Thousands gathered at Baiturrahman Grand Mosque in Banda Aceh on Aug. 15, 2026, to commemorate 21 years of peace between Indonesia and the separatist Free Aceh Movement, or GAM.

Some participants raised GAM’s red, black and white crescent-star flag and chanted “Free Aceh,” while others lowered Indonesia’s national flag and replaced it with the former separatist movement’s flag.

These were politically significant acts in a province where GAM fought a nearly three-decade armed struggle for independence before the 2005 Helsinki agreement ended the conflict.

And the Aug. 15 display was not an isolated incident. In December 2024, former GAM members raised the crescent-star flag during the movement’s anniversary, with one former combatant expressing hope that it would eventually fly across Aceh. The flag appeared publicly again in December 2025, at which point Indonesian soldiers dispersed crowds displaying it.

The return of these independence symbols and slogans comes as Aceh continues to recover from severe floods and landslides that struck the province in late November 2025.

A different natural disaster, the 2004 tsunami, helped create conditions that accelerated the peace process between Aceh and Jakarta. Yet two decades later, it is criticism of the central government’s response to the latest emergency that has served to intensify expressions of independence.

As a scholar of nationalism and political geography, I see the resurgence of pro-independence sentiment in Aceh not simply as evidence that separatism is returning, but also as a reminder that national belonging is continually negotiated between states and citizens, and can be harmed by perceived neglect in times of need.

That matters beyond Aceh. The peace agreement transformed a bloody separatist conflict into one of Southeast Asia’s best examples of post-conflict reconciliation. Renewed tensions would raise questions not only about Aceh’s relationship with Indonesia, but also the durability of a peace settlement that has held for more than two decades.

Peace ended war, not nationalism

GAM’s struggle was about more than opposition to policies made in Jakarta. Founded in 1976, the movement presented Aceh — located on the island of Sumatra at the westernmost edge of Indonesia — as a distinct nation that should be independent from Indonesia. GAM drew on Acehnese history to portray independence as the restoration of a sovereignty that had existed when Aceh was an independent sultanate. The nearly three-decade conflict killed thousands. Civilians bore much of the violence, with Indonesian security forces and GAM both implicated in abuses, including torture, arbitrary arrests, extortion and forced displacement.

The devastating tsunami of 2004 acted as a catalyst to peace, shining a light on the suffering of Aceh’s population while opening the doors to international aid and presence.

The armed conflict officially ended with the signing of the 2005 Helsinki agreement, but it did not make Acehnese nationalism disappear. Instead, it made room for Aceh’s political distinctiveness within Indonesia. The agreement gave Aceh extensive self-governing powers, allowing local political parties, expanding political representation and granting the region the authority to enact provincial laws. Substantial discretion over economic affairs and natural resources was handed to Aceh, although lingering grievances over revenue-sharing provisions related to the province’s gas fields remain to this day.

The political settlement largely succeeded in ending the organized armed campaign for independence.

GAM disarmed, and many of its former leaders moved into electoral politics, forming local parties and winning positions in Aceh’s government and legislature. But while the armed movement ended, pro-independence ideas and symbols did not disappear entirely.

That distinction matters because peace did not depend on Acehnese abandoning their distinct political identity and simply becoming Indonesian; it depended on changing the terms of their relationship with Indonesia.

Aceh could remain part of the country while retaining considerable control over its own political affairs. In that sense, Helsinki did more than end a war. It created political conditions that made remaining within Indonesia acceptable.

From disaster to independence talk

The November 2025 floods and landslides killed more than 1,000 people and forced more than 1 million to relocate. Aceh was among the hardest-hit provinces.

It brought citizens into much more direct contact with the Indonesian government and made people dependent on public authorities for assistance and recovery.

Calls for Jakarta to designate the floods and landslides a national disaster began soon after they struck, but President Prabowo Subianto rejected them, arguing that Indonesia had sufficient capacity to manage the crisis. Prabowo’s rejection of foreign aid, in particular, led to widespread anger in Aceh and provided a strong contrast to the response in 2004, when international assistance was crucial to the post-tsunami effort.

Almost a year later, significant challenges persist in Aceh. As of Sept. 7, 2026, only 649 of the 34,777 permanent homes needed for those displaced had been completed. The latest available data also showed that 93 regional road segments remained nonfunctional, while only 188 of 676 bridges had been restored as of Aug. 8.

On Aug. 14 – one day before the GAM flag event – a civil-society coalition again raised white flags and called on Jakarta to declare the disaster a national disaster.

But why do grievances over the government’s response turn into pro-independence talk in Aceh?

History offers part of the answer. A strong Acehnese identity has not always meant wanting to leave Indonesia. Acehnese leaders supported Indonesian independence from the Dutch colonial empire in 1945, and even the Darul Islam rebellion of the 1950s – which sought to transform Indonesia into an Islamic state – did not seek an independent Acehnese country. Opposition to Dutch colonial rule, followed by Islamic networks and solidarity, helped connect Acehnese elites to the wider Indonesian political community.

It was only later, as relations with the central government deteriorated, that independence became the goal.

This history suggests that Acehnese nationalism is not a fixed political force that periodically resurfaces unchanged. Different understandings of the nation can compete and be renegotiated as political conditions change. Acehnese and Indonesian national identities are therefore not necessarily mutually exclusive; their relationship has changed as the political relationship between Aceh and Jakarta has changed.

The return of “Free Aceh” chants and GAM-associated symbols shows that, more than two decades after the peace agreement, independence remains available as a political language for expressing dissatisfaction with Indonesia — especially in moments like natural disasters that have hurt government legitimacy.

Nationalism as a two-way process

For more than two decades, Aceh has remained peaceful and within Indonesia, while retaining extensive autonomy and a distinct political identity.

Yet the continued use of “Free Aceh” slogans and separatist symbols shows that belonging to Indonesia is not simply settled by peace, autonomy or the passage of time. Nor can nationalism be understood simply by looking at how countries build identity through schools, maps, flags and ceremonies.

Rather, nationalism works both ways: Indonesia promotes a shared identity, but Acehnese also negotiate what belonging to Indonesia means through their interaction with the state.

Perhaps the more important question, then, is not why independence talk has returned, but what has kept Aceh within Indonesia for the past 21 years.

Azifah Astrina does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

By Azifah Astrina, Ph.D. candidate in Political Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Universitas Gadjah Mada. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.