Today's Zaman (Istanbul)
Wednesday, June 10, 2009

by DIPO ALAM

Lately, I have felt deeply shattered by the news on TV. We've been bombarded with the heartbreaking drama of the battle between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government of Sri Lanka.

Tens of thousand of people from both sides have been killed since the war broke out in the mid-1970s. And hundreds, if not thousands more, were also killed in the final act of the drama in May 2009. What struck me the hardest is to see how the lives of ordinary people, the women and children, are afflicted by the war, losing any shred of opportunity and watching the lives of their loved ones falling apart before their very eyes.

Living in I.stanbul, I have also been deeply moved by similar dramas occasionally aired by Turkish TV stations. Each time I see the news where the mothers, fathers, wives, children and families of a young fallen soldier cry and mourn over their beloved son in the fights against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), my heart cries. These scenes -- which are not uncommon in developing countries -- only leave me with a dark and gloomy feeling of sadness and grief.

The depressing feeling caused by this type of internal conflict was also present during the years I experienced in Indonesia, where war broke out between the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the government of Indonesia in the mid-1970s. It was not a conflict stemming from GAM demands for the application of Islamic Shariah in their region -- which had been mistakenly identified by many parties in Jakarta, but instead a genuine case of centralist injustice that was felt so completely by some Acehnese from their fellow Indonesian brothers.

But thank God, after long, tireless peace process efforts, Indonesia finally succeeded in harvesting a lasting peace deal with GAM in 2005 in Helsinki, mediated by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari. And this I was lucky to have experienced collaboratively, accompanying then-President of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (who is commonly know in Indonesia by his initials, SBY) during the early stages of the process seeking peaceful ways to end the war.

Under the administration of former President Megawati Sukarnoputri in 2002-2004, SBY was the coordinating minister for political and security affairs. He took decisive action to establish the Aceh Desk under his office as an effort to solve security problems and help the peace process in the Aceh region.

Indonesia is a huge country with 230 million people. Although Indonesians belong to one nation, Bangsa Indonesia, and to one language, Bahasa Indonesia, with a Muslim majority, Indonesia has more than 300 ethnic groups, a richness of diversity that could potentially pose a threat of conflict if managed by inaccurate policies.

Even though he comes from a military background, having graduated as the top cadet from the Military Academy and later on successfully serving as an army general in the Indonesian Army, SBY is in fact a modern military reformer. His ideas of reformation within the Armed Forces of Indonesia (TNI) just after the end of the Suharto regime rule were often cited as brilliant steps. He had been the strongest believer from the very beginning in the establishment of the Aceh Desk, in which I was an active member, and that a peaceful solution was the best choice compared to a military operation. He knew that he had to balance his role as coordinating minister of political and security affairs in relation to his military professional colleagues, who once had very influential roles in Indonesian politics and were privileged during the Suharto regime, and the demands of the Indonesian people for reformation and true democracy. He also knew that he had to balance the influence of the global world's trend in democracy and human rights vis-à-vis a harsh domestic nationalist faction in parliament that was voicing objections over plans to have a peace dialogue and negotiations with GAM because the two parties -- the Republic of Indonesia and GAM -- were viewed as unequal by law.

The leading policy that was used as a rule of thumb in the peace process was that whatever GAM wanted to request in negotiations would be heard sympathetically by the Indonesian government and would be paid the greatest attention and shown genuine willingness to implement it. However, requests from GAM had to be made with a prerequisite -- that peace shall be sought within the brotherhood of the unitary Republic of Indonesia and never as an independent country.

I joined SBY as deputy coordinating minister for economic affairs in the first important stage of the peace process in Tokyo in October 2003. Facilitated by the Japanese government, it was the first international meeting on the Aceh peace dialogue, attended by delegates from the US, a number of European Union countries, Islamic countries, the UN, international organizations and international financial organization such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The meeting was successful in the way that we were convinced that the world stance on this matter was clear -- that they will support the Indonesian government effort as long as we are honestly willing to enter into a peaceful solution with GAM and that they pledged to build Aceh once the peace was achieved. This case was different from the separatism process of East Timor from Indonesia (1998), when international opinion was in favor of an independent East Timor state.

On the night before the final meeting in Tokyo, in the month of Ramadan, SBY woke me and other members of the Indonesian delegation up to have sahur (the early breakfast in Ramadan) together and asked that we pray to God that the war would be resolved peacefully and violence would be stopped once and for all in the Aceh region. I should add that his firm belief in God also won this general much sympathy in Indonesia.

From Tokyo, facilitated by the Switzerland-based Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, we went off to Geneva to meet with the GAM delegates to talk over the Cessation of Hostility Agreement (COHA). It is important to note that this was the first time the Indonesian government, internationally and officially, had direct negotiations on the peace process with GAM, which controls the movement from its headquarters in Stockholm.

It is worthy of note that an hour before the negotiations started in Geneva, a high-ranking military official called from Aceh, informing us that they were already in Aceh and were strategically positioned to terminate all GAM leaders and their fighters in the battlefield. They believed that if SBY agreed they could start military operations right away, the government could win the war and therefore negotiating with GAM in Geneva was not necessary. The response from SBY was very clear: the military operation is pointless and should be avoided.

The Geneva peace meeting resulted in the very first official agreement between the Indonesian government and GAM -- named COHA -- although it was far from perfect. Though it has started to sow the seeds of trust between both parties, the different perspectives that had been growing on both sides throughout the long years of conflict were still tremendously huge to cope with. For example, there were differences in the agreement on how GAM would render and control their weaponry as well as on the reduction of military bases and the pulling out of TNI soldiers from Aceh. Followed by international observers, the COHA peace agreement has shown GAM good faith in that the Indonesian government was very serious and willing to end the conflict.

The two international peace processes led by SBY in Tokyo and Geneva were geared into his presidential campaign in 2004, where he pledged that the Aceh conflict will potentially be solved in a humanitarian and peaceful way were he elected president. He delivered on that promise in 2005, and facilitated by Ahtisaari, the lasting peace deal between the Indonesian government and GAM was finally inked.

These fragments of the peace process in Aceh reminded me of what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated of our strong will to have a dream of peace and how to make it happen. He said, “We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear. ... That old law about ‘an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. ... The time is always right to do the right thing. ... Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.” Indeed, leaders of developing countries should have the courage to allow and make peace to happen. This courage will “hold back the flood of fear” of our people caused by violence and wars. Now, can leaders in developing countries learn this courage from the Aceh peace process?

Recently, TIME Magazine selected President Yudhoyono (SBY) as one of the world's 100 most influential leaders, besides US President Barrack Obama and others. I believe it was a justified selection and he deserved it.

Dipo Alam is the secretary-general of the Istanbul-based Developing Eight (D-8) Organization for Economic Cooperation.