The Aceh conflict beyond Islamic rhetoric

by a correspondent in Singapore

When Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur, as he is also known) was in Malaysia for talks with the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamed, in October, he expressed regret that he could not meet the activists of Aceh. Indeed his talks with his host, though ostensibly about Indonesian illegal immigrants in Malaysia, were really about Aceh.

With general Malay Muslim support, the Aceh ‘rebellion’ has been challenging the Malaysian regime’s hostility towards Acehnese political refugees. Malaysia gets most of the refugees, and some have lived here for 40 years. But riots broke out when these refugees, housed in detention-camps with illegal Indonesian workers, were forcibly deported two years ago to an uncertain fate.

The Free Acheh Movement (GAM) leaders lived in Malaysia for years before they returned to escalate this present challenge to the Indonesian government. Aceh’s first overseas representative (to the Hague in the 1950s) now lives outside Kuala Lumpur. Most Acehnese leaders are overseas, agitating for an independent Aceh as the Palestinians are doing for their homeland. But unlike the Acehnese, the Palestinian struggle had the support of the Arab and Muslim masses, which sustained it. Acehnese groups hope for foreign support without much success, and their support is mostly from the Acehnese diaspora. Despite its awesome military potential, the "rebellion" in Aceh is still fought more with an eye to ensure worldwide condemnation than as an continuous march towards its goal.

"The war of attrition is unabated. Casualties are heavy, but with the Acehnese exaggerating their losses and the Indonesian military minimising theirs. Aceh today is in a state of siege, a conflict, which like in Jaffna for a Tamil heartland in a dispute centuries old, but its freedom movement is caught in a bind," wrote an observer recently. What brought the Acehnese problem to regional headlines was part of the larger struggle in the Indonesian polity between secularism (or pancasila) and Islam. This cannot, in the present context, resolve the Acehnese problem, especially when it does, like in Sri Lanka, have the Tamil Tigers’ resolve to fight to the end. Leaders of Acehnese groups in Kuala Lumpur, some of whom have spent a lifetime in this struggle, have no clear vision of their aim apart from its being an "independent Aceh". There is another opinion about the conflict: independence is not an option because Jakarta will fight to the last Acehnese to preserve the unity of the state. There is a perennial conflict in Indonesia that pits the nationalists, the "merah putih" (red white, the colours of the Indonesian flag) against the "hijau" (green, the colour of Islam).

"The political uncertainties in Indonesia today can be traced to this conflict. The Acehnese, it seemed to me then, had a clear strategic and tactical overview, but nevertheless missed the forest for the trees," the same observer said.

The Indonesian government, on the other hand, is caught in a turmoil of its own: the disenchanted armed forces, which restrict their role as guardians of its borders, the rising conflict within it between secularism and Islam which reflects the larger conflict elsewhere in the republic, which has increased pressures amidst a weakened state.

Another opinion is that the Aceh freedom movement forgets the importance of Java, with its worldview of Indonesia as an entity with hundreds and thousands of committees within it. Since Java is central to Indonesia, this view is vigorously defended. The pressures for independence after president Suharto’s resignation ignored this world view.

The Aceh conflict is not new. When Indonesia was proclaimed independent in 1945, Acehnese Muslims rose in revolt after president Sukarno went back on his agreement for an Islamic Indonesia in return for the Acehnese Darul Islam movement. But Aceh was a contentious province even in the Netherlands East Indies, the Dutch occupation as recent as a hundred years ago shed much blood and resolve amongst the Acehnese to be independent. Before the Dutch ventured into Aceh, it was independent for 500 years, with Islam so prominent a feature that it was often referred to as Serambi Mekkah, the "verandah of Makkah".

The fall of Suharto in 1997, the short tenure of B.J. Habibie and the election of Gus Dur occurred amidst Islamic pressures, not just in Aceh, but elsewhere in Indonesia. "Religious conflicts" flared anew, mostly between Christians and Muslims, and Indonesia found itself caught in an accelerating debate on whether it should remain with ‘pancasila’ or turn to Islam.

The fight for independence in what is today known as Indonesia was fought on secular grounds, which have endured because the armed forces, which held (and still hold) the balance of power, wanted it that way. The international pressure upon Jakarta over East Timor and the other internal conflicts showed Jakarta aimlessly drifting. The Javanese polity dominates, with realpolitik its rallying cry, and it is willing that blood is shed so long as the integrity of the state is maintained. Indonesian presidents have the status of emperors, and their fall (as with Sukarno and Suharto) creates uncertainty that prevails until a new ‘emperor’ arrives.

There is already talk in Jakarta of this eventuality. A little-known military general is said to be the present-day analogue of Suharto in 1967. There is still a belief that the president must be Javanese, a general, and a Muslim who believes in the mystical "keperchaayan" (belief). The pressures from the Islamic movement have increased, but cannot yet overcome this dominant Indonesian nationalism. It is with this understanding that the Aceh insurgency must be discussed. Its five centuries of independence do not count, except as "Aceh nationalism". Like Jerusalem for ‘Israel’, Aceh will remain an open sore in the side of ‘Indonesia’. There is nothing to suggest that this will change soon.