Aceh pact falls short of rebel ambitions

It is indeed premature to confirm that the peace agreement signed in Geneva on December 8 between the representatives of the Indonesian government and representatives of the Free Aceh Movement (or Gerakan Aceh Merdaka, established in 1976) for ending one of the longest running civil wars in Southeast Asia will serve its purposes.

This is because similar historical experiences have always proved that once a certain government concludes a peace agreement with a particular armed rebel group, the latter emerges to show a current that opposes the agreement and pledges to continue the struggle against it with the claim that it does not meet all the demands that the fighters have been struggling for.

Thus, instead of establishing peace envisaged by the agreement, another kind of upheaval and disturbance is created and anyone who looks at things realistically and according to the arts of politics becomes a traitor or a coward who should be fought against without recognising his previous sacrifices for the sake of his country and people.

The Acehnese rebels, who have fought against the Indonesian state and army over the past 26 years, are not an exception to this rule. Although the literature of the Free Aceh Movement insist upon claiming that its members share a common consensus and there are no divisions within its ranks in terms of dealing with Jakarta or outlining the extent of their demands, and in spite of the mystery surrounding the movement's leaders, structures and decision making methods, what has so far been noted on the ground suggests otherwise.

Autonomous rule

Since Jakarta's announcement last January that it had started implementing an agreement with the rebels to give Aceh an autonomous rule within the single Indonesian entity, a faction among the rebels seemed to co-operate with the Indonesians while another faction loudly denounced the notion of compromise, continuing armed resistance and even attacking the joint preliminary administration made up of the symbols of the Indonesian government and former leaders of the resistance.

That is not to speak about the conflicting media reactions towards the peace process among the leaders of the armed movement abroad and their colleagues inside Indonesia, something that suggest the existence of power struggle within the movement.

In this context, it is useful to mention that following the illness and incapacity to carry out duties of the movement's founder and president, Teungku Hasan di Tiro, in 1997, the Stockholm-based leadership of the Free Aceh Movement was taken over by a handful of di Tiro's relatives and close friends.

This seemed to be unacceptable to many Acehnese figures in Europe, Malaysia, and Indonesia. As a result, an 11-member council came into being as a new collective leadership and genuine political inheritor of di Tiro.

Concerns

In addition to the above mentioned facts, the December 8 peace agreement does not provide for anything more than an expanded autonomy under international supervision, a fair division of wealth between Jakarta and the Aceh province, the latter's right to apply Islamic Sharia within the province, and free local elections to be held in 2004 to enable the Acehnese to elect their leaders of the autonomous administration.

This, of course, falls short of the rebels' ambitions which have been firmly expressed in their many documents, statements and publications throughout the years. In their literatures, the Acehnese rebels are insistent on advocating self-determination and a separate entity that enjoys full sovereignty as in the case of East Timor.

This alone gives rise to concerns about the emergence of a dispute over any form of compromise between Jakarta and the Acehnese other than giving the latter an independent state.

During the last 26 years, the Free Aceh Movement successfully stressed three key issues to gain support and sympathy from abroad. By focusing on incidents of human rights violations and heavy-handed security repression by the regime of former Indonesian President Ahmed Suharto (particularly during the 1980s) the movement succeeded in winning the sympathy of human rights groups and organisations in the West which have opened their doors and mass media for the movement's leaders.

Through their focus on the organised looting of the Aceh resources and wealth (especially the natural gas which is available in huge quantities and oil which is produced at the rate of 1.5 million barrels daily) by the Suharto regime and devoting such resources for the benefit of the Javanese who dominate Indonesia's destiny, the movement won the sympathy of the people of other Indonesian provinces who have always complained of discrimination at the hands of the Javanese.

Finally, through advocating the slogan of creating an Islamic state in Aceh, the movement was able to win the backing of political groups and organisations in the Arab and Islamic worlds whose literatures advocate the same goal in their own countries.

The irony here lies in the fact that these organisations have been accustomed to ringing the warning bells in the case of East Timor on the grounds that the Timorese fight for independence was no more than a foreign plot designed to divide the Indonesian Muslim entity.

However, they have not looked at the Aceh separatist attempts from the same perspective, showing a clear double standard. Of course, the reason is clear and simply calls for no harm in dividing Muslim Indonesia if the tool is Islamic and the price is the creation of a pure Islamic entity no matter how fragile this entity is. But anything to the contrary is unacceptable regardless of the excuses and complaints.

Perhaps what gives an additional reason for pessimism among the observers of Indon-esian affairs regarding the success of the peace process is the strong belief of the Acehnese (about 5 million people living in an area of 183,000 square miles within the island of Sumatra) that they are a great nation with a distinguished identity and culture and glorious past, hence they cannot be a part of another country even with an autonomous rule.

Such a belief is based on a number of old historical facts which have been disfigured by events and changes of more than a century, but which makes its disappearance difficult even with assuming the decline of the Javan domination, the establishment of the principles of justice in the distribution of wealth, and the application of the rules of Shariah.

Artificial national identity

For further elaboration of the point, it is sufficient to read the publications of Aceh Free Movement and the early statements of its founder.

According to these publications and statements, Indonesia is not a homogeneous entity and has an artificial national identity as a result of the merger of all the provinces that were occupied by the Dutch in Southeast Asia in one central state in 1949 under the domination of the people of Java, Indonesia's biggest province in terms of area and population.

In other words, the Acehnese deny the existence of an Indonesian nation based on one history, a single culture, one ethnic origin and harmonious political, economic and socia