Free Aceh Movement

Free Aceh Movement
Type	Armed independence movement
Founded	1976
Base	Aceh, Indonesia; leadership in exile in Sweden
Scope	Aceh
Focus	Acehnese independence; armed insurgency against the Indonesian state until the Helsinki settlement of 2005

The Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) was an armed independence movement in Aceh, at the northern end of Sumatra in Indonesia. Hasan di Tiro established it in October 1976 under the name Aceh-Sumatra National Liberation Front. A redeclaration of Acehnese independence followed on 4 December of that year.^{: 4, 6} Its armed wing disbanded on 27 December 2005, four months after the movement and the Indonesian government signed the memorandum of understanding in Helsinki.^: 374

Kirsten Schulze divides the conflict into three phases: a small ideological organisation from 1976 to 1979, a re-emergence from 1989 that the Indonesian military answered with the counter-insurgency period known as DOM and a popular movement from 1998 until the settlement.^: 4

The Indonesian army implied that the movement and the ganja syndicate were one and the same, which made the movement a criminal organisation. Its leadership denied any involvement in cultivation.^: 1 Schulze listed cannabis among the movement's revenue streams in 2004.^{: 24, 27} The Transnational Institute concluded in 2016 that no concrete evidence connected the two.^: 6

Names

The movement's own name for itself was the Aceh-Sumatra National Liberation Front, abbreviated ASNLF. It used the spellings Acheh and Atjeh in place of the official Indonesian Aceh.^: 1: 4 Gerakan Aceh Merdeka and its abbreviation GAM became the usual form. Contemporary reporting also used Aceh Merdeka on its own.^: 1 From early 1990 the Indonesian government applied the acronym GPK, for gerombolan pengacau keamanan or "public security disturbers", to the perpetrators of any act of violence in the province.^: 1

The armed wing was Angkatan Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (AGAM) until the Stavanger Declaration of July 2002 renamed it Tentara Negara Aceh (TNA), the Aceh State Military.^: v On its disbandment in December 2005 its structure was carried over into the Komite Peralihan Aceh (KPA), the Committee for the Transition in Aceh. Braithwaite and colleagues write that the committee replicated almost exactly the terminology and structure of the old military organisation.^: 374

Aims and organisation

The movement's stated aim was to free Aceh from what its founding declaration called the political control of Jakarta. It held the incorporation of Aceh into the Republic of Indonesia in 1945 to have been illegal, against the official Indonesian account of a voluntary accession.^: 6 Schulze characterises its nationalism as ethnic, defined through descent, religion and membership of one of nine suku.^: 7 In her account Islam was part of the movement's identity throughout without being the object of its politics. Its vision of independence was a revival of the sultanate until the Stavanger Declaration of July 2002 replaced that with a democratic system.^: 7 Schulze traces a shift from the anti-capitalist and anti-Western language of the first 15 years to the language of human rights and democracy from the late 1980s.^: 8

The structure divided a leadership in exile from a mid-level leadership, fighters and support base inside Aceh. Di Tiro formed a cabinet during his years in the province from 1976 to 1979. Decisions on strategy and tactics were taken at field-commander level.^{: 10, 14}

Financing

Schulze identifies three sources of revenue: a levy, foreign donations and criminal activity.^: 24 The levy was the pajak nanggroë, an Aceh state tax collected from all parts of society. According to the senior negotiator Sofyan Ibrahim Tiba, it continued the earlier infaq under a new name from 2000. Foreign donations came mainly from the Acehnese diaspora, above all in Malaysia. The third category covered kidnapping for ransom and the drug trade.^{: 24, 27}

Schulze sets out why verification is difficult: people posing as the movement have abused the situation; Indonesian intelligence has at times produced forged documents attributed to it as part of a policy of criminalisation.^: 24 The movement did not deny levying taxes or receiving donations. It did reject involvement in crime, drugs and kidnapping.^: 24

Cannabis

The state's account and the movement's denial

Asia Watch reported in 1990 that the Indonesian government blamed the violence in Aceh on its effort to eradicate ganja and on the resulting loss of income to what it called the ganja mafia. The army implied that the movement and the ganja syndicate were the same thing, which made the movement a criminal organisation rather than a political one. The leadership denied any involvement in cultivation and said the movement relied on taxes and on contributions from outside. Asia Watch found that the relation between the political movement and the drug trade remained unclear.^: 1

The 1988 arrest and Operation Nila I

In 1988 a man named Muchtar bin Gadong, described in the Indonesian press as a sub-district commander of the movement, was arrested in Pidie. He led the military to several hectares of cannabis and a ton of the dried crop at Pucok Alue Pinang. He was reported to have confessed that the movement was financed by the cannabis trade. Asia Watch noted that confessions in such cases are often coerced. He was convicted of subversion.^: 1–2 Operation Nila I, mounted in early 1989, appeared to Asia Watch to be aimed at eradicating both cannabis and the movement.^: 2 When a sub-district military officer and his commanding officer were shot dead at Tiro in June 1989, the military attributed the killings to cannabis planters whose fields were being destroyed.^: 2

Asia Watch judged that neither resentment at a drug eradication programme nor the activities of a single underworld figure explained the return of the insurgency. It suggested that two dynamics were at work, with the political movement feeding off abuses committed in the course of the eradication effort.^: 2

