INDONESIA: Military Marching to Old Tune in Aceh – Analysts

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 1 2002 (IPS) - While on paper the Indonesian armed forces have stepped in line with the country’s political reforms since strongman Suharto’s ouster in 1998, the ground reality in the recent months suggests otherwise.

None illustrates this better than the situation in Aceh, the resource-rich province on the northern tip of Sumatra island where the Free Aceh Movement, known by its Indonesian acronym GAM, has been waging a separatist struggle against Jakarta since 1976.

Over the last two months, it has become increasingly clear that the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI), as the armed forces are called in Indonesian, is making its presence felt across Aceh to crush the independence movement as it did during the Suharto years.

A key means for doing this, critics say, is the re-establishment in January by the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri of the Iskandar Muda Regional Military Command in Aceh.

“Now the TNI can mobilise faster,” says Tommy Legowo of the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “It affirms a bigger role for the TNI in Aceh.”

Reyza Zain of the Aceh Referendum Information Centre, known by its Indonesian acronym SIRA, estimates the current troop strength at some 70,000 to “guard only 4.5 million people (in the province)”.

The heavy military presence in Aceh — which differs from past government initiatives that at one point included a reduction of troops – is generating worries about the direction of Indonesia’s democratic reforms.

Human rights violations linked to the TNI in Aceh are also fuelling concerns that the defence establishment still has the ability to march to the tune of the old order, where it was a powerful presence in Indonesia’s political culture.

“The situation in Aceh is proving to be a test case of the military reforms that have been implemented, and the current developments are worrying,” Legowo explains.

“Under the new reforms, it is the role of the police to deal with regional autonomy,” he asserts. “The same for internal insurgencies and ethnic conflicts: the police should be sent.”

This was among the changes in the military’s role approved by the government of former president Abdurrahman Wahid, Megawati’s predecessor whose appointment of a civilian as defence minister was the first such move since 1950.

Under the reforms to make the military accountable to civilian authority, the armed forces has been limited to national defence and protecting Indonesian territory from outside threats.

“By having the military in Aceh, the message is that the GAM’s struggle is seen as a threat to our territory,” Legowo adds.

However Muhammed Nur Djuli, communications director at the New York-based International Forum for Aceh (IFA), sees the military presence in the restive province from another point of view.

“The military wants to present itself to the political leadership in Jakarta that the nation needs it, and this naturally undermines all efforts for reform,” he adds. “The military is using Aceh as the last stand in confronting the reform movement.”

During the first three months of this year alone, more than 300 people have been killed in separatist-related violence, according to human rights monitors, a figure that portends a high number of deaths in 2002.

Last year, Aceh marked one of its bloodiest periods, with close to 1,700 deaths or double that of the previous year. Close to 10,000 people have been killed since the separatist struggle began.

In early March, for instance, soldiers killed a 33-year-old Acehnese after accusing him of refusing to show his identity card.

IFA’s Djuli says that there is a marginal difference between the situation in Aceh during the Suharto years and now.

This trend does not augur well for Indonesia’s reform agenda, which include the gradual elimination of the number of seats allotted to the military in the national and regional legislatures and the denial of posts in the bureaucracy to military officers. The armed forces’ political role in Indonesia is written in the Constitution.

What is most troubling to Withaya Sucharithanarugse, an Indonesian expert at the Institute of Asian Studies at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, is the backing the TNI enjoys from Megawati.

“While Wahid did a lot to scale down military authority in the regions, supporting demobilisation, Megawati appears to be re-instituting the old guard,” Withaya explains. “It is not encouraging, particularly at a time when Indonesia needs to ensure the TNI’s role in politics is in the past.”

Apart from re-establishing the Iskandar Muda Regional Command, which had been shelved by the 1980s, Megawati is perceived to be loyal to the military.

On Dec. 29 last year, she remarked in a speech on Indonesia’s Army Day that soldiers have a primary duty to defend the country and should not worry about charges of human rights abuse.

“Armed with the soldiers’ oath and existing laws, carry out your duties and responsibilities in the best possible manner without having to worry about human rights abuse,” Megawati said.

Since coming to power, she has twice extended the presidential decree that legitimises the military” role in Aceh. This decree was introduced during the Wahid period in April 2001.

Wahid’s approval of official military actions came after he had backed the negotiations for peace in Aceh, which commenced in Geneva in 2000. It also followed his plans for an autonomy package for the province, which promised greater control over its natural resources – a long-time demand of the Acehnese.

Some attribute Megawati’s willingness to stand by the armed forces to her needing it until she finishes her term in 2004, and to her credentials as a nationalist.

She wants to hold the republic together, prevent any dismemberment that separatism by Aceh or other any province would cause — and keep intact the nation as it was under her father, Indonesia’s founding President Sukarno.

“They (Megawati and the military) need each other. The armed forces need her for their protection and she is very silent on Aceh. In a sense, we don’t know where she clearly stands,” says Withaya.

But for Legowo, Megawati’s approach to Aceh does not augur well. “The government made that decision (re-establishing the military command) without consulting the people of Aceh,” he says. “As we have seen, it is not a popular decision.”

“Giving the TNI such power is dangerous because it can widen the conflict in Aceh due to its actions,” he adds.

“Under Suharto, Aceh was completely sealed from outside view,” he points out. “Massacres were performed at night and bodies hidden in mass graves. Today everything is in the open. Villagers are being beaten in public. Villagers are burnt down in open retaliation to attacks by (GAM).”

“The army is free to do whatever it wants under President Megawati,” affirms SIRA’s Zain. “Since for the TNI, the unification of Indonesia is absolute.”