On war against GAM

The Jakarta Post on April 13 published an article that said religious leaders and Muslim scholars were urging the government to leave the Aceh question to civilians in order to avoid war between the Indonesian military and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

The call from these prominent people surprises me and makes me wonder about the motive for the call.

In my opinion this call is completely pointless because our Republic, since its establishment in 1945, has been a civilian republic and not a military state and never will be one.

Everything is decided by civilians, the government is civilian, the House of Representatives and the People's Consultative Assembly are civilian organizations, and they are the ones who map out the road to be followed by the country.

Given this, why is it so urgent to urge the government to leave Aceh to civilians. The military is only carrying out orders and has to obey what is decided by the civilians.

In this era of reform, the military has been put back in its place as a professional organization banned from playing politics. So what is the urgency of the call from religious leaders and Muslim scholars urging the government to leave Aceh to civilians? Are the civilians reluctant to bear the responsibility of all the failures Indonesia has experienced in Aceh for the last 30 years, and therefore want to blame the military?

This conclusion is based on the reasoning expressed by these leaders. They say they want to avoid a war between the military and GAM.

Take the Middle East as an example. I think that we all know that what is happening at this moment in the Middle East is a war between the U.S. and Iraq and not a war between the U.S. armed forces and the Iraqi army, or between the Australian armed forces and the Iraqi army.

Likewise, the demonstrations all over the world are not criticizing the coalition military. The demonstrators are carrying statues of George Bush leading a dog with the face of John Howard, not statues of the generals leading the soldiers in the real war.

If the government decides to stop the military operations, then the military will stop fighting and the civilians can continue their dialog. But do not forget what GAM said about their fight for independence and most importantly how the Acehnese are suffering.

SOEGIH ARTO, Jakarta