SARAH FERGUSON: From their base in Banda Aceh, Indonesian soldiers of the TNI are despatched on a relief mission. They won't be putting aside their weapons. For although the tsunami inflicted death and devastation worse than Hiroshima, they're still fighting a brutal war against separatist rebels, one in which the TNI has been accused of murder, torture, kidnap and corruption. Despite that, the army now has the lead role in putting the province back together. Under the command of this man, Major-General Bambang Darmono. Can you tell me that the Acehenese people have nothing to fear now from the TNI?
BAMBANG DARMONO: Don't ask me. Ask the people. That not fair if you ask me. Once again, don't ask me about the people of Aceh fear or not. SARAH FERGUSON: Today we ask if the tragedy of the tsunami makes peace more likely in Aceh, as the Indonesian Government hopes.
ALWI SHIHAB, INDONESIAN MINISTER FOR WELFARE: This is the time for Aceh to get away from the agony, from suffering, not only of the past decades, but also from the disaster. SARAH FERGUSON: Or if, as the independence fighters of GAM claim, the military can't be trusted, and as soon as the eyes of the world turn away the TNI will be more brutal than ever.
TENGKU ECK, COMMANDER, FREE ACEH MOVEMENT (GAM) (TRANSLATION): There will be war again. They'll attack our headquarters, threaten people, torture them, exploit them, terrorise them.
SARAH FERGUSON: And today Sunday reveals evidence that the military involvement in the province goes further than combat and relief. A senior general indicted for war crimes in East Timor is now running a development bank, positioning itself to cash in on the reconstruction of Aceh.
KIKI SYAHNAKRI, CHAIRMAN, ARTHA GRAHA BANK (TRANSLATION): We have a memorandum of understanding with the local government in Meulaboh which has asked us to relocate the town and we've been asked to create a master plan for that relocation.
SARAH FERGUSON: General Darmono was one of the most feared men in Aceh. Trained at the Australian Army's jungle warfare school and at Staff College in Canberra, he used those skills commanding the counter-insurgency operation here to suppress the independence movement.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY, DEAKIN UNIVERSITY: He was given the task essentially of implementing martial law in Aceh and that was a very bloody process. It was supposed to achieve a particular result in a short timeframe, and that was the complete crushing of the Free Aceh Movement. So they really did go hell for leather at that and they were pretty brutal about it.
SARAH FERGUSON: Now he's back, running the relief effort.
BAMBANG DARMONO: I come here to help the people of Acheh. I got the mission. Sure, I have to accomplish my mission. Whatever the people's impression about me, I will not care about that.
SARAH FERGUSON: But with Jakarta now relying on billions of dollars in foreign aid, impressions do matter. This is US marine General Robert Blackman, who's flown in from Thailand.
GENERAL ROBERT BLACKMAN, US MARINES: Somebody says to me, "You know, who's in charge?" I say, "General Bambang". I hear your name spoken in my headquarters all day long. I mean, you've got an incredible responsibility here.
SARAH FERGUSON: General Darmono is both the diplomatic face of the TNI and the coordinator of a massive logistics exercise that's now losing its foreign military backing.
GENERAL ROBERT BLACKMAN: As you know, all the foreign military forces will begin to leave, I believe, on 26 February.
BAMBANG DARMONO: Yeah, I think so.
GENERAL ROBERT BLACKMAN: With an end on 26 March.
BAMBANG DARMONO: Yeah, yeah.
GENERAL ROBERT BLACKMAN: We really only have probably a month or six weeks to decide, you know, what steps we're going to take.
SARAH FERGUSON: General Darmono allowed Sunday into his headquarters to see the sometimes baffling operation here through his eyes.
INDONESIAN OFFICER: Another vehicle - 'heli-chuck'.
BAMBANG DARMONO: What is 'heli-chuck'?
INDONESIAN OFFICER: 'Heli-chuck is air cushion vehicle. Air cushion, hovercraft.
DARMONO: Hovercraft. Ah, you bring the hovercraft?
INDONESIAN OFFICER: Yes.
DARMONO: How many?
INDONESIAN OFFICER: Two.
SARAH FERGUSON: The clean-up of Banda Aceh alone is a huge task.
BAMBANG DARMONO: Sarah, sometimes when I'm tired what is in my head is stuck. Really stuck, something like a hang in the computer.
SARAH FERGUSON: And the general is adjusting to his new humanitarian role.
BAMBANG DARMONO: We have a mission to build something, so contrary.
SARAH FERGUSON: What do you prefer, destroying or building?
BAMBANG DARMONO: Both. Depends on the mission.
SARAH FERGUSON: Darmono leads this operation from the field. We joined him on a tour of the devastated west coast. Where are we going, general?
BAMBANG DARMONO: Oh, we will go to Teunom.
SARAH FERGUSON: What state is the recovery at now?
BAMBANG DARMONO: Oh, I'm not sure. That's why I have to go there.
SARAH FERGUSON: The general has his work cut out for him. He commands only one-third of Aceh's military contingent. The other two-thirds are deployed against the rebels. The coastal towns here took the full force of the waves, destroying roads and isolating survivors. Teunom was a thriving town five hours from the capital, Banda Aceh. Now it's a wreck, shaken apart by the earthquake, then pounded by the waves. For the survivors, General Darmono is their only link to the outside world. How many people were lost here, do you know?
BAMBANG DARMONO: Oh, about, oh, about 1,000, or something like that.
