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Resources and Rebellion in Indonesia

Prof. Michael L. Ross

Department of Political Science

4289 Bunche Hall, UCLA

mlross@polisci.ucla.edu

March 29, 2002

Prepared for the Yale-World Bank project on "The Economics of Political Violence."

Draft for comments only; please do cite without the author's permission. Comments are

welcome.

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Introduction

Indonesia is a large, poor, resource-abundant country with a history of violent conflict. It

should be no surprise that it suffered from a civil war in 1990-91 and another beginning

in 1999. But why did Indonesia's civil wars break out

where

they did ­ in the

westernmost province of Aceh? And why did they break out

when

they did?

To answer these questions this paper focuses on the rise of Aceh's rebel

organization, known by the popular acronym "GAM" (

Gerakan Aceh Merdeka,

Aceh

Freedom Movement).

1

GAM has had three incarnations: the first in 1976-79, when it

was small and ill-equipped, and was easily suppressed by the military; the second in

1989-91, when it was larger, better trained and better equipped, and was only eradicated

through harsh security measures; and the third beginning in 1999, when it became larger

and better funded than ever before, challenging the Indonesian government's control of

the province [Table 1]. This paper seeks to explain why GAM arose at each of these

times, and why it has steadily grown larger and more powerful.

Although Indonesia has frequently suffered from violent conflict, the civil wars in

Aceh have been the country's only civil wars since 1960, if the standard definition of

civil wars is applied.

2

A civil war is generally defined as an internal conflict between a

government and a rebel group that produces at least 1000 combat-related deaths within a

twelve-month period, in which each party suffers at least five percent of these casualties.

A government-sponsored slaughter in 1965-66 killed between 100,000 and one million

1

For clarity I always refer to the organization as GAM, even though it now formally calls

itself the Aceh Sumatra National Liberation Front, and refers to its army as AGAM

(

Angkatan Gerakan Aceh Merdeka

).

2

A civil war is generally defined as an internal conflict between a government and a

rebel group that produces at least 1000 combat-related deaths over some period of time,

in which each party suffers at least five percent of these casualties.

2

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people, but this was a one-sided massacre in which government forces suffered few

casualties, and the victims were civilians, not a rebel army. The Indonesian government

invaded the Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975, killing perhaps 200,000 people

over the next several years. Since this was an invasion of foreign territory, however, it

cannot be classified as an "internal" conflict.

3

In 1999-2000, there were bloody clashes

between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia's Molucca Islands; these too do not qualify

as a civil war, since the parties fought each other, not the government. Only the conflicts

between the Indonesian government and GAM ­ which resulted in over a thousand

deaths in 1990, 1991, 2000, 2001, and possibly several other years ­ qualify as a civil

war.

This case study has several themes. The first is that the civil war in Aceh can be

largely explained by the central insights of Collier and Hoeffler [2001], which explores

the determinants of civil wars. The Collier-Hoeffler model emphasizes that to

successfully challenge the state, a rebel group must be able to finance itself; and that to

obtain financing rebels commonly turn to a country's overseas communities (i.e.,

diasporas), the extortion of primary commodity producers, and to other governments

hostile to their own. It also posits that raising a rebel army will be easier when poverty

rates are high; when the country has suffered from recent conflict; when the population is

ethnically and religiously homogeneous; and when the terrain is mountainous, so that

rebels can hide from government forces. Most of these dynamics are illustrated in the

case of Indonesia. I also show how a more fine-grained analysis ­ one that applies the

3

For example, the German invasion of Poland in 1938 ­ a country that was, like East

Timor, temporarily annexed by its conqueror ­ could hardly be classified as German civil

war.

3

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Collier-Hoeffler model not just to a country, but to a specific region inside a country ­

helps illustrate its explanatory power.

The second theme is that to provide a more complete explanation of Indonesia's

civil wars, it is useful to include two additional factors: the entrepreneurship of GAM's

founder, the charismatic Hasan di Tiro; and public opinion in Aceh, which made ordinary

citizens more or less likely to support GAM. Funding plays an important role in

explaining GAM's inability to launch a civil war in 1976-79, and its success in triggering

a civil war in 1989-91; but it cannot explain GAM's successful re-emergence, and the

new civil war, since 1999.

The third theme is that even though Aceh's abundance of primary commodities

had an important influence on the civil war ­ as Collier and Hoeffler predict ­ it occurred

through different causal mechanisms than the one they suggest. Collier and Hoeffler

suggest that commodity-rich states are more likely to suffer from civil wars because

commodities are exceptionally vulnerable to predation or extortion by rebel groups. If

they are correct, we should observe rebel organizations extorting money from the

commodity sector

before a conflict begins

; if resource predation only occurs after the

conflict has started, it cannot be a cause of the conflict. I find that even though Aceh was

highly dependent on primary commodity exports, little if any such extortion took place

until after the civil war had started. I suggest that Aceh's resource sector contributed to

the onset of the war through three entirely different mechanisms: by creating grievances

over the distribution of resource revenues; by introducing a larger and more aggressive

4

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military presence into the province; and possibly by making the government's offer of

regional autonomy less credible.

4

This paper has four sections and a brief conclusion. The first examines the rise

and fall of GAM between 1976 and 1979; the second, GAM's rise and fall between 1989

and 1991; and the third, GAM's return and growth between 1999 and 2002. Each of

these sections looks at the factors that influenced the risk of civil war in Indonesia as a

whole, and Aceh as a region, on the eve of GAM's incarnation; and describes GAM's

organization, funding, strategies, activities, and the government's response. The fourth

section examines in greater detail how Aceh's natural resource wealth influenced the

conflict.

1.1 Conflict Risk in Indonesia, 1976

According to Collier and Hoeffler [2001], the risk of civil war tends to be influenced by

six types of factors: ethnic, geographical, economic, political, historical, and

demographic. In 1976, Indonesia faced a relatively high risk of civil war due to all but

the final factor.

Indonesia's ethnic composition had ­ and still has ­ both positive and negative

implications for its risk of civil war. It is among the most ethnically diverse countries in

the world, home to perhaps 300 distinct language groups; in at least some instances, this

extraordinary level of diversity has probably reduced the risk of civil war by making it

more difficult for aggrieved groups to form large alliances against the state. In West

Papua, for example, members of the longstanding pro-separatist organization

Organisasi

4

I develop and illustrate the claim that natural resources can influence civil wars in

different ways in Ross 2001 and Ross 2002.

5

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Papua Merdeka

have had difficulty forming a united front, due to animosity among the

province's tribes.

Indonesia's ethnic composition poses a civil war risk, however, due to a different

factor: the dominance of the largest "ethnic" group, the Javanese. Collier and Hoeffler

[2001] find that when a country's largest ethnic group comprises between 45 and 90

percent of the population, the risk of a civil war is heightened. In 1976, the ethnic

Javanese constituted 45 percent of the population; the Sundanese, who also live on the

island of Java and are sometimes grouped with the Javanese, constituted another 15

percent of the population. Whether they are treated as 45 percent or 60 percent of the

population, the size of this group has often contributed to antagonism with Indonesia's

non-Javanese peoples. Non-Javanese tend to see Indonesia's government and military as

Javanese-controlled; people in the resource-rich provinces ­ particularly in Aceh, as

illustrated below ­ commonly complain that their natural wealth is being stolen by the

Javanese.

Viewed along religious lines, Indonesia suffers from a second type of ethnic

dominance: close to 90 percent of the population is Muslim. In Indonesia's

predominantly non-Muslim areas ­ East Timor, Nusa Tenggara, and West Papua ­ this

has at times produced a profound fear of Muslim supremacy. Although Indonesia is not

an Islamic state, and Indonesia's governments have generally supported the religious

rights of minorities, the rebellions in East Timor and West Papua have both been partly

motivated by a fear of Muslim dominance.

Indonesia's economic status in the mid-1970's also produced a significant conflict

risk. Indonesia is a low-income country, and per capita in 1976 was just $395 (in

6

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constant 1995 dollars) [World Bank 2001]. Moreover, in 1976 Indonesia was highly

dependent on the export of natural resources, with a resource export-to-GDP ratio of .194

­ thanks to a boom in both oil and timber exports in the early 1970s.

5

Together these

factors produced a profound danger of conflict.

At the same time, there were several economic factors that mitigated this risk.

Economic growth was steady and high, averaging 7.8 percent from 1970 to 1979 and

never falling below six percent. Income inequality has been, and remains, relatively low:

the gini coefficient was 34.6 ­ relatively favorable for a low-income country. A 1987

survey found that the poorest twenty percent of households had 8.8 percent of national

income ­ more than all but one low-income state and two lower-middle-income states for

which data were available [World Bank 1992].

6

There were also two political risk factors. Indonesia was under authoritarian rule,

and governed by President Suharto, a former military officer who used a combination of

repression and patronage to maintain stability; and the judiciary had little political

independence, and was highly corrupt. It is difficult to know whether the Suharto

government was widely viewed at the time as "legitimate." On one hand, in the mid-

1970s Indonesians may have appreciated the high economic growth and political stability

of the Suharto era, compared with the hyperinflation, economic hardships, and political

chaos of the 1962-66 period that preceded his rule; on the other hand, there were violent

protests in Jakarta in 1974, which the government contended were part of a plot to

overthrow the regime.

5

The resource export-to-GDP figures, and all other economic data, are derived from data

in World Bank 2001 unless otherwise specified.

6

These figures are from a 1987 survey.

