Introduction

30 years of clash between the Free Ache Movement and the Indonesian military have escalated in recent years, leaving over 6,000 dead in the past decade. Following the tsunami, the separatists, or GAM, vowed to maintain peace so that relief efforts would not be affected. Several small skirmishes in the last weeks, only one month after the devastating tsunami, indicate that the civil war persists. This resurgence is not surprising considering the origins, intensity, and continuing stimuli that has transformed this group from a small band of guerilla fighters into a dominant, shadow-governance, controlling 70-80% of local governments in the Aceh region.

In the aftermath of the tsunami, thousands of people have mobilized to help with the cleanup effort. However, renewed fighting may infringe on the volunteers' efforts if areas are not safe to work in. Thus, the war has inextricably become a problem of tsunami relief, not only for the relief workers, but the tsunami victims who are reliant on global support. How can this potentially harmful scene rio of relief interruption be avoided? How can we promote peace in the Aceh region?

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Context and History

The Aceh region has been an area of smoldering violence for the last thirty years, since it became a part of Indonesia. An independence movement has taken the form of guerrilla warfare between separatists living in the rural jungle highlands and the Indonesian military trying to control the city of Banda Aceh and other government interests in the region. As time goes by, the situation only becomes more complicated as new issues fuel new animosities.

In more recent times, the line between civilian and rebel has become blurred. This has become especially true in the last 10 years, as GAM now plays a pervasive role in daily Acehnese society. Unfortunately, because of this integration, many of those killed in the fighting have reportedly been innocent civilians.

Both sides have been accused of human rights atrocities but the government has done little to sort out the issue. Ceasfires and calls for peace have come and gone through the years but now the world's eyes are on Indonesia as it digs out and rebuilds its tsunami-ravaged shoreline communities. The conflict now threatens to impede on the reconstruction process, but it also may now sit on a precipice of potential resolve.

For a history of the events leading to this situation, see Timeline of Events.

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Strategies and Resources

..........A) grassroots reasoning:

The situation of Aceh, like many civil wars, is longstanding and gnarled around social, political and structural changes. A war that was once a band of guerilla fighters is now a strong, international force that is deeply ingrained into Acehnese society. Trying to resolve the situation politically would require concessions on both sides as well as a great deal of international and NGO support. To circumvent the bureaucracy of political process might mean faster and more likely results. What would places of grass-roots, social contact look like?

On this premise, I have begun looking at ways of creating common spaces and identifying common ground: places, actions and metaphors for peace and social change.

..........B) determining strategies:

The conflict in Aceh is about freedom, power struggles, and resource control. Therefore, resources can play a major roll as tools of compromise.

steps toward solutions:

1) Identify contested resources of all kinds

2) Determine which can be made common, social or otherwise play into the concept of reconciliation

3) Using these resources search for social functions and metaphors for peace using space and form

..........C) identified resource themes:

1) spatial

2) religious

3) social

4) cultural

5) natural (physical)

6) environmental (ephemeral)

7) ideological

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Solutions and Opportunities

Considering the list of universal resources above, I began exploring the intricacies of Acehnese society to identify which of those resources could be used to promote ideas of common space and furthermore what forms they might take.

Among them, I considered options for landsharing, farming and other intra-community relationship building. Also, I examined inter-community relationships. How can individual communities foster peace? Finally, the most fierce rifts exist between the Indonesian government. What spaces, forms, or resources could become symbols of reconciliation and peace?

..........community spaces:

-associate gathering places with religious structures

-design in relation to Meunasah, community mosques and gathering spaces

-work with Keuchiks, community leaders, to identify and work within the context of particular communities

-build bales in places of political, social neutrality

..........environmental recovery

-take back sites of resource extraction for use as farmland

-design around the preservation of healthy environments

..........grounds for peace

-created safe-pockets, led by pacifist community members

-metaphors for sacred or safe ground such as symbolic poles

..........resource sharing

-swap shops for trade, bartering, socializing

-shared pea patches or community farms

-wells, common space that celebrates water a source

-aggressors with sustainable, diverse resource extraction; look to Damar Agroforests as precedent

neutral ground: suggestions of shared space in environmentally temporal places; a structure built over water

restoring fecundity: turning land that has become damaged through resource extraction into productive crops

claiming space: metaphors for taking back land, signifiers of restoration

shared resources: sustainable, productive resource extraction such as wells

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