'Paranoia' drove Red Cross shooting

The governor of the Indonesian province where a German Red Cross worker was shot on Thursday says the attack was politically motivated, and believes he knows who is responsible.

Governor Irwandi Yusuf, a former separatist guerrilla who came to office in 2007 following a peace agreement ending 29 years of civil conflict, told the Sunday Star-Times that the shooting had been carried out by rogue elements who wanted to destabilise the progress of post-conflict Aceh, and drive foreigners from the province.

They were motivated by a "paranoia" that a successful Aceh would eventually secede.

"I know who did it. And I know who instructed (them to do) it," he said, in an exclusive interview at his Banda Aceh residence. "They think if there's no more foreign eyes in Aceh, they can do whatever they like."

Erhard Bauer, the 50-year-old chief of the German Red Cross in Indonesia, was shot three times in the stomach and arm by two assailants on a motorcycle as he was being driven to the airport.

Three Indonesian nationals accompanying him were unscathed, and no belongings were taken. Bauer, who had only been in Indonesia for three months and was on his first visit to Aceh, is recovering well from surgery in Singapore. "He was real lucky," said Irwandi, who visited Bauer at his hospital bedside.

New Zealander Bob McKerrow, the head of the Red Cross in Indonesia, said the organisation had stepped up its security protocols but would not be withdrawing from the province. "We're not going to be intimidated." Bauer was a "tough coot", who had spent a decade working in remote parts of Afghanistan.

International humanitarian organisations have been a major presence in Aceh since the province was devastated by the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, which killed an estimated 170,000 people there.

As well as bringing an end to military rule in the province, which had sealed it off from outsiders for years, the disaster created a political opening for the 2005 peace agreement between the Indonesian military and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), which had been waging a war of secession for nearly three decades.

Irwandi, who trained as a veterinarian in the US and as a guerrilla in Latin America, and escaped from a jail where he was being held as a prisoner of war when the tsunami struck, suggested the parties responsible for the attack were linked to disaffected factions within the Indonesian military, which still has 17,400 troops in the province.

He described the attackers as "peace terrorists" - "those who have lost the advantage because of peace" - and who were fearful of the recovery the province was making from its past troubles.

"They want Aceh to close. Whey don't agree with is the internationalisation of Aceh. If it makes Aceh stronger, then, according to their paranoia, Aceh may depart (secede)."

He stressed foreigners were still safe. "In Aceh you drop a pin, and it sounds like a bomb.

Police have said they believe the attack was not religiously motivated, but carried out by elements who wanted to disrupt Aceh's recovery.

The province was the scene of a deadly string of shootings of locals ahead of elections in April, but the last shooting of a foreign NGO worker was in June 2005, when a Hong Kong woman working for the Red Cross was wounded.

* This report was written with the assistance of the Asia New Zealand Foundation.