Aceh Revisited. posted by Richard Seymour

Last year I was writing about the fact that the Indonesian military (TNI) had taken advantage of the devastation wreaked by the tsunami to intensify repression in Aceh, which predictably was blacked out by the media.

Let me just run a quick reminder. First, the Clinton gesture: Aceh is a region in the north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra (see map). What's so special about this spot in the sun is that it has been a locus for colonial predation for centuries on account of its rich resources. It had acquired some measure of autonomy in the British and Dutch competition over Javan spices, for which Aceh was a major trading centre, but the Dutch put paid to that in 1873 by invading - a decision that they were to have some small reason to regret, as the Acehnese engaged the Dutch in a war of attrition lasting right until 1942, when the Japanese took the region. The Acehnese had hoped, following the defeat of the Axis powers, that they might have autonomy, but the United Nations insisted that the region was to be included in the new Republic of Indonesia. Indonesia, for its part, secured the region by sending troops to annexe it. It was the experience of being subject to repressive military presence and intensive exploitation of the resources, particularly under the dictator Suharto that was to lead to the formation in 1976 of the Gerekan Aceh Merdeka (GAM), an armed resistance movement seeking independence for the region. Then: a thirty year war in which the TNI afford themselves of every possible means of repression: rape, torture, murder, the usual fare. Activists smuggled photographs out of the country depicting atrocities, such as the TNI forcing a pole down a prisoner's throat.


Aceh after the tsunami.

Anyway, back to last year. On Christmas Day 2004, the TNI killed 18 guerillas in Aceh. This was in the context of a harsh crackdown under martial law operative from May 2003 in which the Indonesian army admitted to having killed 8,216 people.

As Alan Nairn explained on Democracy Now:

But just five years ago, the yard in front of that mosque was filled with anywhere from 400,000 to a million Acehnese, who were carrying out a peaceful demonstration calling for referendum, a vote, a free vote, in which they could choose whether they wanted to become independent of Indonesia.

In proportional terms, Aceh has a population -- before this disaster, had a population of about four million. This means that anywhere from 10 percent to 25 percent of the entire population of Aceh turned up on the lawn of the mosque that day to call for freedom. It's -- proportionally, it's actually one of the largest political demonstrations in recent world history. If a similar thing happened in the U.S., you’d be talking anywhere from 30 to 60 million people here, to give an idea of the enormity. Faced with that kind of civilian movement, the Indonesian military moved to crush them, assassinating, disappearing leaders, raping female activists.

In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, the repression continued (just as the Sri Lankan government continued its war against the LTTE). To such effect, in fact, that the television media did eventually begin to cover some of it (albeit, tactfully omitting any reference to British complicity in these atrocities). The GAM was predictably devastated by the disaster - not only was its base largely either dead, dislocated or traumatised, but the TNI was attempting to control the distribution of aid in such ways as to deprive actual or alleged GAM supporters. They offered several peace deals and in the end did capture the interest of the Indonesian government. The reasons for this are various, but some of them are as follows: 1) while the GAM had only a few hundred active members when martial law began, by late 2004 it had reached 10,000. The risk of this movement refounding itself was too much for the Indonesian government to countenance; 2) the US has a multitude of corporate interests in Aceh and hopes to have more. Former US diplomat Richard Holbrooke is working with the United States Indonesian Society, a group sponsored by prominent US corporations, to maximise private sector involvement in the reconstruction of the region. So, while the GAM needed a respite from the military campaign, the government and its multinational affiliates needed a stable investment climate in order to properly exploit the resource-rich zone.



A peace deal was formally signed on August 15th 2005, and on Tuesday 27th December 2005, the GAM announced that it was disbanding its military wing. It had given up its goal of independence in return for a withdrawal of Indonesian troops. This was followed by the immediate announcement by the government that a different section of the military would return - entirely for reconstruction purposes, you understand.

The US began to restore military relations with Indonesia on February 26th last year, when it readmitted the latter to its International Military Education and Training programme, (in which the US government subsidises foreign military personnel to receive training at any of its 150 military schools). On 22nd November 2005, the State Department decided to over-ride Congressional restrictions on military ties with Indonesia. Tapol, the Indonesian human rights organisation, commented:

It will allow the export of lethal equipment to Indonesia and the possibility of the US providing loans or grants for the purchase of weapons. The US could in effect end up making gifts of weaponry to the abusive Indonesian military.

...

Last week Congress approved a foreign aid bill which made the resumption of full military ties conditional upon the prosecution of members of the armed forces involved in gross violations of human rights, co-operation with international efforts to resolve serious crimes in East Timor, and reforms to improve civilian control of the military. The State Department has used its power to waive the conditions despite a lack of substantive progress in these areas.

The government, while taking advantage of the peace offered by the GAM, has been increasing suppression in West Papua. Oh, and check this out: The military in West Papua is receiving 'assistance' from a New Orleans-based gold company. Corporations reap considerable profits from the mineral rich territory, but aid agencies say little of that is seen by West Papuans as starvation has set in since November. In fact, as Tom Benedetti writes today in the International Herald Tribune, most of the money for the Indonesian army comes not from the government, but from various forms of business income - licit or illicit. He cites a Dutch government report which suggests that there's a lot of money in those territories and "the troops go where the money is".

Seven years after the overthrow of the dictatorship, the military remains a significant and semi-autonomous bloc in the Indonesian state. And look who it works for: the same regiments of Western capital that stitched up the economy after the British-supported Suharto coup in 1965 and that have been lining up to extract the benefits ever since.