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.