Acehnese with a cosmopolitan flair

Acehnese with a cosmopolitan flair

Yenni Kwok, Contributor/Hamburg

There may not have been a better leader in the Acehnese
delegation to the peace negotiations in Helsinki than Malik
Mahmud.

A career businessman, Mahmud, the exiled prime minister of the
Free Aceh Movement (GAM), is used to all sorts of deals and
negotiations. And, having lived much of his life abroad -- in
Southeast Asia, the United States and Europe -- Mahmud has a
cosmopolitan flair that is highly respected in diplomatic
circles.

Asked for impressions of leading the GAM delegation at the
talks, the 66-year-old Acehnese leader gave an unassuming answer:
"I am just doing my job and duty. Since I am in Europe and
because of my position in GAM, I have some responsibility to the
movement and the Acehnese people."

His colleagues clearly think highly of him. "Mahmud is a very
humble man," said Bakhtiar Abdullah, a spokesman for GAM. "But he
is a good and strong leader. He can be very firm and diplomatic
at the same time."

Mahmud, the second in command in GAM's leadership rank,
considered dropping the group's stated goal of independence as a
natural step. "In politics, things can change from one position
to another, according to the situation and the demands at the
time," he said during a telephone interview from GAM headquarters
in Stockholm.

In the early 1980s, Mahmud moved to the Swedish capital and
has lived there ever since. He took over as GAM's prime minister,
following the passing away of Tengku Ilya Leube, in 1982. Yet, it
was only in 2000 that GAM officially appointed him as the prime
minister.

Mahmud was born in Singapore in 1939, to a family with a long
involvement in the Aceh struggle. His parents emigrated to
Singapore when his father set up an export-import business there.

When the Darul Islam rebellion raged in Aceh in the 1950s,
Mahmud's father, like many Acehnese abroad, supported the
movement. "That legacy was later passed on to the son," said
Abdullah.

Mahmud may hold a Singapore passport, but he has devoted much
of his life to the Acehnese cause. He was just 15 when he started
his activism. His older brother, Amir Rashid Mahmud, is also
involved in the movement, serving as the trade minister for GAM.

The younger Mahmud took over his father's business, but he
eventually left it behind and devoted his life to GAM. His family
took the decision well. "They understood me and what I was
doing."

Since then he has traveled the world for the struggle,
although he refuses to say where he lived before he moved to
Sweden.

Mahmud is a private man who prefers to talk about GAM and
politics rather than his own life and family. All he would say is
that one of his daughters is with him in Sweden (his wife passed
away about two years ago), but he would not say where his other
three children live.

This caution is perhaps due to his work as an exiled political
activist. Perhaps, he is worried about the reach of the
Indonesian government. After living in Sweden for years, he and
Zaini Abdullah, GAM's foreign minister, were detained by the
Swedish authorities last year -- a move largely seen as being
influenced by Jakarta.

Like many Acehnese, Mahmud lost family members in the tsunami
last December. "I am positive that I lost two aunts," he said. He
is also worried about the fate of several cousins and their
children. "I am unsure whether they are dead or alive, because I
have not been in touch with them for a long time."

He has plans to move back to Aceh, but he is not sure when.
"We all yearn to go to Aceh but we do not have an exact time
frame."