The long way round: how the war on terror influenced the politics of international legitimacy and Indonesia’s military action in Aceh

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the war on terror influenced the politics of international legitimacy and domestic military action in the case of Indonesia’s armed conflict with separatist group, Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM, 2003–05). It does so by examining how the Indonesian government justified their military operation to Australian and US audiences. I offer two findings on the role of the war on terror in the politics of international legitimacy. First, context mediated how Indonesian leaders used the language of terror to legitimise their conflict to foreign audiences. Indonesian leaders were not able to hail GAM into the role of “terrorist”, but they were able to invoke the spectre of terrorist hotspots by portraying GAM as a threat to regional stability. Second, Indonesia’s justifications show that they perceived an obligation to other rules and norms. While the war on terror was influential, it did not monopolise the politics of international legitimacy. The article adopts a constructivist approach to legitimacy to provide a theoretically informed account of these dynamics.

KEYWORDS:

• terrorism
• legitimacy
• civil war
• Indonesia
• justification
• insecurity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. For instance, Lunstead (2011) details how Sri Lanka was able to draw on US assistance while it fought separatist group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The US viewed the LTTE through the terror lens, explaining their willingness to provide such support.

2. See also Legro (2005, 6) on collective intersubjective ideas and Goddard and Krebs (2015, 26–30) on common rhetorical formulations.

3. See also Reus-Smit 2013, 34) on fundamental institutions and Ikenberry (2019) on the Liberal International Order.

4. Between 1976–79, the relatively small and poorly armed GAM forces were all but crushed. In the second phase of military action (1989–1998) the movement resurrected itself and launched new attacks. The third phase encompassed fighting in the post-Suharto era starting in 1998 and ending with the 2005 Memorandum of Understanding (Aspinall 2009, 2).

5. In 1999, Australian Prime Minister John Howard wrote a letter to President Habibie encouraging his counterpart to gradually pursue a path to granting East Timor independence. Habibie surprised even John Howard by announcing an immediate ballot on independence. After the military instigated violence of the referendum result, Australia deployed troops to East Timor to lead International Force East Timor (INTERFET) (Reeve 2006, 72).

6. In 2002, two American teachers and their Indonesian colleague were killed when their bus was ambushed near the Freeport-McMoRan mine in West Papua. Special forces group Kopassus were long-suspected and the FBI later accused the TNI of fabricating evidence (Smith 2003, 458).

7. GAM argued that the sultanate of Aceh had never been legally incorporated into the Dutch East Indies and was therefore never legally part of Indonesia either. No other state ever recognised this argument (Aspinall 2009, 255).

8. Yudhoyono stepped down from this role in President Megawati’s cabinet shortly before defeating her at the April 2004 presidential elections (Crouch 2010, 248).

9. In September 2000 a bomb blast killed ten people at the Jakarta stock exchange. GAM rejected allegations they were involved and Aspinall (2009, 171) describes the incident as a “murky and still poorly understood affair”. In 2001, two members of Indonesian special forces unit Kopassus were convicted of the attacks (Kingsbury 2004).