Starting to think about booking that summer holiday? Looking for something a bit different? Look no further than the Strategist:
We’re familiar with tours for military history buffs to European and North American battlefields. But what about tours to the battlefields of the present and the future – the sites of messy, long-running and low intensity conflicts within decaying states?
And he’s not just idly kicking ideas around, either. As he relates, Reuters have news of opportunities for guerrilla tourism in Aceh:
As a rebel fighter, Marjuni Ibrahim hid out in Aceh’s jungle. These days he leads “guerrilla tours” taking visitors with a taste for extreme hiking and an interest in Aceh’s turbulent past over the same terrain … just as tourists in Vietnam can scramble through the Cu Chi tunnels used by the Vietcong in the Vietnam war, visitors to Aceh can see where the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) hid from or fought against the Indonesian army (TNI) until as recently as 2005 when the two sides signed a peace agreement.
Marjuni takes tourists on a scramble over sharp rocky trails, past teak trees cloaked in creepers, and alongside pristine waterfalls and sparkling rock pools. This part of Aceh is home to the endangered Sumatran tiger, deer, and hornbills, as well as rather less appealing leeches. “The area is very beautiful. I like trekking and I was interested to see what life was like during the conflict,” said Hugo Lamers, a Dutch aid worker who went on one of the guerrilla tours last year.
