ABSTRACT
While Aceh is often represented in the Western media as just one in a series of intractable ethnic conflicts that take place in the civilizational periphery, it is a war over a territory that sits at a point of complex interaction between local engagement, nation formation and globalization. To understand such a conflict simply as territorially or locally bound is to misunderstand how differently formed social relations cut across and shape the violence on the ground. Three central elements of a modern conflict – information and solidarity, the trade in weapons and the attempts to forge peace – illustrate how what is often portrayed as a conflict between countervailing nationalist forces is shaped to a significant degree by globalizing processes.
