Aceh : A tragedy of strategic proportions

Bruno Dercon, Jakarta

The tragedy of Aceh puts upraises unprecedented and painful questions for strategic regional and urban policy and planning. Thinking that the key issue is merely recovery will soon prove naive.

The following two articles shed light on a number of issues in relation to Aceh's future social, environmental and economic re-development. The first article looks at the agonizing issues in relation to coastal and interior development and highlights how ordinary lives may soon become hostage to strategic interests. The second article, to be published tomorrow, recommends key issues for re-planning.

During the first two decades of the New Order, Aceh was an important engine of growth for Indonesia's industrialization: The Arun field supplied gas nationally and internationally while logging was vital for the paper and pulp industry in Aceh and North Sumatra.

The tragic irony in relation to the effects of the tsunami is that virtually all economic activities which rely on the exploitation of depleting on-land natural resources have escaped unharmed, with the exception of the cement plant in Lho'nga. What has disappeared are the urban economies and the local fishing industries -- that is to say, the vast majority of micro-sized and medium-sized enterprises.

After the recent tsunami, it may seem bad taste to try to think up more nightmare scenario's. But apart from the predictions on disease outbreaks and acute poverty, contemplate the following one.

First, well-meaning planners design resettlements away from the coast, for instance as LIPI (Indonesian Institute of Sciences) and the Ministry of Marine Affairs have proposed (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 6).

While awaiting re-planning or sorting out land documents, people fester in refugee camps. Next, hostilities with GAM resume and result in the re-closure of the province to for unhampered flows of people and goods.

Without this essential driver for small business revival and urban redevelopment, people will have no means or reason to leave refugee set-upscamps while at the same time they are joined by other re-settlers as the army may continue its attempt to drymop up support for GAM.

The end-result is an institutional and economic duopoly between those in control of the business of refugees and those taking charge of the business of land exploitation, in the form of forest cutculling, plantation (re-)development and fish farm development. A well-meant technological solution as formulated by LIPI could easily and unwittingly contribute to hampering urban and general economic recovery, as it potentially concentrates economic and bureaucratic initiative in the hands of large vested interests.

Even if this dark view does not hold up, one must assume that the coming two to three years may lead to unstoppable forest destruction in the same way as what that which happened in West Java's state forests or in Riau's national parks during the peak crisis years.

The driver is then simply poverty-driven chaos, likely aggravated as a result of the Ladia Galaska road network which may be further completed with aid funds. This network is opening up the mountainous heartland of the province through a 1,600 km network of main roads and feeder roads, reaching from the now infamous Meulaboh to the Malacca Straits.

Environmental groups as well as the previous minister for the environment, Nabiel Makarim, strongly opposed this threat to the Leuser National Park. But which well-meaning human being could now still be against this road-of-escape, now that the city of Meulaboh has proven to be mortally vulnerable as a result of its coastline-only access?

In the destroyed cities, a similar poverty and fear driven pressure towards the interior may become obvious. Historically and in line with the Southeast Asian settlement tradition, cities like Banda Aceh and Meulaboh were riverside or estuary settlements and not seashore towns.

The reason for their subsequent downstream development was only partly economic. Meulaboh, already a center of pepper production during the Atchin sultanate, became a seashore town in the Dutch time, with an administrator in residences of colonial administrators and even a club pavilion built facing the seashore.

Fear for the interior -- Teuku Umar was killed near the city by the Dutch colonial army -- made the sea even look safer. Banda Aceh's historical center is the Baiturrahman district, while the more downstream Kutaraja mostly expanded during the Dutch time and other built-up waterfront subdistricts even more recently.

The growing port is an obvious explanation explaining as to why people chose to live close to the sea. But tragically, also war is to blame. Banda Aceh had been a fortified town since the start of the Dutch Aceh campaign in the 19th century. The outer perimeter of the present nine kecamatan (subdistrict) of the city roughly coincides with the first of three defenses sheltering the city under colonial control from anti-Dutch Acehnese fighters operating from the interior.

So, is Banda Aceh's coastal outlook the embodiment of its claim to be the "Verandah of Mecca" or has the city been a hostage of war and was it "driven into the sea" due to fears for the interior? In the same way, is Meulaboh an innocent coastal township fallen victim to nature's wrath or a river outlet grown unsustainably into a plantation colony connected only to the sea?

Post-disaster Aceh needs a social-economic strategic plan addressing township rebuilding, entrepreneurship recovery and at the same time it requires free and reliable movement throughout the entire Province and with other regions.

Other crucial issues are : What to live from in the face of declining gas resources; how to use forests responsibly; and how at the same time to open up the vulnerable isolation in which disparate coastal communities live?

But the above also shows that the surviving communities will face additional agonizing issues. It is better to address these questions with a clear mind than to allow large vested interests or bureaucratic forces to take charge of rebuilding and exploiting the remaining resources while people stay in camps.

A resumption of the civil war is one reason why strategic recovery could fail. Failing to Not timely realize soon enough ing the environmental-economic threat ahead is another one.

The writer (brdercon@yahoo.com) is an urban and regional planner and was Team Leader for the Riau Master Plan 2020. The experience derived from formulating a strategic long-term change plan for Riau Province were instrumental for these articles.