The putative threat of territorial dismemberment diminished dramatically
following the much-exaggerated panic of 1999. East Timor had never been part
of the Netherlands East Indies territories that Soekarno and his fellow
colonial-era nationalists had envisaged as an independent Indonesia. Furthermore,
the Indonesian occupation had always been illegal under international
law, and the territory remained a fiefdom of the Indonesian military establishment,
even after its formal incorporation as a province of the country.66 Much
to the disappointment of activists in Aceh and West Papua, independence for
East Timor did not establish a precedent for further breakaway new nations,
given the weaker basis of mobilization on the ground and more limited
foreign sympathy for their causes. Instead, as Indonesia had embarked on
comprehensive decentralization in 1999, with locally elected parliaments and
local executives enjoying unprecedented powers over state agencies, “special
autonomy” packages were extended to West Papua and Aceh, and, in the
latter case this proved sufficiently attractive to spur the Free Aceh Movement
(Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, or GAM) to abandon armed struggle in favor of
parliamentary politics