SARAH FERGUSON: US choppers ferry in food and supplies. But now the general must decide whether to go on supplying the survivors cut off in destroyed towns, or shift them to refugee camps.
BAMBANG DARMONO: They will stay here or they have to move to other places, alright? Then we select which one is better for them.
SARAH FERGUSON: The people, it seems, don't really have a choice.
BAMBANG DARMONO: We've got lots of helicopters now, but we can't depend on them forever. Just suppose accommodate you in Calang. At the longest, at the very longest, it would be two years while we fix everything. What do you think?
MAN: It's difficult for us to go to Calang. We'd rather be up in the hills than in Calang.
SARAH FERGUSON: The Acehenese already have reason to fear refugee camps. In the past, thousands of people were forcibly moved to clear areas for military operations against the GAM.
BAMBANG DARMONO: If the people live in the resettlement while we are working with the reconstruction, I think much easier to deliver food to them. Much easier to give them everything. And of course, also very easy to secure them from the GAM side.
SARAH FERGUSON: So it's not true to say that you're going to exploit the potential of the camps to serve the conflict?
BAMBANG DARMONO: No, no, no. I not do that. Once again, my strategy is not that. I think I am not a gentleman if I do that.
SARAH FERGUSON: Even in this town destroyed by the tsunami, the campaign against GAM continues.
PLAIN-CLOTHES TNI: We've been mobilized to persuade them to come down from the hills.
SARAH FERGUSON: These are plain-clothed TNI agents trying to flush out the rebels.
BAMBANG DARMONO: Where are they?
PLAIN-CLOTHES TNI: There aren't many left. The rest have come down.
BAMBANG DARMONO: So they've all come down? Well, let's forget about that now and help the people.
SARAH FERGUSON: With the people reluctant to move and suspicious of the TNI, it's the general who will decide their future and his motives are complex.
BAMBANG DARMONO: We are here with too many experiences with GAM. Foreigners will see with another angle, but we have to see in our angle, because whatever in Aceh is in my sovereignty. That's why we have to be careful.
SARAH FERGUSON: After the tsunami the government in Jakarta and the GAM's leaders in exile announced a cease-fire. It didn't last long. This is Lhoknga, where the waves left almost nothing standing. Less than two weeks after the tsunami it was the scene of a massacre of civilians by the Indonesian military. TNI soldiers on patrol in a village near here shot dead five young men. We can't show you the exact location of the village because the locals now fear reprisals from the TNI if we're seen there. We can tell you that seven men left the refugee camp in the morning to go back to the village. On the way, they were stopped and questioned by TNI soldiers searching the area for GAM rebels. This interview was filmed surreptitiously because the TNI had already threatened witnesses.
OLD MAN (TRANSLATION): Five of them went when they were summoned. Two of them ran off. They saw the other five being made to stand together and take their clothes off. Then, bang, bang. They fell to the ground.
SARAH FERGUSON: The old man is one of the village elders living in a refugee camp. When he heard about the shooting, he sent out a group to find the bodies.
OLD MAN (TRANSLATION): They were all lying in one place, in a line. They'd been shot here. All they were wearing was their underpants, and uniforms had been placed beside them so people would think they were GAM.
SARAH FERGUSON: Are you absolutely sure that those men were not members of GAM?
OLD MAN (TRANSLATION): They were ordinary members of the community. One of them was my grandson.
SARAH FERGUSON: After the tsunami, his grandson was his only surviving relative.
OLD MAN (TRANSLATION): The night before he was shot my 22-year-old grandson slept here with me. He was beautiful. Now he's gone.
SARAH FERGUSON: Do people in the village support GAM in their fight against the military?
OLD MAN (TRANSLATION) No. We have suffered enough. In fact, I pray that the GAM will come to their senses and return home so that we can work together to build the nation.
SARAH FERGUSON: The Acehenese people have had an unhappy history, a conflict that's gone on for many, many years. All the people express a sense of oppression.
BANGBAM DARNOMO: We need no more conflict, actually. For example, GAM need a cease-fire. Actually, we don't need a cease-fire at all. Why, why do we need a cease-fire? What does it mean by cease-fire? If we need a cease-fire, for example, now stop, stop fire. Then after that, we start again. That's crazy, you know. We don't need that.
SARAH FERGUSON: What do you need?
BAMBANG DARNOMO: We need reconciliation. Again, I would like no talking about political matters.
SARAH FERGUSON: Is it possible, though? Do you think that you've been engaged ...
BAMBANG DARNOMO: Ask the GAM, not me.
SARAH FERGUSON: Asking GAM is no simple matter. Despite the chaos and the influx of foreigners, making contact with the rebels is a painstaking process. We want to make contact with Muzakir Manaf, but I understand that things are getting a bit difficult for that. Conversations by mobile phone have to be kept short to avoid betraying their position to military intelligence. One of the GAM commanders agreed to help us find a way to get past the military patrols. Finally we were guided out of town by the rebels. The TNI's on patrol throughout this area, so we can't show you the route we took. The rebels had walked from their own encampment to meet us here in this clearing, somewhere in eastern Aceh. There had been clashes with the military only the day before.
TEUNGKU ECK (TRANSLATION): They're carrying out an operation in the rice fields around Siron, right now.
SARAH FERGUSON: Teungku Eck is a commander for the Pidie region. He says the TNI killed 200 of his men before the tsunami.
