Post-conflict Aceh Research Articles

Who is rebuilding Aceh? Tensions between groups of staff in an NGO

This article takes its point of departure in an international non-governmental aid organisation (INGO) active in post-disaster and post-conflict Aceh. Using material collected through fieldwork conducted in the organisation, the article addresses the issue of how the intrinsic logic and workings of development reinforce the historically tense relationship between Acehnese and Indonesians.

Reconstructing ‘Traditional’ Justice from the outside in: Transitional Justice in Aceh and East Timor

Transitional justice programmes in post-conflict Aceh, Indonesia, and East Timor are often described as acts of bottom-up reconciliation, highlighting both the community focus of the programmes and the inclusion of indigenous justice practices (adat). Traditionally resonant forms of transitional justice are lauded over internationally orchestrated programmes for their presumed legitimacy and efficacy in promoting peacebuilding and reconciliation. This framing ignores the substantial and largely unrecognised role played by external actors in the revitalisation, reconstruction, and in some cases implementation of traditional practices in the transitional justice and peacebuilding programmes in Aceh and East Timor. Moreover, although the use of traditional practices was supposed to improve the effectiveness of the programmes, the reconstruction of ‘tradition’ by external actors created some new legitimacy and implementation problems. The cases highlight how the instrumentalisation of traditional practices in transitional justice programmes may solve some post-conflict dilemmas but create others.

Rapid response: Email, immediacy, and medical humanitarianism in Aceh, Indonesia

After more than 20 years of sporadic separatist insurgency, the Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian government signed an internationally brokered peace agreement in August 2005, just eight months after the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated Aceh's coastal communities. This article presents a medical humanitarian case study based on ethnographic data I collected while working for a large aid agency in post-conflict Aceh from 2005 to 2007. In December 2005, the agency faced the first test of its medical and negotiation capacities to provide psychiatric care to a recently amnestied political prisoner whose erratic behavior upon returning home led to his re-arrest and detention at a district police station. I juxtapose two methodological approaches—an ethnographic content analysis of the agency's email archive and field-based participant-observation—to recount contrasting narrative versions of the event. I use this contrast to illustrate and critique the immediacy of the humanitarian imperative that characterizes the industry. Immediacy is explored as both an urgent moral impulse to assist in a crisis and a form of mediation that seemingly projects neutral and transparent transmission of content. I argue that the sense of immediacy afforded by email enacts and amplifies the humanitarian imperative at the cost of abstracting elite humanitarian actors out of local and moral context. As a result, the management and mediation of this psychiatric case by email produced a bureaucratic model of care that failed to account for complex conditions of chronic political and medical instability on the ground.

Doctors that Harm, Doctors that Heal: Reimagining Medicine in Post-Conflict Aceh, Indonesia

ABSTRACTThis article explores the fears and desires that conflict survivors invest in biomedicine in post-conflict Aceh, Indonesia. After examining common criticisms of Acehnese doctors, I go on to discuss the practise of Acehnese medical travel to Malaysia and the desirable depictions of biomedicine that are generated through cross-border clinical encounters. Building on Pinto [2004. Development Without Institutions: Ersatz Medicine and the Politics of Everyday Life in Rural North India. Cultural Anthropology, 19(3):337–364], I argue that in the post-conflict period, biomedicine acts as both a site of terror and ‘point of imagination and longing’ that guides my interlocutors' understandings of the changing world around them. The article brings debates about medicine and violence into dialogue with a body of post-conflict ethnography, showing how popular imaginaries of biomedicine can shape the process of post-conflict world building.

PATRICK DALY, R. MICHAEL FEENER, and ANTHONY REID, eds. From the Ground Up: Perspectives on Post-Tsunami and Post-Conflict Aceh. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012, xxxi+262p.

