Atame!

I've been spending 10-12 hours a day with three Acehnese who are part of our research team. Through our research we've gone through areas where there was intense damage from the tsunami, as well as damage from the 30 year conflict that ended soon after the tsunami. Very simply, the conflict was between the Indonesian government (GoI) and The Free Aceh Movement (GAM), Gam wanted Aceh to be free from Indonesia, and the government disagreed. Depending on who you ask the conflict had political, religious, cultural and/or economic motives. After the peace agreement was signed in 2005, Aceh was given a good deal of autonomy and former GAM leaders and combatants were elected to local government. For many, though not all, people, GAM members are still local heroes. I went to a cafe run by an ex-combatant and the walls were covered with pictures of him in uniform holding a Kalishnikov rifle. I've sat with mayors who were leaders and members of farming cooperatives who were soldiers.  However, the years of violence and even longer history of tensions hasn't been forgotten, but on the other hand it seems like communities and people who were affected by the conflict are trying to move forward, while holding onto their loyalty to what is now Partai Aceh (political party of GAM). Here's a story I heard more than once over the course of the week with new details being added each time, and from several different people (general gist from a bule (westerner) details from team members).

A while ago, after the peace agreement had been signed, the organization that hired my research team was working in a rural area of Aceh Utara, where the former center of GAM activity was based. This organization hired a new security director who saw it fit to hire security to send to the schools in the former GAM area. He claimed that this security was to protect the school children. However the villagers were suspicious and questioned the security officers. They found ID cards in their bags that identified them as members of the GoI military, then they found disassembled guns. The security officers claimed innocence, saying the guns were broken. While the "security officers", now identified as GoI soldiers (TNI), were tied to a tree, ex-combatants reassembled the guns and shot them into the air. A driver who is still with the organization was my driver this day and he talked about how he was also tied to a tree because he had driven the security to the village, not knowing they were TNI. So with evidence of foul play in hand and soldiers tied to trees, the villagers went to the government with proof that the military was trying to spy on them.
It was later found out that the head of security was in fact high up in the Indonesian military.

A terrible mistake by the organization that could potentially have restarted the conflict. Yet somehow these same villagers, including ex-combatants, spent upwards of an hour telling us how much the organization had helped and how all they really wanted was to earn a living and help the school. They started a farmers' cooperative and 10% of all profits go to the elementary school. Amazing.

Next time... more about GAM, TNI and where Exxon Mobile fits in...

Check out this link for a preview http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1401733.stm

JFK the farmer

Just a quick story, we were talking about famous people and got onto the Kennedys...

Indonesian PhD student: I like to know, why are the Kennedys always get killed and die?

Me: Well I'm not really sure, I don't think there's just one reason...

PhD Student: You know what we are thinking? We are thinking the Kennedys, when the Europeans come to take land in America, they are take a lot of land and have big agriculture. So this is why they are rich and people want to take their land now and kill them.

Me: You know, I'm not sure the Kennedys are the farming type of people...

:)

Just a little update

Ever have that feeling where whatever you do at work is the last thing you want to do when you go home at night? If you're in school it might be reading? If you work in an office it might be working on  the computer. Well for me home is hotels at the moment and work is anything involving reading and writing, really trying to keep track of anything, so forgive the lack of posts, I'll see what I can do about picking it up.

So let' see, I left the states a little over 2 weeks ago now and things have been moving along quite well. This week the research team  (3 national consultants) and I headed to Bireuen, which is about 4 hours away from Banda Aceh, where I'm based. We got to go out to villages, talk to people there about the programs and hear about the changes that have occurred since the tsunami. Many of the villages in Bireuen were actually far enough inland so they weren't affected, but 30 years of conflict leading up to the peace agreement that was signed after the tsunami left their communities in almost equivalent ruin, with schools and health centers burned and communities afraid to send their children to school and the like. I'm amazed by how much progress has been made, and by the fact that a severe natural disaster managed to bring an end to such a long civil war. From what I've heard, after so much devastation from the tsunami, neither side could go on the way they had and a peace agreement that gave Aceh a relative degree of autonomy was arranged. Given all the classes and degrees and theories about how peace is brokered, what does Aceh tell us? It doesn't necessarily tell us that those things don't work, but rather than sometimes it takes something shocking and out of the ordinary for fighting groups to stop and agree to peace. It seems like real lasting peace is so hard to achieve, that it's really a wonder that it appears to have succeeded here.

So back to it then. Village visits have been fun, but a bit trying at times because I don't speak Bahasa (Indonesian) or Acehnese (local language) so I try to participate, but also spend a lot of time looking at pades and watching people harvest rice, and trying to find shade to hide in.  The work is coming along well, although it's a lot to wrap my head around. But one of the senior researchers is here now and he's a very big picture guy so it's great to see what he thinks of all the community ranking exercises and interviews we've done.  So back to the field for a week tomorrow, off to Lhoeksamawe and Aceh Utara and I'll be back to Banda Aceh (and maybe heading to Sebang over the weekend!).  It's about 5-6 hours to get out there so I'll have some deep thoughts for my next post. Hope everyone's having a great Halloween and thanks for staying in touch!