By Dean Yates
TAKENGON, Indonesia, Dec 13 (Reuters)
- Rubbing his arms to ward off the evening chill in the central highlands
of Indonesia's Aceh province, former rebel field commander Fauzan Azima
ponders the problems of peace.
His fighters have put down their guns as part of an historic Finnish-mediated agreement that ended one of Asia's longest running civil wars.
Now they want jobs.
"To be quite honest they don't want to be farmers. They think they are a bit sophisticated for that," said Azima, 33, a former journalist who joined the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in 1999 and became district commander around the lakeside town of Takengon in 2003.
The progress of the Aug. 15 pact has surprised even the optimists. GAM starts its fourth and final weapons handover this week, while the Indonesian military will withdraw the last of its reinforcements from the province by the end of the month.
Finding work for demobilised guerrillas is one of two big challenges ahead.
The other is creating a law for governing the province on the northern tip of Sumatra that paves the way for Aceh-based parties to run in elections, allowing GAM to take part in the political process in exchange for dropping its demand for independence.
"The critical issue is to get GAM combatants employed," said Sidney Jones, Indonesia director of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
The peace pact has been a rare ray of light for Aceh in the wake of the Dec. 26 tsunami that left 170,000 people dead or missing and deprived 600,000 people of their livelihoods -- compounding the employment problem in the province.
The calamity put pressure on both sides to end the 30-year conflict that killed 15,000 people, mostly civilians.
OUT OF THE JUNGLE
Half a dozen former GAM fighters Reuters spoke to in different parts of Aceh said they were enjoying peace, but added that jobs and vocational training were their top priority.
They had come down from the mountains and appeared to have settled easily back into their communities, partly because ordinary people in their areas were also pro-independence.
"We are very happy with the peace, but we must have jobs," said Hamdani Ahmad, 32, a former fighter speaking in Daya Cot village, part of the district of Pidie in the north of Aceh, a traditional GAM stronghold.
Some foreign donors involved in tsunami reconstruction want to help.
International aid organisation Mercy Corps expects a livelihoods project to rehabilitate Takengon's depressed coffee industry to get off the ground within a few months.
While not specifically focused on former GAM fighters, spokeswoman Cassandra Nelson said ex-combatants would inevitably be employed.
The government has allocated $100 each to GAM guerrillas, based on the 3,000 active fighters GAM stated as its force strength. They are actually getting much less, as commanders like Azima say they also must give cash to the movement's support base.
The EU-led Aceh Monitoring Mission said it was too soon to see frustration creeping in among demobilised fighters. But their youth and lack of job skills could not be ignored.
SUSPICION REMAINS
Complicating things, GAM is refusing to hand over to Jakarta the names of its fighters.
The government says it needs the list partly to facilitate distribution of additional resources, including farmland.
While the monitors want demobilised rebels to comply, Irwandi Yusuf, GAM's senior representative to the mission in the local capital Banda Aceh, said the movement wanted to first see if Aceh's new governing law enshrined its demands.
The peace pact says the law must be in force by March 31.
"We are trying to build trust, but not to the point where we give them our neck," Yusuf told Reuters.
The pact says the government must create the legal conditions for Aceh to have locally-based political parties within 18 months of the signing of the Helsinki agreement.
The new law will flesh this out and exempt Aceh from current laws that require parties to be nationally represented.
Parliamentary elections for Aceh are not due until 2009, although GAM says it will likely field candidates for local administrative posts to be contested next year.
There are other, localised tensions as well.
With unofficial backing by elements in the Indonesian military, migrants from Java and indigenous Gayo highlanders around Takengon formed so-called self-defence units in recent years to oppose GAM.
While GAM's relations with these groups were strained, there had been no violence since the peace pact, said Azima.
"It's like a Cold War. We are keeping our distance," he said.
Despite their concerns for the future, former GAM foot soldiers said that in the end they would follow orders.
"If the instructions are to fight, we will. If it's to keep the peace, then we will do that," said Musliadi Sulaiman, 28, speaking in a village near the western coastal town of Lam No.