7

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In 1976 Indonesia also suffered from a recent history of violent conflict, although

the conflict is usually not coded by scholars as part of a "civil war." In 1965-66, between

100,000 and 1 million Indonesians were killed by the military, and citizen groups

supported by the military, as part of an effort to eradicate the influence of the Indonesian

Communist Party (PKI). The slaughter was touched off by a coup and counter-coup that

eventually toppled President Sukarno, and replaced him with Major General Suharto.

Because these killings took the form of a massacre of mostly-unarmed civilians, rather

than a war between a rebel army and a government, scholars generally do not treat this

event as a civil war. Still, if a recent prior conflict raises the danger of a future conflict

by producing unresolved grievances [Collier, Hoeffler, and Söderbom 2001], the 1965-66

slaughter may have heightened the risk of subsequent conflict.

Finally, a single factor demographic factor may have reduced Indonesia's civil

war risk. Collier and Hoeffler [2001] find that states with large diasporas are more likely

to have civil wars, since diasporas can provide funding to rebel groups in their native

countries. Although most adjacent countries provide no data on Indonesian migrants,

relatively few Indonesians appear to live in foreign countries; when Indonesians migrate

they commonly migrate to other islands within the archipelago, not to other countries.

The largest populations of overseas Indonesians are almost certainly found in Malaysia,

Singapore, and Thailand. None of these states publish data on the size of their migrant

populations. The 1971 census of Australia ­ which has long attracted migrants from

Europe and Asia ­ found that fewer than 8,000 residents had been born in Indonesia

[Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs 2001].

8

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In sum, Indonesia's risk of civil war in the mid-1970s was relatively high, due to

poverty, resource dependence, authoritarian rule, a recent history of violent conflict, and

the ethnic dominance of the Javanese and Muslim populations. These factors were

partially offset, however, by high growth, relatively low levels of income inequality, a

high level of ethnic diversity, and a lack of overseas migration.

1.2 Conflict Risk in Aceh, 1976

While Indonesia's 1976 conflict risk was high, it was not equally high across the

country's twenty-six provinces and 13,000 islands. Within Indonesia, the conflict risk

was atypically high in the westernmost province of Aceh, due to its ethnic homogeneity,

terrain, politics, history of conflict, dependence on natural resources, and diaspora. The

conflict risk was reduced, however, by the province's low poverty levels.

Even though Indonesia as a whole is ethnically diverse ­ a factor that may reduce

the risk of civil war ­ Aceh is relatively homogeneous. Virtually all of Aceh's 2.26

million people in 1976 were Muslim. While 21 percent belonged to ethnic minority

groups ­ including the Gayonese (ten percent), the Tamiang Malays (nine percent), and

the Alas (two percent) ­ these groups posed no obstacles to the formation of a separatist

movement

[Central Bureau of Statistics 1971; King and Rasjid, 1988]. Indeed, the

largest minority group, the Gayonese, would eventually join the Acehnese separatists in

attacking Javanese settlers [Tempo 2001b].

7

7

While ethnic dominance matters at the national level by creating grievances among

minority groups, it is hard to see how it would increase the risk of civil war

within

a

restive province, when the province itself is largely poplated by an ethnic minorty. I

hence do not consider it here as a risk factor.

9

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Aceh's geography is also a risk factor: 53 percent of the land is classified as

"steep," having more than 25 percent slope, and an additional 36 percent is "very steep,"

with more than 45 percent slope [Dawood and Sjafrizal 1989]. The mountainous terrain

is can help provide a safe haven for a guerrilla army that is outnumbered by government

forces.

In general, Aceh's economy did not pose any special risk.

8

According to a

national survey in 1971, Aceh's per capita GDP was 97 percent of the national average

(without oil or gas). Between 1971 and 1975 Aceh's real annual growth rate averaged

5.2 percent ­ below the national average but still robust [Hill and Weidemann 1989].

Although there is no reliable information on inequality in Aceh in the mid-1970s,

there is substantial evidence that poverty rates were unusually low, due in part to a large

surplus of rice, the staple food crop. Measured in 1980, just 1.8 percent of the rural

population, and 1.7 percent of the urban population, was below the poverty line ­ among

the lowest rates in the country. Health care standards were also relatively high, and

improved substantially during the 1970s: in 1969, infant mortality rates were 131 per

1000 ­ slightly below the national rate of 141 per 1000. By 1977 Aceh's rates had

dropped to 91 per 1000, while national rates improved to 108 per 1000. Life expectancy

was also better than national average, and improved sharply between 1969 and 1977 [Hill

and Weidemann 1989].

8

Economic figures for Aceh must be treated with care, since the boom in natural gas

production ­ which began in 1977 ­ produced quickly-rising figures for the province's

GDP, even though the vast majority of this revenue accrued to the central government

and was spent in other provinces. For this reason, I prefer to use figures that subtract out

the value of oil and gas production.

10

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Although the province became a major exporter of natural gas and related

products beginning in 1977, in 1976 the economy was still heavily agricultural.

9

A 1976

survey found that agriculture accounted for 52.2 percent of the Aceh's GDP, services

accounted for 30.7 percent, and mining, manufacturing, utilities and construction

accounted for 17.1 percent. The distribution of the labor force reflected these figures:

71.1 of the working population was in the agricultural sector, 20.3 percent in services,

and just 8.6 in mining, manufacturing, utilities and construction [Hill and Weidemann

1989]. Compared to the country as a whole, Aceh had roughly the same income levels;

but it was more agricultural, healthier, and had less poverty.

Even though Aceh dwelt under the same authoritarian government as the rest of

Indonesia, the Suharto government had less legitimacy in Aceh, which made politics an

atypically grave risk factor. There were several reasons why many Acehnese disliked the

Suharto government. One was the breadth of support for Acehnese political autonomy,

which was opposed by the Suharto regime. The desire for autonomy reflected Aceh's

long history as an independent sultanate, one that was subjected to Dutch colonial rule

only after thirty years of brutal warfare (1873-1903). The demand for greater autonomy

­ but this time, as a member of an Indonesian federation ­ surfaced again during a 1953-

62 rebellion led by Teungku Daud Beureueh. Importantly, the rebellion did

not

call for

Acehnese independence, but rather, greater local autonomy and a stronger role for Islam

in the national government.

10

After several years of negotiations, the rebellion ended

9

There are no figures from this period about the province's resource exports

per se.

10

The Aceh rebellion declared itself part of the Darul Islam rebellion, which began in

West Java in 1947. For this reason it is sometimes referred to as the Darul Islam

rebellion; I refer to it here as the Daud Beureueh rebellion to distinguish it from the

Javanese movement.

11

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when the government granted Aceh status as a

Daerah Istimewa

(Special Region) with

autonomy over religious, cultural, and educational affairs; military authorities also

recognized the validity of Islamic law in Aceh.

11

But in 1968, after the Suharto

government came to power, the Acehnese government's special autonomy was

effectively revoked.

The Acehnese people's disillusionment with the central government was reflected

in the national elections of 1971 and 1977. The Suharto regime used myriad forms of

coercion to produce a large majority at the national level for its own party (known as

Golkar)

; but in Aceh a rival, Muslim-oriented party (the Development Unity Party, or

PPP

) enjoyed unique popularity. In 1971, Golkar won 49.7 of Aceh's votes, versus 48.9

percent for PPP; in 1977 Golkar won just 41.0 percent of the vote, while the PPP won

57.5 percent

12

[King and Rasjid 1988]. In 1977, Aceh was one of just two provinces (the

other being Jakarta) that did not give Golkar at least a plurality.

It is unclear whether the Acehnese people had experienced more violence in the

recent past than typical Indonesians. The province suffered from low levels of violence

during the 1953-62 rebellion; and during the events of 1965-66, there were relatively few

communists in Aceh ­ perhaps several thousand ­ and hence less violence than in other

provinces.

13

Finally, there was almost certainly a significant Acehnese diaspora in 1976. Aceh

lies along the Malacca Straits, which has long been a migration route to mainland

Southeast Asia. Although no figures are available from adjacent countries for the 1970s,

11

For a fine account of the Daud Beureueh rebellion, see Sjamsuddin 1984.

12

The remaining votes were taken by PDI, which at the time was a minor third party.

13

In December 1965 a military commander reported that Aceh had been "entirely purged

in a physical sense of PKI elements" [Crouch 1978, 143].

12

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in 1991 an estimated 10,000 Acehnese were living in Malaysia [Vatikiotis 1991].

According to a different observer, in 2001 between 2,000 and 3,000 Acehnese lived in

Malaysia, and an additional 7,000 to 8,000 were in Thailand, Australia, Europe and North

America [Gunaratna 2001].

1.3 The Rise and Fall of GAM I

In the mid-1970s, these elements ­ particularly Aceh's political grievances, ethnic

homogeneity, and history of prior conflict ­ contributed to the foundation of GAM, a

separatist rebel movement. So did the entrepreneurial vigor of a single charismatic

leader. During its 1976-79 incarnation, GAM was small and underfinanced, and was

easily suppressed by the government. Still, the brief 1976-79 incarnation of GAM would

contribute to the resurgence of GAM in 1989-91, which in turn led to GAM's return in

1999.

It is hard to imagine the foundation of GAM without the efforts of Hasan

Muhammed di Tiro. Di Tiro came from a prominent Acehnese family in the Acehnese

district of Pidie; he was the grandson of Teungku Chik di Tiro, a renowned hero of

Aceh's war against Dutch colonial rule. In the early 1950s di Tiro lived in New York

City and worked at the Indonesian Mission to the United Nations. When the Daud

Beureueh rebellion broke out in 1953 he quit his job and became the movement's UN

"ambassador." After the rebellion ended, he set up a business consulting firm in the U.S.

