http://www.smh.com.au/news/Asia-Tsunami/Rebels-grieve--now-its-back-to-the-fight/2005/01/16/1105810778737.html?oneclick=true
Rebels grieve - now it's back to the fight By Matthew Moore, Herald Correspondent in Banda Aceh January 17, 2005 Page Tools a.. Email to a friend b.. Printer format c.. d.. Muharram believes the foreign presence in Aceh will help GAM's cause. Photo: Mike Bowers Muharram was high in the hills when he saw the sea recede so far he could have walked to the little island half a kilometre offshore. Together with his band of 50 warriors, the Acehnese independence fighter watched stunned as the water vanished and then, in horror, when it returned as a thick, foaming mountain. "We screamed, we prayed and we cried," he said, recounting how he and his comrades, hardened enemies of Indonesia, stood transfixed in their jungle perch as the sea tore through the flimsy houses on the mud flats below where they knew their families had no chance. The fighters of the Free Aceh Movement, called GAM, ran down the mountainside to help but were too late to do anything more than climb through the rubble searching for the dead and missing. They were so overcome with grief, Muharram allowed them a break from their 29-year war to search for their families. He figured three days was enough. Now all have returned to the tree-covered hills above Banda Aceh to resume their fight. They clean their guns and take shifts hiding in the bushes, just a few kilometres from the capital's and within easy view of foreign warships. They are unable, because of fear of the military, to help their countrymen carry on the search for missing family and friends. They cannot attend remembrance services or share their grief, except with each other. Muharram, GAM's handsome 30-year-old military commander for the Aceh Rayeuk/Aceh Besar regions that surround the capital, lost his wife to the tsunami. They had only just married. Many of his men lost more. Forty-seven-year-old Hasan Basri, the oldest of the fighters, lost his wife and five children, a typical toll among the guerillas. Only his 12-year-old son survived. It irks Muharram that despite the biggest aid operation in history, no help has come his way. "We wonder why the TNI [Indonesian military] get help from foreign countries, they get food, they get medical treatment, they get everything but we get nothing," he says after a lunch of buffalo and rice. He knows the answer, of course. The aid lies in the refugee camps and to get to it risks clashes with the military. With thousands of overseas troops, aid workers and journalists pouring into Aceh, Muharram and his exiled leaders in Sweden hope the world might at last notice their struggle, which has raged in a province long off-limits to foreigners. The tsunami has taken many GAM supporters, but he believes it has also brought GAM its best chance to show others the injustices they suffer. "It's been 29 years we've been fighting and fighting and thousands of Acehnese have been killed, yet still the UN closes its eyes. What we want is for the UN to send a special team to investigate in Aceh, a team to tell people what is actually happening here." But he knows that is wishful thinking. When asked which country supports GAM's fight for an independent state, he nominates only Vanuatu. And yet he believes the longer foreigners remain in Aceh, the more GAM will benefit. "Indonesia today is afraid that the international aid agencies will find out about the atrocities of the TNI in Aceh and that is why Indonesia set a ... deadline for foreign countries to leave Aceh," he says. Indonesia's Vice-President, Jusuf Kalla, said last week he expected all foreign troops to be out of Aceh by March 26, but Muharram believes it will soon be widened to include all outsiders. "Now is our one big chance for us, the Aceh people, to inform, to explain, to show the foreigners the reality in Aceh, what exactly the Aceh people want." Rules introduced under the emergency declared in Aceh in May 2003 banned all contact with GAM. But the minister in charge of aid, Alwi Shihab, told a press conference this month those rules were now suspended to allow the aid operation to go more smoothly, something for which GAM is clearly grateful. Muharram has been a GAM fighter for nine years, during which there has been only one glimmer of independence, when Abdurrahman Wahid, president from 1999 to 2001, promised a referendum. It never happened - a national outcry forced Mr Wahid into a humiliating climbdown. Hasan Basri explains why he left his family eight years ago to sleep with a gun by his side. "It's my own nation, we have our own flag, it's our own Aceh. We don't want to be controlled by those Javanese colonialists." Although armed with an odd mixture of ageing weapons from China, Russia and Thailand, the troops seem fit and well-disciplined and Muharram insists they have lost only 10 per cent of their number since Indonesia declared martial law and stepped up the fight in May 2003. Even if that is true, GAM's few thousand fighters are hopelessly outgunned by the 40,000 troops Jakarta has committed to the fight. But this is no simple war, and Acehnese know that GAM and the Indonesian military often work together to squeeze money out of villagers and local businesses. Muharram does not admit that, but he does agree friends in the military sell munitions and sometimes give advance warnings of raids. It is an arrangement that suits both sides. Muharram is happy to talk about his war, less comfortable with the notion of making peace. He can sense that the tsunami has brought huge change, but is nervous at the suggestion that GAM could suspend its campaign for independence and lay down its arms to allow the aid mission to proceed more smoothly. "No," he says. "We're sticking to our demand of independence because we have historical and cultural grounds, we have the land, and we have the people. "Our goal remains gaining independence. As mentioned in the UN charter, every nation has the rights to set their own goal on their own soil. We are a nation, Aceh already existed before Indonesia existed. Now we want independence, and we ask that by using weapons. Indonesia does the same, we attack each other. There is no resolution." a.. Top of Page [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! 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