The Aceh quagmire

On Monday at around dawn, five riot troops were ambushed and shot dead by rebels in the village of Reng Krueng in the troubled Pidie regency, about 170 kilometers east of the provincial capital of Banda Aceh. Another 20 soldiers were wounded in the clash. The rebels, about 10 in number, escaped into the nearby forest. Unfortunately, this attack occurred as efforts were under way to begin the peace process between rebels and the government, with talks scheduled to begin in Bangkok this weekend.

Monday's incident was but the latest in a series of deadly skirmishes involving security personnel and separatists from the Free Aceh Movement. It is unlikely that it will be the last. What is much more likely, given the established pattern, is that government troops will hunt down the insurgents and possibly kill a few of them in the process. Retaliation will follow and unsuspecting soldiers or police officers may die in ambushes by the rebels.

And so the conflict will continue to spiral out of control and escalate in violence, as will the people's growing feeling of injustice and discontent -- unless, of course, the peace effort in Bangkok bears fruit.

However, peace is unlikely until the Acehnese can somehow be convinced that given promises will be kept and justice done, as well as being given a great enough say in the administration of their province so they no longer feel like Jakarta's milching cow.

All this may look easy enough to accomplish on paper, yet our experience of the past months has shown the opposite to be true. It was only a few months ago that Indonesian Military Commander Gen. Wiranto visited Aceh and promised to investigate charges of past human rights abuses by the military, punish those found guilty of committing abuses and withdraw all but the most needed military personnel from the province. While there has been a partial withdrawal of troops, there has been little or no effort to set right past human rights abuses.

More recently, President Habibie made a much publicized visit to the province and made similar promises to the Acehnese. Among other things, the President promised to bring to justice all those guilty of human rights abuses in Aceh. Perhaps even more relevant, he assured the Acehnese that acts of violence committed by military personnel against civilians would no longer occur. Both promises have turned out to be little more than empty rhetoric.

Lamentably, the people who suffer the most in all this are those who are ignorant of politics and care about little more than ensuring a decent, peaceful life for both themselves and their families. Human rights activists in Banda Aceh claim that from 1989 when Aceh became a Military Operations Region to last year when the operations were ended, at least 8,107 cases of human rights abuses occurred in the province. They included 1,457 deaths, 1,958 missing persons, 3,430 cases of torture and 128 rapes.

Figures published earlier this month revealed that about 60,000 people, mostly from the troubled regencies of Pidie and North Aceh, had been forced to abandon their villages in recent months and find refuge in towns and cities. It will not be easy to send these people back to their villages as long as the security situation remains uncertain, or to resettle them in other regions of Indonesia with which they are unfamiliar.

Essentially, what the Acehnese demand is justice; no more and no less. One could well ask what is so difficult about granting the Acehnese this one legitimate demand, particularly if the peace of the region and the cohesion of the nation is at stake. On the other, it is easy to see that certain circles within the country's officialdom are shrinking away from having to accept the possible implications a revelation of past abuses could have.

In any case, there seems to be no other choice than to bite the bullet and do what has to be done. If there is to be an enduring solution to the Aceh question, it must be found fast. The more time is lost, the more difficult it will be to rise out of the quagmire.