Di Tiro secretly returned to Indonesia in early 1976 to build a new guerrilla

movement dedicated to Acehnese independence. He recruited a cadre of young

intellectuals, and at least one former Indonesian military officer, to his cause; attempted

13

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to gain Daud Beureueh's endorsement; and issued a "Declaration of Independence of

Acheh-Sumatra."

14

The Declaration offers a glimpse of di Tiro's rationales: it presents a

romantic account of Aceh's history as an independent state; it denounces the "illegal

transfer of sovereignty over our fatherland by the old, Dutch, colonialists to the new,

Javanese colonialists"; it claims that Aceh has been impoverished by Javanese rule,

stating that "the life-expectancy of our people is 34 years and is decreasing,"; and it

blames these economic hardships on the central government's appropriation of revenue

from Aceh's new natural gas facility, claiming "Acheh, Sumatra, has been producing a

revenue of over 15 billion US dollars yearly for the Javanese neo-colonialists, which they

used totally for the benefit of Java and the Javanese."

Some of the Declaration's assertions had little empirical basis. Life expectancy in

Aceh rose from 48.5 years in 1969 to 55.5 years in 1977; by contrast, life expectancy in

Indonesia as a whole was 46.5 years in 1969 and 52.5 years in 1977 [Hill and

Weidemann 1989]. Aceh was also not yet producing the $15 billion for "the Javanese" as

the Declaration claimed; but the allusion to Aceh's mineral wealth foreshadowed the

central role that grievances over resource revenues would play in the coming conflict.

The Declaration is notable for what it does not say: it makes no mention of Islam,

an issue that was central to the Daud Beureueh rebellion and a major source of

dissatisfaction with Jakarta; nor does it mention the Suharto government's authoritarian

rule or the democratic aspirations of the Acehnese peoples; nor does it call for a federal

Indonesia with greater autonomy for Aceh. Instead it focuses on Acehnese independence

14

GAM often prefers "Acheh" to the more common "Aceh," and apppears to use the

term "Acheh-Sumatra" to indicate that it seeks independence for all of the island of

Sumatra, much or all of which it believes should come under Acehnese rule. See di Tiro

1984, entry for August 20, 1977.

14

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­ a substantial departure for di Tiro, who had once been a vocal advocate of a democratic,

federal Indonesia (di Tiro 1999 [1958]).

The change in di Tiro's position was influenced by his efforts to find a message

that appealed to both the Acehnese people, and to foreign governments that could fund

the movement. During the Daud Beureueh rebellion, di Tiro was not just the movement's

emissary to the United Nations, but also a fund raiser and arms purchaser; he was hence

acutely aware of the need to craft an image for the movement that appealed to potential

foreign funders.

Di Tiro believed that foreign governments would not support a movement that

called for Aceh's autonomy within an Indonesian federation, since this would be

regarded as a purely domestic affair; yet if the movement called for Acehnese

independence, he reasoned, foreign governments would be more likely to lend their

support. He also decided not to make appeals based on Islam, for fear it would alienate

potential foreign backers. This was an critical decision, as it apparently cost di Tiro the

support of Daud Beureueh himself, along with his energetic and experienced supporters

[Sjamsuddin 1984].

15

Di Tiro solicited aid from the U.S. through Edward Lansdale, a

prominent CIA agent who had worked in Southeast Asia in the 1950s. Lansdale turned

him down [Lintner 1999].

Instead of raising the issues of Islam or democracy, di Tiro focused on Aceh's

new status as an exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Natural gas deposits had been

discovered in Aceh in 1971, in the district of North Aceh (

Aceh Utara

) near the town of

15

According to Sjamsuddin [1984, 128] the central government believed that if GAM

won Daud Beureueh's backing, GAM would also receive broad support from the

Acehnese people ­ and "transform the movement into a holy war that would be very

difficult to quell."

15

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Lhokseumawe. Exploration by Mobil Oil Indonesia found that the reserves held an

immense quantity of gas ­ enough to generate two to three billion dollars annually in

export revenues over a twenty-to-thirty year period.

16

To exploit these reserves, Mobil

Oil entered into a joint venture with Pertamina, the Indonesian oil parastatal, and Jilco, a

Japanese consortium. Production began in 1977 and reached maximum capacity in 1988

[Dawood and Sjafrizal 1989].

There were considerable economic benefits for Aceh from the LNG boom: during

construction, the new facility employed 8,000 to 12,000 people; during the peak years of

production, it employed between 5,000 and 6,000. Since local infrastructure was poor,

Mobil also built new roads, schools, medical facilities, and 4,000 to 5,000 new houses.

Along with the processing facility came several downstream industries, including a

fertilizer plant and a chemicals plant [Dawood and Sjafrizal 1989].

There can be little doubt that the new LNG complex was welcomed in Aceh. The

government initially planned to extract the gas and ship it to North Sumatra ­ an adjacent

province with a more quiescent reputation ­ for processing. After strong Acehnese

protests, they agreed to build the industrial complex in Aceh [Sjamsuddin 1984].

Even though the LNG complex produced undeniable benefits for Aceh's

population, it also produced resentments. Locals believed that the project employed too

few Acehnese, and that local firms were unfairly disregarded; Mobil officials suggest

they employed as many Acehnese as they could, but were often forced to rely on

Indonesians from other parts of the country, who had more skills and experience.

17

16

The gas field proved to be about fifty percent larger than initially estimated, holding

perhaps 20-21 trillion cubic feet of gas.

17

Interview with anonymous former Mobil employee, May 3, 2000.

16

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Page 17

Hasan di Tiro was personally familiar with these resentments: in 1974, he himself had

lost out on a bid to build one of the pipelines to Bechtel, a U.S. firm [Robinson 1998].

GAM's official position was that it did

not

oppose Mobil Oil, or the LNG facility

itself, or even foreign investment; but it did object to the payment of royalties to the

central government. According to di Tiro, "our country has been laid bare by the

Javanese colonialists at the feet of multinationals to be raped. Our mineral and forest

resources have been put up to the world markets for clearance sale for quick cash for the

Javanese generals and their foreign backers [di Tiro 1984]."

In its 1976-79 incarnation, GAM was small and engaged in few military

activities.

18

It never controlled any territory, and it was forced to move on as soon as its

presence was discovered by the Indonesian army. Estimates of its active membership

range from two dozen to two hundred; some of its fighters were apparently forced to join

the movement [Sjamsuddin 1984; Hiorth 1986]. Much of GAM's activity consisted of

distributing pamphlets and raising the flag. They possessed only a "few old guns and

remnants from World War II," and extorted money from townspeople to support their

efforts.

19

At times, di Tiro and his men went for days without food [Sjamsuddin 1984;

Hiorth 1986].

Several of their most significant actions were directed against the LNG facility in

Lhokseumawe. Around 1977, GAM guerrillas stole the facility's payroll. In December

1977, GAM shot two American workers at the plant, killing one; the shootings occurred

18

According to Hiorth [1986, 192], "Fighting has been so limited that the Free Aceh

movement perhaps might be called a peaceful protest movement."

19

Di Tiro was understandably worried about GAM's lack of armaments. In his diary

entry for February 6, 1977 ­ which he later published ­ he declared "Politically we have

already won; the only thing that separates us from victory is the guns" [di Tiro 1984].

The absence of guns is frequently mentioned in the diary.

17

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Page 18

when GAM rebels tried to arrange a secret meeting with an Acehnese manager for the

LNG plant, to "discuss ways and means to protect the LNG plant...from possible damage

from the raging guerrilla warfare around it" [di Tiro 1985]. Di Tiro's description implies

GAM may have been trying to extort protection money from the facility.

The government responded to GAM's emergence with a combination of military

force and economic programs. Paratroopers were brought in from Jakarta, and the

government initiated new road projects and installed new television relay stations in

remote rural areas. The government also embarked on a campaign to persuade civic

leaders, including some who had been involved in the Daud Beureueh rebellion, to

oppose GAM. Daud Beureueh himself was flown to Jakarta to make sure he would not

throw his support behind di Tiro. In 1979 di Tiro was forced to leave the country, and

most of his followers either fled with him or were killed by the military. The military's

operations against GAM continued until 1982, and trials of suspected GAM supporters

continued until 1984 [Sjamsuddin 1984; Kell 1995].

20

By the early 1980s GAM had effectively disappeared. Its activities lasted barely

two years and attracted only a handful of backers. It was chronically short of funds and

arms, and was easily extinguished by government forces. Although Aceh was the site of

an earlier rebellion, GAM was unable to attract the support of key backers of the previous

movement. Many Acehnese people may have resented the central government's

appropriation of revenues from the LNG facility; still, in the late 1970s and early 1980s

20

In its pursuit of GAM supporters, the Indonesian military apparently used its customary

brutality. According to the human rights monitor

Tapol Bulletin,

those arrested were

frequently tortured, and between August 1977 and August 1980, thirty men in Aceh were

shot dead in public without due process. In other cases, women and children were held as

hostages by the government when their husbands evaded arrest [Hiorth 1986].

18

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the Acehnese economy was doing extraordinarily well, which may have undercut GAM's

claims about Aceh's impoverishment. It was not a time well-suited to rebellion.

2.1 Conflict Risk in Indonesia, 1989

Between 1976 and 1989, Indonesia's conflict risk dropped substantially due to rising

income levels, a drop in resource dependence, and possibly a rise in the government's

legitimacy. There were no measurable changes in the country's recent history of violent

conflict, the size of its diaspora, its ethnic composition or its geography.

