In my previous blogpost, I explained why it is not true that economic development can prevent conflict. In this blogpost, I show how development-envy can, in fact, inspire conflict.

Development-envy refers to the feeling of status-inferiority with respect to symbols of development, such as lacking “roads” and “tall buildings,” especially in contrast to large Indonesian cities like Jakarta or Medan, or even in nearby countries. Numerous respondents would tell me that Singapore was seen as a poster-child of what Aceh could be like if it were independent. Thus, it is not the case that the combatants were motivated by the fact that Acehnese were disproportionately poor. They were not.

Where does development-envy come from? There are two elements of development-envy: political entrepreneurship and everyday experiences. First, development-envy is partly constructed through political entrepreneurship. Grievances concerning development are not objective realities, but are themselves political constructions. As Aspinall argues, Aceh was constructed as a historically great nation – a trading empire – that has suffered injustices committed against it by Jakarta. Aspinall argues that, far from being natural, the idea of the historically great Acehnese nation was constructed from semi-true aspects of history by GAM (particularly Hassan di Tiro, GAM’s founder). It is not just that GAM’s version of history politicized everyday dissatisfactions by helping Acehnese make sense of a range of existing inchoate and everyday grievances with a political tone, but this history also produced the very grievances in itself. Many Acehnese may not have cared that they lacked roads or tall buildings. However, the disparities of development between Aceh and other places became treated as evidence of injustice that Aceh suffered. Suddenly, Acehnese would notice that they had things to be aggrieved about. Hence, when my respondents bemoaned the lack of roads and buildings in Aceh, they were not simply ashamed of Aceh’s underdevelopment. Rather, they were aggrieved that Aceh was underdeveloped despite its great history.

At the same time, GAM could not simply create a completely fictionalized story of Acehnese underdevelopment. This is the second element of development-envy: development-envy also has to resonate with everyday experiences. Several ex-combatants – particularly from elite backgrounds – would describe to me how “Acehnese” would be stereotyped as backward when they moved (merantau) to other cities in Indonesia or Malaysia. One respondent even told me that he was so ashamed to be Acehnese when he was living in Medan that he would try to hide his Acehnese-ness. Aspinall notes that these stereotypes were also held by the technocratic elite governing Aceh (who were elected under Indonesia’s authoritarian New Order) also held these stereotypes that characterized Acehnese as fanatical, backward, and closed-minded. To this end, a series of hard development and soft “economic empowerment” projects were implemented in Aceh in the 1970s (the same period that GAM was born), including the facilities to extract Aceh’s natural gas – what would become a symbol of extraction of Aceh’s natural resource wealth by the Javanese colonizers. What is key here is not that economic inequality was real. Rather, it was the everyday experiences of discrimination and micro-aggressions that made the symbols of inequality feel real.

But it is not just everyday experiences of discrimination that validated the narrative of unjust underdevelopment that GAM was propagating. After all, stereotypes can be reversed. For example, one Acehnese respondent told me that Aceh’s supposed underdevelopment was something to be proud of. For him, Aceh was superior to the nearby city of Medan because costs of living are more reasonable, they aren’t being made to work all day long, they don’t suffer from vices of city-life (such as drugs, crime, or prostitution), and they have great coffee. Nevertheless, one reason that development-envy resonated with Acehnese is that development-envy is not only projected forward onto “developed” places like Jakarta or Singapore. An additional everyday experience that validated GAM’s narrative includes how development-envy also gets projected backwards onto places that become understood as “underdeveloped.” Curiously enough, several Gayonese respondents told me how they too would be stereotyped as backward by Acehnese when they went to school in Acehnese-majority areas on the coasts. Gayo is an ethnic minority in Aceh which generally are concentrated in Aceh’s central highlands. I can recall having heard several Acehnese stereotype the Gayonese in this way. The stereotype is an odd one, given that Acehnese are particular proud of the coffee grown in the region, and most of the coffee growers are Gayonese. Moreover, the stereotypes were strikingly similar with how Indonesians stereotyped Acehnese: the Gayonese were likewise considered backward, uneducated, and lacked roads and buildings. The uncanniness suggests that Acehnese may be afraid of being looked-down upon by Jakarta just as how they look down upon the Gayonese. Perhaps, the personal experience of stereotyping the Gayonese allowed Acehnese to imagine how Jakarta thinks of Aceh, and made the resentment against Jakarta all the more personal. Furthermore, imagining the Gayonese as underdeveloped partly allows some Acehnese to imagine themselves as being as developed like Singapore or Jakarta, and would be more so, only if Jakarta was not limiting Aceh’s full potential, like the good old days.

Thus, constructing Aceh as a historically great trading and economically developed empire that today suffers underdevelopment at the hands of Javanese colonization disposes those who buy such a narrative towards the use of different means to securing economic justice for the historically great Acehnese nation – violent or otherwise.

What then is to be done?

Read Part III here.

By Amoz JY Hor, Sigur Center Summer 2019 Field Research Grant Fellow. Amoz is a Political Science Ph.D. student at George Washington University. He researches on the emotional practices of violence and humanitarianism in Indonesia. Read Part I and Part III.