Aceh, Indonesia

"This book sets out to open up the space for the interpretation of history and politics in Aceh, which is now in a state of armed rebellion against the Indonesian government. It lays out a groundwork for analysing how female agency is constituted in Aceh, in a complex interplay of indigenous matrifocality, Islamic belief and practices, state terror, and political violence.

The book provides a historical ethnographic, literary, and politico-economic analysis of the competing, contradictory, and paradoxical configurations of gendered struggles for power, Islamic identity, nationalism, militancy, activism, and piety in Aceh. Analysts of the current conflict in Aceh have tended to focus on present events. This book provides a historical analysis of power, co-optation, and resistance in Aceh and links it to broader comparative studies of gender, Islam, and the state in Muslim communities throughout the world." (2002) See: https://www.routledge.com/Gender-Islam-Nationalism-and-the-State-in-Aceh-The-Paradox-of-Power/Siapno/p/book/9781315029078

“Playing between Elephants” (2007) touches so many interesting and important points regarding the intricate, multi-layered situations in the aftermath of a complex disaster. In this case, it was the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami in Aceh, which was also under the DOM (Daerah Operasi Militer, the Military Operational Zone) at that time, enforced by the central government to suppress the Free Aceh Separatist Movement.
Some of the points I would like to discuss here include:
1. Leadership in a post-disaster area, when the leaders are faced with situations he or she has never had to face before as leaders, without similar previous experiences that could be made as points of reference. This is a situation that is not extremely unique to post-2004 Aceh, but can also be found in many different post-disaster areas throughout the world. Some illustration on the complexities of leadership in a disaster zone will be drawn from the 2006 earthquake in Yogyakarta and Central Java, based on findings among the humanitarian workers who responded to assist those who had been affected since the first hours of May 27 2006. The following questions that come to mind include: what kinds of disaster-relevant policies and framework that can help these leaders to do their work better in rebuilding their communities?

2. Drawing from the Indonesian metaphor that is the inspiration for this film’s title, it is also of interest to examine the power-dynamics at play between the “elephants” and the “mousedeer”, or to put it in a slightly different light: the politics of “victims” and “helpers”. As portrayed quite clearly in this documentary, the “victims” are not simple, unified entities who are totally helpless and who would unquestioningly abide to whoever are taking up the role of “helpers.” They are also undergoing their own process of evolving from “victims” into “survivors” in varying degrees of recovery, each with their own agendas, preferences, historical baggage, cultural predispositions, and also their different personal quirkiness. Then the question that will be interesting to discuss on this point is: how can the affected communities be best facilitated to go through their process from being victims to becoming survivors in the manner best suited for them?