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Abstract
The end of the civil war in Aceh brought peace, but it has been of a predatory nature. As a moment of rupture, the peace revealed interests, powers and dynamics, and it offered an opportunity for their reconfiguration. When unrest ceased, old agrarian conflicts between smallholders and planters resumed. Peace held promise of land reform. Yet old patterns of smallholder dispossession were entrenched as the former insurgency leadership aligned with the old elite of plantation companies. Oil palm contract-farming schemes effectively alienated smallholders from their land, and violence precluded their organization. As a result, large-scale plantation production expanded. Through the creation of a violent frontier, smallholders were denied recognition of independent rights and property. In essence, smallholders were dispossessed by a combination of violence, political power and duplicitous paperwork. The study is based on fieldwork in areas where current land conflicts are played out, as well as on secondary sources.
Acknowledgements
This contribution is based on several periods of fieldwork in 2015. The data collection was done in collaboration with LBH (Lembaga Bantuan Hukum [Legal Aid]) in Banda Aceh. Based on initial reconnaissance fieldwork throughout the month of May 2015, in which Noer Fauzi Rachman also participated, we developed a research template to map out the chronologies of villages and conflicts and to identify the stakeholders. A series of studies was subsequently conducted between June and October. They, in turn, formed the basis for the fieldwork in selected locations in November and December 2015. I was helped by Ari Nurman and three local assistants who, for obvious and sad reasons, must remain anonymous. The same goes for the local communities who took us in and patiently explained their histories to us. I owe a debt of gratitude to them all. Many people have subsequently helped me to improve the text: Ari Nurman, Arthur Gill Green, Aulianda Wafisa, Christian Cunningham Lentz, Christine Giulia Schenk, Darusman Chandra, Duncan McDuie-Ra, Edward Aspinall (who deserves special thanks for letting me use Predatory Peace for the title, something he coined in 2014), Erin Collins, Gerry van Klinken, Jason Cons, John McCarthy, Jonathan Padwe, Mattias Borg Rasmussen, Matua Sirait, Melanie Pichler, Michael Eilenberg, Mike Dwyer, Mirna Asnur, Mohamad Shohibuddin, Muhajir Pemuling, Mustiqal Syahputra, Nancy Peluso, Noer Fauzi Rachman, Reece Jones, Tania Li, Titik Firawati, Veronica Gomez-Témesio, and Zulfikar. The participants in the Land in Indonesia Conference at UCLA in 2016 were especially helpful. Finally, three anonymous referees provided invaluable help. All remaining shortcomings and infelicities remain mine alone.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 For details on Aceh's history, see Aspinall (Citation2009a); van Dijk (Citation1981); Reid (Citation2005, Citation2006).
2 Palm oil production took up some 175,000 hectares in 1996, and increased to almost 400,000 hectares and a production of two milion tonnes of crude palm oil in 2013 (AICB Citation2015, 76; Eye on Aceh Citation2007, 8).
3 For agrarian issues in Aceh's rainforest frontier, see McCarthy (Citation2006).
4 The basic legal framework in contemporary Aceh is provided by the Indonesian constitution and, secondarily, by the Aceh Governance Law. Elements of syariah law have been introduced through regional regulations passed by the provincial parliament. Syariah was not part and parcel of the GAM programme although its members are usually devout Muslims, like the majority of the general population of the province (Aspinall Citation2009a; Feener Citation2013; Kingsbury Citation2007).
5 GAM's control was quite uneven, though. It was most firmly established on the northern coastal plains while it was ‘weaker and … remained a largely criminal organization lack[ing] the territorial control necessary for governance’ in most of the rest of the Aceh province (Barter Citation2015, 231). Nonetheless, according to Schulze, by 2003, 99 out of 228 districts (kecamatan) and 4759 out of 5947 villages did not have functioning local government (Citation2006, 231). ‘Human rights abuses committed by GAM include[d] hostage-taking and the targeted killing of suspected informers, government officials and civil servants’ (Amnesty International Citation2013, 5).
6 But while such state functions of validation, recognition and sanction were carried out, GAM only exceptionally managed to undertake any long-term infrastructural activities.
