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BANDA ACEH, INDONESIA — For decades, the vast jungle interior that blankets the northern Indonesian province of Aceh provided a haven for thousands of rebel foot soldiers fighting a war of independence.

Now, still marginalized and largely unemployed despite nearly five years of peace, many former separatists have fled back into the forest, this time to chop it down.

“I spoke to an old rebel captain recently, and I asked him why he continued to illegally log Aceh’s forests,” said Mohammad Nur Djuli, head of the Aceh Reintegration Body, an organization set up by the provincial government in 2006 to help former combatants rejoin society.

“He said, ‘O.K., you feed my 200 men and I’ll throw this chain saw into the river.’ What can I say to that?”

A government program, called Aceh Green, hopes to provide an answer.

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