Aceh

Once a village, now nothing: Even the bodies are gone

New York Times - January 14, 2005

Ian Fisher, Calang -- This town was not just destroyed. It vanished. After almost three weeks, only 323 bodies have been found. Before December 26, when the tsunami swept in from both sides of the pretty tropical peninsula that once cradled Calang, 7,300 people lived here. There is no hint of the 5,627 people missing, and the reality is settling in that 8 in 10 people in Calang were whisked clean away.

"It seems impossible," said a student here, Suhardi, 20, still dumbstruck.

The waves left little behind, not people and not houses. There is, in fact, almost nothing left to see. Concrete foundations were stripped bare.

There is some rubble, though far less than might be expected given that every home, coffee shop, fish restaurant and mosque was leveled, apart from one rich man's manor, now a two-story skeleton of partial walls and bone-white columns.

"There is only one," Col. Ikin Sodikin, an Indonesian Army officer, said as he pointed out the sole standing house. He chuckled in resignation, as people sometimes do in the face of things no one can really grasp. "All Calang has just disappeared," he said.

Calang is one of many villages on the western coast of Aceh Province wiped from the map of Indonesia, where suffering along the land closest to the earthquake's epicenter has been compounded by its remoteness. In the next village south, Kreung Sabe, half the town's residents died, and all but 500 of the 4,400 people who lived there before the tsunami are homeless. They now must walk seven miles to a port where relief supplies are delivered with what they say is still not enough food or medicine.

Just south of Kreung Sabe, a fishing village called Panga and three others nearby were flattened completely, with not a single house standing. In Panga itself, 793 of 1,108 people died, local leaders say, in a place with no airstrip, no port and roads completely washed out. It took a week for the first relief to arrive. Maybe 100 bodies, soldiers say, still lay around a swamp.

"I've been encouraging people to come get them," said Lt. Col. Reza Utama, who lost 20 of his own men stationed here. But no body bags or rubber gloves have been delivered, and so Colonel Utama said, "people are a bit reluctant."

This strip of coast southwest of the regional capital, Banda Aceh, itself devastated by the tsunami, appears to have suffered some of the worst proportional losses on December 26. In the region hit by the earthquake and then the tsunami, this is also one of the places that help was last to reach. And that assistance, nearly three weeks later, seems both heroic and not quite enough.

People complain of surviving on just rice and instant noodles. A local leader in Panga, named Ismaelis, said children were suffering from fever, vomiting and diarrhea.

"We don't mind being orphans if the aid is coming," said Sharudin, 18, who lost his parents and four siblings. "If the aid doesn't come, it would be better if we just died with our parents."

It is not for lack of trying: American military helicopters, Indonesian ships and aircraft, along with a flotilla of private boats are getting through to most places. (One aid official reported finding a village near Panga on Wednesday where residents said they had not seen any outside help.)

But the devastation is so great, the numbers in need so huge, with much terrain accessible only by helicopter. On Wednesday, two aid boats capsized, residents said, in the treacherous surf off Panga.

"It's a lot of people in some really remote places that aren't accessible," Maurice Knight, with the private consulting company International Resources Group, of Washington, D.C., said on a boat trip this week along the coast as part of his work coordinating relief efforts. "I think the fact is that it's going to have to be a scaling up, and that is going to take two months."

But time is not unlimited: Rick Brennan, the health director for the aid group International Rescue Committee, camped out for two days here, said enough supplies were getting in to keep people basically fed and healthy.

There are no signs of child malnutrition or outbreaks of serious diseases like cholera.

He estimated, though, that 80 percent of the children had suffered from diarrhea, and sanitation in ever-more-crowded refugee camps is far from adequate to ensure health or prevent major disease outbreaks. "From a humanitarian point of view, we need to move quickly," he said.

Perhaps more than any other place hit by the tsunami, the focus here is on the living -- on getting food and medicine here more quickly, of drafting plans to resettle the homeless into refugee camps that are safe, clean and accessible. And perhaps more than anywhere else, there is no choice but to think more about the living, because so few of the dead have been found.

Unlike elsewhere, there are no mass graves in this town, no patrols uncovering dozens of bodies a day. The few bodies that have been found were buried in small groups near where they lay.

Zulfian Ahmad, 53, the governor of the province around Calang, has not found any trace of his wife or four of his five children, lost while he was away in Jakarta on business. He has not seen a single one of his neighbors.

"Families are trying to find their relatives," he said, sitting on a mat in a tent where he has set up a makeshift office, complete with a typewriter and stacks of papers. "But the government believes they are dead. So we have to focus on the refugees."

The destruction was so complete that it is hard to find anyone who lived in Calang in the throng of refugees crowded here by the beach, smoky from campfires as they combed through piles of donated clothing and waited for food rations.

One man from a nearby village told a story similar to others along this coast: of a quake of tremendous strength, of a sea that receded and suddenly rushed back in fury. Near Calang, he said, he watched three waves from the top of a hill where he escaped with his family.

"When the waves came, the coconut trees just smashed like a potato chip crushed in your hand," he said. The first wave, he said, came "fast and hard," destroying the trees and houses. The second was smaller. "The third one was the biggest, and it just swept everything away," he said.

In Calang, once a jumping-off point for tourists to see orangutans, bears and tigers, geography may have been one reason for the destruction. The town rested on a peninsula, and people here said the waves had crashed from both sides, pushing some people inland but most of them simply out to sea.

In that sea, groups of boys have begun swimming again, throwing themselves daringly into the waves and dangling off the big ropes that moor two Indonesian military ships here to keep order and to oversee the aid operation. If they are afraid, they will not say so. "I don't see any dead bodies," said one boy, Yuli, who said he was 12 but looked more like 8.

An older boy, Wande, 14, watched them in the water from not far away. "You know, they know that people died, but they have trauma," he said. "They don't want to talk about it. They just want to play."

Acehnese rebels come out of hiding

The Australian - January 14, 2005

Stephen Fitzpatrick, Montasik -- Acehnese rebels fighting for an independent homeland have descended from the isolation of northern Sumatra's mountains to restock and regroup after the tsunami that killed 100,000 on the Indonesian island.

A small band of fighters of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), which declares itself "the only legitimate government of Aceh", said yesterday they had emerged from their hideouts shortly after the December 26 disaster struck, confident the Indonesian military forces ranged against them were either dead or had been redirected to the relief effort.

They claimed to be just one of several such groups "protecting" Acehnese villages closer to the coastal fringe and gathering supplies to take back to their mountain camps. Like the others, this group, led by 24-year-old Mukhlis Abei, of the Montasik region east of the Acehnese capital, Banda Aceh, will return to its eyrie when it hears of renewed military operations against it.

That is likely to be within days, with the announcement yesterday that Indonesia would bolster its military presence in Aceh to 50,000 troops.

Military spokesman Major-General Syafrie Syamsuddin said the fresh soldiers would focus solely on humanitarian operations, initially the cleaning up of debris in towns. Asked if the soldiers would be used in the military's battle against GAM rebels, General Syamsuddin said: "No, no, no, of course not."

After his and his fellow fighters' sudden and silent appearance in the mountains east of Banda Aceh, where they made a close inspection of The Australian's car and its contents, Abei dropped his gruff demeanour and decided it was safe to head to the top of a nearby hill, where the surrounding countryside could be surveyed, to describe his operation.

Abei said he was the panglima of the Montasik region east of Banda Aceh -- a choice of title whose effect was both powerful and deliberate. The word conjures for many Acehnese the image of a middle-aged, heavily decorated Javanese military careerist, a man whose rise has most likely come at their expense.

For Abei, in shorts, thongs and a sleeveless black T-shirt, it is a delightful irony. He is sustained by the belief that "we are the Acehnese people"; it is reason enough to believe that the Indonesian military can never defeat GAM.

He at least has history on his side. Aceh's partisans defeated Dutch colonialism through sheer dint of never giving up over centuries, and the current participants expect one day to also wear down the Indonesians, whom they offered to join in federation after World War II but maintain they were never prepared to be subjugated by.

"This is our family," Abei declares, spreading his arm to include the handful of villagers who hover nearby: children, women and old men, keeping a cautious but relaxed distance. "These people are giving us what they can spare, though they have nothing. We will take food, particularly rice, back to our camp."

The men who never really grew out of being boys joke about and jostle to be in photographs; they seem equal parts wild teenager and serious killer. Their automatic weapons are one moment dangled casually towards the ground, the next pointed towards mock targets in the middle distance.

Some have movie star good looks; one wears a T-shirt plastered with the logo of the west Javanese infantry battalion, Yonif 320 -- an item of clothing whose former owner almost certainly died at the hands of this young ideologue. The battalion is one of several assigned to Aceh; wearing the shirt is the guerilla's equivalent of military braid.

Yet it is hard to get a sense of what motivates this small band, other than a kind of naive nationalism: "we are the Acehnese" is about as sophisticated as it gets.

In their mountain retreat there is no time for girlfriends or material diversions. "We relax and pray, mostly," says another. "There's not really a lot else to do."

Abei is the oldest of his small crew and the only one who is married. He says his wife was snatched from a car a week ago in a nearby village where she was staying with the couple's two-year- old child, Salahuddin. The boy, he says, was thrown from the vehicle. He survived and is being cared for by his grandmother.

They say their group in the mountains numbers about 200, although at the moment most have dispersed through the region, waiting for orders to move. "Then we will retreat to the mountains again; we can disappear so that they never find us," another brags.

To the small band of fighters under Abei in the hills around Montasik, their duty is clear. "In a situation where the TNI are threatening the Acehnese people, we protect the Acehnese people," Abei says.

Aceh leader asks troops to stay

Sydney Morning Herald - January 14, 2005

Matthew Moore in Banda Aceh and Cynthia Banham -- The acting governor of Aceh has asked foreign troops and aid workers to stay and provide "long-term support" for victims of the tsunami despite growing pressure from the Indonesian Government for all foreign troops to leave by the end of March.

The vice-governor of the province, Azwar Abu Bakar, said he was "frightened of being abandoned in less than a month facing such a big disaster" and wanted foreign military and aid groups to remain until the emergency had passed. "I really need long-term support from these organisations," he said yesterday.

His remarks are strongly at odds with those of Indonesia's Vice- President, Jusuf Kalla, who said on Wednesday that foreign forces should leave Indonesia by the end of March, three months after the tsunami struck and killed as many as 130,000 people in Aceh and made at least 300,000 homeless.

Indonesia's moves to limit the time foreign forces remain in Aceh and to restrict foreigners' movements outside the region's main cities, Banda Aceh and Meulaboh, have caused concern in the White House, at the United Nations and among aid groups.

The Indonesian military has been fighting rebels in Aceh although the rebels have declared a ceasefire to help with the aid effort. This was formally welcomed yesterday by Mr Kalla.

The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said yesterday the US was seeking clarification on the deadline. "Obviously I think that we want to make sure that there is rapid and immediate relief provided to all the affected persons," he said.

Margareta Wahlstrom, the UN's deputy relief co-ordinator, has met Indonesian officials to clarify the new rules and assess the impact of Mr Kalla's statement on Wednesday.

The chief executive of World Vision Australia, Tim Costello, said the time limit could have an impact on the delivery of aid. "It complicates the situation for us," he told ABC radio.

The Federal Government said yesterday it had not been informed of a deadline, even as Indonesia's ambassador to Australia, Imron Cotan, reaffirmed the March end date. A spokesman for the Defence Minister, Robert Hill, said the Government had only seen media reports of Jakarta's comments.

"We'll make a contribution as long as we are needed, and the time-line of that contribution will be determined in conjunction with the Indonesian authorities," Senator Hill's spokesman said. "We have said from day one we are there at the invitation of Indonesia, and we will do whatever's necessary for as long as we're needed."

Mr Cotan said his Government had "carefully assessed the situation [and] that after three months will be able to take over all relief efforts. His spokesman said this meant foreign troops would have to leave but, some aid workers would be allowed to stay behind under UN supervision.

Although thousands of bodies still lie in Banda Aceh's streets and work has barely begun on the refugee camps set to house 400,000 people, there are growing calls within the Indonesian Government for an even quicker departure of foreigners.

The push to get foreign troops out fast is partly driven by nationalist politicians and the military. But according to some Westerners close to the Government, the deadline and new requirements for aid workers to register and report to authorities are an attempt by Jakarta to regain control over the aid effort.

More foreign troops are arriving in Aceh, with the Australian supply ship HMAS Kanimbla reaching Banda Aceh yesterday with about 400 troops and earthmoving equipment.

Indonesia's Welfare Minister, Alwi Shihab, who is co-ordinating the relief effort, told Al-Jazeera television yesterday that Indonesia expected to have enough infrastructure in place before the end of March. He said some people in Jakarta were worried about having soldiers from so many nations in Aceh.

The spokesman for Indonesia's defence forces, General Sjafrie Samsuddin, said the deadline was "the policy of the Government" and that the armed forces supported the Government.

He confirmed that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln had been barred from running training flights in Indonesian airspace. The ship's helicopters fly most of the relief missions on Aceh's west coast. (With agencies)

Jakarta deadline fans concerns

Australian Financial Review - January 14, 2005

Andrew Burrell, Banda Aceh -- The acting governor of Aceh said yesterday he was "frightened" of being abandoned by the thousands of foreign troops and aid workers involved in the massive humanitarian mission in his tsunami-battered province.

Azwar Abubakar was responding to the Indonesian government's March 26 deadline for all foreign service personnel to leave Aceh, a move that reflects deep sensitivities over the presence of foreigners here.

The plea came as Jakarta imposed strict new restrictions on foreign aid workers in the province, claiming they were in danger from separatist rebels involved in a long-running war against Jakarta's rule.

The Indonesian military planned to send thousands more soldiers into Aceh to help relief efforts, bringing the total troop deployment there to almost 50,000, a spokesman said.

Major General Syafrie Syamsuddin said the soldiers would focus solely on humanitarian operations, initially the cleaning up of debris in towns. Asked if the soldiers would be used against separatist rebels, he said: "No, no, no, of course not."

