paper, that separatists use human rights and human rights organizations as a cover for their activities. It's true that GAM does couch a lot of its propaganda in human rights terms, but that doesn’t justify arresting and interrogating human rights monitors as a result.

In a particularly ominous throwback to the 1960s and 70s, the military commander in Aceh announced that GAM had penetrated the civil service in Aceh, and that all civil servants would be subject to background checks. "Litsus", the old screening mechanism used to root out people with suspected Communist backgrounds, is coming to Aceh.

Officials give lip service to the notion of winning hearts and minds by pointing out that this is an integrated operation with four components: military, humanitarian, law enforcement, and what it called "stabilization of local government" – and that the last three are designed to assist the local population.

The humanitarian component involves the allocation of funds and provisions to assist displaced persons. As of last week, the number of displaced was about 20,000. Not only was this expected to rise, but the government was talking of moving Acehnese civilians in areas of GAM strongholds to temporary camps so as to better facilitate army efforts to root out rebels. (Some people have expressed fears that such a concept, if implemented, could become the equivalent of strategic hamleting, but there is no evidence of this to date.)

The humanitarian component is also now being directed to rebuilding schools. One of the characteristics of the first weeks of the military emergency was the systematic arson of hundreds of schools, most of them state elementary schools, in several districts of Aceh. The government blames GAM, and there is indeed some evidence that GAM was responsible for the initial burnings. But even if GAM had begun to systematically burn schools after May 19 (and it denies having done so), the question at least needs to be asked why the Indonesian army and police, with all the forces at their disposal, were not able to protect the schools when it was clear they were being targeted.

In outlining the humanitarian component of the "integrated operation", the government announced restrictions on foreigners visiting Aceh for the purpose of distributing humanitarian aid and said that any aid from international donors would have to be channeled through the government. It said the restrictions on foreigners was for their own security – it didn't want another Atambua incident where three UNHCR workers were killed by East Timorese militias, and that it did not want foreign donors capitalizing on photographs of displaced people or distressed civilians to raise money for their own organizations.

On June 2, at a meeting of the donor consortium called the Consultative Group on Indonesia or CGI, the government seemed to relent somewhat, saying that representatives of humanitarian agencies could still visit, as long as they were accompanied by a government representative. With the killing of a German tourist and the wounding of his wife in an as yet unexplained incident in Aceh last week, however, a total ban on foreigners going to Aceh appears to have been put into effect.

The third component of the operation is law enforcement, but this appears to mean stepping up arrests, not improving the justice system. One of the main grievances of Acehnese is that the government in Jakarta has failed to address repeated demands for justice for past abuses, particularly those that took place during an earlier period of counterinsurgency operations from 1990 to 1998. But even if there were a commitment to address those demands, and there is not, the legal infrastructure in Aceh is in such disarray that there aren't many current cases that stand a chance of coming to trial, let alone cases from a decade ago.

The fourth and final component of the military operations, strengthening local governance, seems to mean the replacement of non-functioning local officials at the village and subdistrict level with retired army personnel. Even though the government has stressed that these appointments are temporary, they are cause for concern on two fronts. First, the post-Soeharto reformers spent a good deal of time and effort trying to remove the military from government administration; surely qualified civilians could have been found. Second, Aceh has long been fertile ground for economic activities by military personnel, many of them illicit such as illegal logging. Once these retired officers are in place, it may be more difficult to dislodge them than the government thinks.

Political Implications: A Resurgent Military

These military operations have long-term implications for Indonesia's democratization process. As long as the army can maintain control of information, such that the operations can be portrayed as a success to the Indonesian public, it can use the operations as a springboard to greatly increased political influence.

It's one of the many ironies of Indonesian politics that these operations are taking place just as the Bali trials are getting underway. Those trials and the investigations behind them represent the pinnacle of professional achievement by the Indonesian police. It seemed for a while that they could use that achievement to consolidate control over internal security. Then came Aceh, and the police have been eclipsed, yet again, by the military. A bill on the armed forces, drafted in the Ministry of Defense, will shortly come before the Indonesian parliament, and success in Aceh will enable the military to strengthen its bid for control over internal security at the expense of the police.."Success" in the military's terms in Aceh will further set back the process of military reform, already at a standstill, further entrench the territorial command structure, and give the military more decision-making power than it has already in Papua, where a hard-fought battle for special autonomy is being undermined by a military-backed decision to divide the province into three.

The Indonesian government is waging a campaign aimed at the international community to have GAM declared a terrorist organization. The US and other countries have resisted Indonesian arguments on this before, but the Indonesian government, in addition to alleging GAM involvement in a series of bombings in Jakarta and Medan, going back to the Jakarta Stock Exchange bombing of 2000, is now trying to allege that GAM is linked to Jemaah Islamiyah. This is simply not true. The Acehnese with ties to Jemaah Islamiyah are all men considered traitors by the GAM leadership. And while the bombings in question involved Acehnese, they also involve others, including army deserters and arms dealers with questionable affiliations. I know of no evidence to suggest that these bombings were planned or implemented with the knowledge of top GAM leaders.

Q: What does GAM want? Is it sharia law? Was it a mistake for them not to comply with the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement?

A: Nobody should romanticize GAM. The leadership in Sweden and the local leaders want independence. This is a nationalist rebellion, with strong support from the ethnic Acehnese. It is not an Islamic rebellion. GAM did make many mistakes, but there was no real interest on either side over the package contained in the COHA.

Q: Why was there no interest?

A: The TNI was not interested in compromising because their singular objective is to maintain a unitary state. During the ceasefire they got useful intelligence on GAM. The GAM was also incapable of compromising on the independence issue. They achieved a certain legitimacy from the ceasefire agreement.

Q: What should the U.S. Government do? Are public comments counterproductive?

A: US comments have no impact. The US should continue with existing long range programs in justice sector reform, police training, and programs to support civil society. There is no chance to resume negotiations, at least for a few months after the present military action. If that occurs, there should be some other facilitator. The Henri Dunant Centre is finished as an intermediary. Any future facilitator should be quiet and it must be a government. So far the only candidate is the Japanese. They have played a very useful and constructive role.

Q: If the negotiations were in a hopeless deadlock there was no alternative but war.

A: Yes, but the problem in resorting to military force is that the Indonesian government cannot control its own troops. There might have been other options. One, to buy off the GAM. Second, to win the hearts and minds of the Acehnese. This would be a long-term operation. Or third, treat the confrontation as an intelligence operation and try to pick off the GAM leaders, without a massive use of force.

Q: You said politicians are reluctant to criticize the military operation because they do not want to antagonize the military? Why? What do politicians get from the army?

A: I’m not sure. Perhaps it builds on nostalgia for the Suharto era. Perhaps you are perceived as a firm leader if you have army support. Perhaps you may be assured of more peaceful political rallies if you have not antagonized the army.

Q: What’s the attitude of the student movement regarding Aceh?

A: The student movement is much weaker and more divided than it was in 1998. Student protests can be bought for a small amount. They are more likely to be about Palestine than about an Indonesian issue. In any case, Aceh is seen as a nationalist issue.