Quick questions on Bali Bombing 2002 and Aceh Peace Process: HSC Modern History Indonesia

Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) emerged from the Darul Islam movement of the 1950s. The group was reorganised in Malaysia in the early 1990s by Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, both veterans of New Order Islamic dissent and Afghanistan-era international networks. JI sought an Islamic state stretching across Southeast Asia ("Daulah Islamiyah Nusantara").

The bombing tested President Megawati's slow response style. She had initially been reluctant to acknowledge a domestic Islamist terror problem; the scale of the Bali attack changed this. Perpu 1/2002 and Perpu 2/2002 (later passed as Law 15/2003 and Law 16/2003) created anti-terrorism powers and applied them retroactively to Bali (a provision the Constitutional Court later struck down).

Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra, had been a sultanate before Dutch conquest in the Aceh War of 1873 to 1903. Resistance to Indonesian central rule began with the Darul Islam revolt of 1953 and was reignited as the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) declared by Hasan di Tiro on 4 December 1976.

The 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake (magnitude 9.1 to 9.3, off northern Sumatra) and the resulting tsunami devastated Aceh. The death toll in Aceh and the offshore island of Nias reached around 167,000, with around 500,000 displaced. The provincial capital Banda Aceh and the western coast were destroyed.

Five rounds of talks under former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari ran in Helsinki between January and July 2005, mediated by Ahtisaari's Crisis Management Initiative. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (elected October 2004) backed the process; Vice-President Jusuf Kalla and Coordinating Security Minister Widodo Adi Sutjipto led from Jakarta. GAM was represented by Malik Mahmud and Zaini Abdullah.

Source A is an extract from the Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding (15 August 2005). Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain the Aceh peace process. [5 marks]

Evaluate the extent to which Reformasi-era Indonesia handled the Bali bombing and Aceh insurgency successfully. [25 marks]

Compare the views of Sidney Jones and Edward Aspinall on Indonesian security challenges in the early 2000s. [10 marks]