Exhaust all non-military options

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withdrawn from the accord.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.