Andreas Harsono

The Asian tsunami brought the proverbial winds of change to Indonesia by focusing international attention on the festering conflict in Aceh province and creating conditions for a political settlement that may yet instruct other ethnic groups. Many would call the deal between the Indonesian government and the Free Acheh Movement (GAM), signed in Helsinki on Sunday a ‘sell-out’ but it is hard not to spot in it a model that could be replicated as Jakarta moves to deal with other regional movements in this far-flung archipelago. Just about a week after the tsunami struck the coasts of Aceh the first round of talks began to take place in Helsinki under the auspices of former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, government negotiators were surprised by GAM leaders saying they were ready to contest elections, rather than push for independence. Suddenly, for the first time in 30 years there was an end in sight to one of Southeast Asia’s bloodiest conflicts that had already consumed 15,000 lives.

About three or four years ago intellectuals began suggesting that the way forward to end the armed conflict lay in tapping on the interest shown by GAM to form a regional party based in Aceh. GAM is the Malay acronym of the Free Aceh Movement. They claimed that Indonesia had become a vehicle for a ‘’Javanese nation’’. Javanese form the ethnic majority in Indonesia and are based on the island of Java where the capital is located. When Hasan di Tiro, the head of GAM, declared an independent ‘Acheh’ in 1976 he started out by using a different spelling ‘Acheh’ rather than ‘Aceh’ as a mark of distinct identity. Later, many Achenese realised that their land was resource rich and that much of its income was being siphoned away to Java and Jakarta.

Before long the Indonesian army cracked down hard on the rebels. Since the 1980s, human rights groups have been accusing the Indonesian army of executions, torture, rape and collective punishment. But the tsunami changed all that with thousands of foreigners pouring into flooded Aceh. As with the Tamil Eelam cause in Sri Lanka, the international community wanted reconstruction efforts to go hand in hand with the peace process. But under Indonesian law, parties must be headquartered in Jakarta and have branches in more than half of Indonesia’s 33 provinces. Indonesian Information Minister Sofyan Djalil, although himself an Acehnese and a negotiator in Helsinki, rejected the GAM proposal for a ‘’national Aceh party.’’ Djalil argued that Indonesia never had a place for ethnic or regional political parties. He was wrong. In Indonesia’s first election in 1955, ethnic-based parties were accepted and contestants included the Daya Party, which represented the Dayak tribes on Kalimantan Island. But it is still a long way from peace as the Helsinki deal is to demand socialisation and implementation measures. Will the Java-based parties support the deal? How will Yudhoyono overcome his stubborn army? Only time can provide the answers to these questions. — IPS