BLANG Rheumah is not the happy place it once was. In villages like it throughout North Aceh, there are only a few farmers visible working in the paddy fields and harvesting rice following the rains that began last month. When dusk comes, silence falls over the villages. People lock their doors.

But before Jakarta started the emergency military operation, the village was bustling. Hundreds of Free Aceh Movement (GAM) fighters marched back and forth