Between 1976 and 1989 Indonesia grew at an average rate of 4.5 percent a year;

real per capita GDP rose 76 percent, from $395 to $697 (in constant 1995 dollars).

Natural resource dependence dropped sharply, as the resource-export-to-GDP ratio fell

from .194 to .12, due to an increase in manufactured exports and a fall in oil and gas

prices. Indonesia was still a low-income country, but its high growth rate and vigorous

manufacturing sector had reduced its civil war risk.

Indonesia's political system had changed little on the surface: it still had an

authoritarian government, headed by President Suharto. But quick economic growth, and

the Suharto government's wide-ranging patronage institutions, had produced an ever-

larger vote for the government party in national elections. The Golkar party received

62.1 percent of the national vote in 1977, 64.3 percent in 1982, and 73.2 percent in 1987.

As political scientist William Liddle [1988, 180] observed in 1988,

the government's control has never been greater than it is today. The [Suharto

government] seems firmly rooted in a combination of authoritarian coercion,

skillful political management, and long-term economic success that makes it

relatively impervious to short-term currents of change in its environment.

19

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This heightened level of political control and rising vote share may have indicated a

higher level of political legitimacy for Suharto's "New Order" government, and hence a

diminished risk of civil war.

It is difficult to determine whether Indonesia was less afflicted by a history of

recent violence in 1989 than it was in 1976. Certainly the trauma of the 1965-66

massacres had receded further into the past; but this must be weighed against Indonesia's

violent takeover of East Timor beginning in 1975. Perhaps 100,000 Timorese died as a

direct or indirect result of the invasion, and East Timor was not "opened" to visitors until

1988.

Throughout the 1980s, Indonesia's migrant workers commonly spilled into

Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, though they were often illegal and their numbers

went unrecorded. The Australian census showed a jump in the number of Indonesian-

born residents from 7,981 in 1971 to 32,688 in 1991; but these figures were still quite

small in proportion to Indonesia's 1991 population of 183 million.

2.2 Conflict Risk in Aceh, 1989

The conflict risk in Aceh may have also dropped between 1979 and 1989, due to the

region's speedy economic growth, and the government's vigorous efforts to raise its

political legitimacy. Nonetheless, these effects were offset by a rising dependence on

LNG exports, and social tensions created by the LNG boom. For the other factors of

interest ­ ethnic composition, diaspora, and geography ­ there were no measurable

changes.

20

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The late 1970s and the 1980s were a period of exceptional economic

performance in Aceh. The most prominent trend was the rise in natural gas production,

as the LNG facility approached its maximum capacity. This made the province far more

dependent on natural resource exports: in 1976, oil and gas accounted for less than 17

percent of the province's GDP; by 1989, it accounted for 69.5 percent. But it is equally

notable that the rest of Aceh's economy remained vigorous: there were no signs of a

regional dutch disease effect. From 1975 to 1984, Aceh's agricultural GDP grew, in real

terms, at an average annual rate of 7.6 percent; from 1984 to 1989 it grew at an average

annual rate of just under five percent. Aceh's manufacturing sector did even better,

growing at an average rate of 13.7 percent between 1975 and 1984, and at almost eight

percent annually from 1984 to 1989. As a result, Aceh's per capita GDP (without oil and

gas) kept pace with Indonesia's quickly-rising incomes: in 1983, GDP per capita in Aceh

was 113 percent of Indonesia's average; in 1989, they were virtually identical [Dawood

and Sjafrizal 1989].

21

This rapid growth, ironically, may have caused disruptions that eventually

contributed to the 1989 return of GAM. Between 1974 and 1987, the district of North

Aceh ­ which included P.T. Arun, Mobil's natural gas facility ­ rose in population from

490,000 to 755,000; social amenities and infrastructure for workers and job-seekers were

severely overstretched. Some 50,000 Indonesian transmigrants had also come to Aceh,

largely attracted by the oil and gas boom [Hiorth 1986]. Rapid urbanization, the

incursion of the non-Acehnese, land seizures, pollution, and competition for jobs in the

21

Data on Aceh's GDP is from internal World Bank documents.

21

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Page 22

industrial sector all contributed to tensions that may have contributed to GAM's 1989

incarnation [Kell 1995].

There were several political developments that appeared to

increase

popular

support for the central government, at least through 1987; from 1987 to 1989, this trend

may have reversed. In 1984, top officials in the ruling Golkar party began a strategy to

increase the party's popularity in Aceh, so that it would win the province in the 1987

general election. One tactic was the August 1986 appointment of Ibrahim Hasan as

Aceh's governor; Hasan was a skilled and popular figure who energetically campaigned

on Golkar's behalf. Another was a series of development projects, whose inauguration

was presided over by Golkar officials.

Golkar also made a concerted effort to blunt the appeal of the PPP, the toothless

Islamic opposition party that had won previous elections in Aceh, by making stronger

pro-Islamic appeals. Aceh's most prominent religious leader, Daud Beureueh ­ who had

lead the 1953-62 rebellion ­ endorsed Golkar for the 1987 vote. So did other religious

leaders who had previously supported the PPP. Finally, Golkar raised a large campaign

fund for Aceh, thanks in part to the efforts of the director of Pertamina, the state

petroleum company that partly owned the Arun facility [King and Rasjid 1988; Liddle

1988].

These efforts paid off in the 1987 election. In 1982 Golkar had won just 37

percent of Aceh's popular vote; in 1987 it won 51.8 percent, gaining a majority in seven

of the provinces's ten districts and 77 of the 137 subdistricts. Even though the opposition

parties were never able to compete fairly with Golkar, the rise in Golkar's vote share

suggests that support for the central government had lifted over time.

22

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Still, it is difficult to make extrapolations from these figures about the

government's support from 1987 to 1989, since many campaign promises went unfilled.

The development budget for the province as a whole dropped in 1987 by 36 percent; the

budgets for the districts also fell sharply, and special projects were canceled by the

central government [King and Rasjid 1988]. Disappointment with Golkar's extravagant

campaign promises appeared to be widespread [Kell 1995].

2.3 The Rise and Fall of GAM II

GAM's second coming in 1989 was caused in part by three factors: GAM's support from

a foreign government; its assistance from local Indonesian security officers; and

continuing grievances among the population, including grievances associated with the

LNG boom. Even though GAM was larger and better equipped in 1989 than it had been

a decade earlier, it still failed to win widespread support, perhaps due to the region's

strong economic performance.

After slipping out of Indonesia in 1979, Hasan di Tiro and some of his top

advisors moved to Sweden, where they set up an Acehnese government-in-exile, which

doubled as GAM's overseas headquarters. Around 1986, GAM made contact with the

Libyan government. In 1986 or 1987 GAM began to receive Libyan support, as part of

dictator Muammar Qaddafi's efforts to promote insurgencies worldwide [Kell 1995].

Between 250 and 2000 GAM recruits, drawn primarily from the Acehnese population in

Malaysia, received military and ideological training in Libya in the late 1980s. This

assistance enabled GAM to survive, and even grow, at a time when it had been largely

23

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driven off Indonesian soil.

22

In 1989, at least 150 Libya-trained fighters slipped into

Aceh from Malaysia and Singapore [Vatikiotis 1991].

There is also some evidence that GAM received a boost from defecting

government troops. Amnesty International [1993] notes that in early 1989 at least 47

military officers based in Aceh were dismissed, possibly as part of a centrally-

coordinated anti-narcotics campaign. Around the same time, "dozens" of ex-military and

police officers joined GAM and began to attack military installations and personnel. The

wave of defections, possibly sparked by the anti-narcotics campaign, may help explain

both the timing of GAM's re-emergence and its surprising strength [Vatikiotis 1990].

A third factor that helps explain GAM's re-emergence was a series of protests that

occurred in 1988 and 1989 against the corruption, gambling, and prostitution associated

with the transmigrants who were drawn to Aceh by the LNG boom. According to

Amnesty International [1993, 8],

In May 1988, for example, villagers of Idi Cut, Aceh Timur, burned down the

local police station following reports that a police officer had sexually assaulted a

local woman. In August, a hotel in Lhokseumawe, Aceh Utara, was bombed

following repeated complaints by the local community that it was being used as a

prostitution centre. In March 1989, an estimated 8,000 people rioted in the same

town destroying a military-owned building in which a circus, considered

offensive by local Islamic leaders, was due to perform. Later the same month,

military and police authorities mobilized thousands of troops to prevent a planned

demonstration against official corruption by university students in Aceh Utara.

These protests, plus the defection of military and police officers, plus GAM's decision to

repatriate its Libya-trained fighters, all contributed to the outbreak of a new rebellion in

early 1989. It is difficult to know precisely how these factors interacted. An observer

from a western NGO speculated, "It may well be that there are two dynamics operating

22

According to Kell [1995], between ten and twenty GAM members survived the 1980s

in Aceh, hiding out in the forests and producing cannabis to support themselves.

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and that the political movement has fed off abuses committed in the course of the drug

eradication efforts" [Vatikiotis 1991].

From the outset, GAM was far more aggressive in 1989 than it had been in 1977.

From early 1989 to early 1990, it attacked only Indonesian police and army units, killing

some two dozen officers.

23

In mid-1990, however, GAM's tactics shifted, and it began

targeting civil authorities, commercial property, and suspected government informers. It

also attacked non-Acehnese settlers in the Lhokseumawe area, killing about thirty people

civilians and driving thousands from their homes [Amnesty International 1993]. It also

engaged in more symbolic activities, distributing leaflets and burning a school after the

headmaster was told to stop teaching Pancasila, the official ideology of the Indonesian

state [Kell 1995].

