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High-stakes talks over peace in
Aceh
By Bill Guerin
JAKARTA - Tsunami-devastated Aceh, which
only a month ago was a war zone, has now become
the testing ground for a concerted push to
persuade the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM),
which has been fighting for independence, to lay
down its arms.
A top-level ministerial
team from Indonesia left for Finland on Wednesday
to prepare for a planned three days of peace talks
in Helsinki with the exiled leaders of the
guerilla campaign, including self-styled Aceh
prime minister Malik Makhmud and minister of
foreign affairs Zaini Abdullah.
Although
the natural disaster has left at least 95,000 dead
and 133,000 missing, presumed dead in Indonesia,
the toll in human life from the separatist
conflict in that country has also been horrendous,
with at least 14,000 people, mostly civilians,
killed during 29 years of fighting.
Prior
to the tsunami, Aceh had received scant attention,
if any, from Washington. But since disaster
struck, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a
former US ambassador to Jakarta, has indicated
that Washington expects the impasse between the
government and the rebels to be resolved - and
soon. The talks, scheduled to begin as early as
Friday, will mark the first time the two sides
have come together to discuss a resolution to the
conflict since the breakdown of a peace accord in
May 2003.
The team from Indonesia is
headed by Admiral Widodo Adi Sutjipto,
coordinating minister of security. State Minister
of Communication and Information Sofyan A Djalil,
an Acehnese by birth, and Minister of Justice and
Human Rights Hamid Awaluddin, who is close to Vice
President Yufuf Kalla, accompany Sutjipto, who
commanded the Indonesian Defense Forces (TNI)
during the Abdurrahman Wahid administration from
October 1999 to June 2002.
Awaluddin is to
be the chief negotiator in the talks. Foreign
Minister Hassan Wirajuda and former Aceh military
commander Major General Syarifuddin Tippe are also
part of the delegation. Martti Ahtisaari, the
former Finnish president, will mediate the talks
through his Crisis Management Initiative group.
The stakes in Helsinki
Though a GAM
official has been quoted as saying that the Helsinki
meeting should focus only on reaching a ceasefire,
in reality the stakes are much higher.
To describe GAM's position as weak would be
grossly understating the reality that they now
have nowhere to run.
The rebels have been
fighting for an independent state for the 4
million or so people of Aceh. But independence is
not on the table now, nor is it likely ever to be.
The government has long discounted any chance of
an East Timor-style referendum, which resulted in
the loss of a province and a vast swath of the
military's business empire.
Thus, any
proposals from Jakarta are likely only to be based
on a very special autonomy package, a variation on
the existing autonomy given by former president
Megawati Sukarnoputri in June 2002, which allows
the province to impose Islamic law and keep a
greater share of the revenue generated by its vast
natural resources. GAM agreed to use that autonomy
deal as a starting point, but also said it wanted
nothing short of independence.
GAM appears
to recognize that its leaders, exiled in Sweden,
will be negotiating from a weak position. Their
main spokesman in Aceh, Sofyan Dawood,
acknowledged on Tuesday that although they were
still fighting for their "mission" for
independence, they welcomed any means besides
violence and armed contact to solve the matter.
Any moral high ground the rebels may have held up
until now is rapidly disappearing under a massive
onslaught of foreign aid being delivered to their
beloved province by their mortal enemy, the TNI,
whose "mission" is still to "crush" them out of
existence.
The army's territorial network,
with commands all the way down to the district
levels, served in the past to help maintain
internal security, but in the last month it has
proved to be of immense value as a conduit for
distributing aid. Foreign troops and international
aid workers also are on the ground in droves
helping the Acehnese people. It all adds up to a
big loss of face for the separatists, who claim to
represent the people of Aceh and to be thinking
only of them in these tragic circumstances.
Minister of Defense Juwono Sudarsono, who
became the first-ever civilian defense minister
when appointed by Wahid in 1999, added to
perceptions of the rebels as the bad guys when
praising the military. "I see pictures of TNI
troops and foreign military personnel where they
are working together in foreign magazines. It
really made me feel proud," said Sudarsono, who
was not invited to the peace talks.
Pursuits to peace in Aceh
The
government's commitment to sue for peace has been
unwavering since the disaster. President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono has met ambassadors from the
United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Sweden,
Singapore and even Libya, where several rebels
were trained in the past, to suss out how best to
deal with the Aceh issue.
Legislators are
also largely behind the drive for peace. Hidayat
Nurwahid, speaker of the country's highest
legislative body, the People's Consultative
Assembly (MPR), said on Wednesday that the Aceh
problem was one for Indonesia to resolve and he
hoped that the Helsinki talks would have a major
impact on the chances for peace.
According
to Nurwahid, the talks should also aim at
minimizing incidents that have increased the
chances of aid not being delivered to those in
need.
Separately, the leader of the House
of Representatives (DPR), Agung Laksono, said he
hoped the talks would lead to a momentum that
would produce an end to the conflict once and for
all. "Not only a temporary halt to the conflict,
but also an end to all combat there," he said.
Though he currently enjoys a massive
popular mandate from his people and, for the
moment, has the support of most politicians,
Yudhoyono, dubbed the "thinking general", faces a
difficult task persuading the military top brass
to go along with his moves to seek a settlement
with the rebels.
Army chief General
Ryamizard Ryacudu, a staunch nationalist, has been
quoted by local media as saying he did not
understand the government's call for fresh peace
talks with the rebels because the conflict could
only be resolved if GAM put down its weapons and
abandoned its fight for independence. "If GAM
refuse to give up, then we strike them. Why is it
so difficult?" the general asked.
Nonetheless, TNI has failed abjectly in
its counter-insurgency operations to wipe out the
separatists. Though GAM never discusses its troop
strength, independent estimates suggest that
little more than 2,500 rebel troops remain active
on the ground in Aceh.
Should GAM reject
the terms of any new peace deal, for whatever
reason, it will end up as public enemy No 1, not
only in the eyes of TNI, the central government,
and the Indonesian people, including the Acehnese
themselves, but also, perhaps fatally for the
movement, in the eyes of the United States.
While Yudhoyono, one of the last
Indonesian officers to train in the US and a
graduate of two US military schools, is anxious to
improve relations with Washington, many say the US
has entered the fray over Aceh far too soon and
much too harshly.
Breaching the sovereign
privilege of an independent nation by interfering
in domestic affairs is nothing new for the
administration of President George W Bush, but it
seems the height of folly for Wolfowitz, who
should have known better than to ruffle feathers
and threaten TNI at a time when diplomacy is the
order of the day all around.
"If the
military gets in the way of that, then the
military should be pushed to get out of the way,"
Wolfowitz said during an interview last week on
the Australian PBS network program News
Hour, after calling for a political resolution
of "that" problem in Aceh.
Still, it could
all work out for the bestin the end and, as
Wolfowitz commented in one of his more thoughtful
moments, give meaning to the tragedy by moving
toward a better future.
Bill
Guerin, a weekly Jakarta correspondent for
Asia Times Online since 2000, has worked in
Indonesia for 19 years in journalism and editorial
positions. He has been published by the BBC on
East Timor and specializes in business/economic
and political analysis in Indonesia.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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