The battle at Krueng Raba was an engagement of the early Achehnese War in which the Achehnese, under the leadership of Sayyid Abdurrahman Zahir (the Habib), surrounded the Gompeuni’s fort at Krueng Raba with a much superior force, and the Habib — to the lasting perplexity of the Achehnese — promised a free retreat to the Dutch commandant and his men if they surrendered. The episode is one of the principal Achehnese testimonies cited by Snouck Hurgronje to explain the subsequent reputation of the Habib among the Achehnese as a traitor and a spy; in his own analysis, the same facts reveal his “superiority to the Achehnese in civilization and political insight”.
The Habib’s leadership
Sayyid Abdurrahman Zahir — the “Habib” of Achehnese history — was the ambitious and skilful foreigner who succeeded, during the first portion of the war, “in organizing the forces to a comparatively high degree”. He was a sayyid (a descendant of the Prophet), and his position as such furnished him, in Hurgronje’s analysis, with “an impregnable basis of action”. His success in the centralization of power under his own control was, given the circumstances, “nothing short of prodigious”. Yet he was hindered throughout by mistrust on the side of the Dutch and by the childish confidence of the Achehnese in their own invincibility; placed thus between two fires, he finally longed for repose, which he found in accepting a pension and migrating to Arabia. He died at Jeddah in 1896.
The engagement at Krueng Raba
The Achehnese, looking back on the war after the Habib’s defection, “now generally regard him as an ambitious traitor and even suspect him of having served as a spy of the Gompeuni from the very beginning”. Among the proofs which they refer to in support of this theory, Hurgronje tells us, “are included just the very facts which show his superiority to the Achehnese in civilization and political insight”. The engagement at Krueng Raba is the chief of these. “Why, they ask, did he continually urge us to refrain from deceit and treachery in the war with the Infidels? Why, when we had surrounded the Gompeuni’s fort at Krueng Raba with a much superior force under his leadership, did he promise a free retreat to the commandant and his men if they surrendered, and forbid us, if the offer were accepted, to raise a hand against the unbelievers? Evidently, they now reply, because even at that time he had a secret understanding with the Gompeuni.”
The Achehnese incomprehension
The Achehnese interpretation is, in Hurgronje’s view, the precise reverse of the truth. “They cannot comprehend that the Habib’s closer insight caused him to give great weight to the impression which his actions would make upon the enemy, a matter to which the Achehnese have always been utterly indifferent.” The promise of a free retreat to the surrounded Dutch garrison — and the prohibition of any breach of that promise — was, in the Habib’s view, the conduct that would best serve the long-term interest of the Achehnese cause. To the Achehnese, who “have always been utterly indifferent” to the impression made upon the enemy, the promise could only be explained by treachery. The episode thus illustrates, in Hurgronje’s analysis, the very quality that made the Habib’s leadership valuable to the Achehnese, and the absence of which, in the rest of their conduct of the war, made his leadership in the end unavailing.
Significance
The battle at Krueng Raba is one of the few recorded engagements of the Habib’s period of command, and the only one of which a detailed Achehnese tradition has been preserved. As an episode, it is of small military importance; as evidence of the character of the Habib and of the Achehnese incomprehension of that character, it is, in Hurgronje’s account, decisive. Together with the Habib’s skilful use of the mupakat (the favourite Achehnese method of discussion) in his intercourse with the chiefs, it confirms the picture of a leader whose “penetration and skill” would never have gained their end “had not his position as a sayyid furnished him with an impregnable basis of action”. The battle is therefore one of the keys to the early history of the Achehnese War, before the rise of Teungku Tiro and Teuku Uma transferred the leadership of the war-party to other hands.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.