While not usually susceptible to the sway and spell of portends, serious doubts settled uncomfortably comfortably in my mind. The airline we chartered to take us to our destination was called SMAC, an irrelevant acronym for an airline perhaps, yet worryingly apt given our destination was the province of Aceh.
Hampered by forces natural and unnatural - bad weather and good old-fashioned bureaucracy - we stayed the night in the wild west town of Medan. We flew into Bandar Lhokseumawe, the second city in Aceh province, on the first of only two scheduled commercial flights the following morning.
Lhokseumawe was all that you couldn’t imagine it to be. Posters in the airport terminal - a simple building built in the 1980s barely large enough to accomodate the modest hundreds of visitors that flock to the region - identified the GAM leadership, each wearing the uniquely red beret of the movement; most of the photos were blurred, barely an improvement on the Wild West sketches of wanted men. Some of men shown on the posters were crudely crossed out, while others simply had “Mati” written over their faces. “Dead”, and no longer a problem for the military.
The airport perimeter was heavily fortified, belying the view from the outside world that the peace had been won. Army (TNI) checkpoints peppered the 10 km route, a stretch of road quite unlike any other in Indonesia: there was not a street peddler in sight, no advertising hoardings that screened your vision from the untended fields on either side of the road.
The short distance to the project location was quickly covered, not surprising given there was scarcely another civilian vehicle. The arterial factory road was overshadowed by a large bilboard which sold not a consumable item but was a rousing depiction of Indonesia, “Our Motherland, for whom we shed our blood”. Business matters proceeded smoothly and satisfactorily concluded. All that was left was the journey out.
SMAC failed to deliver and, with no commercial flights scheduled, we faced the prospect of spending longer than expected in what remained a “war-zone”.
A little imagination and monetary manoeuvring secured a ride on the next outward bound military transport. The propeller driven Fokker touched down just before dusk while we waited from afar as the ground crew prepared various items of cargo.
A sense of urgency enveloped the small plane and, though less noticeable, we discerned a subtle change of atmosphere as we walked the short distance from the terminal; as we climbed onto the plane, we simlutaneously slid from relief to confusion and disbelief.
I sat across a young soldier, barely out of his teens and head in hands for the duration of the flight. If that failed to convey the circumstances he and countless others faced, the “cargo” that was being air-lifted out were the remains of 5 soldiers. Four wooden coffins lay centimeters from where I sat. The hour long flight stretched painfully slowly, no longer merely a journey between two geographical points. The tightness that grew and gripped my chest was not due to being strapped to the seat. In the short twelve hours since their death, a growing vapour seeped from their coffins, a mixture of nature’s course and - as one of the flight crew observed - an over-enthusiastic infusion of formaldehyde.
The fifth coffin, draped in the Indonesian flag, lay at the rear. He was killed in action - he did not merit a mention in any of the local press reports that week.
Here is a news report on the incident from The Jakarta Post.
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