GAM's activities were more widespread geographically than they had been a

decade earlier, but they were still concentrated along Aceh's northeastern coast, in the

districts of Pidie, North Aceh and East Aceh. Although GAM controlled no territory, it

had a rudimentary command structure in these districts, and could mobilize guerrillas for

hit-and-run attacks and ambushes [Vatikiotis 1991]. North Aceh was also the home of

the natural gas and industrial facilities, near the town of Lhokseumawe, and both North

Aceh (Aceh Utara) and East Aceh (Aceh Timur) had been sites of the 1988-89 anti-

corruption protests. Many observers suggested that the rebellion was inspired by

grievances around the Lhokseumawe facilities, including disputes over the distribution of

23

These early attacks may not have been carried out by GAM, but by defecting security

officers who were fighting the anti-narcotics initiative. GAM was only identified as an

active party in June 1990. This adds credibility to Geoffrey Robinson's hypothesis that

GAM capitalized on the defection of corrupt security officers, perhaps taking advantage

of the opportunity to launch a new offensive [Robinson 1998].

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high-paying jobs and revenues, official corruption, and concerns about the un-Islamic

behavior of non-Acehnese migrants [Vatikiotis 1990, 1991; Kell 1995; Robinson 1998].

Estimates of GAM's strength in 1989-91 range from 200 to 750 active members.

Although Libya had provided training, it did not offer GAM any additional funds or

weaponry. Some money was apparently raised among the Acehnese living in Malaysia.

GAM also stole (or perhaps, purchased) weapons from Indonesian security forces,

obtaining some 200 automatic rifles and light machine guns by June 1990. Still, guns

were scarce, and guerillas were reportedly forced to share their arms [Kell 1995].

Until mid-1990 the government responded to the attacks on its forces in a

relatively low-key manner, relying solely on the troops already stationed in Aceh. But in

June 1990, after identifying GAM as the source of these attacks, President Suharto

ordered a much more drastic response ­ ordering 6,000 additional troops to Aceh,

including special counterinsurgency units. From this point forward Aceh was regarded as

a "DOM" (

Daerah Operasi Militar

, "area of military operations,"), a designation that has

no fixed definition or legal status but implies that the military has a heightened level of

authority and can conduct its operations with impunity.

24

The government's response was successful in the short term: by the middle of

1991 GAM's activities were reduced to a minimum, and by the end of 1991, many of

GAM's field commanders had been captured or killed. But the costs of the government's

response in human rights violations was immense; and the government's brutality

produced a deep-seated antipathy towards the government and heightened support for

Acehnese independence, and ultimately, contributed to GAM's third incarnation in 1999.

24

On the meaning of the term "DOM," see Widjajanto and Kammen 1999.

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Independent estimates of the death toll during the 1990-1992 period range from

just under 2,000 to 10,000; the vast majority of deaths were caused by the government

[Amnesty International 1993]. Although human rights violations continued after 1993,

only a handful of additional deaths were recorded. According to the International Crisis

Group, the number of casualties from the conflict between 1990 and 1998 was 1,000-

3,000 killed, 900-1400 missing and presumed dead, and 500 maimed [ICG 2001a].

3.1 Conflict Risk in Indonesia, 1999

The risk of violent conflict in Indonesia declined from 1989 to mid-1997, due to rapid

economic growth and a declining reliance on natural resources. But in late 1997 and

1998, Indonesia suffered a dramatic economic setback, triggered by the currency crisis in

Thailand; and in May 1998 President Suharto was forced from office, producing a more

democratic, but less stable, national government. By 1999, these economic and political

factors had sharply raised Indonesia's conflict risk. Most of Indonesia's other risk factors

­ ethnic, demographic, and geographic ­ showed little measurable change between 1989

and 1999, while the risk of violence due solely to the proximity of past episodes of

violence fell, as the national carnage of 1965-66 and the East Timorese carnage of 1975-

79 receded into the past.

From 1989 to 1996, Indonesia's economy grew at an average rate of 6.5 percent a

year. Real per capita GDP in 1996 was $1074 (in constant 1995 dollars); in real terms, it

had doubled since 1983 and quadrupled since 1968, all under the economic team of

President Suharto. Although the economy was initially dependent on natural resource

exports ­ its resource exports-to-GDP ratio peaked at .252 in 1980 ­ by 1996 it had

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dropped to .082, thanks to an abundance of low-wage manufactured goods and falling oil

prices. Compared to most developing states, Indonesia continued to have relatively low

inequality levels: the gini coefficient in 1996 was 36.5.

In mid-1997, however, the baht crisis in Thailand triggered a run on the

Indonesian rupiah ­ and subsequently, a banking crisis, capital flight, and an economic

collapse. Between July 1997, when the baht crisis began, and late January 1998, the

rupiah lost 85 percent of its value. The economy contracted by 17.8 percent in 1998 and

grew just 0.4 percent in 1999. Per capita income dropped to $904 in 1999 (in constant

1995 dollars).

The economic crisis, and mounting unhappiness with corruption in the Suharto

government, forced Suharto to step down in May 1998 after 32 years of authoritarian

rule. He was replaced by Indonesia's Vice President, B.J. Habibie, as provided for by the

constitution. After parliamentary elections in June 1999, Habibie was replaced in

October 1999 by Abdurrahman Wahid, a respected Muslim cleric, who headed a new

coalition government.

If judged by the ambiguous standard of "legitimacy," it is unclear whether

Indonesia's conflict risk rose or fell after Suharto's departure. On one hand, the

resignation of Suharto was greeted with widespread acclaim, which implies that the

legitimacy of the government rose; on the other hand, President Habibie had been hand-

picked by Suharto, but unlike Suharto had no real constituency of his own. The

replacement of Habibie with Wahid also had an ambiguous effect on the government's

legitimacy: on one hand, the 1999 parliamentary election was Indonesia's first free

multiparty election since 1955; on the other hand, there was no direct vote for the

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President, and the party of the ultimate victor (Wahid) received just thirteen percent of

the popular vote.

A different standard, however, suggests that political events in 1998-99 sharply

raised Indonesia's civil war risk. In 1998-99, Indonesia became a partial democracy ­

poised somewhere between the harsh authoritarian rule of Suharto, and a full democracy

in which civil rights are protected and the rule of law is well established. Many cross-

national studies have found that partial democracies face a heightened risk of civil war,

since aggrieved constituencies may be able to organize, but their grievances cannot

adequately addressed through the electoral system [De Nardo 1985; Muller and Weede

1990; Hegre, Ellingsen, Gates, and Gleditsch 2001]. This yardstick implies that

Indonesia's 1998-99 political upheaval raised the likelihood of civil war.

3.2 Conflict Risk in Aceh, 1999

Aceh's conflict risk also rose sharply in 1999, largely due to four developments: the

economic crisis, which reduced per capita income and created underemployment; a

referendum on independence in East Timor, which raised hopes for a similar referendum

on independence in Aceh; the proximity of the 1989-91 carnage, which heightened

resentment towards the central government; and a decline in the credibility of the central

government's promises of reform. The province also remained highly reliant on natural

resources, which also produced a high conflict risk. This combination of these factors

overshadowed a series of well-meaning initiatives designed to avert a new separatist

movement in Aceh.

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The economic crisis was less severe in Aceh than it was in the rest of the country,

thanks in part to the strength of the province's large agricultural sector. The impact of

the crisis was largest in Aceh's oil and gas sector ­ its income shrank by 17.3 percent in

1998 ­ but this was also the sector whose direct impact on local welfare was the smallest,

as it employed just 3,811 people ­ about 0.35 of the province's labor force [BPS Aceh

1999]. The rest of the industrial sector, which employed 5.2 percent of the labor force,

fell by 11.8 percent, while the agricultural sector, which employed 58.6 percent of Aceh's

workers, grew by 1.4 percent. Overall, regional GDP declined by 9.2 percent in 1998,

but if oil and gas income is excluded, the contraction was 5.9 percent. In 1999, Aceh's

non-oil and gas economy contracted another 2.9 percent [BPS Aceh 1999, 2000].

The economic crisis produced only a temporary rise in Aceh's unemployment

level. Even though the number of people in the official labor force dropped 37.3 percent

in 1998, the number of registered job seekers fell by 65 percent. Hence while the official

unemployment rate rose from 6.5 percent to 10 percent from 1996 to 1997, it dropped

back down to 5.5 percent in 1998.

25

This drop in unemployment was probably caused by

the migration of unemployed workers back to their villages, a common pattern in

Indonesia. While this reduces unemployment, it generates underemployment. Of those

who remained as registered job seekers, over forty percent lived in North Aceh, where the

natural gas facilities are located [BPS Aceh 1999].

Two decades after the natural gas boom had begun, Aceh's economy remained

highly dependent on natural resources. Sixty-five percent of Aceh's GDP in 1998 came

25

Different unemployment figures are offered by different provincial documents, even

from the same agency. A June 2000 report states that unemployment in Aceh fell from

26.1 percent in 1997 to 18 percent in 1998 [BPS Aceh 2000].

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from the production of oil and gas, and 15.1 percent came from other resource activities,

including fishing, agriculture and forestry; these figures had changed little since 1989.

As a fraction of exports, Aceh's reliance on natural resources was even more striking: oil

and gas accounted for 92.7 of Aceh's 1998 exports ­ even though the sector employed

only one-third of one percent of the province's labor force [BPS Aceh 1999].

The fall of the Suharto regime in May 1998 also triggered a pair of political

developments that further raised the conflict risk in Aceh: the independence referendum

in East Timor and the loss of government credibility. Ironically, these developments

were preceded by a series of government initiatives that should have

reduced

the conflict

risk.

