Very little is known about the inner workings of the armed Free Aceh Movement GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka), but scattered Indonesian media reports indicate it now consists of two rival factions. The split between them is being exploited by Jakarta, which claims to have entered into negotiations with one while the other loudly denounces the notion of compromise.

The faction that denounces compromise is the original Free Aceh Movement, which more properly calls itself the Aceh Sumatra National Liberation Front (ASNLF) and is still at least nominally led by Hasan di Tiro from his base in Nordsborg, a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden. Di Tiro is reluctant to speak with the press. His chief lieutenant, also in Sweden, is Zaini Abdullah, a member of the original cabinet he installed during a short sojourn in Aceh in the late 1970s. He and Di Tiro were among the few to escape death at the hands of the Indonesian military during the subsequent crackdown.

The faction with which Jakarta apparently has some contact calls itself the Free Aceh Movement Government Council (MP-GAM, Majelis Pemerintahan Gerakan Aceh Merdeka). It is led by Teungku Don Zulfahri, who calls himself secretary-general of GAM and lives in an undiscosed location in Malaysia.

MP-GAM also has a patron who is one of Hasan di Tiro's original lieutenants - Husaini Hasan, who lives in exile in Sweden not far from Hasan di Tiro. Husaini (60) has an office in Fitja, 18 km south of Stockholm, together with Yusuf Daud (40). Husaini turned up at the International Forum on Aceh held in Washington DC in April 1999 under the name Aceh Liberation Front.

Another former Di Tiro associate who now backs the breakaway group is Daud Paneuek (alias Muhd. Daud Husin, 68 - Paneuek is a nickname meaning 'shortie').

The conflict between the two factions first emerged, according to some reports (Tempo 19-25 July 1999) when Di Tiro, who is supposed to be 76, fell ill earlier in 1999, thus throwing the succession into doubt. Di Tiro wanted his son Karim Hasan, who is apparently a successful businessman like his father, to take over leadership of the movement. Apparently Paneuek had in mind his own son for the job.

Together with Husaini, according to the Tempo report, Paneuek then contacted a famous/ feared Libyan-trained GAM fighter in Aceh named Arjuna (27) and asked him to confront Hasan di Tiro in Sweden and get him to hand over the leadership. Not surprisingly, Arjuna got an angry reception in Sweden, and found himself 'expelled' from GAM. With the blessing of the Husaini group he ended back in Aceh, where he organised his own fighters. (Other reports doubt he is still opposed to Jakarta. Arjuna reportedly came down from the Aceh mountains in 1998 and fled to Malaysia, but he came back to Indonesia via Jakarta in early '99 and has since been reported as having 'repented' and having met senior government officials [Waspada 7 January 1999].)

The split became public on 30 April 1999, when Hasan di Tiro 'expelled' Husaini Hasan and his associates Daud Paneuek and Mahmud Muhammad.

It seems the MP-GAM armed network, which also calls itself GAM and uses the same flag, is led on the ground in Aceh by Maulida (42), who says he is chief war strategist for the Pase (North Aceh) region (Panglima Pengatur Strategi Angkatan Perang). Maulida has in 1999 frequently been quoted as a GAM spokesperson by journalists in the western press who do not seem to be aware of the split. Maulida uses a mobile telephone to give media interviews.

However, his rivals say Maulida is nothing more than a TNI stooge kept on a short leash by a major Indonesian intelligence specialist, Sjafrie Sjamsuddin (Panji Masyarakat 25 August 1999). Maulida apparently acknowledged in an interview once that he did have 'friends' in Kopassus, whom he got to know when he was arrested in 1990 and has kept up with since.

The same rivals say Achmad Kandang, who like Maulida operates around Lhokseumawe, also has Kopassus contacts and forms part of a 'False GAM' that takes part in school burnings etc.

The ASNLF, the 'original' GAM, still appears to have more armed men on the ground in Aceh than its rival. Its most prominent spokesperson is Abdullah Syafei'i Dimatang, 47, who has been fighting in the forests for 23 years but who has also appeared in public recently and has given interviews freely for at least the last 4 months. He sometimes calls himself the head of government for Pidie of the Islamic State of Free Aceh (Kepala Pemerintahan Negara Islam Aceh Merdeka, Wilayah Pidie). This group honours Hasan di Tiro with the title President, or Father of the Nation (Wali Negara).

With the Malaysian part of the conduit between Aceh and Sweden blocked by rebels, this faction apparently uses a Singapore contact to maintain international relations.

The factionalism became very obvious in another round in the war of press releases on 23 November 1999, when Hasan di Tiro specifically disowned Zulfahri. The war of words followed an announcement by President Adurrahman Wahid that he had had discussions by phone with GAM, something that Hasan di Tiro strongly denied. Wahid may have meant Zulfahri.

Religion plays an important part in the identity each group claims for itself. The Zulfahri group claims to be more Islamic than its rival. One of its spokespersons portrayed Hasan di Tiro and his European GAM as secular, alienated from Acehnese life by his long absence, too scared to return home or even address the world media, and therefore no longer genuinely Acehnese.

One way to bolster claims of Acehnese rootedness is to claim links with the heroes. Husaini claims a special relationship with Dr Muchtar bin Hasbi, who in turn had close links with the revered Daud Beureuh.

Sources differ on which of these two groups, the Malaysian group under Zulfahri and thence Husaini, or the Aceh-based group under Zaini and thence Hasan di Tiro, is the more 'accommodating' towards Jakarta.

On the one hand, Indonesian military spokespersons say Husaini and his 'revolutionary Islamic' group in Malaysia is the more uncompromising, a sentiment echoed by human rights activist Otto Syamsuddin Ishak.

On the other, the allegations of having made deals with the Indonesian military have mostly been levelled at precisely this Husaini group - albeit the alleged military connections are of the least savoury kind. The Tempo report on this faction also said the Husaini group (known as the Group of Eight) had contact with Acehnese businessmen through a forum called Kelompok Aceh Sepakat.

Moreover, the Hasan di Tiro broadside at Zulfahri on 23 November 1999 seemed to have been occasioned by an MP-GAM overture to the Indonesian government to negotiate. One Indonesian journalist (Gamma, admittedly hostile to Hasan di Tiro) concluded that Zaini and Hasan di Tiro were insistent they would deal with the Netherlands, who first invaded them in 1873, but never with Indonesia, because they were absolutely committed to independence, whereas MP-GAM would not mind an Islamically coloured 'independence' that yet remained within Indonesia.

An initiative by Aceh provincial governor Syamsuddin Mahmud last July to open negotiations with GAM failed when the delegation of five Acehnese businessmen-intermediaries first met with the Zaini faction in Bangkok, and then met with Suhaini in Sweden. The group failed to meet Hasan di Tiro. It appears then that, despite each side's hardline rhetoric, both factions would be interested in some form of negotiation.

(Hasan di Tiro is the author of 'The Price of Freedom: The Unfinished Diary of Tengku Hasan di Tiro', Markham, Ont.: The Open Press, 1984. Background information is available in Tim Kell, The roots of Acehnese rebellion 1989-1992, Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1995; also Eric Eugene Morris, Islam and Politics in Aceh, UMI, 1985)

Gerry van Klinken, editor, 'Inside Indonesia' magazine.