JAKARTA: Optimistic talk that a decades-long simmering civil war in Indonesia’s Aceh province is about to end. A peace pact brokered in Europe. International monitors set to make sure the warring sides follow through. That’s the background to a deal set for signing by Indonesia’s government and Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels in Helsinki on Aug. 15. But it would apply equally to a deal that fell apart just a little over two years ago.

The Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (COHA) was signed in December 2002.Five months later it had collapsed. The government charged GAM with failing to move to disarm, GAM accused government troops of continuing hostilities, and frustrated monitors pulled out of the resource-rich province.

Similarities in the agreements, especially in their implementation and monitoring specifics, have some analysts worried history may repeat itself.

“In a way it’s a carbon copy of the last time around. I don’t see too many fundamental differences,” said Ken Conboy, country manager at Risk Management Advisory in Indonesia.

“I think for the next month or so things will probably be a lot better for the people of Aceh, but I don’t think that you can necessarily breathe easier because medium-term there’s a lot of problems,” he told Reuters.

A successful peace agreement this time could smooth the way for a $5 billion internationally-backed reconstruction programme in Aceh, where December’s tsunami left some 170,000 people dead or missing and destroyed much of the infrastructure.

It would also be a plus for investors looking for stability in the world’s fourth most populous country.

“... it’s a symbol I think of this government’s practical problem-solving,” said James Castle, a business consultant who has lived in Indonesia since the 1970s. “If they can solve that one it says a lot for their problem-solving skills.”

The challenge is not a new one for those trying to govern the vast Indonesian archipelago of 17,000 islands. Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, has a history of fierce resistance to ouside control going back to Dutch colonial times.

GAM’s battles with Indonesian troops started in 1976, with differences ranging from the religious to the economic.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation, but Aceh’s four million people are more overwhelmingly Islamic and orthodox than those of other areas.

Aceh also has abundant resources like natural gas, and GAM argued Jakarta grabbed too much of the revenue.

But after three decades of war costing at least 12,000 lives, most of those civilian, many Acehnese yearn for peace, with the need to rebuild after the disaster of the tsunami adding impetus.

“I think the tsunami somehow already changed minds ... that this tragedy is much bigger than war,” said the Aceh Recovery Forum’s Ahmad Humam Hamid.

“We need our kids to go to school.We need our families to be safe. We need farmers to start living again as before,” Hamid, a sociologist and Aceh political activist, told Reuters.

Both sides made important compromises in the Helsinki agreement, reached in a series of talks that began after the tsunami, he added. GAM dropped its independence demand and the government agreed to let GAM members participate in politics.

Hamid says while he is “a bit optimistic” he is also “a bit cautious because they’re going to pass a very fragile stage ... the question (is) whether everything which is signed in Helsinki will be followed by those in the field.”

Many top GAM leaders, including the Helsinki negotiators, have lived abroad for years, raising questions over how in touch they are with fighters in the province’s mountains and jungles.

On the government side too, there is concern whether all troops on the ground will follow the commands from Jakarta, 1,700 km southeast of Aceh’s provincial capital.

Aside from the emotions created by years of bitter battle in which independent groups say both sides, but especially the military, have committed human rights violations, some government and GAM combatants have turned conflict into cash via illegal tolls on roads, kidnapping, and demands for protection money.

Political commentator Wimar Witoelar praised President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s government for making significant concessions to GAM in return for compromises from the rebels.

But, added Witoelar, a former adviser to one of Yudhoyono’s predecessors: “I don’t think it has seeped down to the level of the units in the field”.

The international monitors will be unarmed, and it is not clear what they can do about violations of the deal.—Reuters