Indonesia wants aid workers to ask permission to leave major centres and possibly to have military escorts. There are fears the restrictions could impede the flow of aid.

The moves to restrict foreign access in Aceh prompted concerns from leaders of the international relief effort, including the United Nations and United States, and come as Australia's HMAS Kanimbla arrived in Banda Aceh yesterday with another 400 Australian troops, including army engineers equipped with earth- moving equipment and landing craft. This brings the number of Australian troops in Aceh to about 900.

Mr Abubakar said in Banda Aceh he had not heard directly of the central government's plans to set a deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops. But he said he would be concerned about any plans to scale down the foreign presence.

"I am frightened of being abandoned in less than a month facing such a big disaster," he said. "I really need the long-term support from these organisations."

Foreign troops, including from Australia, the US, Japan and Malaysia, have been praised for delivering much-needed aid to isolated coastlines accessible only by sea and air.

Indonesia's welfare minister, Alwi Shihab, who is in charge of the relief effort, said yesterday that foreign troops might leave Aceh even before March 26. By that time Indonesia would be able to reach all of the affected areas via sea and land, he told Al Jazeera television.

Bambang Dharmono, the head of the military taskforce for the relief effort, said: "After the [deadline] I think Indonesia can do the job, as long as there are available funds."

World Vision Australia chief executive Tim Costello said the deadline could complicate work being carried out by aid agencies.

A spokesman for US President George Bush said the US would ask Indonesia for clarification on whether it wanted foreign troops to leave by March.

"Obviously, I think that we want to make sure that there is rapid and immediate relief provided to all the affected persons," a Bush spokesman said. "That remains a priority for the US as well as the international relief organisations in the area, and so we'll seek further clarification from Indonesia about what this means."

The UN said it had met Indonesian officials to see whether new restrictions on aid workers in Aceh would hinder its relief work.

World Bank president James Wolfensohn cautioned against rushing the relief effort. "I think [it will take about] a month or two or even three to fill in the details [of a comprehensive reconstruction plan]," he said. "This is not a trivial disaster."

From North Korea to Aceh

Wall Street Journal - January 14, 2005

Norbert Vollertsen, Banda Aceh -- I feel almost as if I am back in North Korea again. The military road blocks, heavily armed police tanks at every street corner and thousands of soldiers everywhere all remind me of the 18 months I spent in the Stalinist state.

Like so many others horrified by the pictures of the devastation wrought by the tsunami, which killed at least 108,000 people in the Indonesian province of Aceh alone, I -- together with a team from the Korean Medical Association -- rushed here to try to help.

The devastation is almost beyond belief. Whole areas have been flattened by the tsunami and thousands of bodies are still buried under the rubble.

In one harbor alone, I saw more than 300 bodies. Another eight bodies were pulled from the rubble of a house opposite the makeshift hospital we had established in a downtown area of the provincial capital of Banda Aceh.

Within minutes of opening this emergency medical tent, we were besieged by dozens of children, old people, pregnant women and other people -- many traumatized by their experiences -- and all in desperate need of treatment. Again and again, they begged us to stay and even encourage more foreigners to flock to this formerly closed region.

But that's not the attitude of the Indonesian government. Jakarta only reluctantly lifted long-running restrictions on foreign visits to this war-torn province -- which has been the scene of an insurgency for several decades -- in the aftermath of the tsunami.

Now Indonesia is trying to close Aceh to outsiders again. In the past few days, new restrictions have been placed on the movements of foreigners.

Some areas have been placed completely off limits, ostensibly because of the threat of attacks by the pro-independence movement, known as GAM. Aid workers have been ordered to apply for approval before they can travel outside Banda Aceh, and told they may have to accept military escorts.

But it's clear the Indonesian military is taking advantage of the situation to step up their campaign against the pro-independence movement, even though the leadership of GAM declared a cease-fire in the immediate aftermath of the December 26 tragedy. Sporadic sounds of gunfire can be heard from nearby hills.

And there are huge numbers of Indonesian military helicopters in the air. I saw helicopters unloading guns, weapons and soldiers at Banda Aceh military airport and in the mountains near the provincial capital.

Increasingly Western aid workers are confined to the provincial capital. And that, again, gives me a terrible sense of dij' vu. Just as in North Korea, where Pyongyang is a Potemkin capital used to keep foreigners isolated from ordinary North Koreans and so hide the worst excesses of Kim Jong Il's regime, so Banda Aceh is rapidly evolving into the same role in post-tsunami Indonesia.

Stockpiles of food, medicine and other relief supplies are going to waste in the provincial capital due to the increasing restrictions on aid workers traveling to the rural areas where they are most desperately needed.

Our own team was blocked from going into the countryside and forced to open another rescue tent in already crowded Banda Aceh. Members of other aid organizations complained of encountering the same problem. The military says it wants to take over everything -- from the warehouses to distribution. But that means there will be no one to stop the army diverting aid for its own purposes, in a province long bedeviled by official corruption.

No wonder I feel almost as if I am back in Pyongyang again -- save for one crucial difference. In North Korea, the military were acting on the instructions of an evil leader who cared not the slightest for the welfare his people.

Indonesia, by contrast, has a new, popularly elected president. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has advocated reconciliation in Aceh in the past. He can hardly fail to be aware of what the military is now trying to do in his government's name. And now is the time for him to put the welfare of his people first, and put a stop to their actions.

[Dr. Vollertsen, a physician from Germany, worked in hospitals in North Korea from July 1999 to December 2000, when he was expelled from the country. He is currently based in South Korea, where he organizes rescue and asylum efforts for escaping North Koreans.]

US envoy supports Jakarta on restrictions

International Herald Tribune - January 14, 2005

Raymond Bonner, New York Times, Jakarta -- The US ambassador here said on Thursday that the United States was not troubled by the demands by the Indonesian government that aid workers in Aceh Province register and that all foreign troops be gone by the end of March.

He described the restrictions as "reasonable" and "unremarkable." The government's intention to have foreign troops leave and take over the reconstruction after 90 days "sounds like a perfectly reasonable position to me," the ambassador, Lynn Pascoe, said at a press conference at the US Embassy.

"It's their country," he said at one point, adding that "they have every right to decide" how long American troops are needed.

Sensitive to the impression that it was relying too heavily on outside military forces and wanting to assert control over the relief operation, the Indonesian government Wednesday set a deadline of March 26 -- three months after the tsunami struck -- but said it hoped to phase out the foreign troops even earlier.

The timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops was made public a day after the commander of the Indonesian military announced restrictions on the movement of foreign aid workers.

The military has fought a civil war against separatist rebels here for 30 years and has kept Aceh virtually sealed to outsiders in that period. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is a former general and a strong defender of the military role in the province.

Western military officials said the Indonesian Army, the backbone of the nation's strong sense of sovereignty, was being cooperative but touchy about the foreign troops working here.

The governments of India and Thailand, nations also hit by the tsunami, said they could cope on their own. But out of a total death toll exceeding 150,000, Indonesia accounts for more than 100,000, and it accepted help from foreign troops when it became clear that its own military could not deal with the devastation.

A number of countries have sent or are sending troops to help. The American military has taken a major role, flying daily helicopter runs to ferry food to isolated villages devastated by the wave and bringing wounded people to hospitals Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh.

This is a highly nationalistic country, and the Bush Administration is clearly concerned about the reactions of many Indonesians to the presence of the American soldiers, which has begun to show up in the restrictions imposed by the government. American diplomats, even at the senior level are not supposed to speak officially without approval from Washington, and in the past several years, there have been fewer than a handful of official remarks by American diplomats here.

On Thursday, Pascoe, a career diplomat who took up his post here three months ago, not only spoke officially but also called a news conference, heavily attended by Indonesian journalists. Pascoe stressed repeatedly the theme that this was an Indonesian operation.

"I want to be very clear about that," he said. "This is a cooperative effort. We are here at the request of the Indonesian government. We are here as long as there is a task that needs to be done, that they want us to work on. And we have every intention to leave immediately when that point is reached."

Nor, he said, did the United States military have any problems with allowing an Indonesian soldier on American helicopters. Indeed, this has been happening since the first days of the relief operation, he said. Pascoe added, "We don't do anything up there that is not totally in support of the government of Indonesia."

The Indonesian government has said that its restrictions on aid workers in Aceh are necessary for the protection of the aid workers. Aceh has been torn by a civil war for nearly 30 years, between the government and separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement, better known here by its initials, GAM. In recent days, rebel leaders have declared that they have no intention to harm any foreign relief workers and that they were extending their cease-fire which they announced soon after the tsunami.

Many Indonesians, and foreign diplomats, do not accept the government's reason for the restrictions at face value. It is more likely they say that the military wants to reassert control over the province, they say. Prior to the tsunami, the area was under martial law, and foreign journalists were not allowed in.

Pascoe defended the government's requirement, announced this week, that all aid workers register. "They're saying register your people," he said. "I find that totally unremarkable. Every government has the right to check on foreigners in their country."

Pascoe also bristled when he was question, again, about the motivation behind the US relief efforts. Was they to improve America's image with Muslims, in light of the Iraq war, he was asked, and to open up Aceh, which is rich in natural resources, to American companies?

Those notions are "as wacky as they can be, and I would just say flatly they are foolish." What the United States was doing was perfectly clear -- save lives and alleviate suffering. "We're trying to make this a better world."

[Jane Perlez contributed reporting for this article from Banda Aceh.]

New peace hope but tensions overshadow aid

Agence France Presse - January 14, 2005

Prospects for peace in Indonesia's war-torn and tsunami-hit Aceh province were lifted by an offer of talks from separatist rebels, but tensions continued to overshadow efforts to aid disaster victims.

The rebels' prime minister-in-exile Malik Mahmud said his men were willing to sit down for discussions with Jakarta to ease fears which have prompted the Indonesian government to lock down Aceh, placing restrictions on foreigners.

The offer was welcomed by government officials, even as the country's military dispatched thousands of extra troops to the province, where before the disaster they were engaged in a major campaign to crush the rebels.

But doubts remained over whether discussions could achieve a credible peace on the ground in the province, where the rebels are unlikely to forgo their deep distrust of a powerful and almost autonomous military.

Mahmud's statement came a day after Indonesian authorities accused the rebels of attacking officials and threatening efforts to aid the survivors of the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami which killed 110,229 Indonesians.

He said the rebels were committed to a unilateral ceasefire declared immediately after the December 26 disaster. "We are prepared to meet with [Indonesia] to agree the optimum modalities to ensure the success of the ceasefire and thereby minimize the suffering of the Acehnese people," Mahmud said in the statement.

Vice President Yusuf Kalla said he applauded the statement from the rebels, known by their Indonesian acronym GAM, and indicated the government would offer a positive response.

"What is important is that there is a dignified settlement and that there is no longer any enmity between the GAM and us in Aceh, meaning that we will both manage peace and implement the rehabilitation in Aceh," he said.

Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda, speaking in Germany, said Indonesia was seeking a long-term political settlement with the rebels. "We are working with rebel groups on the possibility of reconciliation," he said.

There were further signs earlier this week that Indonesia could be readying for an internationally-brokered accord when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono held talks with several foreign envoys to brief them on Aceh.

Indonesia and the rebels struck a short-lived peace deal more than two years ago, but Jakarta launched a military campaign after it collapsed in May 2003. For the 18 months before the disaster, Aceh has been closed off to foreigners.

Although the recent catastrophe may help galvanise the peace process at the diplomatic level, analysts warn that talks may meet resistance on the ground.

"The military is dead set against the idea, convinced that talking is a sign of weakness, that it gives GAM legitimacy that it does not deserve and that it would undo all its efforts to crush the insurgency by force," Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group said in a recent commentary.

Earlier this week, the military said it was imposing tough new restrictions on overseas aid workers in Aceh, requiring them to register with authorities and remain in major towns unless accompanied by armed patrols. It said the restrictions would remain in place until the rebels, who have been fighting for independence since 1976, were no longer a threat.

On Thursday it announced it was sending thousands of extra troops into Aceh, ostensibly to help with the humanitarian effort. This would take personnel numbers beyond 50,000 in a force that is still actively engaging the rebels.

Tensions between the military and the rebels have cast a shadow over the relief effort in Indonesia, with some aid groups concerned that the new regulations could delay supply deliveries already hit by logistical glitches.

More help continued to pour into the stricken region with French frigate Jeanne d'Arc, carrying 11 helicopters, steaming into position off the coast of Aceh, while the US military sent long- range jets equipped with heat sensors to track down stranded survivors.

Meanwhile, the grim task of clearing up the carnage from the disaster continued with thousands of bodies still being pulled from the rubble in the hard-hit city of Banda Aceh, according to local officials.

Indonesia's official death toll from the earthquake and tsunami rose by 3,700 on Thursday to 110,229, the social affairs ministry said. "As of 4pm today, a total of 110,229 people have died from the tsunami," said Erny, an official with the ministry's national disaster coordination centre. Some 12,132 people were still listed as missing in Aceh province while another 925 were in hospital, she said.

Indonesia also said Thursday it welcomed a debt freeze offer by the Paris Club of creditor nations, but would carefully study the conditions of the deal before accepting.

Indonesian Islamic party reaps rewards of goodwill

Washington Post - January 14, 2005

Ellen Nakashima, Banda Aceh -- An Islamic cleric and political organizer, Azmi Fajri Usman, pulled up at a camp of about 200 tsunami survivors stranded in a city park.

"Asalaam alaikum!" Peace be with you, he said, hopping off his motorbike and approaching a few of the survivors as the sun neared its zenith Wednesday. "Is there anyone here who's organized the place?"

"There's no organizer here," harrumphed a man wearing a black T- shirt and a surgical mask to filter the stench of decomposing bodies. "We have nothing here. There's not a single pack of noodles."

Usman, a volunteer coordinator from the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party, was still encountering people who needed aid nearly three weeks after a December 26 undersea earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed nearly 160,000 people in 11 countries, 110,000 of them in Indonesia.

"This place is just neglected," said Usman, 26, a thickset man who waddled about with boundless energy. "They see all the relief trucks passing by and all they can do is watch."

