Aceh : A tragedy of strategic proportions

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.