Monitoring Mission in Aceh

Abstract

The AMM was one of the first serious civilian CSDP missions outside Europe. For 15 months (September 2005-December 2006) some 250 monitors from the EU and ASEAN member states oversaw the implementation of a peace agreement between the Government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka; GAM), which had been brokered after the tsunami had devastated the province of Aceh in December 2004. It included overseeing several rounds of decommissioning of weapons by the Free Aceh Movement and the subsequent withdrawal of the Indonesian army. The task of these monitors was by no means easy. On the eve of the signing of the peace agreement, the International Crisis Group (2005) issued a report warning that “no one should underestimate the difficulties of bringing an end to a 30-year-old conflict… peace is not a done deal” (see also Aspinall 2005: 1). The EU, however, got the job done and the Head of Mission, Pieter Feith, claimed in retrospect that the AMM was “nothing less than a success” (Feith 2007). The mission wonderfully showed the added value of the EU’s civilian crisis management.