Humanitarian work is a prime component of the Prosperous Justice Party program, which also provided relief aid during floods and landslides in Jakarta and after an earthquake last year in Papua province in eastern Indonesia.

Although members do not campaign overtly as they deliver aid and insist their relief work is not political, they know they are winning sympathy and often votes.

The symbolism is potent and practical: Indonesians helping Indonesians, Muslims helping Muslims. Here in Aceh, the hardest- hit province, a majority of residents are Muslim and provincial officials are implementing sharia, or Islamic law.

The party has filled a perceptible void here and in other parts of the country. The civilian government does not have an equivalent program and says it intends to manage voluntary organizations rather than implementing relief operations.

The Prosperous Justice Party, known as PKS, began as the obscure Justice Party in 1998 with students and urban intellectuals as its base. It has since grown to include 3 million members, and recently won city council elections in Jakarta and Banda Aceh. Some party members dream of securing the presidency in 2009 and making Indonesia more of an Islamic state.

The party, whose members are ubiquitous in tan vests emblazoned with the party logo of two crescent moons and a stalk of rice, has fielded the largest group among a total of about 8,000 civilian relief volunteers -- 800 to 1,000 party members are on the ground at all times. They were among the first

volunteers, having set up a crisis command center on December 27. On December 28, they began distributing food, water, medicine and blankets. They can be seen passing out clothes and boxes of food, cleaning hospitals and schools and gathering together orphans to be sheltered at Islamic boarding schools.

"Our motto is 'Clean and Concerned,'" said the party's president, Tifatul Sembiring. "Relief work is one way we show our concern."

Part politician, part social worker, Usman, who was recently elected to the Banda Aceh council, is among about 2,000 party volunteers from across Indonesia who have traveled to the archipelago's far northwest corner to help survivors of the disaster.

At the cultural center pavilion in the city center, a young boy in a red Batman shirt ran to Usman and embraced him. Usman, a native Acehnese, once had a radio talk show on Islam and was known as the "funky cleric" for his hip lessons geared toward teenagers. He recognized the child as one of his pupils in a Koranic study class.

One woman said she had to beg Indonesian soldiers for a package of instant noodles. One man said he needed a tent. Another man pointed to his 10-year-old son and said the boy had survived 10 hours in the water after the tsunami and needed medical attention. His wife and 17-year-old son were dead, he added.

Usman radioed for help. Within 10 minutes, a black Mitsubishi truck flying the PKS flag arrived. In it were party members bolstered by volunteers from another Islamic civic group, al- Islam, who said they joined forces to be more effective. Al-Islam had trucks -- the Mitsubishi was theirs -- but not enough volunteers. So they offered their services to the party because they believe the PKS is not corrupt, according to Inen Ardi, an al-Islam coordinator.

Soon, the volunteers were unloading cartons of eggs, men's, women's and children's clothing in separately labeled bags, and sacks of rice.

"The most important thing is to be flexible," Usman told Ardi, who had concerns about how he would help 200 people so quickly. "Don't be uptight about rules." "Yeah, but then we need more people," Ardi said. "Okay, I'll send more people," Usman said, pulling his radio out of his pocket.

Usman and the party strive to portray a moderate image. Though party leaders would like to see sharia adopted, they do not push it in political campaigns, preferring to prepare the cultural ground first. But on posters, and in casual conversation, they reveal suspicion of Christian activists.

One flyer posted on school walls around town warns Acehnese not to hand orphans to "infidels," that is, "Christians and missionaries," who would take the children away and convert them. "The problem is the infidels who are trying to proselytize," Usman said. "We would want to see Christian missionaries leave. We want humanitarian aid workers who are sincere."

Religious charities who stick to aid work are welcome, Usman said. "What makes Acehnese angry is when religious interests get involved."

Usman, who married a medical school student three months ago, said he joined the Prosperous Justice Party because he saw it as "devoted not only to God but also to people." He said its members were religious and intelligent.

The Acehnese are being tested by God, Usman said. They have suffered long, first under Dutch colonial dominion and more recently because of the military-rebel conflict. Now, the natural disaster. "The tsunami is a test from God to bring them back to Islamic teaching," he said, adding that a return to Islamic precepts could help erase deep problems in the province.

Usman said if the Prosperous Justice Party fed the people and gave them good schools, "then there will be no such thing as a separatist movement" in Aceh. "Inshallah," he said, God willing. After a few moments, he excused himself to pray.

[Special Correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report.]

Religious groups are exploiting Aceh chaos

Daily Telegraph (UK) - January 14, 2005

Marianne Kearney, Darussalam -- Dozens of Muslim and Christian groups are exploiting the chaos wrought by the tsunami in the Indonesian province of Aceh to spread their message and compete for influence, secular aid workers said yesterday.

Many religious charities are offering purely humanitarian aid and have policies against proselytising but some have made blatant attempts to win hearts and minds.

An American missionary organisation has claimed to have flown out large numbers of orphans to be looked after and educated in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. More than 110,000 people have died in Indonesia and hundreds of thousands are without adequate food, shelter and medicine.

The Virginia-based group WorldHelp said on its website in an appeal for funds that it had airlifted 300 "tsunami orphans" to Jakarta, to be raised in a Christian centre. "If we can place them in a Christian children's home, their faith in Christ could become the foothold to reach the Aceh people," it said.

The appeal said WorldHelp was working with Indonesian-born Christians who want to "plant Christian principles as early as possible", reported The Washington Post.

After WorldHelp was contacted by the newspaper, it removed the appeal.

Aid workers in Aceh said they had not heard of the organisation or the removal of large numbers of children.

At a relief camp in the grounds of the mosque in Darussalam, five miles outside Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, a volunteer from a conservative Muslim boarding school claimed that an Islamic political party had removed 20 orphans to Jakarta.

That claim could not be substantiated but amid the confusion at the camp the competition between rival groups was clear. Late in the afternoon Ahmad Salikun, the volunteer, gave children a lesson on the Koran.

Downstairs four foreigners in Church of Scientology T-shirts, said to be Americans, were offering massage to refugees lounging on rattan mats. The church has set up an office in Banda Aceh.

The Scientologists are unlikely to make many inroads among the devoutly Muslim population, but they could easily provoke clashes and a subsequent crackdown on humanitarian groups, international aid organisations fear. "You take traumatised people and do counselling for them, this is very dangerous," said one aid worker who has been in Aceh for years.

Christine Knudsen, a child protection officer with Save the Children, said the radical Islamic groups that have moved in from Java were at odds with Acehnese tradition. Devout but tolerant, the Acehnese Muslims have turned away hardliners in the past.

But with their society devastated by the tsunami, and the militant groups receiving the implicit backing of the Indonesian military, observers fear that the Acehnese will be unable to resist attempts to impose more hardline Muslim values.

Jakarta wants permanent ceasefire with rebels: Kalla

Jakarta Post - January 14, 2005

Banda Aceh (Agencies) -- Indonesia wants a lasting truce with separatists in tsunami-ravaged Aceh province, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said on Friday, as both sides expressed a willingness for talks to end the 28-year rebellion.

Kalla, speaking to reporters in Banda Aceh, said Jakarta wanted more than just a ceasefire while a massive international aid effort is under way in a province where more 110,000 people were killed and 700,000 left homeless.

"Ceasefire means you stop now, and fight another day. No, we're making [it] permanently," he said in brief remarks in English after Friday prayers in Aceh's provincial capital. "It is hard to conclude but the steps towards that are now being built," he said. "Later we will arrange to solve the conflict, smoothly, cleverly and with dignity."

The rebel prime minister-in-exile Malik Mahmud said in a statement from Stockholm on Wednesday his Free Aceh Movement, better known by its initials GAM, repeated their ceasefire offer to help efforts to rebuild the region.

"Under the present situation, this is a good chance for both sides to sit down and try to discuss a settlement to the political situation," Malik said.

Interview with Allan Nairn

Democracy Now! - January 14, 2005

Amy Goodman: We're joined by journalist and activist, Allan Nairn.

Allan survived the massacre in east Timor of 1991 where Indonesian soldiers opened fire and killed more than 270 Timorese in that massacre. Allan had his skull fractured. He's also spent a good deal of time in Indonesian Aceh and has just recently returned. Allan, can you talk about the latest developments, the numbers we're seeing and the movements of the Indonesian military?

Allan Nairn: Well, it's now 20 days after the tsunami, and the president of Indonesia, General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is still refusing to lift the state of siege, the de facto martial law. There's an interesting op-ed piece in the "Wall Street Journal" by a German doctor, Norbert Vollertsen who has done medical work in North Korea. He's now in Aceh, and he compares the current military control in Aceh to the situation in North Korea, the environment. And that's the least of it. Because he's only seeing a part of Banda Aceh, now that it's been open to the outside world. If he could have seen rural Aceh before, it would have been even worse. But it's not a bad comparison.

Specifically now, it appears that Kopassas, the red berets, the special forces of the Indonesian army, the most feared units who specialize in torture and kidnapping and political rape and who are also trained by the US Green berets in tactics such as urban warfare, and advanced sniper technique, the Kopassas and also the Indonesian military intelligence unit, S.G.I., also quite feared. They are now getting directly involved in the distribution of aid. I just spoke to an Acehnese activist just returned from West Aceh, who said that aid supplies are being taken directly to the Kopassas and S.G.I. barracks. These barracks are torture centers where Acehnese are routinely brought in and worked-over for interrogation.

And now these supplies are being piled up there and either resold by the Kopassas and S.G.I. intelligence people or, as the person that I spoke to put it, used as a political instrument in the villages. They go out to the villages and first demand that villagers present their special I.D. card issued by the police, given only to people who are certified as not being opponents of the army, and they demand they swear allegiance to the state of Indonesia and collaborate with the army.

Specifically, this is apparently now going on in Meulaboh, in West Aceh, in Aceh Jaya and rural areas of Banda Aceh, such as Leupnung, Krueng Raya, and also in the east in the outskirts of Pidie and Lhokseumawe. In Meulaboh. There's a report of forced labor by the local district military commander, who is requiring survivors to pick up the dead bodies and some who have refused to do this, have been tortured.

Juan Gonzalez: Allan, what do you make of first the insistence of the Indonesian government that all foreign troops get out by March, and then yesterday, US officials saying they think that that's actually a reasonable request?

Allan Nairn: Well, it's probably a little confusing to people looking from the outside. The Indonesian military is a client of the US military.

Their regime came to power in 1965-1967 with US backing. At that time they consolidated their power and put in General Suharto as the ruler of Indonesia by killing anywhere from 400,000 to 1 million Indonesian civilians and Washington and the Pentagon and also the US press openly expressed their delight. They gave extensive military aid. But at the same time, because of the internal politics of Indonesia, where nationalism is very important, the Indonesian military has to pretend that it's independent of the US, even dislikes it. So they're often rhetorical clashes of this kind. It's very ironic now because when you speak to Acehnese in Aceh, they're very grateful for the fact that American troops have come in on helicopters, have come ashore and are delivering food aid, but if the White House and the Pentagon have their way, those Acehnese are in for a cruel trick, because the White House and Pentagon are now pushing to restore full military aid to Jakarta, which means that in addition to food being brought in off those ships, and delivered to Acehnese, weapons and military expertise would be brought in from those ships and the Pentagon they represent and given to the military, which has been, the Indonesian military, which has been killing the Acehnese. That is, if the White House and Pentagon succeed, and in fact this Wednesday, Paul Wolfowitz, who is the Deputy Defense Secretary, had a series of meetings in Washington with top generals and brought in some outside consultants where they planned a campaign to restore the US military aid to Indonesia. Wolfowitz himself has personally been three times to Aceh. He's about to go over to Indonesia.

Amy Goodman: We're talking to award-winning journalist, Allan Nairn, who has won numerous journalistic honors for exposing the Indonesian military, recently returned from Indonesia and Aceh, about the situation in Aceh now, the tsunami-ravaged Aceh. You talk about deputy director of defense, Paul Wolfowitz who's headed over there now. Well-known for being one of the architects of the invasion of Iraq, was a former ambassador to Indonesia, so knows well what was going on. What was his role and how does it continue today now?

Allan Nairn: Wolfowitz was a big backer of Suharto and the Indonesian military and at every stage he has pressed for further backing for the Indonesian armed forces. So, now he is going to try to use this opportunity to break the current congressional restrictions. Right now, due to grassroots activism all across the United States, and due to bipartisan congressional response to that activism, there are severe restrictions in place on what the Pentagon can actually do for the Indonesian armed forces.

They're not allowed to sell almost all categories of weapons. They're not allowed to finance weapons sales. They're not allowed to provide most categories of training. There are very tough restrictions. These were put in after the various massacres in East Timor. But Wolfowitz is now trying to break them to further equip the Indonesian military, which would be disastrous for people in Aceh and also in Papua where the Indonesian military is doing similar operations.

Amy Goodman: What about the relief groups. How are they operating right now in Aceh. What kind of deals are made with the Indonesian government? We have heard about a tremendous amount of money, of course, people extremely generous in supporting all the big organizations. How are they operating?

Allan Nairn: Well, the relief groups. First of all, the Acehnese and Indonesian relief groups, the local people, where people in the areas of Aceh that survived the tsunami and people outside in Indonesia have been extremely generous, have been pouring in lots of money, have been trying to come in as volunteers, and they've been systematically extorted and blocked by the Indonesian military. An aid group just came over from Malaysia, was trying to cross over the border from Sumatra into Aceh, and they were stopped at the border, told by the military that there is now a ban on bringing in aid by land, and they were forced to pay bribes in order to get in.

Acehnese who were trying to deliver aid to their fellow citizens are being told that they can only go around with military escorts. They're being interrogated about their political views, etc. The big outside agencies have, like the UN and the big charities, have memoranda of understanding with the government of Indonesia, which set the terms for their access to Indonesia and Aceh. And this often requires them to work through the government, and in concert with the military.

