ABSTRACT
Lasting most of the 130-plus years since Dutch invasion, Aceh’s resistance war portended the demise of the Indonesian state by the twenty-first century. Phenomena from early anticolonial phases uncannily resurfaced, ghost-like, suggesting at once the intractable nature of Aceh’s environment and inhabitants as well as colonialism’s profound influences on Indonesian political culture. After East Timor’s eventual independence victory from 1999, comparisons helped measure the challenge Jakarta’s regime faced: Indonesia’s Aceh troop commitments doubled and even tripled those in East Timor during Indonesia’s 25-year occupation of that ex-Portuguese colony.1