TENGKU ECK: We're fighting for independence, to establish an Acehenese nation free from Indonesian imperialism. If we're not independent, we're better off dead.
SARAH FERGUSON: His force is a motley group, poorly armed and clothed, and few of them are educated. Yet these rebels, who claim a force of 6,000 across Aceh, have fought a stubborn insurgency against tens of thousands of Indonesian soldiers for almost 30 years. One of the things we hear is that the Acehenese people don't support GAM, that GAM says it's fighting for Aceh, but really it's only fighting for GAM and it doesn't really look after the Acehenese people. Is that true?
TENGKU ECK (TRANSLATION): It's not true. We are fighting for the Acehenese.
SARAH FERGUSON: The TNI says you're not freedom fighters, the GAM is just a group of criminals. Do you engage in criminal activity?
TENGKU ECK (TRANSLATION): No, never. We only fight for independence.
SARAH FERGUSON: Tengku Eck says he was driven to join GAM by the injustice of Aceh's situation.
TENGKU ECK (TRANSLATION): Aceh is so rich in natural resources, but development in Aceh is so far behind that of other provinces. Just look at the villages, look at the houses. They're like cow sheds in Australia.
SARAH FERGUSON: And his determination hardened by the cruelty of the TNI.
TENGKU ECK (TRANSLATION): They take our belongings. They take our crops. They ransack our houses.
SARAH FERGUSON: Nurdin is from the political wing of GAM.
NURDIN, FREE ACEH MOVEMENT (TRANSLATION): We are worried about what will happen if the international community leaves because the Indonesian Army will do what they've always done and resort to violence again.
SARAH FERGUSON: He claims the TNI targets civilians.
NURDIN (TRANSLATION): When they don't find GAM, they just grab ordinary people. When they're interrogated at TNI posts or by the police, they are tortured so the military can find out where GAM is.
SARAH FERGUSON: That is exactly what happened to Ali. He's a farmer from a village near the GAM encampment. Last year, the rebels paid his teenage son a few rupiah to bring them some water. Soon afterwards, the TNI came to Ali's house, looking for his son.
ALI (TRANSLATION): First they were slapped. Then they beat me with a plastic hose. Then I was beaten with a cane. They hit me here in the stomach, in the middle of the back and the legs. There weren't any scars but I bled internally and was very swollen.
SARAH FERGUSON: Ali was beaten every day at the military post until he sought help from a human rights lawyer, who took his complaint to the military police. He was presented with a letter by the local military commander.
ALI (TRANSLATION): The commander said, "I will sign this letter." Then he signed it and told me to sign the letter so I wouldn't get beaten any more.
SARAH FERGUSON: Ali can't read or write, so he put his thumbprint on the letter. Dated and stamped with the commander's seal, it says, "I guarantee we won't torture you any more. If we do, you can take us to court."
ALI (TRANSLATION): After I signed the letter, they stopped beating me. I can go back to work. It's better than not feeding my children, who are hungry.
SARAH FERGUSON: Ali keeps the letter with him all the time. It's a thin protection against the brutality that routinely went unpunished during the military emergency. Damien Kingsbury is an international expert on Aceh.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Well, apart from the usual burning of villages, homes, rapes, tortures, disappearances, there's a very large number of documented murders, something in the order of about 1,500 or so.
SARAH FERGUSON: General Darmono told us proudly he'd been to Italy to study human rights and that he'd written a human rights training manual for the military. But when we met very late that night in his headquarters to talk about his own record in Aceh, he wouldn't concede anything. The accusation against you would be that you learnt to talk about human rights but you didn't go far enough in really protecting them.
BAMBANG DARMONO: A very small number of human rights violations at that time. But mostly not human rights, of course. If we are talking human rights - I think it's like sexual harassment conducted in military operations - then, yes, it happened about two soldiers.
SARAH FERGUSON: The accusation against your army, though, is that assassination and torture were regular parts of your warfare.
BAMBANG DARMONO: We never do this. Why should we do like this? My mission is not like this. I will not deal with the people. I just deal with the GAM.
SARAH FERGUSON: One of the stories that is repeated often, one of the sorts of cases, is that people are taken away by the military ...
BAMBANG DARMONO: I think we go too far with our mission here. You just asking me about GAM. Actually, I don't like to answer your question like this.
SARAH FERGUSON: The first time Dewi Mutia came back to her house, she couldn't look inside. There was no-one here then except for the dead bodies hanging in the rubble. What was here before, Dewi?
DEWI MUTIA (TRANSLATION): There was a bookshelf. Nazar used to sit here reading. He had a small library.
SARAH FERGUSON: Dewi is very lucky. She and her family were not here when the tidal wave struck. She had moved with her 4-year-old son to Java to be closer to her husband Nazar. He's in prison there serving a 5-year sentence for "spreading hostility to the Indonesian state". Nazar was not a GAM rebel, but a civilian who led an independence movement called SIRA.
DEWI MUTIA (TRANSLATION): SIRA's statements were very, very offensive to the Indonesian Government and to the TNI.
SARAH FERGUSON: At mass rallies, he called for a referendum on independence for Aceh from Indonesia.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Particularly after the referendum in East Timor, the TNI in particular was really concerned that Aceh was going to break away, and these massive rallies showed that there was overwhelming support for independence, or for a referendum for independence.
