NOVEMBER 22, 1999 VOL. 154 NO. 20

Heading for the Exit
Jakarta searches for a way to hang onto Aceh--and to hold the republic together
By NISID HAJARI

When Abdurrahman Wahid stood in Banda Aceh last September under a massive banner that read referendum! and said the Acehnese people deserve a chance to decide for themselves whether they want to remain part of Indonesia, he was a respected opposition leader. On Nov. 4, when he said essentially the same thing, he was President. The first declaration won him a spot in the heart of many Acehnese. The second has landed him in hot water.

"Gus Dur should not voice his personal opinion, because it is taken as a political decision by the Acehnese," says prominent human rights activist Munir, referring to the President by his nickname. Only days after Wahid's statement that he did not dispute the right of Aceh--the prickly and proud region that caps the northern tip of Sumatra--to have a referendum on independence, more than 1 million Acehnese rallied in the provincial capital Banda Aceh to demand just that. Organizers say the President's words gave impetus to the peaceful demonstration, which drew a huge chunk of the province's 4 million people. Now the turnout has ratcheted up the pressure on Wahid, who continues to insist that he cannot philosophically oppose a referendum, though he may not in reality be able to offer it. "Gus Dur is creating chaos," says Rosita Noer, a member of the commission charged with investigating past military abuses in Aceh. "Don't make any more promises. Enough have been broken."

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Those pledges, made and shattered by others, have backed Wahid into the first major crisis of his young presidency. Back in the 1950s, President Sukarno promised Aceh autonomy for its role in the independence struggle, but he made the province a "Special Area" in name only. His successor Suharto vowed to raise living standards and expand religious freedom in the devoutly Muslim province; instead, he drained the region of its oil and gas revenues and sent troops to crush rebels agitating for the imposition of Islamic law. Last March, Suharto's successor B.J. Habibie apologized for that decision. In July, soldiers surrounded the home of religious leader Teungku Bantaqiah in West Aceh and opened fire, killing him and at least 50 followers. "We have customs in our culture where we forgive and forget, and I believe the people of Aceh had forgiven the army," says local activist Muhammad Gade Ismail. "But they never gave us time to forget before they took the lives of our people again."

That kind of brutality has transformed the independence cause. The thousands who flocked to Banda Aceh were called not by the rebels of the Free Aceh Movement--who, after a decade of military repression, number less than 5,000--but by the Aceh Referendum Information Center (sira), a group formed only this past February. Muhammad Nazar, 26, a former Arabic teacher, is typical of sira's leadership. He was a high school student in the early 1990s, at the height of the army's unforgiving campaign. "Seeing one or two dead bodies on the roadside on the way to school was pretty common," he says. At night Nazar would be awakened by the clatter of army helicopters overhead and at times by troops who slapped and kicked him and doused him with icy water. According to Noer's Independent Commission on the Investigation of Violence in Aceh, at least 4,000 Acehnese were killed in the nine years that the province was a Military Operations Area. The psychological damage was even more widespread--and has made the average citizen an activist. Says Otto Syamsuddin Ishak, an Acehnese rights crusader: "For a lot of ordinary people in the villages, 'independence' does not necessarily mean political independence but simply freedom from repression and violence--freedom to have a normal life."

That simple demand, though, has not received a simple answer. Wahid has promised to withdraw all special troops from the province, and the armed forces were conspicuous by their absence during last week's rally. Noer's commission has recommended that military officials be tried for human rights violations in five incidents since 1996, including the massacre at Teungku Bantaqiah's house. "If there has been any wrongdoing by soldiers, it is in the interest of the military to see justice carried out," says Lieut. General Agus Widjojo, the army's chief of territorial affairs. But many analysts agree that the military is unlikely to sacrifice any but lower-ranking officers to the court. Some wonder just how many commanders support Wahid's contention that force will no longer work in Aceh. "How can we solve the problem only through a cultural and economic approach when they [the rebels] have guns and are killing people?" asks Widjojo.

Jakarta has sent out similarly mixed signals regarding the province's other chief complaint--that the Acehnese enjoy little of their province's natural wealth. Indonesia is the world's largest producer of liquefied natural gas, and an estimated 30% of its output comes from the vast Arun gas fields in northern Aceh. The fields generate $4 million a day in revenues. Yet Aceh has traditionally gotten back only around 5% of its tax revenues. A bill passed earlier this year would return up to 30% of earnings from forestry, oil and gas to the province, and Wahid more recently has vowed that he would allow Aceh to keep 75%. But no one has said whether Aceh would then be expected to furnish a larger percentage of its local budget (Jakarta currently pays 70%) or how the central government would support less fortunate provinces without the money generated by wealthier ones.

The question, in fact, is not so much whether Aceh could survive without Indonesia as the reverse. Unlike newly independent East Timor, says historian Taufik Abdullah, "Aceh was one of the founders of the Republic of Indonesia, and if it were no longer a part of the country, it would set a very dangerous precedent." Aceh's secession would cut the last psychological tether holding provinces like Riau and Irian Jaya to the center. (In Irian Jaya last Friday, 3,000 people turned out for a pro-referendum rally in the capital Jayapura.) Jakarta would have neither the moral authority to refuse these provinces independence, nor the military might to hold them against their will. The shrunken Indonesia that would result would be hobbled by its poorest and most overpopulated islands. International powers have no interest in seeing that happen--not least because an independent Aceh would control access to the Straits of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

What that means, of course, is that Jakarta is unlikely ever to keep the one promise that Aceh wants to hear. Military brass have, unsurprisingly, declared that a referendum on independence will not be allowed. Jakarta's newly assertive legislature has also warned the President against promising more than he can constitutionally deliver. At the same time most ordinary Indonesians--and even many Acehnese living outside the province--oppose secession, which gives both groups solid popular backing for their stance.

That leaves Wahid's ministers the unenviable task of squelching the appetites their President has whetted. Acehnese Hasballah Saad, the human rights minister Wahid ordered to the province over the weekend, has already begun to backtrack. "When a person who hasn't eaten well for a long time is given food, he wants to eat everything," he says. "We have to be rational." Like Wahid, Saad does not dispute Aceh's right to have something called a referendum. But, he says, "we're not talking about substance yet, rather a mechanism for solving the problem." The President may be hoping that his personal credibility alone will persuade the Acehnese to settle for less than they are asking. Talking his way out of trouble, however, is going to take more than the few words that got him into it.

Reported by Zamira Loebis/Banda Aceh and Jason Tedjasukmana/Jakarta