Around the time that Suharto was ousted, journalists and NGOs in Aceh began to

call attention to atrocities committed by the military and police in their campaign against

GAM. In late July 1998, a fact-finding team from the national parliament admitted that

serious human rights violations had occurred in Aceh between 1990 and 1998. In early

August 1998, armed forces Chief Wiranto visited Aceh to announce a withdrawal of

combat forces and an end to the DOM, and to apologize for the army's human rights

abuses. In March 1999, President Habibie visited Aceh himself and pledged to aid the

region's economy, to help children orphaned by the war against GAM, and to establish a

commission to examine human rights abuses by the security forces [Robinson 1998].

Three major pieces of national legislation should also have lowered the danger of

a new civil war in Aceh. In late April 1999, the parliament adopted a pair of

decentralization laws (No. 22 and 25 of 1999) that gave all of Indonesia's regional and

local governments extensive powers, and enabled them to retain much of the income

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from the extraction of natural resources in their own regions ­ including 15 percent of the

net public income from oil, 30 percent from natural gas, and 80 percent from timber

(which is also abundant in Aceh). The parliament adopted a third law (No. 44 of 1999)

that affirmed Aceh's right to control its own cultural, religious, and educational affairs.

These developments should have made Aceh's status as a member of the

Indonesian republic

more

attractive and independence

less

attractive for Aceh's citizens

and politicians; and it should have thereby reduced the likelihood that a new civil war

would break out. But two additional factors seemed to obviate these positive

developments. The first was the demonstration effect of East Timor's referendum on

independence.

In January 1999, President Habibie announced that East Timor would be allowed

to secede from the Indonesian Republic, if its citizens voted to do so in a province-wide

referendum. Within weeks, student groups in Aceh had formed organizations calling for

a similar referendum. East Timor's referendum was held in September 1999, and

produced an overwhelming vote for independence (as well as a vicious backlash by state-

sponsored militias). That same month, Aceh's conference of Ulama (Muslim religious

leaders) backed the idea of a referendum. The following month there were massive

parades across Aceh in support of a referendum. In November 1999 hundreds of

thousands of people ­ according to some estimates, as many as one million people ­

gathered in the Acehnese capital, Banda Aceh, to hold a rally in support of the

referendum. According to polls taken by a leading pro-referendum NGO ­ and the

virtually-unanimous perception of outside observers ­ a freely-held referendum would

produce a strong vote for independence.

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The second development was the erosion of the credibility of the central

government's commitments to reform in Aceh. If the government's pledges in 1998 and

1999 were credible, the notion of independence ­ a risky option that appeared to have

little popular support before the late 1980s

26

­ should have been unappealing to most

Acehnese. But if these commitments were not credible, then the only way that the

Acehnese people could be certain they would no longer suffer from state-sponsored

brutality, and would retain control of the province's resource wealth, was to secede from

the rest of the country.

The central government's poor credibility in Aceh could be traced back to the

founding of the republic, when the government refused to make Aceh a separate

province, despite Aceh's history as an independent state and its contributions to the

struggle for national independence; to 1968, when the Suharto government effectively

abrogated the 1963 agreement that granted Aceh special autonomy; and to the failure of

the central government to fulfill the munificent promises it made to Aceh during the 1987

election campaign.

But however low it was initially, the government's credibility seemed to decline

even further beginning in 1998 due to a series of events: the revelations about the

government's human rights abuses in Aceh, which followed years of denials; President

Habibie's failure to keep the promises he made in Aceh in 1998, including his pledge to

bring human rights violators to justice; President Wahid's failure to fulfill his promises to

support the Aceh referendum, prosecute human rights violators at all ranks, and withdraw

non-Acehnese troops from the province; armed forces chief Wiranto's reversal (in May

26

On this point, see Hiorth 1986; Liddle 1986; Robinson 1998.

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1999) of his August 1998 promise to withdraw combat forces from Aceh; and the

government's failure to stop the military's attacks on civilians, notably the May 1999

"Simpang KKA" massacre of close to 40 peaceful demonstrators near Lhokseumawe, and

the July 1999 massacre of between 57 and 70 people at an Islamic boarding school in

Beutong Ateuh.

According to several scholars who have worked in Aceh for many years, these

developments in 1998-2000 caused the government's credibility to fall to new lows in the

eyes of the Acehnese people. Historian Anthony Reid, who has worked in Aceh since the

1960s, wrote in March 2000 that "During the past year, the overwhelming evidence of

military atrocities has rapidly eroded" the belief in national unity formerly held by the

Acehnese [Reid 2000]. Political scientist Harold Crouch, also a longtime observer,

concluded in June 2001 that

The credibility of the central government in Aceh is close to zero, amongst all

sections of the population. Given a history of promises made and broken since

the 1950s, even the minority of Acehnese who see autonomy as the best solution

have little trust in Jakarta's good faith [ICG 2001b].

The Acehnese people hence had little reason to believe that the government's

offer of regional autonomy will be kept. The central government's reliance on natural

gas revenues from Aceh ­ which in 1998 were worth $1.2 billion, and provided the

government with 9 percent of its total government revenues ­ may have made these

promises even less credible, by convincing the Acehnese that the government would not

be financially able to fulfill its promise to allow the province to retain more of its

resource revenues.

27

27

This argument is drawn from Fearon [2001], who suggests that separatist conflicts are

difficult to resolve, in part, because government promises of regional autonomy typically

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Finally, there is abundant evidence that the proximity of the 1989-91 civil war

made a renewal of conflict more likely, due to widespread disgust towards the Indonesian

military. Soon after Suharto was removed from office, information about the summary

executions, torture, rape, and theft committed by the military was widely publicized.

The discovery of at least a dozen mass graves, the public testimony of widows of victims,

and the investigations of the newly-freed media produced widespread outrage. When

combat troops started to pull out of Lhokseumawe in August 1998, crowds began to stone

the departing trucks, and eventually destroyed the provincial office of the ruling Golkar

party. In Guempang Minyek, villagers destroyed a Special Forces interrogation center

where suspects were allegedly tortured. According to a reporter for the

Far Eastern

Economic Review,

"In Aceh, loathing of the military's brutal legacy extends from the

humblest villager to the highest provincial official [McBeth 1998]."

The propinquity of the 1990-98 conflict also had a second, more concrete effect: it

provided GAM with a pool of willing recruits who aspired to take vengeance on the

military.

3.3 The Rise of GAM III

Between 1991 and 1998 there were few signs of GAM activity in Aceh; many locals

came to believe that GAM no longer existed. After the government lifted the DOM in

August 1998, there were reports of pro-independence neighborhood rallies, and displays

of GAM banners and flags. Several Acehnese who had worked for the Indonesian

lack credibility in the eyes of separatist movements. He also notes that when a region has

lots of resource wealth ­ like Aceh ­ a government's promises of fiscal autonomy will be

even less credible, since locals will anticipate that the central government's desire for

resource revenues will eventually cause it to rescind its pledges of local autonomy.

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Special Forces were killed or disappeared, although it was unclear who was behind these

murders. A journalist who visited Aceh in mid-November 1998 found no trace of GAM

[McBeth 1998].

Yet in early 1999 GAM reappeared and began to grow more quickly than it ever

had before. By July 1999 it reportedly had more than 800 men under arms, equipped

with assault rifles and grenade launchers. Two years later GAM had an estimated 15,000

to 27,000 men and was reportedly in control of 80 percent of Aceh's villages [ICG

2001a].

The sudden return of GAM cannot be explained by a change in funding: GAM

appeared to have little revenue between 1991 and 1999, and it had lost Libya's

sponsorship. The main cause for GAM's successful re-emergence may be the sharp

change in public opinion about Acehnese independence, caused by the factors outlined

above: the economic crisis, which made independence ­ and the retention of LNG

revenues ­ seem more attractive; the revelations of human rights abuses; and the

government's low credibility. This shift in public opinion made it easier for GAM to

recruit new members, and perhaps, to raise funds.

At first GAM had to use force to conscript new members.

28

But it then began to

target for recruitment the children of people who had been killed or tortured by security

forces under the DOM, offering them the opportunity to avenge their parents. According

to the Care Human Rights Forum, 16,375 children had been orphaned during the 1990-98

military crackdown [McBeth 1998]. By mid-2000, these "children of the DOM victims"

28

Author interview, Medan, June 2000.

36

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Page 37

(

Anak Korban DOM

) constituted a significant corps of GAM fighters.

29

The Jakarta Post

reported on July 30, 2000, that most of GAM's new recruits were children of the DOM

victims.

It is possible that GAM had some assistance from the Indonesian military,

although the evidence is sketchy. Several observers note that in late 1998 and early 1999

the military did little to stop GAM, which has led to speculation that it favored GAM's

revival. GAM returned at a time when the military was facing an unprecedented loss of

political influence and funding, due to the fall of the Suharto regime, the turn towards

democracy, and the economic crisis; some military officers may have found the prospect

of war in Aceh to be politically or financially attractive. A report by the International

Crisis Group suggests,

According to local sources, the assault (on GAM by the military) involved close

collaboration between the Free Aceh militia and the military, with the latter often

turning a blind eye and sometimes actively participating in the activities of the

former. Amnesty International staff described soldiers from the Indonesian

military routinely bypassing militia training camps, feigning ignorance...

According to Acehnese human rights activists interviewed by ICG, such incidents

are engineered to show that the situation is out of control and that a police and

army crackdown is necessary. For some junior soldiers there may be an

additional incentive. Collaboration with the Acehnese "freedom fighters" can

provide a lucrative source of extra income from extortion and looting to

supplement meagre army salaries [ICG 1999].

