Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Edward Aspinall is a researcher in the Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. He is the author of Oppasing Suharta Compromise, Resistance and Regime Charge in Indonesia (Stanford, 2005).

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Islam and Nation

Stanford University Press

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments.........................ixGlossary............................................xv1 Nation, Islam, War, and Peace.....................12 Aceh, Islam, and Indonesia........................183 Birth of Nationalism..............................494 Rural and Global Networks.........................845 The Nationalist Moment............................1216 Violence, Money, Insurgency.......................1517 Islam to Nationalism..............................1938 From War to Peace.................................2209 Conclusion........................................248Notes...............................................255Bibliography........................................265Index...............................................277

Chapter One

"Who is the governor of Aceh?" asked Military Resort Commander A. Y. Nasution, during a discussion with a group of children.... "Abdullah Syafi'ie, Sir," piped up Mustafa, a grade five elementary school student. The commander was shocked and surprised, then quiet for a moment. Then he explained to the children that the governor of Aceh was Abdullah Puteh. "That Abdullah Syafi'ie, he's a GAM rebel" he explained, prompting laughter from the villagers.

Analisa, April 27, 2004

This uncomfortable scene, in which a child in a village in North Aceh confuses the name of the head of Indonesia's provincial government with the name of the (deceased) military leader of Aceh's rebel movement, occurred almost a year after the Indonesian government declared martial law in Aceh. The government had intended to exterminate the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, or GAM) "down to its roots," but military officers' encounters with Acehnese school children suggested that this was easier said than done; the incident just presented was not the only one of its type recorded in the press. A few months earlier another officer found that students at a different school in North Aceh did not know the date of Indonesian army day, yet could quickly recall the anniversary of GAM's declaration of independence. "Education has failed," he lamented, apparently good-humoredly (Kompas, October 28, 2003). A little later, Colonel Nasution was angry when a patriotic song competition was attended by students from only thirty-five of the ninety schools invited. Schools that did not send students, he said, had likely been "influenced by GAM." The army would interrogate their principals. "Fighting the GAM rebels doesn't have to be with weapons. This kind of event will also make GAM sad. School children are blank sheets. It's up to us what we fill their heads with" (Waspada, June 2, 2004).

Such reactions are not surprising. In Indonesia, as elsewhere, the education system had been a chief instrument of nation building. At schools throughout the country, all children were taught a uniform curriculum in the same national language about the same national history and culture. Students learned that kebhinekaan (diversity) was Indonesia's essence, and about the many ethnic groups that made up the Indonesian nation. In this way, the state tried to inculcate national identity in its future citizens. Yet in Aceh, after the Soeharto regime collapsed, the education system began to falter in performing this function. Its failure was testimony to the success of GAM's insurgency, the leaders of which had always viewed the education system as one of their greatest enemies precisely because of its role in turning children into Indonesian citizens.

These events came as part of the penultimate act in a bitter secessionist dispute that ran on and off in Aceh between 1976 and 2005. That dispute is the subject of this book. It is safe to say that the conflict caused great suffering, although data on the victims are still being collected and we do not yet have precise figures. The death toll over thirty years of conflict is uncertain and controversial, but it is likely to be in the vicinity of twelve to twenty thousand people. This figure is equivalent to approximately 0.5 percent of the 2007 population of 4,350,000. After the conflict ended, a survey conducted by Harvard Medical School and the International Organization for Migration (2007) in seventeen districts of Aceh found very high levels of conflict-related abuses of civilians. For example, 38 percent of respondents reported that a family member or friend was killed, 24 percent experienced forced labor, and 40 percent experienced the confiscation or destruction of property.

The conflict began with the formation of GAM in 1976 (or early in 1977; the exact date is disputed) and is conventionally divided into three periods: (1) 1976 to about 1979, during which GAM had only about two hundred members and was quickly repressed; (2) 1989 to 1998, when the movement resurrected itself and launched new attacks, prompting massive retribution; and (3) 1998 to 2005, when, after the authoritarian Soeharto regime collapsed, it resurged and temporarily controlled much of Aceh's countryside. For a time, Indonesian sovereignty looked shaky. A resurgent hard-line mood in Jakarta and a return to harsh methods in Aceh ended this brief nationalist euphoria. The military offensive, however, proved to be the prelude to a peace deal that ended the armed conflict altogether, at least for a time. Under the Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding of August 2005, GAM members put aside their goal of independence, gave up their arms, and ran in elections. Surprising most observers, the peace has held since that time.

During the conflict years, the two sides strove to "fill the heads" of the Acehnese with different visions of their place in the world and in history. For the Acehnese nationalists of GAM, Aceh was distinct from and incompatible with Indonesia. Hasan di Tiro, founder of the movement, explained in his declaration of independence in 1976 that Indonesia was merely a front for Javanese dominance and that "the Javanese are alien and foreign people to us Achehnese Sumatrans. We have no historic, political, cultural, economic or geographic relationship with them." He also explained that the Acehnese "had always been a free and independent Sovereign State since the world begun [sic]." Aceh's movement for national liberation was, in this view, merely reclaiming the sovereignty of the old Acehnese sultanate, which had succumbed to Dutch colonialism after heroic resistance in the nineteenth century. However, when, "after World War II, the Dutch East Indies was supposed to have been liquidated-an empire is not liquidated if its territorial integrity was preserved-our fatherland, Acheh, Sumatra, was not returned to us. Instead, our fatherland was turned over by the Dutch to the Javanese-their mercenaries-by hasty fiat of former colonial powers" (di Tiro 1984a, 25). This vision of Aceh's historical authenticity and its incompatibility with Indonesia was central to Acehnese nationalism to the end.

The Indonesian government's view (shared by many Acehnese) was that the Acehnese, although members of a distinct ethnic group, were merely constituents of Indonesia's multicultural nation. Indeed, they were a treasured and honored group, having played a key part in winning...