7 While GAM was fighting the Indonesian military as the representative of what it considered to be the Indonesian imperialist state, some collaboration between the two sides also took place. Sometimes, the same plantation paid both parties, and sometimes army and police would clash over who should ‘protect’ a particular plantation. Sometimes, the GAM would sell ‘their’ harvest though the police or army, and sometimes the army personnel would buy up harvest from smallholders through middlemen, who would then also act as informants (Eye on Aceh Citation2007, 8–9). Between 1999 and 2009, active plantation areas increased only from 175,000 to 250,000 hectares in Aceh (Eye on Aceh Citation2007, 8). It is difficult to assess the actual extent of collaboration, but there was enough to sustain elaborate conspiracy theories. Rumours circulated that the military delivered arms to GAM to justify their own role in fighting them. And sometimes the criminal activities of the two sides aligned (see Aspinall Citation2009a; Drexler Citation2008; Eye on Aceh Citation2007; McCulloch Citation2005a). Often the situation was simply that GAM controlled the interior while troops controlled the main roads. So, one needed to placate both sides to get the produce out. For small-scale traders and producers this was simple – they just paid at checkpoints set up by the two sides in their respective areas of control. Plantation owners had to make larger-scale deals, or rely on brokers who could negotiate with both sides. But a lot of the plantations did become unproductive. As Aspinall (Citation2009a, 152) states, ‘the guerrillas and their enemies were locked not only in mortal combat but also in an intimate embrace’.
8 In 2003 new red/white identity cards were introduced. They were, in principle, free, but the military charged 50,000–300,000 rupiah to issue them. Everybody needed them, so as not to be confused with GAM. Yet GAM also managed to get cards illegally, and ordinary people chose to put in ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘worker’ so as not to be confused with GAM soldiers who put down ‘farmer’ (McCulloch Citation2005a, 18). This has put many farmers in a pickle, as they thereby excluded themselves from recognized rights to land. As a consequence, many have had to take up work as seasonal labourers for other farmers who had ‘correct ID’.
9 ‘Amnesty International and other bodies documented a range of violations committed by members of the security forces and their auxiliaries, including unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, torture, forcible displacement of civilians, arbitrary arrest and detention of those suspected of supporting GAM. … Amnesty International along with others has also highlighted the extent of violence against women during the conflict and stressed in its 2004 report Indonesia: New military operations, old patterns of human rights abuses in Aceh that there was a “long-established pattern of rape and other sexual crimes against women” in the province’ (Amnesty International Citation2013, 5).
10 The Peace Accord included the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In October 2016, the Governor of Aceh, Zaini Abdullah, announced the appointment of the seven commissioners (Investigasi Aceh Citation2016).
11 Actually, some key figures of GAM had been elected as top executives in the province and most districts in Aceh during the first post-war elections in 2006 (i.e. before the establishment of Partai Aceh). The rank and file of GAM organized in the new Komite Peralrihan Aceh (Aceh Transition Committee/KPA), replicating the military and territorial structure of GAM's army. Despite some tensions between the old GAM elements, KPA became a mass organization and Partai Aceh's street-level security arm, and a very effective political machine developed. Partai Aceh would fund KPA via direct budgetary transfers and more obscure accounting techniques. More recently, the old guard – the returning exiles – appears to be losing influence to people whose authority is ‘derived from local resources and political institutions’ (IPAC Citation2015a, 1).
12 In a recent well-publicised campaign, 11 illegal palm oil estates inside the Leuser National Park were destroyed, and it was estimated that another 50 may still operate inside the protected area (Murdoch Citation2009).
13 It was to be implemented by the Aceh Re-integration Agency (Badan Reintegrasi Aceh, BRA) (Shohibuddin Citation2014, 14).
14 Pembela Tanah Air (PETA, Defenders of the Homeland) and Forum Komunikasi Anak Bangsa (FORKAB, Communication Forum for the Children of the Nation) were two such anti-separatist groups.
15 A rough estimate suggests that 50,000 persons – as potential beneficiaries (ex-fighters and victims) of two hectares per person, with space for infrastructure – would require some 125,000 hectares. No one ever identified exact locations for such an amount of land (Shohibuddin Citation2014, 21).
16 Compensation was not distributed evenly. More than a third of the category ‘victims’ never received any compensation in cash or kind (Shohibuddin Citation2014, 26). Generally, people acknowledge that the GAM ex-soldiers deserve some compensation for their war efforts, and that land would be an appropriate instrument. However, GAM veterans have often sold the land that government offered them. Shohibuddin (Citation2014) documents, for Gayo District, that more than 40 percent of the allocated plots were sold within a year of their allocation. Shohibuddin does not tell us who bought this land, but from the cases studied below, neighbouring plantations would be a reasonable guess. After selling their allocated plots, ex-GAM fighters have been known to use their political capital from the war, and their standing with the present government, to intimidate others into giving them more land. Many villagers, nonetheless, still experience demands from already cash-compensated ex-fighters for land (or land rent) with reference to the Peace Accord Memorandum of Understanding (field notes, May 2015). This seems to be a post-war rent that government officials know about but dismiss as exceptional. The effect was that people often feared the veterans – whether the practice took place on a large scale or not. News travelled, and the potential for intimidation was there.
17 In some cases, ex-commanders from GAM did receive land. For example, in Linge District some former combatants received up to 850 hectares (Shohibuddin Citation2014, 32). See also Rutten et al. (Citation2017).
