Free Republic

THE last batch of combat soldiers in Aceh assembled on the dockside yesterday in full kit and armed to the teeth, ready to embark on their troopships as the final act of a bloody 29-year guerrilla war. Supaidin Adi Saputra, Aceh’s military commander, told them they should be proud of fighting to keep Indonesia intact — then told the watching Acehnese: “The flame of peace is burning and we must not let anyone extinguish it.” The head of the feared Indonesian military in Aceh was doing what was almost unthink-able only a year ago; telling its people that the war,...

PEACE ACCORD: The move was part of an agreement that ends Asia's longest-running separatist insurgency, and sets the stage for the guerillas to run in elections Indonesia's Aceh rebels formally disbanded their armed wing yesterday, fulfilling a crucial part of a tsunami-inspired peace accord to end one of Asia's longest separatist conflicts and paving the way for the guerillas to enter politics. "The Acehnese national army, or the armed wing of the Free Aceh Movement, has demobilized and disbanded," Sofyan Daud, one of the group's commanders, told reporters. "The Aceh national army is now part of civil society, and will...

The Indonesian Government and rebels from the province of Aceh signed a peace treaty this morning in Helsinki that could bring to an end South East Asia's longest running war. The signing of the treaty this morning, in which the separatist rebels known as the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, renounced their claim for full independence in return for an amnesty and participation in Indonesian politics, came after seven months of negotiations. More than 10,000 people are believed to have died in Aceh's war of independence against the Indonesian Government over the last 30 years. More than 4,000 people, including...

HELSINKI : The Indonesian government and Aceh separatists wrapped up peace talks, setting a date for new talks and reporting major progress, but no breakthrough, on an offer of special autonomy for the tsunami-wrecked province. A new round of negotiations was set for April, the third since the Indian Ocean tsunamis that devastated Aceh made the need for a settlement more pressing. Indonesian communications minister and delegation member Sofyan Djalil, speaking after the Helsinki meeting concluded, said the rebels initially had rejected outright a government offer of special autonomy. But as the talks progressed their position "changed dramatically", he told...

Suspected rebels fired shots early Sunday at the home of a top police official near the United Nations' relief headquarters in the tsunami-ravaged Indonesian city of Banda Aceh, officials said. There were no casualties. An unspecified number of Free Aceh Movement rebels fired at officers guarding the home of Aceh province's deputy police chief, located about 100 meters from the UN building, said police Sgt. Bambang Hariyanpo. Police returned fire but the rebels vanished into the city, he said, adding authorities were investigating the incident. Police and UN officials said the UN's relief headquarters was not the target of the...

The second front in America's war on terror is yielding limited results THE arrival in January of 1,200 American soldiers in sleepy Basilan island in the southern Philippines drew attention to a wider threat of international terrorism in South-East Asia. Abu Sayyaf, a militant group the Americans have been helping to fight, is just one of many in the region, after all. Its founder, Abubakar Janjalani, trained with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Two of the September 11th hijackers had spent time in Malaysia. Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first bombing of the World Trade Centre, in 1993, used...