ABSTRACT
The scale of overseas interests around Aceh and Indonesia became clearer after the December 2004 tsunami devastation, when state leadership elites used media publicity to more directly influence audiences on matters of diplomacy, war, and their economic and strategic background, whereas parallel TNI publicity became another useful measure of its claims to humanitarianism. At the time of writing, the catastrophic effects of debt regimes and poverty in Africa were often portrayed as a consequence of local corruption, in a similar process to the belated blame on old Western allies: Soeharto, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Debt rationalization was publicized as charity and magnanimity where accountancy restructured outstanding onerous foreign debt. For Aceh, debt restructure combined with aid bureaucracies and new loans in more direct international participation, enlarging Jakarta’s earlier more token “humanitarian” programs. But behind the advertised altruism and compassion, self-congratulatory “generosity,” and avowed love for peace, the ASNLF leadership’s post-tsunami negotiations with Jakarta were coerced by altogether different forces: a mobilized Western counterterrorist (CT) diplomacy and its market-driven media networks.
