Disturbing the Peace.(the Free Aceh Movement of Indonesia)

Suthep Anuchon is a man in a hurry. The 31-year-old Thai national was pacing in his office in Indonesia's war-torn Aceh province as his staff packed up fax machines, computers and files in a 500-pound safe. Anuchon is no dodgy businessman preparing for life on the lam. He's one of dozens of international monitors trying to keep the peace between the Indonesian government and armed separatist guerrillas. But after attacks against two remote peace-monitoring offices, Anuchon and his colleagues were forced to evacuate back to the provincial capital last week--pushing a fragile four-month-old ceasefire to the brink of collapse. "Someone's trying to drive us out of here," says Anuchon, a major in the Thai Army.

That someone, peace monitors and Acehnese citizens suspect, is the Indonesian military. After being bogged down fighting the Free Aceh Movement, known by its Indonesian acronym GAM, for 26 years, Jakarta's generals grudgingly agreed to an internationally brokered ceasefire in December. Despite some early signs that the peace might hold, locals now say the military, or TNI, is engaging in a dirty-tricks campaign to push out the monitors and scuttle the ceasefire. Although the GAM's continued calls for autonomy may have provoked TNI hard-liners, analysts believe the military is anxious to find--or create--any excuse to renew military operations against the rebels. "The TNI is acting in Aceh out of pride, and they don't believe the civilian government can solve the problem through negotiation," says Salim Said, a military analyst. "They never negotiate with separatists--they crush them."

For its part, the GAM has provided the TNI with plenty of political ammunition. When the Geneva-based Henry Dunant Centre helped hammer out a deal in December, rebel negotiators agreed to drop their claim to independence in exchange for special autonomy, which includes an offer from the Indonesian government for a much larger share of oil and gas revenues as well as direct elections for Parliament next year. But despite seeing some remarkable improvements on the ground--killings in Aceh have dropped by about 85 percent since the ceasefire--the rebels have used the pause in fighting to recruit new members, expand their own shadow government and tell the local population that independence is on the way. The GAM's civilian ...