Word: aceh
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...while I was reporting on the civil war then raging in the Indonesian province of Aceh, rebels of the separatist Free Aceh Movement (G.A.M.) opened fire on a car carrying me and three colleagues, almost killing us. Afterwards, furious, I called and text messaged my G.A.M. contact, code-named "Iskander," to tell him to get his trigger-happy men to stand down. Iskander's role as a G.A.M. operative was secret-until I unwittingly blew his cover that day. When I called, he was being questioned by the police, who saw my incriminating messages arrive on his phone. Iskander...
...escaped on Dec. 26, 2004. That day, as the tsunami tore through the prison, drowning inmates in their cells, Iskander punched his way through the roof and got away. We know the rest: nearly 170,000 people dead in Aceh, a gargantuan relief effort, and-amid the tragedy-a historic peace deal between G.A.M. and the Indonesian government. But Iskander's story didn't end there. In fact, it's just beginning. Irwandi Yusuf-his real name-was last week sworn in as the first directly elected governor of Aceh province...
...among the 60 or so in the pyre, is crazed with grief, one moment scooping water into cooking pots and throwing it on the flames, the next collapsing in uncontrollable sobs. They are collecting bodies from the normally green lawn in front of the old mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, now littered with a thick debris of dead snakes, chickens and humans - in just one collection point of the city, the authorities have gathered 3,500 corpses. On the Andaman coast in Thailand, soldiers are using an ax and a spade to dig out the body of a woman half...
...favorite for this year is former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari,? said Stein Toennesson, director of the Peace Research Institute-Oslo, who gave the statesman a 50% chance of taking the prize for his role brokering a peace between the the Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian government. ?He has been involved in several peace processes in his life, in Libya, the Balkan; he has a special role in Kosovo; but the main reason is the role he played in Indonesia...
...possible that they might ignore the role of the Aceh peace process, but I don?t find it likely for them to do that,? said Toennesson. ?I must admit that I normally bet on people who are involved in real political peace processes - a mediator, or an organization dedicated to peace. But the current committee has a different profile and they are trying to widen the prize to new categories of winners...