Although these accounts come from reliable sources, they are impossible to verify

independently.

To fund itself, GAM has used a combination of voluntary donations, taxes,

extortion, robbery, and the sale of cannabis. People identifying themselves as members

of GAM regularly approach businesses and individuals ­ both in Aceh, and in Acehnese

29

Ibid.

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communities in Malaysia, Thailand, and other parts of Sumatra ­ requesting or

demanding contributions.

30

GAM has also been reported to levy 20 percent taxes on the

development funds received by Acehnese villages; monthly taxes on households, ranging

from 1,000 to 10,000 rupiah (12 cents to $1.20); and an eight percent tax on construction

projects [Reid 2000; Djalal 2000; Asmarani 2001; ICG 20001a]. These funding schemes

were employed

after

GAM's reappearance. There are no indications that GAM has

received assistance from Libya, or any other foreign government, since the late 1980s.

31

Members of GAM have also tried to raise money from the Arun natural gas

facility, through both direct and indirect forms of extortion. Between 1999 and March

2001, ExxonMobil reported a growing tally of violence and threats: its company vans and

pickups had been hijacked about 50 times; company airplanes were twice hit by ground

fire when they tried to land; facilities were repeatedly attacked with gunfire and grenades;

company buses were bombed, or stopped and burned, as they brought employees to

work; four employees were killed while off-duty; and other employees were threatened

[Tempo 2001a; Arnold 2001]. From March to July 2001 the company was forced to shut

down the Arun facility due to a lack of security.

Some of these security incidents may have been carried out by the army or

ordinary criminals. At least one ­ the kidnapping of eight employees, who were briefly

held for ransom in May 2000 ­ appeared to have been a freelance operation carried out

30

While GAM officials and associates have acknowledged that they use this technique to

raise funds, those who are approached cannot be certain that the request comes from

GAM, and not from ordinary criminals or even military officers posing as GAM.

31

According to one report, GAM's military and political budget for 2001 was under

$500,000 [Gunaratna 2001]. But this is unlikely to be a complete account, since GAM's

military operations ­ and presumably, its fund-raising operations ­ appear to be highly

decentralized.

38

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by GAM members without the leadership's authorization. The GAM leadership later

apologized to the US Embassy and promised to try and punish the kidnappers.

But many of these incidents were part of efforts by GAM to extort money from

ExxonMobil, to reduce the government's gas revenues, or both. In March 2001 the GAM

regional commander in the Lhokseumawe area, Muzakir Mualim, stated in an Indonesian

newsweekly that GAM had been demanding money from ExxonMobil. "We expect them

to pay income tax to Aceh. We're only talking about a few percent of the enormous

profit they have made from drilling under the earth of Aceh [Tempo 2001a]."

32

It is unclear whether ExxonMobil (or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates) actually

made such a payment. According to the generally reliable

Tempo

[2001a], the company

paid GAM five billion rupiah (about $500,000); other sources support this claim,

although the company denies it. Previously GAM had pledged it would not attack

foreign companies; the attacks on Arun may represent a change in policy, or a split

between the central GAM leadership and the local GAM command.

As in 1977-79 and 1989-91, GAM has been hindered by a shortage of weapons.

Although it has between 15,000 and 27,000 soldiers, they are thought to have only 1,000

to 2,500 modern firearms, one or two 60 mm mortars, a handful of grenade launchers,

and some land mines. Most GAM fighters have only homemade or obsolete firearms,

sharp or blunt instruments, or explosives [ICG 2001a; Davis 2001]. The majority of

32

Some of GAM's attacks on the Arun facility have other motives. GAM has

periodically attacked military units that happen to be based at Arun. In October 2000,

17,000 sticks of dynamite were stolen from an Arun warehouse, although GAM may not

have been the perpetrator. There may also be an ideological component to some of

GAM's anti-Arun activities: GAM officials continue to denounce ExxonMobil for

"exploiting Aceh's land for the benefit of the colonialist government in Jakarta [Jakarta

Post 2001a]."

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GAM's modern arms appear to come from the Indonesian military, often purchased from

corrupt officers: in January and October 2000, soldiers were arrested for selling arms to

GAM, and in April 2001 the military admitted that corrupt officers have continued to

supply GAM with weapons [Indonesian Observer 2001; Australian Broadcasting

Corporation 2000; Lubis, Meehan, and Meehan 2000]. GAM has also purchased arms

from corrupt military officers in Thailand, although the Indonesian navy has made it

increasingly difficult for GAM to bring in weapons by boat [Davis 2001].

A rift appeared in GAM in the late 1990s when Hasan di Tiro became ill, and a

dispute erupted over who would lead the movement after he died or became

incapacitated. Di Tiro and some of his lieutenants wanted di Tiro's son, Karim Hasan, to

succeed him; a different faction favored the son of another longtime GAM official, Daud

Paneuek (a.k.a. Mohd Daud Husin). For a while the Indonesian government attempted to

exploit this division [van Klinken 1999]. The breakaway faction had a setback in June

2000 when one of its leaders, Don Zulfahri, was killed in Kuala Lumpur by unknown

assailants. This dissident faction has no military capabilities of its own and has focused

on establishing an international political base [Gunaratna 2001].

There are conflicting reports about GAM's organization inside Aceh. GAM's

military commanders ­ Abdullah Syafi'ie until his death in 2002, and Mazukkir Manaf

thereafter ­ have been appointed by the GAM leadership in Sweden and apparently

remained loyal to it. There are frequent reports, however, that discipline inside GAM's

armed forces is poor, possibly due to its rapid growth. The disjuncture between GAM's

official policy of not attacking foreign companies, and the many attacks on the Arun

facility, may imply that GAM units in the Lhokseumawe area are not fully under GAM's

40

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central control; indeed, the GAM unit in this area has a reputation for being unusually

violent, corrupt, and resistant to central control.

33

GAM forces are divided into small groups of 10 to 20 men, who are at least

formally under one of 17 local commanders. GAM activity continues to be concentrated

in the three districts where the movement has traditionally been the strongest ­ Pidie,

East Aceh, and North Aceh ­ the organization now has a presence in every part of the

province except Sabang, in the far north.

34

There were reports in mid-2001 that the

violence was moving away from the northeast coastal area and towards the central part of

the province.

Due to GAM's funding constraints, dearth of weapons, and limited manpower, it

may never be able to defeat the Indonesian army and police on the battleground. Instead

it has developed a series of political tactics to build popular support and draw attention to

the Acehnese cause. Since 1999, at least four tactics have been discernible.

The first has been a propaganda campaign that extols Aceh's glorious history, and

denounces the "theft" of its mineral wealth by the Javanese. Speakers and pamphlets

commonly suggest that if independent, Aceh would be as wealthy as Brunei, the oil-rich

Islamic sultanate on nearby Borneo. This is an economic appeal, not a political one:

Brunei is much wealthier, but less democratic than Indonesia. It is also a misleading

comparison. If Aceh was fiscally independent in 1998, its per capita GDP would be

$1,257 ­ about one-third higher than Indonesia's average GDP but not close to Brunei's

1998 per capita income of $17,600.

33

Author interview, Jakarta, June 2000.

34

Author interview, Banda Aceh, June 2000.

41

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Page 42

The second strategy has been to mobilize public opinion against the Indonesian

government by denouncing ­ and possibly, provoking ­ military repression. Until the

early 1990s the central GAM messages were economic and historical; since 1991, GAM

has also focused on the military's human rights violations [Robinson 1998]. In an

interview with a British journalist, Ilias Pase, a GAM commander, suggested that GAM

has at times provoked military reprisals in order to boost its support:

We know from experience how the security apparatus will respond [to our

activities]. They will kill civilians and burn their homes. This makes the people

more loyal to the GAM. And the people in Jakarta and outside can see that we are

serious about our struggle. This is part of the guerrilla strategy [Dillon 2001].

The Indonesian military is, unfortunately, all too eager to respond to provocations with

brutality ­ and hence fall into the trap set by GAM.

35

A third strategy, employed in 1999, was to encourage Acehnese villagers to move

into refugee camps ­ ostensibly to protect them from the military, but also to create a

refugee crisis that would draw international attention to Aceh. In mid-1999 GAM helped

empty dozens of villages, and move between 80,000 and 100,000 Acehnese into 61

refugee camps along the northern coast [Cohen 1999]. After drawing international media

attention, villagers were allowed to return to their villages and these camps were largely

closed down.

The fourth strategy has been to drive Javanese settlers out of Aceh: in mid-1999

they forced at least 15,000 Javanese ­ some who had lived in Aceh since the 1970s ­ out

of their homes [McBeth et al. 1999]. This may reflect, in part, GAM's anti-Javanese

35

This is a time-honored method for generating support for social movements; scholars

of social movements sometimes call it "countermobilization." As Lichbach [1995, 103]

explains, this strategy "involves exaggerating the position of counterdissidents and

regimes, fanning intergroup hostilities, politicizing a conflict, and framing the conflict in

"we vs. them" terms." He notes, however, that this strategy can backfire.

42

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Page 43

ideology; the association of the Javanese with the military, who are loathed; and

competition between the Acehnese and non-Acehnese over jobs. It also may have been

caused by the fear that the army would organize non-Acehnese settlers into a militia to

fight the separatists, as they did in East Timor. In 2001 there were reports that Javanese

settlers were indeed being recruited into a nationalist militia [Tempo 2001b].

The army and police have responded to GAM with their own mix of strategies.