18 Thus, palm oil was high on the agenda when the newly elected governor of Aceh, Irwandi, headed an Acehnese delegation to Malaysia in 2006 to discuss the potential for increased trade links (Down to Earth Citation2007).
19 The delivery of seedlings appears to have been little short of a disaster, with most of them damaged in some regions (Shohibuddin Citation2014, 31).
20 Confidential interview with two senior staff members of the National Land Agency, Banda Aceh, in May 2015.
21 The current legal framework is Government Regulation no. 24, 1992.
22 Covering some 370,000 hectares (LBH Citation2015).
23 The Legal Aid Foundation of Aceh registered some 119 conflicts between planters and smallholders in the period 2006–2011. It is difficult to establish ‘what is a conflict’ as social confrontations are rarely discrete events in time or space. But it seems reasonable to assume that the 119 conflicts registered by the Legal Aid Foundadtion (LBH Citation2015) represent a larger number of unreported skirmishes and a generalized tension between planters and smallholders.
24 Confidential interview with two senior staff members of the National Land Agency, Banda Aceh, in May 2015.
25 This may now be changing with recent legislation, but it is too early to assess (Bedner Citation2016, 81).
26 Ministry of Agriculture Decree No. 26/2007 on Permitting Guidelines for Plantantation Business states that at least 20 percent of a company's total plantation area should be made up of smallholdings.
27 Interviews with villagers in three locations in Aceh in May 2015.
28 It is worth recalling that the location permit (izin lokasi) would always cover a much larger area within which the smaller area for the actual lease would be carved out. Thus, operating as if the area for the location permit was indeed the area under lease would increase the area of operations quite significantly.
29 I was consistently told how companies would spray farmers’ fields with pesticides and herbicides to make work there unbearable. And often companies would simply move big equipment onto smallholder land, uproot plants and dig canals for oil palm cultivation.
30 Confidential interview with key informant in May 2015 in Banda Aceh.
31 Fieldwork is not a simple task in Aceh. While the war is over, violence is never far off, and talking to ordinary people demands flexibility, discretion and care. Sometimes interviews were cut short for security reasons because of the proximity of military, police, plantation security or guerillas. For example, one interview took place in a coffee bar. Some 20 people attended, and while three or four of them engaged most directly in the interview, the rest came and went throughout. Halfway through our discussion a text message began to circulate that one of the old GAM guerillas was nearby with his men. The guerilla leader, Din Minimi, had refused to decomission his arms, and still made sporadic attacks on government infrastructure and abducted people for ransom (IPAC Citation2015b). We broke off the meeting, and people scattered. Din Minimi had declared that he would only ‘arrest evil people’. If that was meant to be reassuring, it did not work. In this paper, people, villages and their organizations are anonymized and the exact dates of interviews are blurred.
32 Village names are anonymized. It was not possible to ascertain the age of all hamlets. People suggested that they dated back to the turn of the last century.
33 After the fall of Suharto seven years later, villagers reported the incident to the Head of the District Parliament. To this day, however, the deaths remain unsolved.
34 One of the villagers refused to sign the blank receipt and protested loudly. According to several informants, he ‘was disappeared’ and his dead body was found a few weeks later.
35 In 2001, during the emergency, the Bumi Flora plantation became a notorious site of bloody violence as the military massacred some 30 people (Human Rights Watch Citation2002).
36 Government introduced PRONA in 1981. Its declared aim was to give effect to mass land titling (Löffler Citation1996; Slaats et al. Citation2009). PRONA's bureaucratic entitlement is as a land administration scheme rather than a land distribution scheme. On some occasions, however, the scheme and its budgets were used by the government to legalize so-called ‘land reform from below’ – in other words, land occupations by farmers’ unions.
37 Anomynous villager from Bawang, November, 2015.
38 While the first Partai Aceh governor of the district was somewhat sympathetic to the idea of a land reform after the peace treaty, it never materialised.
39 Separate interviews with two independent journalists and one civil servant, December 2015. Only corroborated information is used.
40 Interview with independent journalist, December 2015.
41 Anonymous villager, interview, May 2015. Property literature sometimes makes the point that ‘property is a right, not a thing’ (Hohfeld Citation1913). This popular confusion is rooted in the fact that many property rights correspond to tangible ‘things’ like a piece of land with its characteristics. The contract-farming scheme in this case produces the perfect abstraction of property, as the land to which the right once corresponded is physically dissolved into the plantation. The land is thenceforth irretrievable.
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Christian Lund
Christian Lund is a professor at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Law, power and politics in Niger. Land struggles and the rural code (Lit Verlag/Transaction Publishers) and Local politics and the dynamics of property in Africa (Cambridge University Press). He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Nine-tenths of the law. On legitimation, legalisation and land struggles in Indonesia.