From the Ground Up: Perspectives on Post-Tsunami and Post-Conflict Aceh PATRICK DALY, R. MICHAEL FEENER, and ANTHONY REID, eds. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012, xxxi+262p.On the book cover, the words Lebih baik disini kampung kita sendiri are scrawled on a wall of a disaster-hit house in Aceh. is better to stay here in our village. As its title suggests, From the Ground Up explores the country's recovery from natural disaster and military conflict from the perspectives of various participants, including scholars, practitioners, and ordinary Acehnese. Across the chapters, there is a sensitivity to Acehnese views, interests, and agency. This is buttressed by the inclusion of several Acehnese authors and a sustained inquiry, based on extensive fieldwork or personal engagement, into a society's recovery at the intersection of international, national, and local action.The book begins with a geological study of the Sunda megathrust and considers the likely timing and site of the next great earthquake and/or tsunami to strike Sumatra. The bulk of the volume is divided into two sections. The first, by far the more substantial, examines the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami which devastated Aceh, among other places in Southeast and South Asia. It critically addresses issues like the role of NGOs in relief work, the autonomous ways in which survivors responded to loss and trauma, the experiences and rights of women, reconstruction finance, and the need to rebuild Aceh's cultural heritage.The second part surveys the resolution of Aceh's separatist struggle. The landmark event here, as a counterpoint to the disaster, is the Helsinki Peace Accords brokered the following year between the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka movement and the Indonesian government which ended the long-running, low-intensity conflict. The tone in this section differs from the first with an emphasis on success and moving out of crisis. Although the authors generally acknowledge that more demanding challenges of truth and reconciliation and peace building lay beyond the end of the conflict, there is a lack of criticality present in the first section. The papers provide useful insights into the roles played by external parties in ending the conflict, such as the Indonesian leaders and the Aceh Monitoring Mission, but they sit rather awkwardly alongside the first group of papers.I shall examine several chapters in greater detail. The contributions on international NGOs crucially reveal a disjuncture in relief and rehabilitation work between the international and local levels. John Telford, drawing upon the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition reports, points to the failure of large, powerful international NGOs to be respectful towards local perspectives and traditions. He shows how the post-disaster operation focused excessively on relief work to the detriment of tackling long-term problems such as disaster risk, poverty, and under-development. Ian Christoplos and Treena Wu reiterate this point in highlighting the need for international NGOs to devolve the task of LRRD (linking relief, rehabilitation, and development) to local communities. Both papers underline the tension in post-disaster work between responding to the effects of a calamitous event and addressing long-term processes which have contributed to these effects. The work of various scholars (Blaikie et al. 1994; Pelling 2003; Nowak and Caulfield 2008) suggests that the two issues cannot be divorced: a disaster's impact falls hardest on those people who have been rendered particularly vulnerable by political, economic, demographic, and environmental developments. This point alludes to the book's failure to properly contextualize the history, politics and society of pretsunami Aceh.The shortcomings of post-tsunami rebuilding are also evident in the chapter on cultural heritage. Patrick Daly and Yenny Rahmayati highlight the failure to take into account the intangible cultural aspects of reconstruction. …

Amnesty and Accountability: The Price of Peace in Aceh, Indonesia

In 2005, the government of Indonesia and representatives of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed a Memorandum of Understanding bringing almost 30 years of violent conflict in Aceh to an end. At the centre of the agreement was the provision of an amnesty for GAM combatants that has been widely cited as one of the key reasons for the success of the Aceh peace process. This article assesses the price paid for that peace and its impact on democracy, rule of law and human rights in postconflict Aceh. It demonstrates that although the development of a human rights culture has not eventuated in the five years since the Acehnese war ended, general predictions about the negative impact of amnesties have not materialized in this case. Rather than leaving a significant debt, in this case peace has purchased democratic elections and marked improvements in the material respect for human rights.

The policy-making dimension of post-conflict governance: the experience of Aceh, Indonesia

Rebuilding and strengthening the essential functions of government is a critical aspect of peace-building and recovery after conflict. There is now a wide literature on the challenges of post-conflict state-building based on the international community's experiences in such places as Kosovo, East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of this literature is concerned with the challenges of strengthening administration and service provision—what might be loosely called the policy implementation functions of government. Much less attention has been given to the policy formulation capacities of post-conflict governments. This is surprising given the importance of conflict-sensitive policies for peace-building and for laying the foundations for economic growth and employment. Many post-conflict governments lack capacity for policy development—a gap that is often filled by international technical assistance. In cases where the international community is providing support to a reasonably functioning government after a conflict, this study argues that more attention needs to be given to the government's policy-making capacity. Using the experience of post-conflict Aceh as a prism, the study argues that technical advice can be too easily wasted unless there is concomitant support for developing the institutional infrastructure needed to manage advice and to prepare options for political deliberation and choice.

Two solitudes: post‐tsunami and post‐conflict Aceh

In August 2005, after the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean Basin, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the cessation of hostilities was signed by Aceh's longstanding adversaries-the Government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). The tsunami was a major catalyst for 'disaster diplomacy'-international political pressure, which, this paper argues, was an important ingredient in creating conditions for the MoU, although the situation within Aceh also shaped the peace process. Based on interviews conducted in 2006 and 2007 with government officials, GAM representatives and fighters, and non-governmental organization staff in Aceh, this paper finds that assistance for tsunami survivors far exceeds that available for conflict survivors and ex-combatants. The formation of these two solitudes-the tsunami-affected and the conflict-affected-compounds challenges for sustaining peace in Aceh. This research points to an enduring lack of livelihoods for former fighters and conflict victims that may threaten a sustainable peace.