SARAH FERGUSON: Less than four weeks after this rally in January 2003, Nazar was arrested. Dewi, Nazar and their son were sleeping when two dark-coloured vans with tinted windows pulled up at the house.
DEWI MUTIA (TRANSLATION): They banged on the door. They kicked at the door with their big boots. They broke the door down. I came in and they asked, "Where is Nazar? Where is Nazar?" They pointed a pistol at me.
SARAH FERGUSON: The military was determined to hold Indonesia together at all costs. They also had very practical reasons for not letting go of Aceh. The TNI has to raise 70% of its own budget. Soon after the tsunami, and ahead of other clearing work, the TNI was mobilising to secure its economic interests.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: The TNI makes an awful lot of money out of Aceh and they are basically given free reign. The central government doesn't control their activities, doesn't try to limit their revenue-raising exercises, both legal and illegal.
SARAH FERGUSON: That included the giant cement factory Andalus, on the devastated coast 25km from Banda Aceh. The wave destroyed the factory. It crushed the giant fuel tank like a tin can and picked up this massive coal barge and dumped it on the road. It also wiped out the TNI post, killing 180 soldiers who were paid by the company to defend the factory against the rebels.
DAVID, TNI COMMANDER: And I and my members cleaned up this area.
SARAH FERGUSON: Is there any threat from GAM here?
DAVID: GAM, maybe, because I don't scare, yeah. Over there, my friends. Kopassus.
SARAH FERGUSON: Kopassus? In the hills?
DAVID: Army, Indonesian Army.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Every company, every business in Aceh, has or continues to pay the TNI, from the very smallest shop right through to the biggest company. It would be very hard to say precisely how much is coming out of it, but it is certainly in many millions of dollars a year.
SARAH FERGUSON: Near the cement factory, soldiers are starting to rebuild the main west coast road. Their equipment and material is provided by a Jakarta conglomerate called Artha Graha. In Banda Aceh, it has set up its operation at the military base, flying its company banners.
DAVID, ARTHA GRAHA (TRANSLATION): I think cooperating with the TNI is our duty as Indonesian citizens.
SARAH FERGUSON: It's not just their duty. Artha Graha is partly owned by the TNI.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: It's the enormous business empire of a certain businessman, Tommy Winata. It has very close and long-standing links with the TNI. TNI owns 20% of the bank Artha Graha and 30% of the overall holding company.
SARAH FERGUSON: Former president of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid.
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID, FORMER PRESIDENT, INDONESIA: The fact that they come from the military wing of business means that we have to be careful.
SARAH FERGUSON: Be careful of what?
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: Be careful of their 'misdeeds'.
SARAH FERGUSON: We went to Artha Graha headquarters in Jakarta to ask about their plans in Aceh. The chairman of the bank is indicted war criminal retired major-general Kiki Syahnakri.
KIKI SYAHNAKRI, CHAIRMAN, ARTHA GRAHA BANK: When I leave the army, until now, I think I still found something missing in my life.
SARAH FERGUSON: Something missing?
KIKI SYAHNAKRI: Yeah.
SARAH FERGUSON: Syahnakri was indicted in absentia by a UN war crimes tribunal for his role in East Timor.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: He helped organise the militias, which obviously created havoc and terror, murdered people, burned houses and villages and so on. As the martial law administrator he was also responsible for the deaths that occurred after he took over.
SARAH FERGUSON: Now Syahnakri is positioning the company to take part in the massive reconstruction in Aceh.
KIKI SYAHNAKRI (TRANSLATION): We have a memorandum of understanding with the local government in Meulaboh, which has asked us to relocate the town, and we've been asked to create a master plan for that relocation.
SARAH FERGUSON: Since this interview, Artha Graha's involvement has become the subject of intense debate in Indonesia. The company sent Sunday this email to clarify their position: "I have to make a correction. We haven't signed anything. The Regent of Meulaboh has sent an official letter to Artha Graha. He requests the expert team from Artha Graha to help. Only when and if the government appoints us as one of the developers, would we be ready to help."
SARAH FERGUSON: The great mosque in Banda Aceh survived the waves. It's Idul Adha, the festival of sacrifice, and president Yudhoyono has come to pray for the victims. Alongside him is former president Wahid. It's a symbolic moment, since Wahid is one of the strongest critics of the entrenched corruption of the old regime.
ALWI SHIHAB, INDONESIAN MINISTER FOR WELFARE: This is actually a test case for the government and therefore the government is trying to demonstrate to the whole world that this time we are serious to combat corruption.
SARAH FERGUSON: But the pressure on the President to engage in old-fashioned cronyism will be intense.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Tommy Winata and Artha Graha were the key financiers of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's presidential campaign. Simply, without Artha Graha Susilo would not be president now. It's a very simple relationship, and he owes big-time.
SARAH FERGUSON: Do you think SBY has the necessary decisiveness to control those groups trying to move in right now?
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: I put it at a very low, very low expectation.
SARAH FERGUSON: You don't have high expectations of SBY in this?
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: No.
SARAH FERGUSON: If he is unable to control the profiteering, does that mean that the corruption too will get out of control, do you think?
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: Oh, yes. Now it is already.
SARAH FERGUSON: Banda Aceh is a city of ghosts. People say they can hear the dead calling from the river or from beneath the rubble. The tsunami swept away thousands of their lives, but it also swept aside the veil of secrecy behind which a brutal war has been conducted and corruption has flourished. Without international pressure, the veil will be drawn again. The challenge for everyone involved is to make sure that doesn't happen. It is the least epitaph owed to the victims.
