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Like many theatres of civil war across the world, Aceh’s war-time economy featured widespread corruption among and collusion between the government and rebels. Edward Aspinall, a politics professor at Australia National University, explained: “On the surface, GAM and state officials fought each other in a deadly conflict; below the surface, they were locked in an intimate embrace, seeking mutual economic advantage.”
***Photo: Jefri Aries/IRIN | An Acehnese resident rides on a bridge guarded by the army in Krueng Raba, Aceh Besar (File photo 2004)
On 15 August 2005, less than eight months after the disaster, a peace deal (MOU) was signed between GAM and Jakarta, including provisions to disarm the rebels, and that Aceh would not be independent but “self-governed,” including being allowed to form local political parties there, which Jakarta had previously outlawed.
GAM retained substantial political clout in peace time, including by what Aspinall called “predatory exploitation of post-tsunami and post-conflict reconstruction” to win contracts and dole out jobs and money to ex-combatant networks.
Irwandi, who had initially fled Aceh so as not to be apprehended again, won Aceh’s governorship in December 2006, largely thanks to young GAM-aligned voters. He took a hard line against corruption and even banned logging (a major income source for GAM and TNI during the war).
According to the International Crisis Group (ICG) in 2007, Irwandi was “popular and free from any taint of corruption or abuse of power but is coming under fire for… having no idea of how to make or implement policy.” Divisions within GAM’s political operations were quickly deepening, and public dissatisfaction with former rebels governing was growing.
Peace dividend rotting?
Political squabbling (including GAM supporters splitting into two parties in 2012) and weak governance has meant Aceh continues to be tormented by sluggish development, low-level violence and intimidation, and growing popular dissatisfaction.
The main GAM party retains what the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), a Jakarta-based think tank, called “a grassroots-based political structure that no party could rival… far more resources than other parties… [and] no hesitation about using intimidation and violence”.
However, despite these attributes, May 2014 elections showed a slump in support. IPAC noted that “five years in power have not brought much tangible improvement to the lives of ordinary Acehnese, poverty remains endemic, and corruption is rife, as is extortion by former GAM commanders of local businesses and public works projects.”
Beginning in 2008 Aceh received a Special Autonomy Fund (SAF) from the central Indonesian government, pegged as a percentage of oil revenues worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and “intended to fund the development and maintenance of infrastructure, people economic empowerment, poverty eradication, and finance the education, social, and health sectors.”
In 2012 a researcher at the Institute of Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies (ICAIOS) found, however, that ineffective planning for SAF funds in its first two years had increased the Human Development Index gap between Aceh and the rest of Indonesia.
According to Farabi, even with Jakarta delivering this special autonomy budget to Banda Aceh for the province’s discretionary use, “the mentality among politicians now is that this – all of this – is our money. We can take it and do what we please with it because it’s our compensation for our own suffering.”
Farabi told IRIN that while GAM members had shown political competence during peace negotiations, their leaders have not been able to work as effectively when in government. “There’s no commitment to using [state funds] for development – that is our emergency today.”
Dissatisfaction continues to fester among former combatants as well. In recent months, some ex-GAM factions have threatened to take up arms due to their disappointment with the government.
A former GAM soldier living in the eastern coastal city of Biruen showed IRIN a video clip on his phone from the late 1990s with TNI soldiers beating Acehnese men in public.
“We did not win this war, we settled for peace. And then all the money came to recover this place and was wasted.” [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
This is the second part of a five-part series looking back at the Indian Ocean tsunami. |
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*Source: This report was published by IRIN, a humanitarian news and analysis, a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Go to Original.
**Photo: Jefri Aries/IRIN | Aceh rebels with GAM stand guard during a jungle patrol in Jantho, Aceh Besar (File photo 2004)
***Photo: Jefri Aries/IRIN | An Acehnese resident rides on a bridge guarded by the army in Krueng Raba, Aceh Besar (File photo 2004)
2014 Human Wrongs Watch
Filed under: Asia, Mother Earth, The Peoples