Martial law in Aceh serves military well

Martial law in Aceh serves military well

Otto Syamsuddin Ishak, Sociologist, Jakarta

The government has prioritized the extension of martial law
over an evaluation of achievements made in the last six months.
One could ask in jest: What party would most potentially be in a
state of emergency after Nov. 19, 2003? Would it be Aceh or
Indonesia, or perhaps the military, in connection with the
behavior of many of its personnel during the military operation?

The government arbitrarily produced a presidential decree on
martial law in Aceh but has failed to follow it up with policies
to solve the problem. It has, instead, decided to extend martial
law, based only on the opinion of legislators and demands
reportedly made by mobilized masses.

The government has virtually ignored any considerations
related to the total cost that the military operation has
incurred, as well as the political, economic and humanitarian
risks entailed for Aceh and also for Indonesia.

Coordinating Minister for Political and Social Affairs Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono said the above decision was made in the light
of a change in the guerrilla strategy adopted by the Free Aceh
Movement (GAM).

Lt. Gen. (ret) Kiki Syahnakri, former deputy army chief of
staff, has also argued that this extension is necessary "to
maintain the momentum of victory." How significant is this
victory? Does it include controlling the masses for military
purposes? Unless well managed, a successful military operation
under martial law would pose a threat from either the armed power
of GAM or the masses, similar to what happened after the status
of Aceh as a military operation region was lifted on Aug. 7,
1998. A desire to avenge the worst impacts of the operation, for
example, turned hundreds of young people into GAM supporters.

Presidential Decree No. 28/2003 was produced as a result of a
series of actions to transform an amicable solution to a conflict
to one that resorts to violence, as reflected in the collapse of
the agreement between the government and GAM in December 2002,
and the subsequent imposition of martial law.

During the imposition, the PDMD (local martial law
administration) may be construed as a military junta of sorts in
Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam.

The main problem is not whether the PDMD has submitted its
accountability report to Jakarta, the central martial law
administrator (PDMP). It is whether the officials involved in
PDMP -- Cabinet ministers, chief of the State Intelligence Agency
(BIN) and the chiefs of staff of the Army, Air Force and Navy --
have submitted their respective reports.

What are the positions of the regional police chief and the
chief of the operational executive command within the structure
of the central martial law administration? We have yet to have
any public explanation about this, let alone an accountability
report about the imposition of martial law from the parties that
lent their political support to it, such as legislators.

The twin targets of troop deployment are to stop GAM's attempt
to intensify terrorist acts, and to minimize GAM's military
power. According to the government, only 25 percent of GAM's
military power has been destroyed.

In law enforcement, there are two important achievements.
First, the police have concluded 844 official reports of
investigation. Trials in 375 cases have been completed and
sentences have been handed down to various suspects, ranging from
those accused of giving rice to GAM members to those serving as
negotiators (noncombatants).

Second, the military has managed to transform instances of
human rights violations into criminal offenses (rape) and into
cases involving nondisciplinary acts (violence against
civilians). Law enforcement has been applied largely to Acehnese
noncombatants and lay people (relatives of GAM personnel); this
has served to obscure the actual situation on the ground, in
which human rights have been seriously violated.

Meanwhile the political structure stipulated in the law on
special autonomy for Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam has been completely
ignored. Jakarta has instead decided to keep regents and
municipality heads in office, although their terms of office have
expired. The martial law administration has taken over the powers
of civilian district heads and given them to military officers.

The martial law administration has even worked in cooperation
with the province's leadership, which is known to be corrupt. The
use of the state and provincial budget in Aceh is almost without
transparency. This could bring down the credibility of the
central and local martial law administrations. The martial law
and military operations thus have nil accountability.

In general, the six-month military operation, which has seen
the deployment of some 50,000 troops at a cost of some Rp 6
trillion, has reached only 25 percent of the target. To be able
to achieve complete success within the same period of time, the
government would have to deploy some 200,000 troops at a cost of
about Rp 24 trillion, but then the number of civilian casualties
would likely be fourfold.

The success rate might drop if we took into account the
economic and humanitarian cost that Indonesia and Aceh would have
to sustain. Scores of Indonesians now live in poverty as they
have lost their livelihoods and have been forced to become
refugees.

The success rate might drop even further, given the cultural
cost (in relation to thousands of children being deprived of
proper school facilities) and the cost of allowing the collapse
of a civilian political structure brought about by the 1998
reform movement.

The success of the military operation is thus limited to the
capability of mobilizing people, first, to justify the collapse
of the December agreement; second, to strengthen the political
legitimacy of the military operations and third, to mobilize the
masses to support the continued military operations.

There are thus two hypotheses on why martial law has been
extended. First, the extension would ensure that the Acehnese
would remain in a state of emergency. They would continue to live
in uncertainty amid heightened terror, intensified kidnapping and
shock therapy, all forming part of intelligence operations and
warfare. In addition, they could always be mobilized to serve the
goal of a particular political party and benefit the military in
the upcoming general elections.

Second, if martial law were not extended, it would be the
military that would be in a state of emergency, as it would have
to brace itself against condemnation from victims of martial law
and criticism from human rights workers both at home and abroad.

The TNI would thus lose its bargaining power in the national
political arena. Thus, without martial law and its associated
military operation, the TNI would lack leverage for its political
maneuvers.