That report by Sarah Ferguson, the producer Nick Rushworth. Sarah Ferguson was also the camera person.
Transcript produced by the Australian Caption Centre
BAMBANG DARMONO: Don't ask me. Ask the people. That not fair if you ask me. Once again, don't ask me about the people of Aceh fear or not. SARAH FERGUSON: Today we ask if the tragedy of the tsunami makes peace more likely in Aceh, as the Indonesian Government hopes.
ALWI SHIHAB, INDONESIAN MINISTER FOR WELFARE: This is the time for Aceh to get away from the agony, from suffering, not only of the past decades, but also from the disaster. SARAH FERGUSON: Or if, as the independence fighters of GAM claim, the military can't be trusted, and as soon as the eyes of the world turn away the TNI will be more brutal than ever.
TENGKU ECK, COMMANDER, FREE ACEH MOVEMENT (GAM) (TRANSLATION): There will be war again. They'll attack our headquarters, threaten people, torture them, exploit them, terrorise them.
SARAH FERGUSON: And today Sunday reveals evidence that the military involvement in the province goes further than combat and relief. A senior general indicted for war crimes in East Timor is now running a development bank, positioning itself to cash in on the reconstruction of Aceh.
KIKI SYAHNAKRI, CHAIRMAN, ARTHA GRAHA BANK (TRANSLATION): We have a memorandum of understanding with the local government in Meulaboh which has asked us to relocate the town and we've been asked to create a master plan for that relocation.
SARAH FERGUSON: General Darmono was one of the most feared men in Aceh. Trained at the Australian Army's jungle warfare school and at Staff College in Canberra, he used those skills commanding the counter-insurgency operation here to suppress the independence movement.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY, DEAKIN UNIVERSITY: He was given the task essentially of implementing martial law in Aceh and that was a very bloody process. It was supposed to achieve a particular result in a short timeframe, and that was the complete crushing of the Free Aceh Movement. So they really did go hell for leather at that and they were pretty brutal about it.
SARAH FERGUSON: Now he's back, running the relief effort.
BAMBANG DARMONO: I come here to help the people of Acheh. I got the mission. Sure, I have to accomplish my mission. Whatever the people's impression about me, I will not care about that.
SARAH FERGUSON: But with Jakarta now relying on billions of dollars in foreign aid, impressions do matter. This is US marine General Robert Blackman, who's flown in from Thailand.
GENERAL ROBERT BLACKMAN, US MARINES: Somebody says to me, "You know, who's in charge?" I say, "General Bambang". I hear your name spoken in my headquarters all day long. I mean, you've got an incredible responsibility here.
SARAH FERGUSON: General Darmono is both the diplomatic face of the TNI and the coordinator of a massive logistics exercise that's now losing its foreign military backing.
GENERAL ROBERT BLACKMAN: As you know, all the foreign military forces will begin to leave, I believe, on 26 February.
BAMBANG DARMONO: Yeah, I think so.
GENERAL ROBERT BLACKMAN: With an end on 26 March.
BAMBANG DARMONO: Yeah, yeah.
GENERAL ROBERT BLACKMAN: We really only have probably a month or six weeks to decide, you know, what steps we're going to take.
SARAH FERGUSON: General Darmono allowed Sunday into his headquarters to see the sometimes baffling operation here through his eyes.
INDONESIAN OFFICER: Another vehicle - 'heli-chuck'.
BAMBANG DARMONO: What is 'heli-chuck'?
INDONESIAN OFFICER: 'Heli-chuck is air cushion vehicle. Air cushion, hovercraft.
DARMONO: Hovercraft. Ah, you bring the hovercraft?
INDONESIAN OFFICER: Yes.
DARMONO: How many?
INDONESIAN OFFICER: Two.
SARAH FERGUSON: The clean-up of Banda Aceh alone is a huge task.
BAMBANG DARMONO: Sarah, sometimes when I'm tired what is in my head is stuck. Really stuck, something like a hang in the computer.
SARAH FERGUSON: And the general is adjusting to his new humanitarian role.
BAMBANG DARMONO: We have a mission to build something, so contrary.
SARAH FERGUSON: What do you prefer, destroying or building?
BAMBANG DARMONO: Both. Depends on the mission.
SARAH FERGUSON: Darmono leads this operation from the field. We joined him on a tour of the devastated west coast. Where are we going, general?
BAMBANG DARMONO: Oh, we will go to Teunom.
SARAH FERGUSON: What state is the recovery at now?
BAMBANG DARMONO: Oh, I'm not sure. That's why I have to go there.
SARAH FERGUSON: The general has his work cut out for him. He commands only one-third of Aceh's military contingent. The other two-thirds are deployed against the rebels. The coastal towns here took the full force of the waves, destroying roads and isolating survivors. Teunom was a thriving town five hours from the capital, Banda Aceh. Now it's a wreck, shaken apart by the earthquake, then pounded by the waves. For the survivors, General Darmono is their only link to the outside world. How many people were lost here, do you know?
BAMBANG DARMONO: Oh, about, oh, about 1,000, or something like that.
SARAH FERGUSON: US choppers ferry in food and supplies. But now the general must decide whether to go on supplying the survivors cut off in destroyed towns, or shift them to refugee camps.
BAMBANG DARMONO: They will stay here or they have to move to other places, alright? Then we select which one is better for them.
