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| 1. INDONESIA: The Conflict in Aceh | ||
| Between them, the Indonesian military (TNI) and the international media have left the impression that the conflict in Aceh involves a military contest between two parties, namely the central Indonesian government and the TNI on one hand and a separatist organisation (GAM or the Aceh Independence Movement) on the other. However, the situation is far more complex than that. | ||
| To begin with, GAM is not just an armed, political independence movement. It is also a criminal organisation involved in the drug trade, the smuggling of guns and consumer goods, extortion and protection rackets and other criminal activities. The second point to be made is that surveys and polls show that GAM does not enjoy majority support among the Acehnese, partly because of its criminal activities. | ||
| Some of our military sources say that a useful way of looking at the Aceh problem is from the drug perspective. The drug involved, usually, is marijuana. Aceh is broken, essentially, into eight regencies whose people speak different languages and often intensely dislike each other. In some cases, business companies in one regency will not employ people from another, while, it is said, to wander from one regency into another can be to court death. As the marijuana plantations stretch across three regencies there are at least three drug lords. They each have their own private armies which have been fighting each other for control of the trade which is said to run from Aceh through Jakarta to Bali and then on to the US, Australia and other places. These private armies often operate under the cover of being independence and freedom fighters and constitute significant parts of GAM. | ||
| Internationally, the drug lords and GAM have contacts in Afghanistan, the Middle East, the southern Philippines, southern Thailand, Malaysia and other places and many of their top soldiers have been trained in some of these places. It is well established that some of their weaponry is smuggled into the province through southern Thailand and Malaysia. GAM is known to have drug and political connections with al Qa'ida linked organisations including the Abu Sayaff in the southern Philippines, while Osama bin Laden, prior to September 11, sent emissaries to Aceh to investigate its suitability as a regional base for al Qa'ida operations in Southeast Asia - including its drug and other criminal operations. | ||
| Different Agendas - The Conflict Matrix | The Acehnese are far from united in what they want from Jakarta. Some of our sources say that while the drug lords, GAM and non-GAM independentists all want independence from Jakarta, the local authorities, local political bosses and perhaps most of the people, generally speaking, want something less. At the regency level, they generally favour autonomy, while at the provincial level, they want a federal system. Intersecting with this, there is, if you like, political or military conflict on at least five levels -
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Because of this, the police and TNI have been engaged simultaneously on a number of fronts each presenting a different problem and therefore demanding different responses. Those fronts have included:
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| The police and the TNI's poorly trained and poorly disciplined soldiers have never been up to these sorts of demands. | ||
| Lack of Discipline | This lack of both police and TNI discipline and training is part of the reason for their appalling human rights record in the province (and throughout the country for that matter) which has undoubtedly led to the significant expansion in GAM numbers over recent years. This lack of discipline has also led to the TNI being easily and willingly exploited by various local mafioso and local political bosses involving them in corrupt and criminal activities of many kinds. This problem was highlighted by Indonesian government's chief negotiator on Aceh, Wiryono Sastrohandoyo, when he wrote in a recent report: "A good number of observers have identified one extremely formidable obstacle to peace in Aceh, and that is a situation of widespread corruption that gives everyone involved an economic motive for leaving the problem unsolved. "There is reportedly a great deal of smuggling of luxury goods going on in the free port of Sabang. Extortion and protection racketeering by both the military and GAM guerrillas have been observed to be endemic from one end of the province to the other. Weapons from foreign sources are regularly brought ashore by fishing boats in a thriving arms trade that keeps GAM and other groups of a more criminal nature well armed. The national government can to a large extent curb the corruption by simply making provincial officials and other authority figures more accountable, but such a crackdown may have its own destabilizing effect."1 | 1 The Aceh Conflict: The Long Road to Peace, Jakarta Post. |
| There is something to be said for the argument that a negotiated settlement with GAM will prove very difficult to achieve. A number of reasons are given for this. One, obviously, is that GAM leaders say that they will ultimately accept nothing less than full independence and that is impossible for the Indonesian government, and for other governments in the region, at least in the current circumstances. Another is that for many GAM leaders, guerrilla warfare has become a way of life and they are therefore not particularly interested in winning. Some might even fear that if they did win independence, they would be taken over and perhaps destroyed by the warlord armies. And as Wiryono says many TNI officers and local politicians don't want to see the insurgency end either for it opens up opportunities for them to pursue their own ends. | ||
| Counter-Insurgency Operations | As we all know, with the breakdown of recent negotiations, the government in Jakarta has resumed full scale military operations saying that it will continue until GAM is defeated. Given that that is its position, its objectives should be: Firstly, to engage GAM through effective counter-insurgency operations, that is counter guerrilla, terrorist and political operations, with the aim of ultimately neutralising and destroying both GAM's military organisation and political infrastructure. Ideally, the aim should be, as far as possible, to convert and not kill any genuine politically motivated insurgent. | |
| These operations should involve day and night, short and long term foot patrolling by para-military police field forces backed by the TNI and schools of well trained political cadre. Patrolling should be conducted with the aim of bringing the insurgents to you so that you can deploy your superior techniques, weaponry and firepower against him at close quarters. Unless you have the proper procedures for effecting and achieving this you can march for years through enemy territory unmolested. (Much the same is true, incidentally, for a lot of ideologically contested politics). Apart from patrolling, personal and weapons amnesties should be appropriately, but generously, offered, but vehicular patrolling and convoys, napalm, helicopter gunships, tanks, jet fighters, and OV10 Broncos are not required - for as in Vietnam and East Timor, they would be both militarily counter-productive and further alienate those one wishes to convert. If the PFF/TNI combination can protect villagers from GAM taxation and other forms of pressure and extortion, then the GAM infrastructure will be disrupted and intelligence will flow from villagers on the identities and movements of GAM guerrillas. This flow of intelligence is the key indicator as to how well the counter-insurgency is progressing. | ||
| The second objective should be to destroy the warlord armies. This should involve hard and co-ordinated police and military operations aimed at destroying their military forces combined with efforts, wherever appropriate, to buy off the warlords and negotiate hard, if at times unsavoury, political deals with them through whatever channels are available. | ||
| Capability | Are the Jakarta government and the TNI up to this? Given past experiences, and what has been said above, we don't think so and are at the very least highly sceptical. However, the TNI claims that this time, things will be different. It has said that compared with previous operations in Aceh, this one will be relatively short. Presumably, this is said on the basis of the TNI's own assessments of GAM strength and capabilities and international support. It has also said that it will take a hard line against any human rights abuses. We also find this extremely hard to believe, but hope it proves to be right for the sake of Indonesian and regional stability. | |
| Whatever the outcome of the military operations, there is no prospect in the present era of Aceh gaining independence or even a Puerto Rican style autonomy. In this time of global terrorism, no nation in the region, or perhaps the world, will accept the prospect of an independent Aceh with the risk of GAM and/or the drug warlords coming to effective power at the entrance to the Straits of Malacca. Western NGOs and politicians sympathetic to the GAM cause should take a closer look at the situation. | ||