Ex-combatants have not even begun vital reintegration in Aceh

Ex-combatants have not even begun vital reintegration in Aceh M Nur Djuli  ;   An independent international consultant on conflict resolution and post-conflict peace management; A former GAM negotiator in Helsinki; A leader of the Aceh National Party (PNA);  He was 2011-2012 Weatherhead Fellow for International Affairs, Harvard University

JAKARTA POST,  24 Desember 2014

                                                                                                                       

“The government of Indonesia and the authorities of Aceh will take measures to assist persons who have participated in GAM [Free Aceh Movement] activities to facilitate their reintegration into civil society. These measures include economic facilitation of former combatants, pardoned political prisoners and affected civilians. A reintegration fund under the administration […] of Aceh will be established,” reads Article 3.2.3 of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Indonesian government and GAM signed in Helsinki, Finland, on Aug. 15, 2005, ending the bloody 30-year conflict in Aceh. Last month a group of former GAM combatants led by a young man named Nurdin, aka Abu Minimi, openly challenged the Aceh government under Governor Zaini Abdullah, GAM’s former foreign minister, and his deputy, Muzakir Manaf, former supreme commander of GAM’s armed forces. Minimi (“Minimi” is short for the French “mini-mitrailleuse”, a Belgian-made 5.56 mm light machine gun much prized by GAM fighters during the conflict), declared his group was ready to fight the two former leaders to “our last drop of blood”. They said Zaini and Muzakir had failed to implement the MoU or to improve the livelihoods of former combatants and poor people. “There are so many widows and orphans of combatants living in abject poverty while they bask in luxury,” Minimi said. They insisted that they were not rebelling against the Indonesian republic, and that once these two leaders were out of office or killed, they would surrender their weapons to the police. So what went wrong? Why have these former GAM combatants turned their anger not on their old enemies but against their own leaders, 10 years after the conflict ended in a peace process touted as a world model? Naturally there are plenty of conspiracy theories, especially when the rebels gave a press interview with their photos splashed in the papers complete with their weapons and battle gear that made it so much easier for the military and the police to hunt them down. Their village was immediately put under a police and military “sweeping” siege reminiscent of the dark days of the conflict. House-to-house searches, roadblocks and the usual roughing up of villagers, young and old, followed, as if Minimi and his gang would stay around in the village to fulfill a death wish. Within a couple of days, three villagers were arrested for possession of weapons and Minimi immediately publicly protested the “insult”. “They are not our members, they are ordinary robbers,” conveniently forgetting his own admission that he had been responsible for several robberies too before announcing his political aims, and that, according to the police, Minimi had been on their wanted list for some time — begging the question of how a journalist could find him for an interview and the police could not. Nevertheless Minimi and his friends are former GAM soldiers. So what happens to the above Article of the MoU? Ten years after its signing, aren’t these former combatants supposed to have returned to society and become good and productive citizens? How many more are still in this situation and what is the likelihood that a sizable number of them will resort to violence? These serious questions require immediate responses from both the central and Aceh governments. One may say that sooner or later Minimi and his friends will be captured or killed. But that will not solve the problem if there are others like them. The governor cannot just dismiss this incident as a security matter that the police, and much less the military, should handle. He, both as governor and former GAM leader, has the responsibility to find a better end to this problem, lest the “peace with dignity and justice for all” becomes just another worthless phrase of another ill-fated peace agreement, like what happened to the 1965 Lamteh Agreement to end the 12 years of equally bloody conflict in Aceh. The central government has indeed allocated a reintegration fund, as stated in the MoU. In 2006, the Aceh Reintegration Agency (BRA) was formed as an ad-hoc body by then acting governor Mustafa Abubakar. By April 2007, it had already had three chairmen, and I was asked by the newly elected governor, Irwandi Jusuf, to take over this hot seat in May 2007 and managed to become its longest serving chairman till March 2010. When I was forced to leave the agency, the BRA had allocated some Rp 1.7 trillion (US$136.4 million), largely to build some 23,000 simple one-room houses as token replacements for the registered 29,000 houses, burned down or destroyed all over Aceh during the conflict, to pay Rp 10 million each for 6,200 “non-military” GAM members, 6,500 militia members trained by the Indonesian Military (TNI), the treatment of thousands of injured people, school fees for some of the 23,000 registered orphans, and the same token amount of diyat (death compensation) to a few thousand families. It is a serious misunderstanding of the terminology of “reintegration” on the part of authorities in Jakarta and in Banda Aceh to consider that the aforementioned measures constitute “reintegration”. Upon becoming BRA chairman, I had specifically divided the process into two parts: the physical stage, which should take no more than three years, and the mental stage, which would take many years to complete before society was ready for social cohesion and the return to normalcy — meaning that the people would no longer be identified as “ex-combatants”, “victims of conflict” and other such terminologies linked to the conflict. It would be too naïve to even think that giving Rp10 million to a former combatant who had spent practically all his adult life in the jungle would automatically change him from a killing machine into a law-abiding civilian. It is to their credit that, despite the extreme hardships they have been suffering these last 10 years of peace, very few former GAM soldiers have resorted to violence to air their grievances.  The researcher Yuki Tajima wrote that on their return from the war in 2005, ex-combatants found themselves with significantly fewer assets, more injuries and lower educational attainment on average than civilian men, and consequently less opportunity for employment. However, none of the ex-combatants interviewed wished to return to conflict despite their economic predicament. A 2009 policy paper from the office of the UN secretary-general on post-conflict employment creation, income generation and reintegration concluded there are several economic factors that heighten the risk of conflict recurrence. Failure to sufficiently address the issues may contribute to resumption of violence, as mentioned in other reports. While no two conflicts are the same, there are generalized guidelines for a particular post-conflict management, like that in Aceh, to be successful. The UN road map clearly shows that what has been done in Aceh is merely reinsertion, in which former combatants were given some money upon coming out of the jungle so they could survive for a while, before being enrolled in training programs to learn new life skills. According to these guidelines, “The second stage of demobilization encompasses the support package […] called reinsertion [...] the assistance offered to ex-combatants during demobilization [...]” Such basic needs, which can last to one year “can include transitional safety allowances, food, clothes, shelter, medical services, short-term education, training, employment and tools”. Meanwhile through reintegration ex-combatants “acquire civilian status and gain sustainable employment and income”. Thus reintegration “is essentially a social and economic process with an open time-frame, primarily taking place in communities [...] It is part of the general development [...] and a national responsibility, and often necessitates long-term external assistance” The Helsinki MoU even specified the necessity of granting “suitable farming land” to former combatants. None of these measures have been carried out. It is my fervent hope that the new government, especially Vice President Jusuf Kalla, the initiator and architect of the Helsinki peace accord, looks into the post-conflict peace management in Aceh, especially in the long-overdue amendment of the 2006 law on Aceh governance, to make it more compatible with the clauses of the Helsinki MoU. ●