SARAH FERGUSON: The people, it seems, don't really have a choice.
BAMBANG DARMONO: We've got lots of helicopters now, but we can't depend on them forever. Just suppose accommodate you in Calang. At the longest, at the very longest, it would be two years while we fix everything. What do you think?
MAN: It's difficult for us to go to Calang. We'd rather be up in the hills than in Calang.
SARAH FERGUSON: The Acehenese already have reason to fear refugee camps. In the past, thousands of people were forcibly moved to clear areas for military operations against the GAM.
BAMBANG DARMONO: If the people live in the resettlement while we are working with the reconstruction, I think much easier to deliver food to them. Much easier to give them everything. And of course, also very easy to secure them from the GAM side.
SARAH FERGUSON: So it's not true to say that you're going to exploit the potential of the camps to serve the conflict?
BAMBANG DARMONO: No, no, no. I not do that. Once again, my strategy is not that. I think I am not a gentleman if I do that.
SARAH FERGUSON: Even in this town destroyed by the tsunami, the campaign against GAM continues.
PLAIN-CLOTHES TNI: We've been mobilized to persuade them to come down from the hills.
SARAH FERGUSON: These are plain-clothed TNI agents trying to flush out the rebels.
BAMBANG DARMONO: Where are they?
PLAIN-CLOTHES TNI: There aren't many left. The rest have come down.
BAMBANG DARMONO: So they've all come down? Well, let's forget about that now and help the people.
SARAH FERGUSON: With the people reluctant to move and suspicious of the TNI, it's the general who will decide their future and his motives are complex.
BAMBANG DARMONO: We are here with too many experiences with GAM. Foreigners will see with another angle, but we have to see in our angle, because whatever in Aceh is in my sovereignty. That's why we have to be careful.
SARAH FERGUSON: After the tsunami the government in Jakarta and the GAM's leaders in exile announced a cease-fire. It didn't last long. This is Lhoknga, where the waves left almost nothing standing. Less than two weeks after the tsunami it was the scene of a massacre of civilians by the Indonesian military. TNI soldiers on patrol in a village near here shot dead five young men. We can't show you the exact location of the village because the locals now fear reprisals from the TNI if we're seen there. We can tell you that seven men left the refugee camp in the morning to go back to the village. On the way, they were stopped and questioned by TNI soldiers searching the area for GAM rebels. This interview was filmed surreptitiously because the TNI had already threatened witnesses.
OLD MAN (TRANSLATION): Five of them went when they were summoned. Two of them ran off. They saw the other five being made to stand together and take their clothes off. Then, bang, bang. They fell to the ground.
SARAH FERGUSON: The old man is one of the village elders living in a refugee camp. When he heard about the shooting, he sent out a group to find the bodies.
OLD MAN (TRANSLATION): They were all lying in one place, in a line. They'd been shot here. All they were wearing was their underpants, and uniforms had been placed beside them so people would think they were GAM.
SARAH FERGUSON: Are you absolutely sure that those men were not members of GAM?
OLD MAN (TRANSLATION): They were ordinary members of the community. One of them was my grandson.
SARAH FERGUSON: After the tsunami, his grandson was his only surviving relative.
OLD MAN (TRANSLATION): The night before he was shot my 22-year-old grandson slept here with me. He was beautiful. Now he's gone.
SARAH FERGUSON: Do people in the village support GAM in their fight against the military?
OLD MAN (TRANSLATION) No. We have suffered enough. In fact, I pray that the GAM will come to their senses and return home so that we can work together to build the nation.
SARAH FERGUSON: The Acehenese people have had an unhappy history, a conflict that's gone on for many, many years. All the people express a sense of oppression.
BANGBAM DARNOMO: We need no more conflict, actually. For example, GAM need a cease-fire. Actually, we don't need a cease-fire at all. Why, why do we need a cease-fire? What does it mean by cease-fire? If we need a cease-fire, for example, now stop, stop fire. Then after that, we start again. That's crazy, you know. We don't need that.
SARAH FERGUSON: What do you need?
BAMBANG DARNOMO: We need reconciliation. Again, I would like no talking about political matters.
SARAH FERGUSON: Is it possible, though? Do you think that you've been engaged ...
BAMBANG DARNOMO: Ask the GAM, not me.
SARAH FERGUSON: Asking GAM is no simple matter. Despite the chaos and the influx of foreigners, making contact with the rebels is a painstaking process. We want to make contact with Muzakir Manaf, but I understand that things are getting a bit difficult for that. Conversations by mobile phone have to be kept short to avoid betraying their position to military intelligence. One of the GAM commanders agreed to help us find a way to get past the military patrols. Finally we were guided out of town by the rebels. The TNI's on patrol throughout this area, so we can't show you the route we took. The rebels had walked from their own encampment to meet us here in this clearing, somewhere in eastern Aceh. There had been clashes with the military only the day before.
TEUNGKU ECK (TRANSLATION): They're carrying out an operation in the rice fields around Siron, right now.
SARAH FERGUSON: Teungku Eck is a commander for the Pidie region. He says the TNI killed 200 of his men before the tsunami.
TENGKU ECK: We're fighting for independence, to establish an Acehenese nation free from Indonesian imperialism. If we're not independent, we're better off dead.