The aid groups, the big groups often say they don't get involved in politics. That's not quite true. In the 1990's during the Clinton Administration, when Suharto came to the US, C.A.R.E. actually organized a gala for him in Washington shortly before he met President Clinton where about 250 corporate C.E.O.'s honored Suharto. I think the aid groups should be more open now in speaking out about what the military's doing. If you speak to them privately, they will say one thing. Their public statements are very reserved. Also, I think the big aid groups should re- channel a lot of the money they have received from generous private citizens, to small grassroots groups on the ground in Indonesia, and Aceh that are literally fighting for survival.

Just yesterday, we got a report that the Indonesian government is actually blocking the bank accounts of some of the grassroots groups trying to prevent them from receiving donations from overseas.

Juan Gonzalez: And what about the political resistance or the guerrilla movements that were there in Aceh before the tsunami. What has been their role, obviously, in terms of what's going on with the disaster aid and reconstruction, and what's been the Indonesian government's posture toward them?

Allan Nairn: Well, in Aceh, there is an armed rebel movement called the GAM, which wants independence. They exist alongside much broader civilian movement, which has called for a referendum, a free vote on the question of independence. As soon as the tsunami struck, the armed GAM immediately offered a cease-fire, and the Indonesian government rejected that, and kept on attacking. Now, what the Indonesian government is saying, they want to talk. But it's not clear what will come of that.

From December, 2002, until May of 2003, there was actually a fairly constructive peace deal called the COHA, a Cessation of Hostilities Agreement in place, which allowed some free speech and free organization in Aceh. There could be a return to that if the US put pressure on Jakarta and if civilians were brought into the negotiating process, not just the Indonesian government and the armed rebel GAM.

Amy Goodman: If people wanted to support grassroots groups, where could they go?

Allan Nairn: Well, within the US, the East Timor action network at www.etan.org is passing on donations to some groups and there is also Tapol in Britain which is doing similar work.

Amy Goodman: Allan Nairn, I want to thank you for being with us.

[Journalist and activist, just recently back from Indonesia and Aceh.]

A battle for the allegiance of the living

Asia Times - January 14, 2005

Bill Guerin, Jakarta -- As the United States rides its sudden wave of popularity in the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, the secular government there has been handed a very hot political potato. The government itself, Americans, radical and mainstream Muslim groups, the Indonesian military, and separatist rebels are all engaged in a struggle to sway the allegiance of the living in the staunchly Islamic province of Aceh.

The contenders are generally seen to be giving their best shots to the immediate humanitarian mission. But the stakes, particularly for the government, are much higher than simply repairing the damage from the giant waves that hit a region that, until only three weeks ago, was a no-go war zone in effect under martial law and closed to Westerners.

Against all odds, the separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) are likely to be invited to the table in Jakarta to discuss ending their 29-year armed struggle for independence that has cost an estimated 15,000 lives. Should President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono pull off such an invitation -- although a compromise is not yet in the cards -- he certainly will have worked a miracle.

For the Americans, ironically, it is the presence of their military on the ground in Aceh, Indonesia's only official Islamic province, that is helping fuel pro-US sentiments. About 150 US marines onshore and more than 8,000 offshore are supporting a relief effort that has so far outstripped the Indonesian air force in terms of its number of support missions.

Yet the country's militant jihadi Islamist groups view these US troops through a lens of hate. In an effort to calm these tensions, the Indonesian government on Wednesday told foreign military forces to leave by the end of March and tightened controls over the movement of international aid workers. But despite Yudhoyono's assurances, militants are on the ground in Aceh, where they have previously been made unwelcome, branding their Muslim credentials and striving to gain moral ascendancy over the so-called "infidels". They have quickly drawn a line in the Aceh soil, warning foreigners not to cross it.

Speaking on behalf of Abu Bakar Ba'ashir, allegedly the spiritual leader of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), Fauzan Al Anshari said, "It's dangerous, this idea by Acehnese that US and Australian forces are their guardian angels -- more popular than the TNI [Indonesian military]." Ba'ashir, currently on trial in Jakarta on terrorism charges, summed up his loathing for Americans in 2002 when he said, "I am a Muslim. They are infidels."

Captain Larry Burt, who commands the air wing aboard the command ship USS Abraham Lincoln from which US military crews are ferrying food, water and medicine to the province, has been widely quoted as saying, "I don't see an end to this for a long, long time.". However, Anshari has warned that if "they" establish a permanent base there, it will lead to trouble. "We are suspicious of the presence of foreign soldiers and their show of force," said Anshari, who leads the militant Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia group.

It had been fondly imagined that the militants would be smart enough not to portray foreign troops as invaders, but Anshari quoted Ba'ashir as saying he feared that the presence of Australian and US troops in Aceh was like that of "colonial invaders".

The Americans have had to delay a planned deployment of 1,000 marines to remote Meulaboh, a town almost totally devastated and where half of its former population were killed in the disaster. The marines were to help provide water-purification services, reconstruct power lines, restore hospitals, repair roads and rebuild bridges in the town but were prevented because they are on board the multi-purpose amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard and, because navy landing craft would be used to take them ashore, their arrival might seem like an invasion.

The Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), meanwhile, has suggested that Australians helping with the relief effort could somehow corrupt the local culture. FPI leader Habib Rizeq Shihab has warned that when the US and its allies give aid, they have particular interests.

There is no love lost between the separatist rebels and the radicals. In a press release on Sunday the PNA/ASNLF, the so- called government of Aceh in exile, deplored the arrival in Aceh of members of the "thuggish" FPI, which it describes as being made up of street hoodlums and minor criminals. The group was established as a militia by TNI generals on August 17, 1998, to act as a vanguard against Indonesia's pro-democracy activists.

In the wake of the tsunami, the Indonesian military and GAM declared a notional ceasefire but have since reported casualties in clashes and have accused each other of using the disaster as a pretext for a renewed offensive. Neither claim has been independently verified. The distrust between the two is hindering international relief efforts. The TNI claims that the rebels are disrupting aid efforts by infiltrating refugee camps, impersonating soldiers and extorting and stealing supplies from convoys. The TNI says only defensive operations against GAM are being conducted so that GAM cannot interrupt the relief effort.

Yet even human-rights organizations concede that troops have shown dedication and compassion in addressing the immediate needs of the survivors and been heavily involved in the thankless task of collecting and burying bodies. Officials estimate that the disaster killed about 500 troops there.

Yet the radicals are also putting their best foot forward in providing humanitarian assistance. Most were flown to Aceh in US-built Hercules C-130 troop and cargo carriers from the Indonesian air force fleet. Only seven can fly because of a US embargo on spare parts.

Asked in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, last week if it was true that a deal had been struck over parts, Secretary of State Colin Powell stuttered, "Well, I can't ... I can't get too far into this because we're still working it out. But the nature of the humanitarian crisis is so great, and we're doing it in a way that still puts controls on the remaining aircraft. Only a few additional aircraft will be made serviceable as a result of the arrangements I'm working on now, maybe five more." So much for the US commitment, which Powell has conceded is meant to capture the hearts and minds of Muslims.

Though there have not yet been reports of significant aid disruptions, aid workers, journalists and the local population are concerned about travel restrictions, security costs, disrupted supply lines, and even the deliberate withholding of aid. This first worry was enhanced when the government announced on Thursday that foreign aid workers will have to take military escorts to areas of Aceh deemed unsafe. Foreign aid workers and journalists also could be expelled if they don't report their movements outside the provincial capital, officials have said. The disaster-mitigation task force based in Banda Aceh has recorded at least 1,125 foreign relief workers and 1,307 soldiers deployed in the province.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, when seeing the devastation of Meulaboh for himself, was moved to say, "Although we were powerless to stop the tsunami, together we do have the power to stop those next waves." But while the giant waves off Aceh may have brought in their wake a chance to resolve the long-running conflict in the province, it seems far too soon for optimism. Although GAM appears to be making the right noises offstage, the TNI would be incensed if the separatists were to survive by default the long battle to crush them with force, and it is likely to go the last mile to prevent a diplomatic solution. GAM never makes a public comment on its troop strengths, but the TNI estimates there are only some 2,500 rebels left.

Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said in London on Monday that a "gentlemen's agreement" had been struck with the rebels. Claiming he sensed "optimism that both sides are interested for reconciliation", the minister said the rebels had agreed not to disrupt the flow of aid.

Alwi Shihab, coordinating minister for people's welfare and the overall chief of relief efforts in Aceh, called the current situation a "unique opportunity" for the government to solve issues in Aceh and said the government was communicating indirectly with the rebels through a group of Muslim religious leaders and scholars.

"We do hope they will join efforts with us to rebuild Aceh," said Shihab. "The GAM side will not be easy to convince. I hope [the intermediaries] will be able to convince them." Shihab added that the religious leaders were trying to convince the rebels that Aceh should be peaceful and prosperous. The intermediaries will certainly not be foreign, he said.

This week President Yudhoyono met ambassadors from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, Sweden and Libya to sound them out on the conflict but reiterated that it would be a matter for Indonesia to resolve.

Yet short of inviting GAM to take part in the political process, Jakarta has little to offer the remaining separatists. GAM wants independence and has no interest in autonomy. Independence as an alternative to autonomy is not an option, and never will be.

There is a heavy price to pay for leaving the Indonesian republic. Tiny East Timor, which officially became an independent state separate from Indonesia in 2002, is now one of the poorest nations on the planet, having ceded control over Timor Sea oil and gas reserves to Australia. Indonesia's huge natural-gas fields, on the other hand, are in Aceh, and the vast revenues could be used to up the ante at the negotiating table if a special autonomy is offered.

As US-based Human Rights Watch points out, failure to ensure the proper use of aid could quickly attenuate international goodwill and, worse still, spark Acehnese anger against Jakarta, which in turn could lead to growing support for GAM.

Yudhoyono clearly has his work cut out for him. At the same time, he will need to keep a lid on the more radical and extreme leaders who, if aid wasn't coming through, would say that the West doesn't care and just exploits Muslims to keep them poor.

Indonesia has been identified as the main recruiting ground for frontline JI cadres and future leaders. The radical leaders appear able consistently to intimidate all levels of officialdom. But although the president will face challenges from both major opposition parties for whatever he does, most observers believe that he may still be able to move effectively against the radicals, given the overwhelming mandate he has from voters.

The ugly specter of the radicals in Aceh -- perhaps mirroring their activity elsewhere in Indonesia, where they have not only provoked sectarian violence but also developed a network of local cells to plan and carry out direct acts of terrorism -- should certainly be something for him to focus on.

[Bill Guerin, a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has worked in Indonesia for 19 years in journalism and editorial positions. He has been published by the BBC on East Timor and specializes in business/economic and political analysis in Indonesia.]

Indonesia pulls the plug on foreigners

Sydney Morning Herald - January 13, 2005

Matthew Moore in Banda Aceh and agencies -- Indonesia's Vice- President, Jusuf Kalla, said yesterday that foreigners should get out of Aceh as soon as possible. "Three months are enough. The sooner [they leave], the better," he said.

Mr Kalla said Indonesians, not foreign troops, should take charge of caring for the 400,000 or so people who lost their homes to the tsunami. When asked about long-term relief efforts, he said: "We don't need foreign troops."

His comments come on top of those from the cabinet secretary, Sudi Silalahi, who told journalists in Jakarta that aid workers and troops should begin leaving next month.

"It's not proper for us to keep on relying on overseas aid," he said. "If it is possible, starting from February 26 will be a transition period, and on March 26 we can handle all of this independently."

Mr Silalahi said the President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, had issued instructions about the timetable for soldiers to leave the province after two of the major parties in the parliament -- Golkar and the Prosperous Justice Party -- demanded he set a deadline by next week.

A spokesman for the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said yesterday that he had not seen the statements but Australian troops would not stay "a day longer than they were wanted".

"No decisions have been taken on the length of time of the deployment," he said. "All decisions about the deployment will be taken in a co-operative fashion with the Indonesian Government."

Yesterday's remarks came after restrictions imposed by the Government that forbade all foreigners, including soldiers and aid workers, going anywhere outside the two most affected towns without specific military permission.

Mr Kalla and the head of the military, General Endriartono Sutarto, have said in recent days that Banda Aceh and Meulaboh in the west are the only two towns considered safe enough by the military for aid workers to travel independently.

In a related development, the senior minister in charge of the aid effort, Alwi Shihab, ordered international aid groups and reporters to inform the Government of their travel plans outside Banda Aceh.

"It is important to note that the Government would be placed in a very difficult position if any foreigner who came to Aceh to assist in the aid effort was harmed through the acts of irresponsible parties," the statement said, in an apparent reference to possible attacks by rebel fighters (GAM). "Such an event would severely hamper the humanitarian effort, which remains the Government's first priority, and would distract officials from their focus on providing relief."

Asked if it was possible groups could be expelled from Aceh if they disregarded the order, Mr Shihab said: "I think that is one possibility."

Both the Australian Red Cross and international aid agency CARE said it was too early to say if the new requirements to register would slow down aid delivery. "When we hear that, we all automatically get concerned. But this is a conflict zone and there might be elements to the Government's concern," CARE's country director, Bud Crandall, said.

The new warnings come as about 400 Australian soldiers and sailors are about to arrive on HMAS Kanimbla to begin engineering works repairing bridges and roads. They will bring Australian troop numbers to about 900, far fewer than the 6000 from the US in the area. Commander Stephen Woodall has told his crew to expect to stay at least a month.

Corruption in Indonesia is worrying aid groups

New York Times - January 13, 2005

Raymond Bonner, Jakarta -- As the United States and other world governments prepare to channel hundreds of millions of aid dollars to the tsunami-ravaged regions of Aceh, Indonesia's culture of corruption has emerged as a major concern.

A daylong seminar Wednesday on corruption here, a joint effort by the United Nations, the Indonesian government and a number of private, nongovernmental groups, reflects the magnitude the problem.

The first speaker, a government minister, spoke about "Eliminating Corruption Within the Bureaucracy." Then came the attorney general, who spoke about "Eliminating Corruption in the Attorney General's Office," then the chief of police, whose topic was "Eliminating Corruption Within the Police." In the afternoon, the head of the Supreme Court, the minister of justice and the minister of finance spoke about "eliminating corruption" in their jurisdictions.

