What is going on?

Currently the GAM and the TNI, Tentara Nasional Indonesia (the Indonesian military) are fighting. The GAM is fighting for independence from the Indonesian government. One of the major complaints of the GAM is that the provice of Aceh is not seeing any of the profits from the oil resources off the coast. Obviously there are more than just political differences which the Acehan people fight over.

The brutality of the fighting is clear from outside sources. Once inside Indonesia things get more complicated. The Indonesian government has tried to reign in its military but with little success. There has been little success because since the reorganization of the government after the economic crisis in 1998, the military has not been held accountable for its human rights violations. Until 2000 there has been a military leader as the President. When the democratic revolution occured, a pact occured between the Indonesian military and those calling for a true democracy. The pact gaurenteed democracy as long as the military was never tried for its war crimes or human rights violations. (The first president that did not obey this pact by trying some of the military leaders was kicked out of office.)

The planned lack of accountability surrounding the Indonesian military has allowed the TNI to grow unethical and uncontrollable. When collecting the dead after a confrontation it is impossible to tell whose casualties are whose. This is because both sides dress the same, cleverly and intentionally done so that both can claim to have killed more men, or have lost more men, depending on what the situation calls for. There are no reliable facts about how many each side has lost, or killed, or when fights have even occurred. The latter is because there are factions in the GAM and sometimes the TNI will claim that they were not involved in a bombing, or a conflict, but that instead it was two warring GAM factions.

The leader of the GAM, and the Acehan government, Malik Mahmud, though in exile, has been active in this conflict. Last year, on May 16, 2004, he formally declared that the military occupation of Aceh by the Indonesian government was an act of war. He refers to GAM as TNA, not as a rebelling force but as the proper military of the State of Aceh, and he pledges that they will continue to fight the Indonesian military. But he also says that he is looking for a “peaceful solution.”

The solution that Mahmud is looking for however, is one of independence for Aceh. The Indonesian government has offered partial autonomy twice and Mahmud has refused it. Compromise seems unreachable, and so warring between the GAM, or TNA and the TNI, the Indonesian military, continues.

Indonesian soldiers

Achean Fighters

On the left is Prime Minister Malik Mahmud, and on the right is Zaini Abdullah the Foreign Minister.