The Aceh quagmire
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.