Quotes of the Day

Bilal looks down at the bloody corpse of his neighbor, Mohammed Ishak, and says: "They must have hated him very much to put so many bullets into his body." Like other residents of Alue Bieng, an idyllically beautiful village in Indonesia's war-ravaged province of Aceh, Bilal heard the shots in the early hours of June 3 but didn't dare to venture outside until well past dawn. The sight that greeted him is so commonplace in Aceh as to be almost banal: Ishak, a 51-year-old farmer who was standing watch over Alue Bieng that night, was sprawled on a wooden platform used by the village's night watchmen, his T shirt pocked with bullet holes. Beneath the platform lay a pool of blood and the brass casings of the seven bullets that killed him.

Later that morning, Ishak's 20-year-old daughter covers him with a pink print cloth, which quickly turns crimson. The womenfolk then gather around the body and chant the Islamic prayer for the dead. The victim's mother and his 15-year-old son watch while his wife, Ainal Mardiah, sobs quietly. "I can't go home again, I'm very scared," she says over and over.

Ishak's wife has good reason to be scared, as do many of the province's 4 million residents. Although the Indonesian government formally lifted a yearlong state of martial law in Aceh in mid-May, there has been no discernible difference in the lives—and deaths—of ordinary Acehnese. The army has yet to announce the withdrawal of any of the approximately 50,000 soldiers and police sent in to crush the separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (also known by its Indonesian acronym G.A.M.). Bloody clashes are an almost daily occurrence, with security forces claiming to have killed 24 rebels in a single week in early June. Also unchanged is the steady stream of reports of mysterious civilian killings like Ishak's. Human-rights workers blame both sides for such deaths, although as one activist in Aceh puts it, if "their atrocities are on par in terms of quality, the military wins in terms of quantity."

The shadow of violence and death has hung over the fiercely proud Acehnese for centuries. The province never fully succumbed to rule by the Dutch colonialists who pacified the rest of the Indonesian archipelago, and since 1976, G.A.M. has been fighting doggedly for an independent state. The conflict has already cost the lives of 10,000-20,000 Acehnese.

But even by Aceh's standards, the past year has been grim, and there is scant promise of relief. Last May, after the collapse of peace talks, Jakarta launched a massive military campaign against G.A.M.—a move that many saw as politically expedient for President Megawati Sukarnoputri, bestowing upon her an image of toughness that would belie her reputation as a remote and indecisive leader. The campaign was also popular with senior army brass, still smarting at their loss of prestige and power after dictator Suharto's toppling in 1998. But the quick success the generals predicted was not to be. After a vicious initial round of fighting that left hundreds dead, the conflict settled down into a bloody stalemate: the security forces saturated the countryside, hoping to drive G.A.M. out of hiding and into the mountains, and conducted a brutal campaign against the separatists' civilian supporters. According to New York City-based Human Rights Watch, the military has killed hundreds of ordinary Acehnese—a charge the government denies. "If anyone is shot, it's because he is G.A.M.," says Colonel Ditya Sudarsono, spokesman for the martial-law administrator in Aceh. The military itself boasts that the campaign against the rebels has been a major success, claiming that more than 2,000 G.A.M. members have been killed and another 3,000 captured.

Others counter that G.A.M.—with its classic guerrilla tactics and extensive local support—is far from being a spent force. Matt Davies, a former Indonesia analyst for Australia's Department of Defence who is working on a book about Aceh, says the military may have killed as few as 600-700 separatists. He adds that the security forces may have reported only 10% of their own casualties, which would mean that the two sides have suffered similar losses. As evidence of G.A.M.'s resilience, Davies and others note that none of its senior officials have been captured and that the rebels are still receiving fresh clothes, money and arms from civilian supporters. That point was vividly illustrated recently, when G.A.M. released several hostages it had been holding; media coverage of the handover showed guerrillas who were well fed, clothed and armed, many of them carrying expensive satellite phones.

Even some Indonesian soldiers admit that G.A.M. is still a serious threat. Nasrudin, a 31-year-old marine captain who is Acehnese, is the military administrator for the region around Juli, a village in Biruen, one of the province's most dangerous battlegrounds. He acknowledges that the rebels in his area have proved tough to defeat: "We've managed to push them into the mountains temporarily, but they're still out there. You take the military away, and the whole place would be fully back in their control in an hour." Meanwhile, the impact of the past year is eerily evident on the streets of Juli. Almost all of the younger men have gone, with many of those who weren't jailed or killed having fled overseas or to other parts of Indonesia for safety. Others have joined G.A.M.

Ominously, the past year of bloodshed, dislocation and military law has only intensified the sense of alienation among ordinary Acehnese. "It's totally polarized what was left of civil society in Aceh so that there is effectively no third way between Jakarta and G.A.M.," warns Damien Kingsbury, an Indonesia specialist at Melbourne's Deakin University. Some hope the situation will improve after Indonesia's July 5 presidential election. Retired military chief Wiranto, one of the three leading candidates, told TIME that "the use of force" in Aceh is a mistake, noting: "the problem of Aceh is not a security problem but a problem of conscience. The issue is returning dignity to the Acehnese, giving them rights with a genuine regional autonomy." But in political opinion polls, Wiranto is currently lagging behind the top contender, former Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who supervised the imposition of martial law in Aceh. "There seems to be no way out," says Kingsbury. "It could take a generation before the two sides can get back to the negotiating table with any hope of success."

For its part, G.A.M. says its fighters can outlast anything the government throws at them. "It costs a lot of money to run a big campaign, and Indonesia's economy is weak," says a slight, soft-spoken G.A.M. representative who calls himself Tengku, a common honorific in Aceh. "We can wait until the money runs out. We have fought them for 27 years. We can fight on for three times that long until the Indonesians finally get tired and go home." But given the rate at which people are dying or fleeing the province, there will be far fewer Acehnese left to celebrate independence if it ever comes.

• Simon Elegant | Jakarta
• Jakarta has lifted martial law in Aceh, but the rebels remain undefeated and the killing continues on both sides