Five GAM representatives on their way to peace talks in Japan with government representatives were arrested in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, May 16. They were released briefly before being re-arrested with the declaration of martial law. “We will oppose the onslaught. We will fight for independence,” said Mahmood Malik, leader of the GAM delegation. “We are ready. We have been fighting for 27 years.”

The Indonesian military offensive has included paratroopers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, warships, and helicopters. U.S.-made OV-10 Bronco aircraft and British-made Hawk-200 fighter planes have also been used. Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, the Indonesian commander, has called on GAM fighters to surrender, declaring his troops will “hunt them down and exterminate them” if they don’t.

The Indonesian military plans to relocate into detention camps as many as 200,000 Acehnese living in GAM strongholds. At the end of last year, 62,000 people in the province had been “displaced.”

During the first night on the offensive some 180 schools were burnt down. Indonesian authorities tried to put the blame on GAM fighters. Radio Australia reported May 21 that these attacks involved “hundreds of arsonists in scores of villages.” Indonesian troops arrived on the scene “too late,” however, to capture any of the culprits. The GAM has denied responsibility.

A picture of beatings and summary executions of civilians, long the hallmark of Indonesian military operations in Aceh, has quickly emerged. “We’re afraid, but only of the Indonesian soldiers,” an un-named hospital worker in Bireuen told the British Guardian. “They have brutalized us for so long, the only solution is independence. Otherwise we will never have peace.”

Eighteen people—including two 12-year-old boys shot at point-blank—were massacred during dawn raids in four villages in the Bireuen district as the military assault began. Another 30 people were beaten. Sydney Morning Herald journalist Matthew Moore reported that two men, Juanda and Jamaludin, were shot and taken away and their houses were robbed by the Indonesian army during raids on other villages near Lhokseumawe. The Australian gave an account of 51-year-old Ilyas being led down the road in the village of Teupin Raya, bleeding heavily from a head wound. “He had been hit on the head with a rifle butt—an Indonesian soldier’s response to the villagers’ failure to report the rebel presence in the village,” reporter Sian Powell wrote.

The Indonesian army claimed it had killed 58 rebels as of May 23.  
 
History of struggle
Aceh, with a population of nearly 5 million, has a long history of resistance to rule by Jakarta, and earlier against Dutch colonization. The Dutch invaded the Acehnese sultanate, previously a British protectorate, in 1873. Guerrilla war continued even after the Sultan finally surrendered in 1903. The Dutch had not fully “pacified” the territory when the Japanese army drove them out during World War II. In the 1950s, following Indonesia’s independence from Dutch rule, a revolt for greater autonomy simmered in Aceh. GAM was founded in 1976.

In recent years pro-independence sentiment has spread. It has been fueled by resentment against the government in Jakarta, which takes all the revenues from Aceh’s oil and gas fields while keeping the province underdeveloped and using brutal military force to secure its rule and the exploitation of the Aceh’s wealth.

Aceh’s natural gas has been exploited since 1971 by Mobil Oil, which in 1999 merged with Exxon to become Exxon/Mobil. It operates in partnership with the state oil company, Pertamina, which runs the liquefied natural gas plant, generating $1.2 billion in exports. To press the Indonesian government into increasing “security” for its profit-making operations, Exxon/Mobil shut down its facilities from March through June of 2001. Its installations are now guarded by 3,000 troops.

Former Indonesian dictator General Suharto designated Aceh a “military operations zone” in 1989. This was not lifted until August 1998, several months after Suharto was forced to resign in face of a deepening economic crisis and rising protests against his rule by students, workers, and farmers across Indonesia. In the political space that opened up with Suharto’s fall, Acehnese protests against the brutality of military rule there became a national issue in Indonesia. In November 1999 several hundred thousand people rallied in Banda Aceh to demand a referendum on self-determination.

Military operations continued even as peace talks opened between the Indonesian government and the GAM over the last two years. Some 4,000 people were killed, mainly by the Indonesian army and police, in the two years leading up to the December 2002 cease-fire. The toll since 1976 stands at 12,000 killed.  
 
Imperialist powers back Jakarta
The imperialist governments of Australia, Britain, and the United States have close relations with Jakarta and its military, which they view as essential to maintaining capitalist stability in the Indonesian archipelago. They have backed the Indonesian government against the Aceh independence movement, while expressing concerns about the effectiveness of the military assault.

Leading up to the imposition of martial law, U.S. ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce told the press that Washington was “disturbed” by the likelihood of war but viewed the Aceh situation as Indonesia’s “internal matter.” On May 20, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that the White House’s stance is that “the problem of Aceh” is “not amenable to a solution by military force,” calling on both sides to return to the negotiating table.

The Australian government has given Jakarta’s offensive a more unqualified support. “Indonesia’s got the perfect right to maintain its internal integrity and we regret that there are those who are in armed revolt,” Australian defense minister Robert Hill said. “The violence perpetrated by the separatist movement is absolutely unacceptable,” added Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

An editorial in the May 21 Australian stated that Indonesia’s “stability and territorial coherence are key elements in the stability of the whole of Asia, and central to Australia’s national interests.”  
 
 
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