In the post-Cold War era, there has been a plethora of liberal interventions to ameliorate rising civil conflict, including peacekeeping, regime change, human rights shaming, humanitarian aid, and development aid. This three-part series of blog posts questions the alluring idea that civil conflict would go away in some of the poorest regions in the world if only there were more economic development. Indeed, the World Bank has advocated development programs in places such as Rakhine state and Indonesian Papua as part of its policy solutions for reducing conflict. Such policy prescriptions can be misguided, however. Based on my early fieldwork in Aceh, there is evidence that these programs can be counterproductive: when armed separatist movements are inspired by development-envy, outsider harping on underdevelopment only validates movements’ justification to use violence to achieve economic justice. Ironically, by naming conflict areas as underdeveloped, development programs can generate self-fulfilling prophecies when they inspire groups to use violence to compensate for the shame of the lack of development.

It is a commonly held idea that development can ameliorate conflict. Such analyses focus on the opportunity cost for armed rebellion. The argument in brief is that groups that have better economic prospects would be less likely to jeopardize that to risk their lives in a civil conflict; conversely, groups with low economic prospects have relatively less to lose in giving up their lives to fight. While this argument may seem intuitive, a closer look at which individuals decide to join a rebellion reveals a different story. In Aceh, for example, many of the early and high-ranking combatants did not fit this profile. These combatants were highly educated and came from well to do families that were rich enough to afford an education outside of Aceh, and even outside of Indonesia. Even if economic opportunity costs may incentivize or disincentivize individuals from participating in armed resistance, it seems that there was no shortage of individuals willing to give up their economic comfort and risk their lives in the name of Acehnese freedom.

Why then would Acehnese choose to risk their well-being and even their lives by participating in the armed struggle of Gerakan Aceh Mederka (GAM or Free Aceh Movement)? To answer this question, we need to understand more than the economic costs and opportunities for armed resistance, and focus on what specifically motivates combatants. Through approximately 90 interviews in Aceh, I sought to understand why combatants chose to fight with violence on their own terms.

Many combatants I interviewed claimed they were motivated by grievances, including economic grievances. Yet, these grievances were not necessarily objective: many came from well-to-do families, had high status, and were typically well educated. Moreover, many had never experienced violence by the Indonesian military prior to joining the armed separatist movement. Rather than employing some individualistic cost-benefit calculus of joining a rebellion, ex-combatants were motivated, even inspired, by something larger than themselves. Tellingly, the vast majority of my interviewees told me that “peace” was not just the absence of conflict. Rather, “peace” also must entail justice. However, that raised the question of justice for whom? The grievances and injustices that ex-combatants described to me were not their own, nor of other individual Acehnese, but of the nation of Aceh. When I asked my interviewees why they decided to join GAM and pick up arms despite never experiencing violence themselves, they would tell me directly, “history,” (sejarah) and abstractly describe the injustice of how Aceh has declined since its glory days. For these combatants, fighting for Aceh was a way of making Aceh great again. But great in what way? An oft-recurring trope throughout my interviews was development-envy.

Read Part II 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 II and Part III.