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Aceh

© John Walsh

Freedom fighters or terrorists? It is often difficult to be sure. Political, religious and ethnic history is often complex and does not yield simplistic answers. Aceh, in northwestern Sumatra, has become integrated to some extent into Indonesia since the declaration of independence in 1945. This was immediately met with the creation of the movement for independence or at least autonomy which, in recent years, has become the GAM (Free Aceh Movement). The movement has been strongly linked with the Islamic cause that Acehnese consider to have been let down by the central government in Java. A continued call has been for the establishment of the Sharia law - the rule of law based on Koranic law which is most commonly associated in the western mind with the mutilation of those convicted of theft and judicial deaths of women convicted of adultery. At the same time, Acehnese are proud of the role of powerful women in their history over a period of six centuries.

How has this situation arisen? What is the background of the Acehnese and what is the justice of their call for independence?

Aceh was the home for the ancient state of Perlak, which is dated by some to the early ninth century and which certainly was visited by the author of the Marco Polo history and noted as a Muslim state. In the centuries leading up to this period, small but distinctive city trader states had formed their own international trading networks and were also integral to the networks linking them to the Arab world to the west (and thence to Europe) and to China in the east. Trade was linked with diplomacy and military matters, as ever, in a context in which no large state was able effectively and consistently to enforce control over distant polities. Instead, local cities were able to enjoy effective independence.

By the time of the arrival of the European colonizers, Aceh had grown into a powerful part of the Malay world and was able to contend against both the invading Portuguese and the rival Malay power base of Malacca (Melaka). Fierce wars were fought between the three, with shifting alliances, burning of villages, carrying off of wives and children and sea chases painting a picture of romantic adventure that, in reality, was more likely to have been one of misery and the repression of the poor and of women.

The conquest of the Indonesian archipelago by the Dutch signaled a definitive entry into the imperial world for the Acehnese. The colony experience was as varied and as unpleasant on Aceh as it was throughout the Dutch holdings. It did little to encourage Acehnese to believe that they were naturally part of a larger state or wished to be so. Ethnic divisions and their use by the colonizers encouraged disintegration. However, the discovery of oil in the region ensured the fate of the Acehnese independence cause. Since independence, thousands of disappearances and murders have been blamed on the Indonesian military. The oil industry is supported by a joint venture with the Mobil company.

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