SARAH FERGUSON: His force is a motley group, poorly armed and clothed, and few of them are educated. Yet these rebels, who claim a force of 6,000 across Aceh, have fought a stubborn insurgency against tens of thousands of Indonesian soldiers for almost 30 years. One of the things we hear is that the Acehenese people don't support GAM, that GAM says it's fighting for Aceh, but really it's only fighting for GAM and it doesn't really look after the Acehenese people. Is that true?
TENGKU ECK (TRANSLATION): It's not true. We are fighting for the Acehenese.
SARAH FERGUSON: The TNI says you're not freedom fighters, the GAM is just a group of criminals. Do you engage in criminal activity?
TENGKU ECK (TRANSLATION): No, never. We only fight for independence.
SARAH FERGUSON: Tengku Eck says he was driven to join GAM by the injustice of Aceh's situation.
TENGKU ECK (TRANSLATION): Aceh is so rich in natural resources, but development in Aceh is so far behind that of other provinces. Just look at the villages, look at the houses. They're like cow sheds in Australia.
SARAH FERGUSON: And his determination hardened by the cruelty of the TNI.
TENGKU ECK (TRANSLATION): They take our belongings. They take our crops. They ransack our houses.
SARAH FERGUSON: Nurdin is from the political wing of GAM.
NURDIN, FREE ACEH MOVEMENT (TRANSLATION): We are worried about what will happen if the international community leaves because the Indonesian Army will do what they've always done and resort to violence again.
SARAH FERGUSON: He claims the TNI targets civilians.
NURDIN (TRANSLATION): When they don't find GAM, they just grab ordinary people. When they're interrogated at TNI posts or by the police, they are tortured so the military can find out where GAM is.
SARAH FERGUSON: That is exactly what happened to Ali. He's a farmer from a village near the GAM encampment. Last year, the rebels paid his teenage son a few rupiah to bring them some water. Soon afterwards, the TNI came to Ali's house, looking for his son.
ALI (TRANSLATION): First they were slapped. Then they beat me with a plastic hose. Then I was beaten with a cane. They hit me here in the stomach, in the middle of the back and the legs. There weren't any scars but I bled internally and was very swollen.
SARAH FERGUSON: Ali was beaten every day at the military post until he sought help from a human rights lawyer, who took his complaint to the military police. He was presented with a letter by the local military commander.
ALI (TRANSLATION): The commander said, "I will sign this letter." Then he signed it and told me to sign the letter so I wouldn't get beaten any more.
SARAH FERGUSON: Ali can't read or write, so he put his thumbprint on the letter. Dated and stamped with the commander's seal, it says, "I guarantee we won't torture you any more. If we do, you can take us to court."
ALI (TRANSLATION): After I signed the letter, they stopped beating me. I can go back to work. It's better than not feeding my children, who are hungry.
SARAH FERGUSON: Ali keeps the letter with him all the time. It's a thin protection against the brutality that routinely went unpunished during the military emergency. Damien Kingsbury is an international expert on Aceh.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Well, apart from the usual burning of villages, homes, rapes, tortures, disappearances, there's a very large number of documented murders, something in the order of about 1,500 or so.
SARAH FERGUSON: General Darmono told us proudly he'd been to Italy to study human rights and that he'd written a human rights training manual for the military. But when we met very late that night in his headquarters to talk about his own record in Aceh, he wouldn't concede anything. The accusation against you would be that you learnt to talk about human rights but you didn't go far enough in really protecting them.
BAMBANG DARMONO: A very small number of human rights violations at that time. But mostly not human rights, of course. If we are talking human rights - I think it's like sexual harassment conducted in military operations - then, yes, it happened about two soldiers.
SARAH FERGUSON: The accusation against your army, though, is that assassination and torture were regular parts of your warfare.
BAMBANG DARMONO: We never do this. Why should we do like this? My mission is not like this. I will not deal with the people. I just deal with the GAM.
SARAH FERGUSON: One of the stories that is repeated often, one of the sorts of cases, is that people are taken away by the military ...
BAMBANG DARMONO: I think we go too far with our mission here. You just asking me about GAM. Actually, I don't like to answer your question like this.
SARAH FERGUSON: The first time Dewi Mutia came back to her house, she couldn't look inside. There was no-one here then except for the dead bodies hanging in the rubble. What was here before, Dewi?
DEWI MUTIA (TRANSLATION): There was a bookshelf. Nazar used to sit here reading. He had a small library.
SARAH FERGUSON: Dewi is very lucky. She and her family were not here when the tidal wave struck. She had moved with her 4-year-old son to Java to be closer to her husband Nazar. He's in prison there serving a 5-year sentence for "spreading hostility to the Indonesian state". Nazar was not a GAM rebel, but a civilian who led an independence movement called SIRA.
DEWI MUTIA (TRANSLATION): SIRA's statements were very, very offensive to the Indonesian Government and to the TNI.
SARAH FERGUSON: At mass rallies, he called for a referendum on independence for Aceh from Indonesia.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Particularly after the referendum in East Timor, the TNI in particular was really concerned that Aceh was going to break away, and these massive rallies showed that there was overwhelming support for independence, or for a referendum for independence.
SARAH FERGUSON: Less than four weeks after this rally in January 2003, Nazar was arrested. Dewi, Nazar and their son were sleeping when two dark-coloured vans with tinted windows pulled up at the house.
DEWI MUTIA (TRANSLATION): They banged on the door. They kicked at the door with their big boots. They broke the door down. I came in and they asked, "Where is Nazar? Where is Nazar?" They pointed a pistol at me.
