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."