It took a killer tsunami to put Aceh on the world map.

The scale and magnitude of human suffering in Aceh goes beyond any natural disaster we have experienced on our shores. Of the 155,000 deaths caused by the South Asian killer wave, about two thirds are found in Aceh. Indonesian authorities have already given up on counting and identifying corpses. The names of victims buried in mass graves will forever be lost.

Unlike Phuket and the Maldives, Aceh is not a tourist spot. There are no posh beach-side resorts. This is not because Aceh has no sights to offer to travelers. It is because Aceh is a war zone.

The people of Aceh are no strangers to pain and hardship. Even before the televised images of tsunami victims flooded the world, Aceh was already a land of too many tears. Estimates range from 10,000 to 20,000 lives lost in intermittent fighting between separatist rebels and the Indonesian military since 1976.

To date, the government in Jakarta has allocated almost 145 million US dollars in emergency aid for Aceh for 2005. (It is estimated that about two billion US dollars will be needed to rehabilitate Aceh over the next five years). Contrast this to close to 215 million US dollars spent on military operations in the province in the last 18 months alone.

What is this conflict all about?

The Acehnese struggle is not just about ethnic “tensions”. And although the independence movement is aspiring for an Islamic state, religion alone is not what fuels the fighting.

The roots of the conflict are found in history. Like Muslim Mindanao, Aceh never fully succumbed to colonial rule. Yet, although both Aceh and Mindanao have been short-changed by re-drawing of borders after World War II, no two conflicts are the same.

For once, there is the shockingly high incidence of severe human rights abuses by the Indonesian military. Name any assault to a person’s dignity and life, Aceh has it: indiscriminate “checkpoint” operations, arbitrary detention, rape, torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, extrajudicial executions and disappearances. It is indeed ironic that the Indonesian government was quick to join in the universal condemnation of US abuses at Abu Ghraib, while systematic torture of suspected rebels and sympathizers continue in its own backyard. Needless to say that all this happens in the name of “fighting terrorism”.

Aceh has been placed under martial law several times. The longest period was from 1989 to 1998. But in reality, the bloodshed and arbitrary harassment of civilians and activists continue whether emergency rule is declared or not. Even after the lifting of the year-long martial law in May 2004, the 40,000 troops were not withdrawn. In fact, another 15,000 troops were sent in to assist in disaster relief. Already the military is being accused of eyeing new counter-insurgency offensives while facilitating aid delivery.

The Acehnese freedom fighters cannot claim a spotless human rights record for themselves either. The Free Aceh Movement, the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka or GAM for short, is an armed guerrilla force that has engaged in targeted killings of suspected government informers. They have their own tax collection system and do not hesitate to administer this forcefully.

Caught in the crossfire is, of course, the civilian population. The number of internally displaced amounted to several thousands before the disaster-and swelled to half a million people in the aftermath of the tsunami (out of a total population of 4.2 million).

The other dimension of the conflict is economics. The economic potential of Mindanao is unquestioned-yet it remains just that, an underdeveloped potential. Aceh, by contrast, is one of Indonesia’s top dollar earners. In the 1990s, forty percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas supply came from Aceh. Oil fields yield million of dollars in sales a day-yet so little trickles down to the local population. In 2003, forty percent of the population were considered poor. It is only natural that Acehnese want to benefit from the wealth that comes from their homeland.

What makes the situation in Aceh frustrating is the lack of a clear political vision that is capable of galvanizing the same kind of international support that made an independent East Timor possible. The complications are too overwhelming.

The Acehnese student and women’s movements are staunch advocates of peace. Their calls for an end of human rights abuses are a necessary condition for meaningful dialog to begin. There is also an active movement calling for a referendum to determine the territory’s political future. But what comes next?

On the one hand, Acehnese find the present relations between Aceh and the central government untenable. The “special province” status is far from the promise of substantive autonomy. On the other hand, Hassan di Tiro, the self-exiled leader of the Acehnese independence movement based in Sweden, is calling for the return of the Acehnese sultanate the way it was in the 16^th century. There seems to be no middle ground between GAM and Jakarta.

The world’s donations are direly needed to sustain immediate emergency relief and re-build infrastructure in the long term. This is very clear. But aside from physical rehabilitation and logistical assistance, Aceh also needs to be rebuilt politically. What kind of political solidarity is needed to support our Acehnese brothers’ and sisters’ aspirations for peace, participation and self-determination? How might we help in imagining a new political horizon that can bring true democracy to Aceh?

No place on earth deserves the merciless destruction of a tsunami this brutal. But the fact that it hit Aceh is a tragedy that stabs already bleeding hearts.