Exhaust all non-military options

It is certainly with great relief that we welcome President Megawati Soekarnoputri's decision to postpone -- although probably only temporarily -- what many people fear will be the biggest military operation in Aceh since Indonesia proclaimed independence almost 58 years ago.

As we all know, the government delivered its ultimatum to the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) late last month, enjoining the movement to disarm and drop its campaigns for independence, or face an all-out war in which up to 50,000 government troops would be deployed against the rebels, who are estimated to number about 5,000. That deadline expired on Monday, May 12.

Sadly, calls on the government not to repeat its past mistakes have gone unheeded. The Special Area of Aceh was designated a Military Operations Zone (DOM) in 1989, when the authoritarian regime of President Soeharto was in power, and by the time the decree was lifted in 1998, an estimated 10,000 people, mostly civilians, had died. The horrendous operation failed to destroy GAM, and instead, it only succeeded in increasing the number of GAM sympathizers and substantially damage the credibility of the Indonesian security forces.

Over the past few days, the government has been under heavy pressure to delay launching a military operation against GAM. At the same time, leaders of the Henry Dunant Centre (HDC), including "sage" Anthony Zinni, as well as diplomats from the United States, the European Union and Japan, put pressure on the GAM leadership in Stockholm to soften their stance. Both efforts seem to have failed.

The deadline has passed, yet nothing has happened so far.

At least a couple of reasons could explain this apparent calm before the storm. First, the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (COHA) that both the Jakarta government and GAM signed in December 2002 remains in force, as neither party has formally withdrawn from the accord. Launching operations at present would be in violation of the COHA and would raise the risk of committing war crimes. Second, leaders at the House of Representatives have requested a consultative meeting with the government before military operations are launched. It would probably be too big a risk for the government to antagonize the House at this particular moment.

In the meantime, what is substantially lacking in this long- drawn debate about whether or not to go to war in Aceh is a clearly defined, core context of the Aceh problem. The integrity of the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia is not an issue here, if one is only willing to understand the long history and the traditional legacy of the proud Acehnese people: It is a history of generations of Acehnese born amid war, of decades of betrayal by consecutive "outside" powers, and it has a very long list of undelivered promises.

Amid all this, one thing is clear: Military operations will not be able to address these problems, as has been proven in the past. House leaders should dig deeper into the core of the problem when they meet with the government before the end of this month.

Together, they should examine and exhaust all the non-military options that are available and not manipulate the problem into becoming a political tool to serve their own interests in next year's general elections.