Losing the Peace

The troubled peace that has prevailed in Indonesia’s bloody Aceh province for the past four months is on the verge of unraveling. Negotiations between the separatist Free Aceh Movement (known by its Indonesian acronym GAM) and the Indonesian government broke down last week over trivial scheduling and venue changes. Meanwhile, more than 25,000 Indonesian troops in Aceh went on high alert, and the country’s Navy chief warned that 14 warships could soon arrive off Aceh’s coast.

The government blames rebels for the flaring hostilities. Under a cease-fire brokered last December by the Geneva-based Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, GAM agreed to abandon its 26-year armed struggle and accept autonomy as a starting point for negotiations. But GAM’s leaders — possibly emboldened by East Timor’s successful breakaway from Jakarta in 1999 — continue to vow that Aceh will one day be a sovereign entity. What’s more, they have yet to begin disarming.

The rebels, for their part, accuse Indonesia’s military of sponsoring fresh violence — which has killed nearly 50 people in the past month — to scuttle negotiations and crush the uprising for good. Two offices for international monitors stationed in the country were attacked in April. Witnesses claim a mob of about 500 Javanese who set fire to the Joint Security Committee office in Langsa arrived in army trucks. We believe the differences between the two sides are still not that great, says Steve Daly, a Henry Dunant Centre spokesman. Nobody’s packing up yet. That kind of optimism is hard to maintain when talking stops and shooting begins.