SARAH FERGUSON: The military was determined to hold Indonesia together at all costs. They also had very practical reasons for not letting go of Aceh. The TNI has to raise 70% of its own budget. Soon after the tsunami, and ahead of other clearing work, the TNI was mobilising to secure its economic interests.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: The TNI makes an awful lot of money out of Aceh and they are basically given free reign. The central government doesn't control their activities, doesn't try to limit their revenue-raising exercises, both legal and illegal.
SARAH FERGUSON: That included the giant cement factory Andalus, on the devastated coast 25km from Banda Aceh. The wave destroyed the factory. It crushed the giant fuel tank like a tin can and picked up this massive coal barge and dumped it on the road. It also wiped out the TNI post, killing 180 soldiers who were paid by the company to defend the factory against the rebels.
DAVID, TNI COMMANDER: And I and my members cleaned up this area.
SARAH FERGUSON: Is there any threat from GAM here?
DAVID: GAM, maybe, because I don't scare, yeah. Over there, my friends. Kopassus.
SARAH FERGUSON: Kopassus? In the hills?
DAVID: Army, Indonesian Army.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Every company, every business in Aceh, has or continues to pay the TNI, from the very smallest shop right through to the biggest company. It would be very hard to say precisely how much is coming out of it, but it is certainly in many millions of dollars a year.
SARAH FERGUSON: Near the cement factory, soldiers are starting to rebuild the main west coast road. Their equipment and material is provided by a Jakarta conglomerate called Artha Graha. In Banda Aceh, it has set up its operation at the military base, flying its company banners.
DAVID, ARTHA GRAHA (TRANSLATION): I think cooperating with the TNI is our duty as Indonesian citizens.
SARAH FERGUSON: It's not just their duty. Artha Graha is partly owned by the TNI.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: It's the enormous business empire of a certain businessman, Tommy Winata. It has very close and long-standing links with the TNI. TNI owns 20% of the bank Artha Graha and 30% of the overall holding company.
SARAH FERGUSON: Former president of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid.
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID, FORMER PRESIDENT, INDONESIA: The fact that they come from the military wing of business means that we have to be careful.
SARAH FERGUSON: Be careful of what?
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: Be careful of their 'misdeeds'.
SARAH FERGUSON: We went to Artha Graha headquarters in Jakarta to ask about their plans in Aceh. The chairman of the bank is indicted war criminal retired major-general Kiki Syahnakri.
KIKI SYAHNAKRI, CHAIRMAN, ARTHA GRAHA BANK: When I leave the army, until now, I think I still found something missing in my life.
SARAH FERGUSON: Something missing?
KIKI SYAHNAKRI: Yeah.
SARAH FERGUSON: Syahnakri was indicted in absentia by a UN war crimes tribunal for his role in East Timor.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: He helped organise the militias, which obviously created havoc and terror, murdered people, burned houses and villages and so on. As the martial law administrator he was also responsible for the deaths that occurred after he took over.
SARAH FERGUSON: Now Syahnakri is positioning the company to take part in the massive reconstruction in Aceh.
KIKI SYAHNAKRI (TRANSLATION): We have a memorandum of understanding with the local government in Meulaboh, which has asked us to relocate the town, and we've been asked to create a master plan for that relocation.
SARAH FERGUSON: Since this interview, Artha Graha's involvement has become the subject of intense debate in Indonesia. The company sent Sunday this email to clarify their position: "I have to make a correction. We haven't signed anything. The Regent of Meulaboh has sent an official letter to Artha Graha. He requests the expert team from Artha Graha to help. Only when and if the government appoints us as one of the developers, would we be ready to help."
SARAH FERGUSON: The great mosque in Banda Aceh survived the waves. It's Idul Adha, the festival of sacrifice, and president Yudhoyono has come to pray for the victims. Alongside him is former president Wahid. It's a symbolic moment, since Wahid is one of the strongest critics of the entrenched corruption of the old regime.
ALWI SHIHAB, INDONESIAN MINISTER FOR WELFARE: This is actually a test case for the government and therefore the government is trying to demonstrate to the whole world that this time we are serious to combat corruption.
SARAH FERGUSON: But the pressure on the President to engage in old-fashioned cronyism will be intense.
DAMIEN KINGSBURY: Tommy Winata and Artha Graha were the key financiers of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's presidential campaign. Simply, without Artha Graha Susilo would not be president now. It's a very simple relationship, and he owes big-time.
SARAH FERGUSON: Do you think SBY has the necessary decisiveness to control those groups trying to move in right now?
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: I put it at a very low, very low expectation.
SARAH FERGUSON: You don't have high expectations of SBY in this?
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: No.
SARAH FERGUSON: If he is unable to control the profiteering, does that mean that the corruption too will get out of control, do you think?
ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: Oh, yes. Now it is already.
SARAH FERGUSON: Banda Aceh is a city of ghosts. People say they can hear the dead calling from the river or from beneath the rubble. The tsunami swept away thousands of their lives, but it also swept aside the veil of secrecy behind which a brutal war has been conducted and corruption has flourished. Without international pressure, the veil will be drawn again. The challenge for everyone involved is to make sure that doesn't happen. It is the least epitaph owed to the victims.
That report by Sarah Ferguson, the producer Nick Rushworth. Sarah Ferguson was also the camera person.
Transcript produced by the Australian Caption Centre