Aceh Separatists Remain Defiant

By Stanley Hawkins

ACEH - Abdullah Syafie, 48, is a softly spoken man who wears wire-rimmed bifocals and carries an M-16 for protection. Flanked by masked bodyguards toting machine-guns, he resembles a Mafia Don.

Syafie describes himself as a military commander for the Free Aceh Independence Movement and after years of hiding, he has rallied his troops and redoubled his efforts to secede from Indonesia. Why now?

"If East Timor will become a free country then Aceh must also be free," Syafie explains, "If Aceh is free than all the other provinces that want to separate from Indonesia must be free as well. It's only logical."

Amid a delicate political transformation that has aggravated ethnic and religious tensions, Indonesia is counting down to East Timor's August 30 vote on independence, heightening separatist tensions in other regions.

Indonesia's resource-rich province of Aceh is embroiled in a bloody separatist insurgency that has killed more than 250 people in clashes this year and driven 140,000 into refugee camps.

Violence has intensified so quickly that Indonesian President Jusuf Habibie recently ordered his entire cabinet to visit Aceh and come up with an immediate solution. Nonetheless, Habibie, the architect of the East Timor ballot, has refused to hold a similar referendum in Aceh.

"East Timor never legitimately belonged to Indonesia," Habibie said, "but other provinces cannot try to separate or they will face the full fury of the armed forces."

To lose Aceh is not an alternative for Indonesia. Aceh guards the entryway to vital and lucrative shipping lanes in the strategic Strait of Malacca and houses the world's largest supply of natural gas, tapped by US energy giant, Mobil Oil.

The Acehnese played a crucial role in Indonesia's war for independence against the Dutch. They have a proud history of resisting foreign rule and Indonesia's attempts to subdue separatist sentiment and harness the province's resources have met fierce resistance.

The military launched a massive campaign to uproot the Free Aceh Independence Movement in the early 1990s, committing mass human rights abuses documented by international observers and recently admitted to by the military. Last year, dozens of Acehnese mass graves were discovered, offering indisputable proof of military abuses.

The fall of former President Suharto in May last year diverted attention from the province, leaving room for the Free Aceh Independence Movement to revive itself in the wake of the East Timor ballot agreement.

By May, Free Aceh had launched a string of ambush attacks on military personnel, prompting a crackdown and a threat to impose a state of emergency if separatist attacks did not end.

Seven thousand troops have been deployed in the area, despite local protests that the military wreaked more havoc than Free Aceh's guerrilla tactics.

One month ago, soldiers stormed a suspected Free Aceh village and killed 53 unarmed men, according to the military. Just last week, panicked soldiers sprayed a village with bullets and killed a 60-year-old man after troops thought they were under attack when two military trucks accidentally collided.

One soldier, grasping a head wound from the crash, looked around in confusion before murmuring, "This is a crazy war. I don't know what I'm doing here."

Syarwan Insyah, a 27-year-old villager who witnessed the incident, quickly packed his belongings and fled with his family to a refugee camp.

"Maybe I won't be safer there. Maybe both sides will kill us all there." He says, sitting astride a motorcycle overloaded with the last of his family's personal belongings, "But I can't wait here for the soldiers to shoot me."

The military insists, however, that they are defending against national disintegration, rather than sowing resentment against the Indonesian Government.

"It's kill or be killed," said Colonel Syafnil Armen of the Lhokseumawe command in East Aceh, "You cannot have a nation within a nation. Our job is to keep the nation united regardless of illegal actions by these rebels."

Nevertheless, even Aceh's military commanders recognize their forces cannot solve the problem and have appealed for more regional autonomy to placate separatist sympathizers.

Although the military has offered to meet him, Syafie, has flatly refused. He says negotiations are impossible with colonialist, imperialist Indonesia because it must then give up its colonies in East Timor, Aceh and Irian Jaya according to the United Nations Charter's right to self-determination.

"What has happened in East Timor is one step forward," he says as he rests an arm on his M-16, "Now we are ... asking for the same thing."

Stanley Hawkins is a freelance writer currently residing in Jakarta. He can be reached at stanleythawkins@gmail.com or visit: http://www.stanhawkins.com