A noble strategy for lasting peace in Aceh province

Berly Martawardaya, Siena, Italy

Machiavelli once said that a prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

But the knowledge that a particular prince often breaks his promise undermines most of its worth. This will put the prince in a dilemma since he needs the peasants and nobles to sufficiently believe his promises in order to benefit when breaking them.

The idea that one's gain depends on the actions and the acceptance of other people has been examined in the last 50 years in economics using the analytical tools of game theory. The theory was acknowledged with a Noble Prize in 1994 for three of its principal founders. One of them is John F. Nash Jr whose life has been immortalized in a book and movie entitled A Beautiful Mind.

The Noble Prize committee this year awarded another prize to game theory, this time to those who advanced the concept once the foundations were laid. This time, Thomas C. Schelling, who taught at the University of Maryland and Harvard, shared the Nobel Prize for economics with Robert Aumann from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In his influential book, The Strategy of Conflict (1960), Prof. Schelling outlines some concepts that could be used to analyze the current conditions in Aceh and the way ahead.

Threats make one's actions conditional on what the other player does, thus limiting one's choices of behavior. Threats need to be communicated to the other party to be effective and they need to be credible to be believed.

Someone who wants to go on a diet but is not sure of his ability to reduce temptation may accept a bet with other people so that he is not free to change his mind at later time. The bet become a commitment device that is costly to break in the future.

The government would find it beneficial to break its promise once GAM has surrendered its weapons to crush the movement and GAM would benefit if it launched a fresh attack once the non- local military forces had withdrawn from Aceh. Both sides have been known to breach promises before, so what makes the Helsinki MOU different?

The highest threat that GAM could deal the peace is a proclamation of independence while the government has the ability to declare and resume all-out war against separatists. But neither move is intelligent since either would likely cause the international community to freeze tsunami reconstruction aid. The side that made the first move to break the peace would be seen as extremely immoral and selfish and find it very difficult to gain domestic and international support for its action.

Keeping this reconstruction aid flowing and one's reputation as a humanitarian nation or group in the eyes of the world have proved to be commitment devices too costly to break.

However, one side could still accuse the other of making the first move and say it was only acting in legitimate retaliation to a pre-announced threat. This is where the need for enforcement of a peace arises. An enforcement body needs the ability to distinguish a violations and the authority to punish or coerce dealbreakers. Furthermore the party involved needs to perceive the enforcer as impartial.

Therefore a third-party entity that is sufficiently accepted by both sides and is well-equipped to identify who conducts the first violations is indispensable. The Aceh Monitoring Mission must strife for this much-needed credibility. The only punishment available is a credible and public announcement that one party has conducted violation with valid evidence.

That might not sound like much but the establishment of peace is only the first stage of a two-stage process. The next is the local elections of executive and legislative councils; both institutions, which are projected to hold considerable power in the Helsinki MOU. The government does not want GAM to win a majority in these elections as much as GAM needs a strong showing in order to advance its agenda. Violations by any sides at this stage would very likely result in poor electoral results later on.

Of course there will be shortsighted radicals on both sides that do not abide by the rational calculations above. Peace loving majority from both sides and ordinary people should act as constraints, they must neither be intimidated nor emotionally sway to the beat of the drums of war.

In peacetime local elections will be repeated every five years. The time will come when the fate of Aceh will be determined by the ballot and not the bullet. This mechanism should ensure that the interests of the Acehnese are always in the minds of the elected representatives. Whoever holds the presidency or the majority in the national legislature cannot afford to have Aceh declare independence under their watch since it would likely lead to their downfall.

On the other hand, a local party founded by GAM has every incentive to point to neglect by national government as a reason to vote for them as the defenders of Acehnese interests and identity. The commitment device of reconstruction aid may not exist indefinitely and as long as GAM holds a majority in the Aceh DPRD, the threat of independence is still there. Local elections therefore will serve as a substitute commitment device.

Germany, Spain and Canada are examples of countries that have regions with strong identities and histories of independence movements and violence. Germany has Bavaria; Spain has Catalan and Basque while Canada has Quebec. All three have largely pacified the renegade regions with economic incentives, increased national prestige and allowed them to express their identity in an acceptable political way.

Munich, the capital of Bavaria, is more affluent than most parts of Germany and stands tall as the country's manufacturing center with the BMW and Mercedes Benz factories as its crown jewels.

Like Germany, all these Western countries pour money into independent-minded regions to appease their constituents and all of them have hosted events of international prestige such as the Olympic or Winter Games.

Thus, the regions feel they are an important asset. Bavaria, Catalan and Quebec are also known for strong local sports teams that serve as a vent for deep-seated emotions of repressed identity.

All three countries also allow local parties that champion regional identity and their local elections are fought as ferociously as their sports games.

The writer holds a Masters Degree in Economics from the Free University Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and is currently a PhD student in the School of Politics and Economics at the University of Siena, Italy.