The conflict economy

Schulze wrote in 2004 that the movement had been actively involved in the cultivation and trade of cannabis and that "an estimated 30 percent of all of Southeast Asia's marijuana is believed to originate in Aceh". She held the movement's own share difficult to guess, given the number of other participants, who ranged from members of the army and police to local strongmen and criminal syndicates in Medan in North Sumatra.^: 27 She wrote that at one level the movement, the military and the police were enemies, while at another some of their members were business partners.^: 28 In her account the largest share of the crop was sold inside Indonesia, mainly elsewhere in Sumatra and on Java. Sales funded weapons bought in Cambodia and Thailand, from individuals in the Indonesian security forces and on the black market in Jakarta.^: 27–28

Damien Kingsbury and Lesley McCulloch place the armed forces in both the cultivation and the trade. They describe security forces encouraging local people to grow and harvest the crop for a predominantly military market and paying far below market value.^: 213 Braithwaite and colleagues write that many units of the movement and many members of the military made large sums from producing and trading cannabis, often together.^: 392 They report that at least 47 Aceh-based military and police officers were dismissed, possibly for involvement in the drug trade. They also give the alternative reading, that the allegation was government disinformation intended to discredit the officers.^: 355

In July 1999 Indonesian troops killed the ulama Tgk. Bantaqiah and 56 of his followers at his boarding school in Beutong Ateuh. Rodd McGibbon writes that the military claimed Bantaqiah was involved in cultivating cannabis and suspected him of ties to the movement, claims that have never been independently verified.^: 336

Assessments

The Transnational Institute's 2016 briefing sets out the allegations: that the movement financed itself by levying taxes on cannabis cultivation and controlled trafficking in cooperation with a Jakarta-based organisation. It then states that the relationship is hard to determine and that no concrete evidence connects the two. It treats cannabis as one form of resource-grabbing among several, beside the extortion of the coffee and fishing industries and the seizure of plantation land. In its account all parties to the conflict were probably caught up in shifting alliances: military and police, competing factions of the movement, local strongmen, criminal gangs and political and criminal entrepreneurs.^: 6 The briefing places farmers and growers who depended on cannabis for a living in the worst position of all, harassed by whichever armed group controlled the ground.^: 6

Kingsbury and McCulloch judged the military less involved in the drug economy by the time they wrote than it had been earlier. Braithwaite and colleagues attribute the change to police enforcement after the police were separated from the military.^: 213: 400

Conflict with the Indonesian state

Suppression, 1976–1979

Hasan di Tiro came from an Acehnese ulama family and was a grandson of Teungku Cik di Tiro, who had fought the Dutch. He lived in the United States from 1950, first as a student and then in business. He served on the Indonesian delegation to the United Nations until the Darul Islam rebellion of 1953, when he took the side of Daud Beureueh.^: 4 He returned to Aceh in 1976. By his own account 70 men joined him, drawn mainly from Pidie and particularly from the village of Tiro. The senior figures were university-educated or had been businessmen, while many of the mid-level leaders and fighters had fought in the Darul Islam rebellion.^{: 4, 14} Indonesian counter-insurgency operations had effectively destroyed the organisation by the end of 1979, with its leaders in exile, imprisoned or dead.^: 4

Re-emergence and the military operations zone, 1986–1998

From 1986 Libya provided paramilitary training. The movement recruited in rural Aceh and sent the recruits abroad.^: 4 It re-emerged in Aceh in 1989 and consolidated command structures in Greater Aceh (Aceh Besar), Pidie, North Aceh and East Aceh. The returning trainees then trained further fighters in the province.^: 4 Indonesia answered with the Jaring Merah counter-insurgency operations from 1990. The period from 1989 to 1998 became known as DOM, Daerah Operasi Militer or military operations zone.^: 4

Casualty figures vary by source. Schulze cites between 1,258 and 2,000 killed and 3,439 tortured. The number of disappeared was put at 500 by Human Rights Watch, at between 1,000 and 5,000 by the Aceh regional assembly and at 39,000 by the NGO Forum Aceh. Of some 7,000 documented cases of human rights violations, five were selected for prosecution and one was tried.^: 5

From the fall of Suharto to the military emergency, 1998–2004

Schulze attributes the movement's transformation into a popular one to the DOM years themselves: almost every Acehnese family in Pidie, North Aceh and East Aceh was represented among the victims. After the fall of Suharto nothing was done to meet Acehnese demands for justice.^: 5 Talks brokered by the Henry Dunant Centre produced a Cessation of Hostilities Agreement in December 2002. It collapsed in May 2003 and was followed by a declaration of military emergency and the offensive Operasi Terpadu.^: 44–47

Settlement, 2005

The earthquake and tsunami of 26 December 2004 destroyed much of Banda Aceh and the western coast and opened the province to foreign aid workers. Peace talks began in Helsinki in January 2005 on the initiative of the former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari. The agreement was signed there on 15 August 2005 "on the basis of self-government rather than the old alternatives of independence or autonomy".^: 17 An Aceh Monitoring Mission drawn from the European Union and five south-east Asian states certified the destruction of the weapons the movement had declared and counted the departing Indonesian troops.^: 368

The armed wing disbanded on 27 December 2005. Indonesian law was changed to allow local parties to contest elections. The former strategist Irwandi Jusuf was elected governor in 2006. Former members founded Partai Aceh, which in Braithwaite and colleagues' account was the most successful party in Aceh at the 2009 national elections.^: 368

See also

• Aceh
• Badan Narkotika Nasional
• Ganja
• Indonesia
• North Sumatra