ABSTRACT
On 14 January 2002, Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro declared that Japan would try to promote peace in Aceh.1 Seeking a higher political profile in Southeast Asia was not new to Japan. Indeed, Koizumi’s political mentor, then Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo, proposed in 1977 that Japan should assume an active political role in Southeast Asia commensurate with its status as the world’s second largest economy.2 This aspiration has since been codified as the Fukuda Doctrine. While the urge to take on a larger political role is not new, the attempts specifically to address regional conflicts and consolidate peace in Aceh, Sri Lanka, East Timor and Mindanao mark a new direction in Japanese foreign policy.3 Tokyo is now committed to playing a political role even in civil-wartorn countries where thousands have perished and peace is yet to be restored. This chapter addresses the following questions: Why did the Japanese government engage in peace-building diplomacy in Aceh? What was its role in that conflict? How did Tokyo pursue the consolidation of peace? To what extent did it cooperate with other governments and NGOs to resolve conflict in Aceh? Why was the successful peace accord in Aceh brokered by Finland and not Japan in 2005? Why did Japan not join the European Union-ASEAN Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM) to supervise the ceasefire even though it earlier dispatched 1,000 troops – its largest post-World War II deployment abroad – for post-tsunami humanitarian relief in Aceh? What lessons can Tokyo draw from its peace-building in Aceh? The chapter will first examine Tokyo’s motivations for seeking a political role in the Aceh conflict. They include the desire to exercise greater political initiative after the First Gulf War and against the backdrop of a rising China in East Asia; to seek balance and autonomy in its foreign policy while being a close ally of the United States; and to use its foreign aid in a more strategic and focused way, given its dwindling material resources after a decade of economic stagnation. The chapter will also identify Japan’s geopolitical and economic interest in Indonesia, especially the safety of its communications sea lanes and access to natural resources like oil and gas. Next is a brief analysis of the civil war in Aceh and Tokyo’s policy towards that conflict. Following that is an examination of Japan’s role in organizing an international conference in Tokyo to facilitate the peace process and in offering substantial aid as an incentive to the combatants to adhere to cessation of hostilities. Woven
into the text will be a discussion of the Japanese government’s relations with two sets of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs): cooperation with the Swiss-based Henri Dunant Center (HDC) but friction with Japan-based NGOs. The Japanese government and HDC have a division of labor in Aceh. Due to Jakarta’s sensitivity to any “interference” in its domestic politics by foreign governments, Indonesia was initially more open to mediation by the nongovernmental HDC. However, with its friendly relations with Indonesia underpinned by decades of generous Official Development Assistance (ODA), Japan could offer what a small NGO like the HDC could not: a multimillion-dollar aid package and conference that brought together many governments and international organizations with the aim of supporting peace in Aceh. In the next section, the chapter will examine Japan’s last-ditch attempt to save the ceasefire when the government of Indonesia was on the verge of launching a military campaign to wipe out the separatists in Aceh. Negotiations between Jakarta and the separatist Gerakan Aceh Mederka (GAM) were held in Tokyo but to no avail. Aceh slipped back into civil war again. However, the impasse was broken by the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which struck Aceh most severely leading to a loss of 166,000 lives there alone. As stated earlier, Japan dispatched its largest SDF contingent abroad since the end of World War II to Aceh for emergency humanitarian relief. Given the magnitude of the natural catastrophe and knowing that a precondition for a billion-dollar rehabilitation aid for Aceh from the international community was a peace accord, the government of Indonesia (now headed by the peaceminded President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Muhammad Yusuf Kalla) became more receptive to a negotiated settlement with GAM. Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari was the driving force at the negotiations in Helsinki. The EU and five ASEAN countries then established the AMM to supervise the ceasefire. Although Japan played an active role at one particular stage of the Aceh saga, its efforts were not sustained when Prime Minister Koizumi became preoccupied with problems of domestic reforms especially postal privatization in 2005. Japan also did not dispatch the SDF to join the AMM because it was not within the legally permissible framework of the UNPKO. Tokyo’s peace-building in Aceh reveals five limitations: first, top Japanese political leaders failed to pay sustained attention to Aceh because domestic politics took precedence; second, strict legalism prevented the SDF from participating in the AMM; third, the failure to take the lead in DDR (disarmament, demobilization and reintegration) even though Japan led DDR in Afghanistan; fourth, ODA per se could not guarantee a leading political role for Japan in Aceh; and fifth, Japanese intellectuals and journalists were unable to envision a larger Japanese peace-building role in Aceh and other conflict areas. Finland, a small and distant country with few historical, economic and political links to Indonesia, trumped Japan in peace-building because its efforts were spearheaded by its former President Ahtisaari and supported by the collective weight of the EU. Helsinki showed Japan and the world what a small country can do if it has the strong political will, ideas and tenacity to act as a peacemaker.
