"The Aftermath in Aceh"
Sylvia Tiwon and Ben Terrall, Indonesia Alert

Thousands missing, refugee camps lacking food and water, mass graves: in the aftermath of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean basin on December 26, 2004, these images have come to identify Aceh in the world's eyes. As of this writing, more than 80,000 Acehnese are reported killed by the disaster; hundreds of thousands are displaced, facing disease and starvation. Data from Aceh's southwestern coast, nearest the epicenter, is only beginning to emerge due to destruction of already poor infrastructure in those isolated communities.As the area suffering the most direct hit from the great quake and the
colossal waves, Aceh was strangely missing from early reports of the
catastrophe, although we quickly learned that Exxon's liquefied natural gas
(LNG) plants were safe. Only part of this can be blamed on the international
media penchant to zoom in on English-speaking tourists and celebrities at
exclusive resorts, for the province has been virtually closed to
international press and humanitarian agencies since the Indonesian military
occupation of the region began.

The 1971 discovery of LNG in Aceh yielded large revenues, virtually all
going to the central government in Jakarta and multinational corporations.
People living near LNG facilities suffered land expropriations, serious
environmental devastation and atrocities at the hands of the Indonesian
military (TNI).

Resentment over TNI brutality and scanty local compensation for resource
extraction contributed to the October 1976 formation of the armed Free Aceh
Movement (GAM), known formally as the Aceh/Sumatra National Liberation
Front. GAM, whose platform was predominantly secular, declared Aceh's
independence. From 1989 to 1998, Aceh was declared a Military Operations
Area, and police and military targeted the civilian population as a means of
destroying GAM.

After the pro-democracy movement drove the dictator Suharto from office in
1998, political space opened across the archipelago. This allowed a growing
nonviolent political movement to develop in Aceh, and in 1999 more than one
million people (almost a quarter of the province's population) peacefully
demonstrated in Banda Aceh, the capital, to demand a referendum on the
region's political future. The TNI subsequently once again targeted
political activists, human rights defenders, teachers and other civilians
for imprisonment, kidnappings and murder.

An official "military emergency" was replaced by a "state of civil
emergency" (darurat sipil) on May 18, 2004. The main change this entailed
was an ostensible shift from military to police authority. Unfortunately for
the people of Aceh, police independence from TNI has been minimal, with one
of the most notorious police units, the Mobile Brigade (Brimob), remaining
highly militarized. At this point, it remains unclear whether the "civil
emergency" has been lifted to enable free movement of aid workers, emergency
supplies and funds into the area.

On December 29, Coordinating Minister for Politics, Law and Security, Widodo
explained that the government would pursue "efforts to alleviate the
catastrophe without abandoning the state of alert in order to ensure the
security and order of the society." Reports from NGOs and local activists
indicate that bureaucratic barriers continue to hamper aid efforts. Human
Rights Watch/Asia notes that the Indonesian government is only granting
two-week visas for aid workers. While a few national and international aid
workers have been able to enter, most rescue supplies and volunteers remain
stranded in airports outside Aceh.

For the crucial first two to three days after the tsunami hit, the
Indonesian government did little beyond making prerequisite television
appearances to provide relief to the hard-hit population. As previously
barred, scrappy grassroots activists travel to Aceh to provide help in the
fight against hunger and disease, well paid functionaries in Jakarta
continue to waste valuable time in high-profile but less than productive
meetings and telegenic press conferences.

Refugee camps, missing loved ones, and mass graves have become part of a
dreadful yet familiar pattern for many Acehnese. While nature wreaked almost
unimaginable havoc in a matter of hours, it did so on a terrain already
scarred by acts of violence only the human mind can concoct and enact in the
name of security and order -- and business interests. What Amy Goodman
called a "man-made catastrophe" on Democracy Now (Dec. 29, 2004) has
involved systematic application of torture, rape, and abduction on unarmed
civilians and human rights workers.

While the earthquake destroyed many buildings, military and paramilitary
violence chose its sites and, in a particularly warped strategy, singled out
schools for destruction. The impact of such attacks on Aceh's future cannot
be underestimated. Many aid specialists appearing on television this week
spoke of the importance of efforts to return children to a state of normalcy
to work through trauma. But for innumerable Acehnese children, the trauma
of terror, loss of parents, dislocation and deprivation has been the
"normal" state for over two decades.

Nature's immense destructive force has also dismantled some structural
elements of the administration of state terror, including tracking of
special identity cards the military imposed upon Acehnese in classic
counter-insurgency techniques of discrimination and intimidation. And the
central government in Jakarta has been forced to take over direct
responsibility for Aceh. Civil society throughout Indonesia has responded
with strong solidarity action, gathering funds and volunteers for Aceh. It
has taken the irresistible power of nature to finally open this battle-weary
region of northern Sumatra to national and international attention and
assistance. It may well be the opening required to take the people of Aceh
-- and Indonesia -- out of the clutches of the violent zero-sum game of
armed conflict and military repression.

Sylvia Tiwon is an Associate Professor in the South and Southeast Asian
Studies Department at UC Berkeley.

Ben Terrall is a writer and activist based in San Francisco.