It is difficult to imagine anything good coming out of last year’s Indian Ocean tsunami. To speak of it having a silver lining seems positively offensive — mocking, it seems, the magnitude of the tragedy and the pain of the hundreds of thousands who lost family, friends, community and homes in the devastation. Yet for Indonesia, the worst ravaged of all the countries hit by the tsunami, and more specifically the province of Aceh in northern Sumatra that was at the epicenter of the disaster, there is something akin to restoration as a result. The agreement signed yesterday in Helsinki between the Indonesian government and rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) who for the past 29 years have been fighting for the province’s independence would not have happened but for the tsunami. The devastation it wrought in the province, with 132,000 dead or missing and half a million homeless, changed hearts and minds both there and in the capital Jakarta. It put the civil war and the 15,000 lives it cost into a new perspective. It allowed the rebels, the military and the Indonesian government to break out of the straitjacket of violence in which for those 29 years they had been bound. There was an acceptance that there had been enough suffering in Aceh. All sides seized the opportunity to ensure that post-tsunami reconstruction should include political reconstruction as well.
Of course there are others to thank for the breakthrough, not least President Susilo Bombing Yudhoyono who, since his election, has taken on with unprecedented determination the task of solving the issue. Deserving thanks too is the former president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, who seized the chance in the changed political environment to mediate the peace deal. And yet, it is no big deal. GAM has given up its goal of independence and will hand over its weapons in return for autonomy and an Indonesian military pullout, an amnesty and the right to pursue its political ambitions through the ballot box, and with 70 percent of oil revenues staying in the oil-rich province. But all these were on offer before; about the only difference is a south African-style truth and reconciliation commission. The inevitable conclusion has to be that this was never a war of liberation. It was a war of frustration over Jakarta’s refusal to reinvest any of Aceh’s oil wealth back into the province.
Certainly it is a deal the Acehnese want. Their gathering in mosques across the province, in their tens of thousands, to pray that the deal will hold demonstrates a desperate desire for peace and prosperity. It must not be betrayed like the two previous attempts at peace. It should work. Both the rebels and the government appear committed to the deal. Even so, it would be wise to hold one’s breath, at least until next month when the rebels are supposed to begin handing in their arms. That will be the real test.