These include attacking and killing GAM personnel, including its military leaders;

detaining and torturing anyone believed to have information about GAM, or to be

sympathetic to them; burning houses and buildings in villages where GAM may have a

presence, or that are simply near recent GAM activities; developing a militia composed

of Javanese migrants; and forcibly recruiting petty criminals and teenagers to use as

informants. According to an estimate in mid-2001, approximately 30,000 military and

police personnel were operating in Aceh. They operate in what the International Crisis

Group calls "a virtual legal vacuum" and have committed a large number of atrocities

[ICG 2001a; Human Rights Watch 2001].

The military's failure to contain the rebel movement could be attributed to

ineptitude, corruption, or a belief they will profit from an ongoing conflict. Efforts by

both Presidents Habibie and Wahid to find peaceful solutions were subverted ­perhaps

deliberately ­ by the military. Up and down the chain of command, soldiers profit from

the war in Aceh, and the war has given a political boost to the military as an institution

[ICG 2001a].

Efforts to find a peaceful solution have so far produced no concrete results. In

May 2000 representatives of the two parties agreed to a "humanitarian pause" ­ in effect,

43

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Page 44

a cease-fire ­ but this had little influence on the intensity of the conflict or the casualty

rate, and was abandoned in 2001. The government and GAM have maintained a

dialogue throughout much of the conflict, but neither seems willing to compromise on the

core issue of Acehnese independence: GAM insists on it, and Jakarta rejects it.

In August 2001 President Megawati signed a law that granted "Special

Autonomy" to Aceh (Law No. 18 of 2001), giving Aceh control of 70 percent of its oil

and gas revenues for eight years, after which the arrangement would be subject to review.

It would also partially implement Islamic law in Aceh, establish Islamic courts, introduce

direct elections for the province's governor, and give the governor greater control over

the Acehnese police. The new law was ignored by GAM, and has apparently failed to

win over Acehnese leaders who remain independent from GAM. Because of the conflict

it was unclear whether the government would be able to implement any parts of the law.

From August 1998 to the beginning of 2002 there was a steady increase in the

number of deaths caused by the Aceh war. According to data compiled by Aceh's

Human Rights Care Forum (

Forum Peduli Hak Asasi Manusia

), 393 people were killed

in the conflict 1999, 1041 people were killed in 2000, and about 1700 in 2001. The

group estimated that between August 1998 and April 2001, 14 percent of those who died

in the conflict were Indonesian soldiers and police, five percent were GAM fighters, and

over 80 percent were civilians [ICG 2001a; Jakarta Post 2001b; Agence France Presse

2002].

44

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4. Natural Resources and the Aceh Conflict

Collier and Hoeffler [2001] observe that a state's dependence on primary commodities is

correlated with the likelihood of civil war. They explain this correlation by suggesting

that the presence of primary commodities makes it easier for potential rebel groups to

fund their "start-up" costs by looting and selling these commodities. They argue that

"rebellions need to finance themselves, and the extortion of primary commodity exports

offers the best opportunity for financial viability [2001, 3]."

This case is consistent with the Collier-Hoeffler observation that resource wealth

heightens the risk of civil war; but it is inconsistent with their claim that resource

predation or extortion is at fault. If Collier and Hoeffler are correct, we should have

observed GAM raising money from resource predation before the civil war began ­

anytime before 1990, or between 1992 and 1998. There is some evidence that GAM

attempted to extort money during these periods from Aceh's commodity sector (including

the LNG complex, and the agricultural sector), there is little evidence that they

succeeded. Only after the civil war was under way (in 1990-91 and 1999-2002) did their

extortion efforts appear to pay off. I conclude that resource predation did not contribute

to the onset of civil war in Aceh.

There are three alternative ways, however, that Aceh's natural resource wealth

appeared to influence the conflict. The first was by creating grievances over the

distribution of resource revenues and jobs. The claim that non-Acehnese are stealing

Aceh's resource wealth has been a central part of GAM's rhetoric since its birth in 1976 ­

just months before the Arun natural gas plant began operations. The theme has gradually

45

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spread across the province and has become a popular ­ even ubiquitous ­ belief among

the Acehnese.

This belief has given the Acehnese people a financial incentive to support

independence, and may have made them more likely to make voluntary donations to

GAM ­ which they might see as rational investments in their future. While the economic

attraction of independence may have meant little while the economy was growing quickly

in 1976-79 and 1989-91, it took on greater salience after the economic crisis of 1997-98.

Second, Aceh's natural gas wealth heightened the risk of conflict by

producing a larger military presence in the province; and by inducing a more repressive

response from the government to early signs of unrest. The government has placed

Military Operations Command (

Pangkolakorps

) for Aceh directly in Lhokseumawe,

home of the Arun facility. Lhokseumawe is also the base for one of Aceh's two Sub-

Regional Military Commands, Korem 011 (

Komando Resor Militer

) [Robinson 1998].

The military has long had a central role in managing the Arun facility, in part out

of fear that grievances over the distribution of its revenues would lead to security

disturbances. Political scientist Donald Emmerson, who observed the central

government's procedures for developing the Arun facility and the adjoining industrial

zone in the early 1980s, observed that Indonesian bureaucrats believed that

once those facilities have begun to fill central coffers with foreign exchange, the

claims of regionalists to the income from "their" resources must be prevented

from undermining the unity of the nation ­ or, from a regionalist perspective, the

hegemony of the center. These concerns explain why the armed forces and the

second-most penetrated ministry [by the army], Home Affairs, approached

decisions affecting Aceh's [industrial zone] mainly in security terms [Emmerson

1983, 1233].

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The Indonesian government also has a longstanding (though rarely articulated)

policy of placing security forces around firms that are designated as "vital projects"

(

Proyeck Fital

) for the nation. Around 1,000 troops are normally assigned to guard the

Arun project, its employees, and its contractors; during the recent conflict, the number of

troops doubled [ICG 2001a; McBeth 2001].

The military presence at Arun has almost certainly heightened anti-Indonesian

grievances in the Lhokseumawe area. Officers assigned to protect Arun have

periodically been involved in the abduction, torture, and execution of Acehnese in

neighboring areas, who they suspect are sympathetic to or associated with GAM

[Business Week 1998; Solomon 2000; Tempo 2001a]. These activities were the basis of

a lawsuit filed in June 2001 by the International Labor Rights Fund against

ExxonMobil.

36

Yusuf Ismail Pase, a Lhokseumawe-based lawyer and human rights

activist, told a reporter in March 2001, "Without Mobil, we wouldn't have so many

soldiers. These military posts ­ they're like machines to make people disappear [Murphy

2001]."

The heavy security presence at Arun helps explain why the district of North Aceh

(where Arun is located) has suffered more violence than any of Aceh's 13 districts. Even

before

Arun was targeted by GAM for shakedowns in early 2001, North Aceh had the

greatest number of people killed and injured, the largest number of offices burned, and

the largest number of schools burned of any district in Aceh. The number of homes and

businesses destroyed in North Aceh was more than double the number in East Aceh,

which was the next-most damaged district [BPS Aceh 2000].

36

ExxonMobil has denied it was involved in human rights abuses by Indonesian security

forces.

47

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Page 48

Finally, Aceh's resource wealth may be making the civil war harder to resolve, by

reducing the credibility of the government's commitments to regional autonomy. In

August 2001, the government adopted a law that granted Aceh "special autonomy,"

including the right to retain 70 percent of the province's oil and gas revenues. The

credibility of the government's promises was already quite low in Aceh. The resource

wealth may have lowered it even further, since the Acehnese may have doubted that the

cash-strapped central government would abide by this agreement once the war was

over.

37

Conclusion

This paper has described some of the proximate causes of the violence in Aceh since

1976. In general, the case of Aceh fits the Collier-Hoeffler model of civil wars well.

Aceh has many of the characteristics that Collier and Hoeffler suggest tends to put

countries at risk: it is relatively poor; mountainous; ethnically homogeneous; has a

significant diaspora; suffered from conflict previously; is only partly democratic; has a

weak judicial system; and is highly dependent on the export of natural resources.

It has also tried to show that three additional factors can help provide a more

complete explanation for the Aceh civil war. The first is the entrepreneurship of Hasan di

Tiro, the founder of the separatist group GAM. The Aceh conflict was largely caused by

the rise of GAM: it is the only organization in Aceh that has violently challenged the

Indonesian state since 1963, and had it not formed, Aceh's recent history would be far

37

See footnote 27.

48

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Page 49

different. The foundation and growth of GAM was largely the result of di Tiro's tireless

efforts.

The second factors has been Acehnese public opinion. If we look solely at the

funding of GAM, can partly explain why GAM failed to start a civil war in 1976-79 (due

to lack of funds) and why it succeeded in 1989-91 (due to Libyan assistance); but we

cannot explain why GAM re-emerged in 1999 and grew so quickly, when it had no

apparent source of start-up funds.

As others have noted, GAM's 1999 rebirth and subsequent growth has much to do

with Acehnese public opinion ­ particularly the outrage against human rights abuses

committed by Indonesian security forces between 1990 and 1998, the belief that

independence would create an economic windfall due to the retention of resource

revenues, and the low credibility of the government's offers of autonomy [Robinson

1998; ICG 2001a]. These views appear to have made recruitment easier for GAM,

enabling it to multiply in size between early 1999 and 2001.

Finally, the third factor has been the role of Aceh's resource wealth ­ not as a

source of start-up funds for GAM, but as source of grievance for the Acehnese people,

who have been displeased about the distribution of resource revenues, and aggravated by

the large and aggressive military presence at the LNG industrial complex.

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