The corruption here starts at the top. Last Thursday, Monsanto admitted to paying a bribe of $50,000 to a senior official in the Ministry of the Environment in exchange for dropping a requirement for an environmental impact statement. The company was fined $1 million by the United States Department of Justice.

That a public official had been bribed by a foreign company surprises few, if any, here. It is taken for granted that no one does business in Indonesia without paying bribes, routinely disguised as "consultants' fees," to government ministers and heads of agencies, many of whom have retired with hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed in accounts in Singapore and elsewhere.

Even before the tsunami, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former general who was elected in September, had promised a campaign against corruption, a promise met with hope, but skepticism, given the entrenched nature of the problem, foremost in the military.

Mr. Yudhoyono has a reputation for being indecisive, but the deluge of aid coming in has forced him to take action to assure donors that it will not be wasted. He is not placing any trust in his government agencies.

Rather, he has turned to a non-governmental agency, Indonesia Corruption Watch, for help, asking the nonprofit group to set up a program for monitoring the aid to Aceh, said Luky Djani, who is heading up the Aceh project.

The problems will not surface immediately, in the emergency relief phase, said Mr. Djani. Maybe some food or other supplies will be siphoned off by a soldier or corrupt official, but that is minor, he said.

The opportunities for serious theft will come in the rehabilitation and reconstruction phase, Mr. Djani said, which the government has said will cost about $3 billion. That will create lots of temptations, in a country where there are no conflict of interest laws and government officials have long seen public office as a vehicle for private gain.

Mr. Djani said there were no mechanisms for ensuring that the needs were not inflated by government agencies, local and national, in order to get more money. The Ministry of Health might overstate the number of hospitals needed, the Ministry of Education might call for more schools than needed, he said.

And what if some official says he needs to rebuild about 20 miles of road, how do we know it is not only 100 yards? he asked. "We don't even know how many refugees there are," he said.

Mr. Djani said that the monitoring project would use volunteers as well as paid staff and that he hoped to have 50 people working in Aceh.

Currently, he said, the project has only about $2,000 on hand and needs about $120,000 to finance its operations for two years. The Asia Foundation and nonprofit groups in the Netherlands and Belgium have offered financial assistance, he said.

Corruption in Indonesia is ingrained and systematic, he said. For example, to get a driver's license through the normal channels can take five months, which, he said, is how long he has been waiting. But, if you pay $20 or so, you join the express line and get it in one day.

At the land title agency, he said, they have a pricing formula, depending on the size and location of your plot. You can pay in advance or over time, he said.

Civil servants do not earn much, but the opportunities for money under the table are so great that people pay bribes to get the jobs. The most sought-after jobs, in Jakarta's tax office, cost more than $500, he said.

But people consider the money well spent because they earn it back fast, he said, snapping his fingers, usually in less than a year.

Perhaps reflecting the depth of the corruption here, you even have to pay a bribe to get into the police academy, and thousands of dollars to become an officer, Mr. Djani said.

Army to send thousands more troops into Aceh

Agence France Presse - January 13, 2005

The Indonesian military will send thousands more soldiers into Aceh to help tsunami relief efforts, bringing the total troop deployment there close to 50,000, a military spokesman said.

Major General Syafrie Syamsuddin said the fresh soldiers would focus solely on humanitarian operations, initially the cleaning up of debris in towns. Asked if the soldiers would be used in the military's battle against separatist rebels, Syamuddin said: "No, no, no, of course not."

He said 12 battalions, with troop numbers ranging from a few hundred up to 1,000, would be sent in over the coming months, without giving a timeframe. He said the extra soldiers would initally help "in the process of cleaning the towns and retrieving the bodies", and later move on to rehabilitation and reconstruction work. Syamsuddin said there were already about 40,000 soldiers in Aceh.

The military's presence has become the focus of international attention over recent days as Indonesian leaders have sought to portray the forces as essential in providing security to foreigners from rebel attacks.

The Free Aceh Movement has been fighting for independence since 1976 in a conflict that has claimed thousands of lives, but the insurgents have insisted they are no threat to the international humanitarian effort.

The government launched a massive offensive against the rebels in May 2003 and banned most foreigners from Aceh in a bid to avoid international scrutiny of its operations.

The government was forced to scale back its offensive and reopen Aceh to foreigners following the December 26 earthquake and tsunamis to allow one of the biggest international humanitarian efforts in history to take place.

More than 106,000 Indonesians died in the disaster, with almost all of the victims in Aceh.

The military called for a ceasefire with the rebels immediately after the disaster, but later admitted forces were still conducting raids and accused the insurgents of ambushing relief convoys. The rebels have in turn insisted they are sticking to their own unilateral ceasefire, and are only using their weapons in self-defence.

The rebels' prime minister in exile, Malik Mahmud, said in a statement Thursday he was willing to hold ceasefire talks with the Indonesian government. "We are prepared to meet with [Indonesia] to agree the optimum modalities to ensure the success of the ceasefire and thereby minimise the suffering of the Acehnese people," he said in the statement.

Tsunami hits Indonesian military hard

Associated Press - January 13, 2005

Yeoh En-Lai, Lhoknga -- All that remains of the barracks that housed 2,000 Indonesian soldiers in this village is a huge mound of rubble, crushed in seconds by last month's tsunami. The commander died when his quarters were washed away.

The devastated remains are one of many signs that the Indonesian military suffered serious damage in Aceh, the tsunami-ravaged province where troops have been battling separatist rebels for three decades.

Other militaries in Thailand, India and Sri Lanka also reported tsunami damage, but the losses don't seem as severe as Indonesia's.

Before the disaster, 35,000 troops were based in Aceh -- where more than 106,000 people died in the December 26 earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Jakarta rushed thousands more troops to the rebellion-wracked region in the aftermath of the disaster.

Officially, the country's military said 39 soldiers died and 44 were missing. But those numbers were drastically lower than the hundreds of dead reported by officers in the field.

Maj. S. Jamaluddin said at least 300 army personnel died at the base in Lhoknga, about 10 miles from the provincial capital of Banda Aceh. "It was a Sunday, so many of the soldiers and their families would have gone down to the park," he said, pointing to an area a hundred yards from the base.

In another coastal town, Meulaboh, more than 350 troops died, said West Aceh military chief Lt. Col. Geerhan Lantara. Military outposts in Calang, about 125 miles from Banda Aceh, were also wiped out.

A senior officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested that the official death toll was classified so it wouldn't give comfort to the enemy -- the Free Aceh Movement, known by the Indonesian acronym GAM. "Maybe there is a need to protect the total numbers from GAM," he said. "We do not want them getting any advantage."

More than two weeks since the disaster, soldiers can still be seen searching for their missing comrades, guns and ammunition. A makeshift sign at the destroyed army base urges people to return army uniforms found strewn around the countryside.

"We found four M-16s. Nothing else. All our mortars are still missing," said Cpl. Guniawan, a member of Company B, which occupied the destroyed base in Lhoknga.

Sri Lanka's military, which has been grappling with a 20-year separatist insurgency by the Tamil Tigers, acknowledged it suffered losses but did not give a death toll.

"Our camps have been damaged, but the loss of heavy military equipment is negligible because we don't keep sensitive or heavy equipment near the beaches," said Brig. Daya Ratnayake, spokesman of the military.

The Tamil rebels also declined to report casualties. But a Tamil journalist, D.B.S. Jeyaraj, who has access to rebel information, reported in the Sunday Leader weekly newspaper that the Tigers lost 100 fighters.

India's air force suffered extensive damage on Car Nicobar island, a strategic outpost off the country's southeastern coast. The base is important to India because it helps authorities curb illegal movement of arms and narcotics into the insurgency- wracked northeastern Indian states.

More than 150 people -- including officers and their families -- died, and dozens of officers' homes and offices were flattened. The base's air traffic control tower toppled over, and most of the airstrip -- used by fighter jets - was destroyed.

Indian officials said the base was also important to keep an eye on Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebels, who routinely use the area to ferry arms into their strongholds.

Officials said reconstruction could take a year. Indian Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi ruled out relocating the base, but said some of the officers' quarters would be moved.

"We have asked for land in higher areas from the civil administration," he said.

Aid agencies downplay TNI restrictions

Jakarta Post - January 13, 2005

Banda Aceh -- Wanting to visit Sigli to report on the activities of Doctors without Borders here, Bruno Bonamigo, producer of Radio Canada Information, reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs desk at the governor's house in Banda Aceh.

An official at the desk told Bonamigo that he could go to Meulaboh on the west coast, but not to Sigli, a town on the east coast.

The producer said Doctors without Borders had relief operations in both towns, and that the agency had recommended that he go to Sigli as it was more accessible from Banda Aceh.

"Now, I have been told [by Indonesian officials] that I may not go to Sigli, so, I have no alternative but to find a way to Meulaboh," Bonamigo told The Jakarta Post here.

Bonamigo was one of the first victims of the government's new policy of restricting the movements of over 2,000 civilian foreign aid workers in Aceh for security reasons.

The move was announced on Tuesday by Indonesian Military (TNI) chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, who said security forces could not guarantee the safety of foreign aid workers from separatist rebels in the province.

On Wednesday, the disaster mitigation task force in Aceh issued a statement that says all foreigners, including individuals, country representatives, United Nations agencies, NGOs and journalists, are not allowed to operate outside Banda Aceh and its surrounding areas without clearance from the Indonesian authorities.

The policy applies to foreigners who have just arrived as well as those already in Aceh. "It is important to note that the government would be placed in a very difficult position if any foreigner who came to Aceh to assist in the aid effort was harmed through the acts of an irresponsible party," said the statement, apparently referring to the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

"Such an event would severely hamper the humanitarian effort, which remains the government's first priority, and would distract officials from their focus on providing relief," it added.

Budi Prastowo of the foreign affairs desk said that all foreigners must fill in a registration form at the desk, explaining where they want to go and why.

"The forms will be submitted to Aceh Police Headquarters which, together with the military, will assess within 24 hours whether the intended destinations of either aid workers or reporters is safe for them, or whether they need police guard or soldiers to escort them," he added.

Asked by the Associated Press if it was possible that groups could be expelled from Aceh if they disregarded the order, chief welfare minister Alwi Shihab said: "I think that is one possibility". He did not elaborate.

The restrictions would likely affect humanitarian operations in areas outside Banda Aceh, Aceh Besar and Meulaboh, particularly in coastal towns between Meulaboh and Banda Aceh, which were hardest hit by the December 26 tsunami.

Indonesian authorities have not specified how they would reach and assist refugees in those areas without the help of foreign agencies.

As of Wednesday, helicopters belonging to many nations continued to airlift aid from the airport in Banda Aceh to a number of places outside the city, including Meulaboh. But it was not clear whether the restrictions had affected aid distribution in certain areas.

A senior UN official downplayed the new restrictions. "The cooperation with the government of Indonesia remains, I think, excellent," said Kevin Kennedy from the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

"In no way has it impacted or diminished our ability to move about or to access populations," Kennedy was quoted by Agence France Presse as saying at the UN headquarters in New York.

Raul de la Rosa, an aid worker from the Christian Children's Fund, which has helped tsunami survivors in Bireuen, North Aceh, said that he hoped the new policy would not affect its plan to assist displaced people there and in Sigli. "As long as it does not hinder us from helping them, it should be all right," he said.

In Canberra, Australian Prime Minister John Howard supported the Indonesian government's demand that foreign aid workers and journalists report their movements outside Banda Aceh, saying it was "a good idea".

"It is very, very important that in the process of giving full effect to this magnificent international response, that we recognize the difficulties in Aceh, but that we don't overreact to them and we don't dramatize them," he was quoted by AP as saying.

Aceh rebel leaders call for ceasefire talks

Agence France Presse - January 13, 2005

The leadership of a rebel movement fighting for independence in the tsunami-hit Indonesian province of Aceh has called for ceasefire talks with the government.

Rebel prime minister Malik Mahmud said in the statement that his men were willing to sit down for discussions with Jakarta to ease fears over the safety of foreign humanitarian workers operating in Aceh.

"We are prepared to meet with [Indonesia] to agree the optimum modalities to ensure the success of the ceasefire and thereby minimise the suffering of the Acehnese people," he said.

Indonesia this week strengthened its military grip on Aceh, requiring all foreigners to register and seek military escort when travelling outside main towns citing a danger of attack by armed rebels.

The rebels have been fighting for independence since 1976. They declared a unilateral ceasefire after the December 26 tsunamis, which killed more than 106,000 people on the northern tip of Sumatra island, and insist it stands.

The government has repeatedly called for the Free Aceh Movement rebels to put down their arms and join the relief effort and says it will not lift restrictions in Aceh until it has full cooperation from the separatists.

A short-lived peace deal between both sides ended in early 2003, prompting the government to seal off Aceh to outsiders and launch a major military offensive to crush the rebels.

Islamic groups unlikely to attack foreigners - analyst

Associated Press - January 13, 2005

Manila -- Two radical Islamic groups that have moved into Indonesia's tsunami-stricken Aceh province aren't likely to attack foreigners or relief workers, but may raise tensions by fostering anti-Western sentiments, said an expert in Manila Thursday.

Sidney Jones, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the Indonesian government may have provided support for one of the groups in Aceh, apparently out of fear that foreign military forces and aid workers "have an agenda that is in addition to pure humanitarian relief."

One of the groups, Laskar Mujahidin, is linked to the Indonesian Mujahideen Council (MMI), which is founded by detained cleric Abu Bakar Bashir. The other is the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).

"[They] seem to have gone to Aceh with some government support, at least the FPI did," Jones told reporters in Manila. "I don't think there's a danger of either of these two groups planning attacks on foreigners or relief workers," she said. "The danger is that they foster anti-Western and anti-Christian sentiments."

The Laskar Mujahidin group, which campaigns for an Islamic state in Indonesia and is fiercely anti-American, has set up four posts in Aceh and sent more than 200 of its members to the provincial capital of Banda Aceh. It has been collecting corpses, distributing food and spreading Islamic teachings among refugees in the city, its members said.

