ABSTRACT
Jakarta’s forces in Aceh overwhelmingly comprised nonlocal, or “non-organic,” units. Where the organic-territorial base increased its political and surveillance powers over the province, non-organic forces gave the territorium its protective shield and forward fighting elements to expand that organic base. Although often not mutually exclusive in practice, the attached non-organic territorial “shield” performed local security duties while other, less conventional but more aggressive non-organic combat units took the fight directly to GAM. Together, Indonesian forces in Aceh formed “layers” of different force types from the TNI’s three services and POLRI. In a microcosm of the TNI’s coercive, vertical relationships with police and civil government agencies in mapped bureaucracies, overlapping layers of TNI-POLRI units filtered up into local command supremacy by much the same elite army hierarchy that dominated other Indonesian counterinsurgencies.
