Political orders and peace-building: ending the Aceh conflict

Why did the 2005 Helsinki Agreement lead to peace in Aceh while the 2000 Humanitarian Pause and the 2002 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement floundered? This paper argues that a decidedly illiberal peace-building approach led to the cessation of hostilities and subsequent peace in the Indonesian province. Conflict termination in Aceh was premised on the transition from a wartime political order to a peacetime order. The shift from a wartime to peacetime political order entailed the assuaging and renegotiating of patronage, rent-seeking privileges and social hierarchies that existed during the conflict. The end of the Aceh conflict led to the perpetuation of the wartime elite’s stranglehold over the province’s political economy.