The group, accused of involvement in Christian-Muslim fighting elsewhere in Indonesia, said it is unarmed and has only come to the province to help with the humanitarian assistance.

Soldiers extort money from Malaysian aid volunteers

Malaysiakini web site - January 13, 2005

Petaling Jaya -- A team of Malaysian volunteers was forced to bribe its way through a military check point at the Medan-Aceh border yesterday during its journey to deliver medicine and other supplies to the tsunami victims.

The 16-member team from Amal Foundation of Malaysia was forced pay 500,000 rupiah (approximately 250 ringgit) to the soldiers who claimed that there was a new ruling barring distribution of aid via land. The soldiers initially demanded 2 million rupiah but following appeals from the volunteers, agreed to settle for less.

"The money we have were collected from Malaysians to be given to the victims in Aceh. If we give you so much then there would be less for the people who rightfully deserve it," team leader Dr Lo'Lo' Ghazali told the soldiers. The team was on a 15-hour journey from Medan to Aceh in four rented vehicles.

Crackdown on corruption

Upon being stopped at about 1.30 a.m., the soldiers had demanded for a list of the team members and the permit issued by the Indonesian immigration at the Medan Airport. However, even after the relevant documents and passports were handed over, the soldiers refused to allow the team to pass, citing the "new ruling".

At this juncture, Lo' Lo' told the soldiers that the team had obtained a permit from the Indonesian immigration but the soldiers pointed to a copy of a directive pasted at the guard outpost. "Read this. It states that no distribution of aid through land. I cannot allow you to go through," said one soldier. When team members appealed, the soldier told one of the local drivers in Bahasa Indonesia that the problem could be resolved with a payment.

Meanwhile, Lo' Lo' expressed disappointment with the corrupt attitude of the army personnel, stating that they should be more sympathetic towards the tsunami victims. "I have heard of the corrupt practices but this is the foundation's first experience. I hope the Indonesian government will make more efforts to curb such practices as this would hamper the foreign groups in helping the people of Aceh," she said.

Allegations of corruption are rife in Medan and Aceh as foreign humanitarian teams continue to pour in help in cash and kind.

No help extended

Locals met in Aceh claimed that corruption is so rampant that many of the tsunami victims have not received any kind of aid. A group of villagers in Inderapuri, about an hour's drive from the provincial capital Banda Aceh, claimed that they have yet too receive anything.

The villagers, who are putting up with relatives, alleged that Indonesian government agencies tasked with distributing aid do not make attempts to disburse aid to those living outside of relief camps.

Sanian, in her 30s, when met at the village canal washing a pile of mud stained clothes salvaged from the flood, also complained of not receiving any help.

"If I tell you that I have not received a single thing, you would not believe me. But that's the truth. We heard many people from outside have given all kinds of help. "But it's been two weeks [since the tsunami disaster on 26 December] and I have yet to get anything," said the woman who lost her elder brother to the killer waves.

"That's why we are washing the material we salvaged from the flood as all our belongings are gone. If we sell the material maybe we can buy some food," she added.

As the Malaysian volunteers geared up to leave the village, a man ran up to the vehicles pleading that they return with aid. "Please come back and help us. Tell them [the Indonesian authorities] that I have seen those unaffected [by the disaster] being given aid. Some of them are even selling the goods they received. We need help," he implored.

[From BBC Monitoring Service.]

After the tsunami - and then the politics returned

The Economist - January 13, 2005

Banda Aceh -- Indonesia bore the brunt of the tsunami, suffering 100,000 of the 150,000 fatalities. The world's response has been generous, but is already causing tensions

It seemed too good to be true -- and it was. In the aftermath of December 26th's horror, Indonesia threw open the province of Aceh to foreign aid workers and journalists. Singaporean planes, American helicopters and Australian warships all entered what had been a highly restricted military zone.

The Indonesian army even talked about suspending its offensive against the separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM by its Indonesian acronym). Such openness and moderation marked a break with the suspicion and secrecy of the past, and raised hopes that Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia's new president, would set a fresh tone for government policy on Aceh, and on security matters more broadly.

Old habits, however, die hard. As the aid effort got under way, military spokesmen announced that GAM was attempting to steal provisions and infiltrate refugee camps. Relief workers, the army said, were not safe -- although none of them had expressed any concerns.

When shots were fired in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, the police immediately blamed the rebels. The army, arguing that GAM was somehow trying to take advantage of the catastrophe, delayed the truce.

Indonesia's foreign ministry has information on the country's response to the tsunami. The International Committee of the Red Cross is one of the NGOs working in the area.

At first, civilian officials played down the army's concerns. Alwi Shihab, the minister in charge of the relief effort, cast doubt on stories of rebel infiltration. An agitated soldier, rather than an insurgent, turned out to be responsible for the gunfire. Meanwhile, Mr Yudhoyono asked several foreign diplomats for their advice on how to handle Aceh -- a step close to treason in the eyes of Indonesia's more xenophobic generals.

In recent days, however, the government has started to toe the army's line. Earlier this week, it said foreigners would no longer be allowed to leave the cities of Banda Aceh and Meulaboh without a military escort. It also instructed all foreigners in the province to register with the authorities. In theory, these measures guarantee the safety of aid workers and prevent duplication in relief efforts. But the rebels insist that they will not disrupt the humanitarian work. Besides, unnecessary bureaucracy is a bigger obstacle to the relief effort than are duplication and the bedraggled guerrillas of GAM.

Mr Yudhoyono himself has said that he would like to see all foreign aid workers leave Aceh by the end of March. Underlings hint that some are not aid workers at all, and have come to the province with ulterior motives. The sooner foreign troops leave, the better, says Jusuf Kalla, the vice-president. Since the people of East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia in a UN-sponsored referendum in 1999, many Indonesians have become convinced that outsiders are plotting to dismember their country. Donors, such as Australia, which has pledged A$1 billion ($760m) in aid, were hoping that generosity would dispel such notions. So far, it hasn't.

The government seems more relaxed about local helpers. Extremist Muslim outfits, such as the Islam Defenders Front and the Indonesian Mujahideen Council, have set up shop in Aceh unhindered -- even with official assistance, according to some reports. In the past, such groups have recruited fighters to join in sectarian conflicts in other parts of Indonesia, or mounted vigilante attacks on businesses they deem immoral, including bars and nightclubs.

In fairness, the government's prickliness over foreign aid and its forbearance in the face of radical groups reflect local public opinion. It would be politically impossible at such a time for the authorities to turn away volunteers on the grounds that they were too religious. By the same token, ordinary Indonesians bridle at the idea that their country, the fourth most populous in the world, needs to be rescued from abroad. The speaker of parliament, among other politicians, has been urging the government to show foreigners the door as soon as possible.

Yet many observers had hoped that Mr Yudhoyono would use the authority of his office to press for a less emotive approach. Indeed, some analysts wonder whether the president really supports the new regulations in Aceh, or has simply been outmanoeuvred by hardliners in the army. He is a former general himself, and has recruited a former commander of the military garrison in Aceh to his staff. On all sorts of issues, from the composition of his cabinet to overhauling the budget, he has proved less of a reformer than many imagined at the time of his election.

As it happens, the relief effort in Aceh also impinges on the budget. On January 12th, ministers and officials of the Paris Club, a group of 19 big donor countries, offered Indonesia and other victims of the tsunami an immediate moratorium on payments, while they consider other forms of debt relief. Since Indonesia is due to pay its sovereign creditors some $8.8 billion over the next two years, the impact could be enormous.

Indonesia has accepted the moratorium in principle. But the details are controversial. Newspapers are already giving warning that a moratorium, rather than a write-off, could aggravate the long-term debt problem, not least by affecting the country's credit rating. In 2003 a previous government spurned similar relief on the grounds that it compromised sovereignty.

Mr Yudhoyono's team is struggling to plug the budget deficit and stop wasteful spending. A multi-billion-dollar windfall might encourage the reverse.

In any event, donors will want to be sure that the money freed up by the moratorium is actually spent on reconstruction in Aceh. But proper scrutiny seems unlikely, if the government's reluctance to grant foreigners unrestricted access to the province is anything to go by. For all its power, the tsunami does not seem to have changed some underlying attitudes in Indonesia's armed forces and officialdom. Only Mr Yudhoyono can do that.

Cheap shots put Aceh rebels in the firing line

Melbourne Age - January 12, 2005

Matthew Moore, Banda Aceh -- Alwi Shihab couldn't help himself. Barely two hours after a US Seahawk helicopter crashed near Banda Aceh's airport, the Indonesian minister responsible for the relief effort explained what had gone wrong to a news conference of mainly foreign journalists.

"There's a possibility of technical failure, and there's a rumour GAM is involved," he said. Floating the idea that separatist rebels from the Aceh Independence Movement might have brought down a US helicopter was a ludicrous suggestion. There was no motive or evidence. And Alwi Shihab knew it.

But with a room full of reporters, many of whom had not heard of Aceh until the tsunami washed much of it away, Shihab calculated he could get away with nonchalantly equating GAM rebels with Iraqi warriors who would like nothing more than a US chopper kill to their credit. He was probably right.

The Indonesian Government and its army like to portray GAM as a renegade gang of extortionists who execute innocent people and the heroic soldiers trying to protect them.

There are elements of truth in that, just as there are in GAM's portrayal of the army as Javanese hit men sent by Jakarta to keep ripping the money out of this remote, resource-rich province and funnelling it back to Jakarta.

For the hundreds of foreigners who have arrived in Aceh to help with the clean-up, the Government and army are keen to simplify what is an exasperatingly complex struggle that goes back centuries.

Their task is being made easier because GAM is on the run in the hills and hard to talk to, especially for those not familiar with the roundabout ways of contacting them.

The Government and the military have daily news conferences in which they can list GAM's offences, largely free from pressure to prove that what they're saying is right.

The Government has already accused GAM of infiltrating refugee camps and impersonating soldiers, of stealing food from aid convoys and extorting money from homeless tsunami victims.

But it is not the accusations that are going to marginalise GAM, it's the fact that Indonesian soldiers are now working side by side with troops and aid workers from dozens of countries. While the Indonesian Army is cleaning up Aceh and forging new relationships with foreign countries, GAM is stuck on the sidelines waiting for someone to talk to.

And GAM is so far outside the tent, it is easily portrayed as a group of rebels who would like nothing more than to shoot down a US helicopter. "Thank you world" press statements from the GAM leadership, in exile in Sweden, a week ago show just how silly that idea is, and how much they want Western support. GAM has been waiting for decades for the world to notice its struggle. Now that everyone is watching, it needs something more creative than the offer of a ceasefire, which the army has ignored.

An Aceh expert from Sydney University, Ed Aspinal, says GAM needs to put up something like a five-year moratorium on its independence campaign to force the Indonesian Government to respond while the world watches. "If they do nothing they risk being entirely marginalised," he said.

He says GAM grew strong when the military's human rights abuses were at their height. Now that the army is heavily involved in reconstruction, it has an opportunity to redress some of its dreadful history.

This is a critical point in GAM's 30-year history, following heavy losses in the past few years. Anecdotal evidence also suggests a fall in popular support. GAM urgently needs a savvy political strategy to take advantage of the huge interest the world has in the misfortunes of the people it claims to represent.

But the problem is that GAM has long been more of a fighting organisation than a talking one. Its threats of more fighting can only make it easier for the army and Alwi Shihab to continue to marginalise it.

Government, TNI wring their hands over foreigners

Jakarta Post - January 12, 2005

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak and Riyadi Suparno, Banda Aceh -- The government and the military are caught between a rock and a hard place regarding the presence of more than 2,000 foreign nationals in disaster-hit Aceh.

On one hand, foreign countries and aid workers are demanding wider access to Aceh, while domestic, nationalistic groups are calling on the government and military to put some limitations on foreigners" access to and movement in the province.

Head of the disaster mitigation task force in Aceh, Alwi Shihab, who is also coordinating minister for people's welfare, revealed that he had received criticism from many countries on the perceived lack of access into the province.

"We have opened our doors wide to them, but still they deem it limited. People may think we are putting humanity behind security, but we're not," he told The Jakarta Post. "However, if we thought we were able to handle things by ourselves, it would mean the work of foreign relief workers and military here was done."

The United Nations has at least 30 major international organizations, 30 middle-scale international organizations, nine agencies, hundreds of volunteers and military personnel from several countries under its coordination in handling aid distribution and the provision of facilities, including clean water, education and health for survivors.

The disaster mitigation task force based in capital Banda Aceh has recorded at least 1,125 foreign relief workers and 1,307 soldiers deployed in the province.

In the operation, relief workers are backed by military personnel who fly helicopters to isolated, damaged areas as earthquake- triggered tidal waves severed land and sea transportation.

The US has deployed 12 helicopters to the province, while Singapore and Malaysia are sending one each, while France is planning to send five.

UN estimates up to five years of work in Aceh that includes four months of providing emergency response, the rehabilitation of road, telephone lines and schools and to help Acehnese recuperate from the trauma as well as with the reconstruction of Aceh.

People's Consultative Assembly Speaker Hidayat Nurwahid earlier urged the government to give a deadline of one month for foreign troops to leave Aceh, which was followed by a statement by Indonesian Military (TNI) Commander Gen.

Endriartono Sutarto, who stated on Monday that the their presence would be reviewed two weeks after their arrival in Aceh. Endriartono acknowledged, however, that the government was relying on them to bridge the shortfall of the TNI's limited capacity, and that their presence in Aceh would be needed for some time to come to help reduce the suffering of the Acehnese.

"In my opinion, we should not impose a time limit in relation to the roles of foreign nationals in Aceh. The target should be how far their help is still needed. If one week is enough, then we could say one week is enough. But if we need them for two or three months, why should we ask them to pack and go while the Acehnese are suffering?" Endriartono said.

One international aid worker reacted with indignation to the suggestion that people viewed the presence of foreign nationals in Aceh negatively, saying that even the US, in the wake of 9/11, received help from foreign countries, a practice he said was common in international society.

