The Peace Process in Aceh, Indonesia

The project will study the successful peace process in Aceh, especially the transformation it has brought among the former armed separatists of GAM (Free Aceh Movement). It will investigate three ways by which GAM supporters are being incorporated into Indonesia-wide structures: i) politically, via autonomy arrangements, local political parties and local government; ii) ideologically, via re-imagination of Acehnese identity; and iii) economically, via business and use of clientelism and extortion to access state resources. The study will contribute to comparative literature on the political, identity and economic shifts that accompany peace processes, and on the political economy of local corruption and criminality in Indonesia.