"Too bad if the Indonesian government sidelines the world's commitment to help the Acehnese. It's not that we underestimate its capability, but without the help of other countries, the aid handling would take a long time and would not be effective," the worker said. "As for the presence of military personnel ... they're not here for a military operation. They're here to help in the relief work."

Aceh cease-fire in doubt as rebels threaten bloodshed

Sydney Morning Herald - January 12, 2005

Matthew Moore in Banda Aceh and Karuni Rompies -- Rebels in Indonesia's tsunami-stricken province of Aceh have threatened to abandon their two-week-old cease-fire unless the Indonesian military agrees to stop action against them.

Sofyan Daud, a spokesman for the separatist army GAM, said the rebels had no choice but to go on the offensive if Indonesia did not agree to a ceasefire. "We asked the TNI [Indonesian military] to respect the ceasefire we offered on December 27," Mr Daud said through one of his aides. "Now we just run away when they chase us. However, if they continue to chase us, we will go on the offensive and that would be trouble for the TNI and the humanitarian mission."

He would not say where or when the rebels might launch an attack, but any offensive would threaten the relief effort being mounted across Aceh's devastated northern and western coasts. Most of those killed in tsunami were in Aceh.

The head of the Indonesian military, Endriarton Sutarto, said yesterday he had contacted GAM in an attempt to broker a truce. General Sutarto said he had offered a moratorium to rebels who agreed to lay down their arms and help with the aid effort.

"I appealed to them if they're saying that their armed activity is to help the people in Aceh ... they have to change their arms with other means, other tools and ... join us in conducting humanitarian activities," he said.

General Sutarto also warned rebels not "to rob or steal humanitarian aid". "If they need water, food or medicine we will provide for them."

General Sutarto said he would not arrest or punish any GAM member who agreed to the offer but would not say how long the moratorium would last. "We'll see," he said.

GAM, which wants independence for Aceh, has not yet replied to the offer.

General Sutarto also briefed leaders of foreign forces helping with the relief operation on Indonesia's conditions for working in Aceh. He told them the maximum stay for aircraft and ships entering the province was 14 days and that liaison officers from the Indonesian military would be posted on board each one.

All foreigners were banned from travelling outside Banda Aceh and Meulaboh without military permission and foreign troops were banned from carrying arms.

The official in charge of Indonesia's aid mission, Budi Atmaji Aditputo, said plans had been completed to build 24 refugee camps, each big enough to house 20,000 people. He said tents would be used until semi-permanent houses were completed over the next three months.

Indonesia puts curbs on relief in rebel areas

New York Times - January 12, 2005

Jane Perlez, Banda Aceh -- The Indonesian military on Tuesday ordered restrictions on foreign aid workers, limiting their free operation to the two main cities hit by the tsunami in an effort to assert control over international relief operations here. Outside those cities, Banda Aceh and neighboring Meulaboh, aid workers will need special permission to go into more remote areas where hundreds of thousands of people were uprooted by the disaster, Indonesia's military commander, Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, said in a news conference here.

"For the time being I would like the foreign presence only in Banda Aceh and Meulaboh," General Endriartono said. "Outside those areas they must be accompanied by the Indonesian military." The United Nations estimates that about 400,000 people in the province of Aceh were uprooted by the tsunami and says many of those victims are being sheltered in small towns and villages.

The new restrictions will enable the military to increase its presence in the countryside, where the rebels are strongest and where civilians fear Indonesian soldiers the most.

The general asserted that the new measures were needed to protect foreign aid workers from the separatist rebels that Indonesia has been fighting for 30 years. But rebels from the Free Aceh Movement, known by its acronym GAM, released a statement on Tuesday guaranteeing "the safety and free access to all parts of Aceh for international aid workers."

So far, there have been no incidents in Aceh involving the rebels and the trucks of the United Nations World Food Program, said Ian Clarke, the head of its office here. About 40 food-laden trucks a day have wound their way up the road from the city of Medan to Banda Aceh without trouble, he said.

Aid workers have expressed concern in recent days that the Indonesian military, worried about losing control or forfeiting what it sees as hard-won gains of recent years, would use the civil conflict as a pretext for clamping down on their activities.

There was considerable skepticism on Tuesday among relief groups about whether and how the new restrictions would be enforced.

Many foreign aid agencies, including the World Food Program, are generally reluctant to work with military escorts because they fear that accepting the protection of soldiers from one side could drag them into the conflict. Only in "very rare circumstances" does the World Food Program accept military escorts, said Bettina Luescher, the spokeswoman for the program. She pointed to Darfur in Sudan, where a civil conflict rages but where the program's trucks are never accompanied by military personnel.

MC(c)decins du Monde, a French agency that specializes in the delivery of medical supplies, also has a policy of refusing military escorts, and will continue to apply it in Aceh, said Pierre Foldes, the director of the program here. "Anytime the Indonesian military protects you, they want to be involved in your program," Mr. Foldes said.

Before the tsunami, Aceh was virtually sealed off to foreigners. Martial law was declared in May 2003 and relaxed to a state of "civil emergency" the following year, as the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 troops severely weakened the rebels. Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group based in New York, and other organizations have consistently accused the Indonesian military of severe abuses of civilians.

The United States terminated military aid to Indonesia a decade ago, citing credible accounts of human rights abuses against civilians in East Timor. This week, restrictions were relaxed on spare parts for Indonesia's military transport aircraft that can be used to deliver aid.

With the spread of foreigners throughout Aceh in the last two weeks, aid workers say, the strict control imposed by the military has necessarily been eased and relief operations have gone ahead without any interference.

The general made his comments during a morning news conference and elaborated on them later in a brief interview. He came to the provincial capital to address foreign military personnel who are involved in flying aircraft and helicopters and bringing ships with aid to the port.

"A foreign medical team has to be working with a team from the Indonesian Department of Health," the general said, explaining the policy, "and together they will be accompanied by the Indonesian military on everything outside Banda Aceh and Meulaboh."

In a prepared text, the general said foreign military equipment and assistance would "be under operational control" of the Indonesian military. Indonesian officers would be appointed as liaison officers on each foreign military aircraft and ship, he said.

After the apocalypse

The Bulletin (Australia) - January 12, 2005

Paul Toohey -- The stragglers below wave plastic flags and shirts as the US Navy Seahawk helicopter settles on an island of broken tarmac in the no-longer-existent village of Panga, some 100km south of Banda Aceh. It is the briefest of touchdowns.

Women and children rush towards the machine but air crewman Xipe Brooks wards them away from the blades with wild arm signals. Boxes of water and instant noodles are tossed out the side door. People touch their hearts in thanks.

The chopper pilot behind the mirror shades puts his hands together in the salaam "respect" prayer greeting, bowing his head. He pulls the machine up fast and they're gone, like rock stars. The Americans are winning hearts and minds in hell.

Others have been slower to roll into the disaster zone of Aceh, pussyfooting around perceived Indonesian sensibilities with aid bottlenecked in the Sumatran capital of Medan, a long way south of the afflicted areas. By Thursday last week, 11 days after the tsunami struck, four Australian Iroquois helicopters finally arrived in Banda Aceh, destroyed capital of Indonesia's most westerly province.

The Americans had meanwhile been for eight days staging constant all-day aid missions in 17 Seahawks to forsaken towns and villages on the west coast. Without them, the survivors would have starved to death. The Indonesian military has been of little help to these people. It appears stunned into organisational inertia, unable to cope, exposed as hopelessly unprepared for a humanitarian operation and shell-shocked after losing so many of their own.

The Australian military has in fact been here from early on, not that they've advertised it. Two teams of doctors and anaesthetists, all of them military reservists, flew in three days after the tsunami, but in order not to put out the notoriously touchy Indonesians, presented as civilian doctors so it didn't look like a military takeover. Such absurdities dispensed with, the Australian teams rapidly took over main surgery duties at two hospitals in Banda and began carving off legs and opening up limbs. No air-conditioning, no general anaesthetic. Pain relief under the blade comes from ketamine, a trauma drug that sends the patient into light unconsciousness but carries the side-effect of nasty hallucinations.

At the military hospital, a woman with gas gangrene -- the infection so advanced that it is alive and spitting -- is told she will need an amputation from just below her knee. She replies: "I don't want the choice." But there is no time to sit and talk her quietly through it. It's yes-or-no decision, right now.

She consents with a single sob and is wheeled onto the operating table, chest heaving with terror. Two metres from her, in the same theatre, reservist surgeon Peter Sharwood -- a veteran of Rwanda, Bougainville, East Timor and others -- is already snipping through the knee of an eight-year-old girl. Before the Australian team arrived, she'd had a mid-shin amputation which became infected. Now they have to go higher.

Anaesthetist Dr David Scott sends the older woman under and Perth-based Swiss military surgeon Dr Rene Zellweger is a short time later tearing at the leg with a saw-toothed garrotte, in sharp upwards jolts. The leg is dropped in a bin and she's wheeled away. Next.

A woman with a wound that was originally the size of a 10" coin is having her leg splayed open from ankle to crotch as Zellweger searches with a gloved hand among infection and dead tissue. Someone mutters something about the "rivers of pus". Zellweger had hoped to cut out the dead tissue and save the leg but found himself able to run his hand straight up the woman's thigh on a decaying yellow flesh trail all the way through to her hollowed- out buttock.

There's no muscle left, just infection. Amputation is out of the question because she'd have to be cut in half. The unstitched leg is bandaged together and she is sent to a ward with antibiotics. She cries, "Allah, Allah" in an eye-rolling ketamine nightmare. She will die.

"We shouldn't even be operating on some of them," says Scott. "They're too sick. This is a last-ditch effort." Team leader Dr Paul Schumack, who has treated conflict-zone patients the world over, says the wounds of war are cleaner.

This is different. People have been lying around in wards becoming steadily more infected as the team battles to get through the workload. The stench is unbearable. Re-amputations are common as infection climbs up limbs towards torsos.

Schumack says it has all been overwhelming. He allowed himself a tear the day before "for the first time in years. It was a woman, just another woman. Nothing particularly special about her case. We were just too little, too late. There isn't enough blood."

The eight-year-old girl is sent home with her parents only two hours after undergoing amputation. Dr Paul Luckin explains that she will get better care at home than what can be given here -- and there's less chance of infection than in these festering wards.

Most of those who've been treated no longer have homes, so they are sent out of the Banda contagion zone south to Medan. US Secretary of State Colin Powell flew in to Banda airport last week and was taken to a tent full of amputees awaiting evacuation. It was his first meet-the-victims moment and as they lay on stretchers looking up at this sympathetic stranger, they didn't realise their evacuation had been delayed for hours because the airport had been closed to provide security for Powell. Even here, the stricken wait for politics.

Peacetime isn't supposed to look like this. Nor are the people, who are holding up well. Many Acehnese have the physical appearance of having been through a rusty barbed-wire washing machine. They are scraped, nicked, scarred, broke and homeless. Yet no one fights at food and water queues; they are orderly and tolerant. "We've had not one word of complaint from anyone about anything at all," says Sydney-based emergency nurse Lisa Dillon. "I work at Westmead Hospital and you hear nothing but complaints. I can't imagine Australians coping in the same way."

Not once, in many conversations with people who have lost family members, was there a tear. They seem to almost shrug at it, not callous but perplexed.

Trying to comprehend the scale of damage and loss in Aceh, which of all regions saw the worst of the tsunami, is quite possibly beyond the scope of a single human. The entire north-western coast of the island has, over hundreds of kilometres, been gathered up and hurled two or three kilometres inland.

It was the low-lying seaside areas of greater Banda Aceh city that took the greatest hit. Here, between 40,000 and 80,000 people were hunted out and thrashed lifeless by the great dirty wall of water. Hauling bodies from under the rubble has just begun.

The hideous task of corpse recovery has fallen to trudging teams of TNI -- Indonesian army -- and police, who pick through the foul, waterlogged acreage, often wearing only gardening gloves and paper masks. There is nothing sentimental to this work. Bodies are grabbed and tossed onto black plastic sheets, wrapped and hurled onto the back of trucks with the rest of the day's takings. It's as much dignity as the dead are going to get. Then it's off to the stinking mass grave along the airport road, where the local dingo-like dogs have begun to gather.

Stare into the rubble long enough and twisted human figures -- at the same time purple, yellow and black -- begin to take focus. They are almost invariably naked, clothes having ripped or rotted off. Bodies are everywhere and located by scent. No road-kill ever smelled like this. It is too acerbic, too sour and, at first, so unfamiliar that it is -- strangely -- instantly recognisable as human. When arriving in Banda for the first time there is an urgent compulsion to see the dead where they lie rotting. You have to do it to ground yourself.

At the village of Leupung, some 30km south, no help has yet come. That's because none is really needed. The locals say the entire event was over in five minutes, after which only 500 of the 8000 who lived here remained. Most were washed up in a valley where they remain, unburied. The flats closer to the sea are an open- air morgue. These bodies are in no state to be clutched or held close by loved ones. No one knows who they are anyway, except to say they were friends, neighbours and possibly family. They are distended and distorted beyond recognition.

The handful who remain in Leupung have already walked in to Banda or reported in to neighbouring villages but have quickly returned home to exist as scavenging post-apocalypse badlanders. One young man, pointing to the wreckage around him, explains why he has come back to nothing: "Mama somewhere here."

In a kampong -- or village -- in west Banda, where five miserable elephants hunt among ruins for corpses, a well-to-do man considers the loss of his wife and two daughters. He has not found them and now he never will. "It all depends on God," says Darma Ibrahim. "If God takes all my family, it's OK -- no problem." He may sound indifferent but he is only mechanically reciting his lines. In this, the most devoutly Muslim -- as distinct from hardline militant -- of all Indonesia's provinces, God's will must be considered. Inshallah.

A group of young men explain that the tsunami was a result of the Acehnese showing insufficient gratitude to God. They are not angry at Him -- they are angry at themselves, vowing to try harder to do His bidding in the future.

Many mosques remain standing, widely read as a sign of God's selective power. The engineering reality is that mosques have few walls, just pillars, and the water was able to flow straight through them.

Banda Aceh was no hick outpost. There were once 350,000 people here, a small but wealthy and stately city which has managed to repel the otherwise pervading Indonesian love of tinsel commercialism. Taxis are not covered in stickers and do not blare rock music; there's never been liquor to be had, except in the two or three hotels which are now fractured and uninhabitable; and the stereotypical long-haired Indo dudes talking drugs and chicks and rock'n'roll never had a place here. It was -- and will be again -- a sedate city led by Muslim intellectuals who have for centuries regarded themselves as an independent and pious people.

Aceh province has been closed to the world for two years due to a severe martial law clampdown. The Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka or GAM) is, according to Jakarta, a failing ragtag guerilla movement. Whether it is or not, it is clear that anti- Java sentiment is widespread among the people. Many in Banda have not seen Caucasians for years and take the opportunity to tell of their struggle.

GAM and the army never fought pitched battles in the main streets of Aceh's towns and cities; there have just been countless skirmishes here and there.

But after losing East Timor, Java has made an example of Aceh to the rest of Indonesia: they will not allow the republic to disintegrate further.

The army knows it is despised and this tragedy will not bring Aceh and Java back together. Soldiers and police are massing in their thousands, under orders to carry their machine-guns at all times. Indeed, they never lay down their guns even when carrying bodies from the swampy flats -- work that no one will thank them for in a hurry.

Indonesian television spares its viewers nothing, closing in on the mutant faces of the dead, whether child or adult. We might call it disgusting.

They call it death. People gather blankly around freshly discovered batches of corpses, hands over noses, expressionless. It is monsoon season, meaning the fields of death are only going to become more muddy and prone to disease incubation.

Morning and night, substantial tremors continue to rock the city, causing people to run to open spaces. The feeling is that the Aceh shakedown isn't over yet.

'Relief curbs:' Politics and aid in Aceh

The NewsHour (US) with Jim Lehrer - January 12, 2005

Guests: Prof. William Liddle, Prof. Jeffrey Winters

Jim Lehrer: Next, politics and aid in the devastated Indonesian province of Aceh. We start with a report from James Mates of Independent Television News.

James Mates: In the aftermath of all this, perhaps the worst natural disaster in living memory, it's been largely forgotten that until Boxing Day 2004 the province of Aceh was being fought over in a bitter civil war between separatists and the Indonesian government.

These soldiers, now so vital to the rescue efforts, were here to fight a growing rebel insurgency. Westerners have been banned entirely from the province for close to two years.

Those rebels have not gone away, and today, amid reports that an Indonesian health worker had been kidnapped, the government here announced restrictions on where the international agencies can now operate, restrictions that mean outside the main population areas there must be full coordination with the local military.

Alwi Shihab, Indonesian Welfare Minister: The military will go first and safeguard the area before the foreign mission reach that place.

James Mates: International agencies have already been struggling to deliver the aid that's poured in to Aceh. Broken roads and bridges, shattered infrastructure already impose their own restrictions, but tonight they were diplomatically accepting of the new rules.

Margareta Wahlstrum, United Nations Special Envoy: What they have asked is that we organize ourselves a bit better to operate in this environment, which, as you know, has had a conflict for many years.

James Mates: But they are trying to convince the Indonesians that this is far from being a unique situation for the aid agencies.

Bettina Luescher, World Food Program: We operate in many areas where there are civil war situations. Often what we do is that we inform both sides where we're going, where our convoys are going, what team's on their way, so nothing happens to them.

James Mates: The Indonesian government are also demanding that all foreign military personnel leave the country by the end of March. Most western governments, frankly, have hoped to have their troops back by then anyway. But the bluntness of the request suggests that despite this disaster the Indonesians are much more concerned about a resumption of civil conflict here than anyone had quite realized.

Margaret Warner: To explain more of what is behind these new restrictions on foreign aid workers and foreign troops and how that relates to the civil conflict in Aceh, we turn to Jeffrey Winters, an associate professor of political economy at Northwestern University; he specializes in Southeast Asia and spent the last five months in Indonesia.

And William Liddle, a professor at Ohio State University specializing in Indonesian, Southeast Asian and third world politics; he was in Indonesia this past July. We invited the Indonesian embassy to participate but they declined.

Welcome to you both. Professor Liddle, give us a little more context to understand why the Indonesian government, Indonesian authorities are imposing these restrictions now.

William Liddle: Well, it certainly is expected because Indonesia has a long history of nationalism. And nationalism in this kind of third world context means opposition to foreigners especially westerners. From 1945 to '49 the Indonesians fought a revolution against the Dutch. And ever since that time, they thought that they had to defend their independence against all comers.

And of course the United States for most of this time, and especially since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been the principal world power. And so Indonesians see themselves as possibly under siege from the United States, so the larger background here is that there are many Indonesians who take nationalist ideas very seriously. And then I think you have to connect that to the Indonesian army which is the most nationalistic within the country.

And then of course the Indonesian army operating here in Aceh which is the most sensitive or one of the two most sensitive areas in the country, so it's certainly quite expected that the Indonesian army and presumably with the government behind it would act to try to limit aid workers and American troops.

Margaret Warner: Professor Winters, would you attribute this to? To nationalism?

Jeffrey Winters: Well, partly I agree with that brief history from Professor Liddle. And I would also add that there's an additional sensitivity regarding the United States military and specifically regarding the island of Sumatra where Aceh is located.

And that is, in the late 1950s when the United States didn't like the government under Sukarno, we actually assisted a rebel movement there.

We had US Naval submarines off the coast. We had supplies being flown in under CIA operations. And while this is not a piece of history that's very well remembered by Americans, it's very well remembered by Indonesians, so they are, one aspect is that they are extremely sensitive about foreign troops on their soil.

And I think another element of it is that this tsunami has blown the Aceh situation wide open. And it exposes the country, the government as well as the military, to a lot of potential embarrassment if reporters, which had up till now not been able to even go into the province, are able to snoop around and go beyond the boundaries of the disaster itself.

Margaret Warner: All right. Professor Liddle, back to you; pick up there. Give us some background is what the state of play was between the government forces and the rebels before the tsunami hit. And what is it that they might not want foreign observers -- whether they're reporters or aid workers -- to see now?

William Liddle: Well, there had been a cease-fire for about six months until May of 2003 between the independence forces in Aceh, GAM, they're called the Aceh Independence Movement. There had been a cease-fire between GAM and the Indonesian government for about six months that ended in May of 2003.

And since that time, almost two years, the Indonesian military has been in there in force. The martial law was declared in the province. And what martial law means of course is that the Indonesian military can do whatever it likes in the area. And so undoubtedly they have engaged in brute treatment of their own people, of the Acehinese people in the area because they have a history of doing that in Aceh and other places as well.

So as Professor Winters said, it is certainly true that the Indonesian military doesn't want people coming in and finding out what's been happening in the last couple of years. I think there's probably another element in this though as well that I was thinking about in connection with the aid workers in particular.

I suspect that the Indonesian military thinks those aid workers probably, many of them, are in favor of Acehinese independence. If they get back there in the interior and start dealing with GAM forces and so forth, they will cause the Jakarta government a lot of headache. Again, I'm thinking about Timor where something very similar happened before.

Margaret Warner: We're talking about East Timor where, in fact, they ended up having to hold an election under UN auspices and they got independence.

William Liddle: That's right. And that's not likely to happen in Aceh.

Margaret Warner: Well, let me just go back to Professor Winter there. On the aid groups, follow up on that. Why do you think the Indonesian military would care so much about aid workers going, say, unescorted by the military? And do you think some human rights groups already today were charging that corruption may be involved in this too? What do you think?

Jeffrey Winters: Right. Well, first of all, the Indonesian government in general, and the military as well, have a reputation for a very extreme level of corruption. In fact, Transparency International which tracks this across countries recently listed Indonesia as number five from the bottom of the most corrupt countries in the world.

And here we have a tremendous amount... I mean just such a generous outpouring of resources, it's coming bilaterally from governments; it's coming multilaterally; it's coming through private organizations on the one hand, but a lot of it, because the Indonesian military is the face of the Indonesian government really in the province, a lot of it is being controlled by or funneled through military channels.

And the military itself, which is a woefully under-funded institution and funds itself through its own businesses, has also been involved historically in smuggling, in skimming of resources. So the generals are very rich so the concern is that a lot of this money could be skimmed off. And so there's a premium on controlling outsiders who could limit their ability to do that, first of all, and report on it if they saw it.

Margaret Warner: Professor Liddle, now let's bring in one other complicating element. Last week the Indonesian government, it's been reported, actually flew in hundreds of Muslim militants into Aceh Province and encouraged them to participate in the relief effort. Now what is that about? Why would they be flying in Muslim militants?

William Liddle: Well, there are a number of different kinds of Muslim militants in Indonesia. I hadn't heard the story that these were flown in as though the Indonesian government or the military in Jakarta had sort of rounded these people up and taken them to Aceh to do these things.

Margaret Warner: They did facilitate it apparently.

William Liddle: Certainly they wouldn't have stood in the way. But anyway, there are a number of Muslim militant groups, most of which are not practicing violence but which do have the ambition to turn into Indonesia into an Islamic state. And Aceh is an area of very strong Muslim beliefs so it would make sense for people in Jakarta to send Muslim organizations that had volunteered to go to Aceh to help with the relief.

As I say, most of these organizations don't practice violence or anything of that sort. But some do. There are some serious problems. There's one organization in particular, the FPI, the Islamic Defenders Front that has a very bad reputation in Jakarta for breaking up bars and so forth. And it has a kind of gangster-ish reputation as well. I've been observing them in Aceh.

So far what they're doing -- there are as many as 400 of them in Aceh -- and so far what they're doing is mainly evacuating corpses and helping survivors and so forth. So they don't appear to be into any kind of violent activities in Aceh.

Margaret Warner: And, Professor Winters, do you agree with that, that they have fairly benign motives? And then how does it perhaps -- first, answer that question and then I have a follow- up.

Jeffrey Winters: Of the groups that have been sent in, including the Islamic Defense Front as well as another organization that is connected to Abu Bakar Bashir who himself has murky connections to al-Qaida, none of these organizations have a humanitarian relief background at all. In fact, all of them have a very violent profile.

Two of those organizations in particular were sent to the Malakas, another part of Indonesia to the east that has a heavy concentration of Christians. And they were directly involved in the violence there in the inter-communal violence between Christians and Muslims. In Jakarta, the FPI, the organization Professor Liddle mentioned, was actually created at the end of the Suharto regime as a thug organization to beat up pro- democracy movements, students and so on.

So what they're doing there is very mysterious. And not only that, it's important to say that Aceh is probably the most orthodox Islamic region of Indonesia and yet they have never wanted anything to do with these organizations. They have no connections to them. Nor have they ever had any connections to al-Qaida.

Margaret Warner: Finally and I'll start with you, Professor Liddle, on the other side of the ledger you have reports that the Indonesian president actually brought in the ambassadors from the US, the UK, Sweden, a couple other countries, on Monday to talk about their ideas for how to resolve the whole civil conflict.

One, do you think there's a split here between the civilian government in Jakarta perhaps and the military on the ground? And do you think that a possibility exists that, in fact, this tsunami may present the opportunity for a resolution of the civil conflict?

William Liddle: Well, I do think that there is probably a disconnect. You know, President Yudhoyono was just inaugurated in October, and so we're only beginning to take the measure of the man. But my sense of him so far -- and I think this is backed up by many other people who are observing it too -- is that he's very indecisive.

He can't make up his mind about anything. And so his advisors or people who are near him who want a particular policy. They tend to announce publicly that decision and then the president feels forced to go along with it.

And I was thinking about that when Endriartono Sutarto, the commander of the armed forces, made the announcement about foreign troops being out of Aceh within three months. That was probably that same kind of precipitant move on the part of the military, preempting what the president could do so I think we have to watch very carefully.

I started out by saying that the Indonesian military is very conservative, very concerned with Aceh and all of the things that Professor Winters said also are true about Aceh. So this is a very touchy situation as far as the military is concerned, and it's likely to be the case that the president will back off if the military pushes him very hard. But it's reassuring on the other hand that there was a meeting with foreign ambassadors, that people are able to get to him and maybe we will get some movement in a direction of getting peace in Aceh.

Margaret Warner: A brief final word from you, Professor Winters on that point.

Jeffrey Winters: Yes, I think there is a split going on and it's very interesting that the president well, the person from the military who is in charge, the commander of the army itself, is the person who is in charge in Aceh of this relief movement. And he is the same commander who the president has blocked to rising to commander of the entire armed forces. So there does seem to be a split going on there.

If I could add one last thing, it is that although we've talked about corruption and so on, it's very important for people to realize that they should not pull back on the relief effort but pay very careful attention to trying to channel it through means that get it directly to the people as opposed to maybe through the state.

Margaret Warner: All right. Thank you, professors, both. Thanks so much.

TNI rejects non-war martial law in Aceh

Tempo Interactive - January 12, 2005

Jakarta -- Indonesian Military (TNI) chief General Endriartono Sutarto has said that Indonesian government needed not to impose non-war martial law in the province of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD).

According to the TNI chief, during the handling of natural disasters, an emergency status can be imposed in the region so that the government has the legal force to mobilize any required help and support.

However, Sutarto said, the current situation in Aceh has shown the strong solidarity of all people to assist and help victims of the disasters.

As an example, he cited that the TNI had been unable to accommodate all support offered as it was considered to be too much.

"It also means that we no longer need to impose any emergency situation in order to mobilize help and support," stated Sutarto after a meeting with Singaporean defense minister Teo Chee Hean at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Jakarta on Wednesday (05/01). The TNI chief said he considered that the sending of too many people, including Indonesian Military (TNI) personnel, to help the situation in Aceh would be worthless as this would require huge funds for logistics support.

"If I send 1,000 military personnel for example, I shall need huge funds to facilitate their living there." said Sutarto.

In addition, said Sutarto, he did not consider that the mobilization of Indonesian Military (TNI) personnel would be effective for the time being.

According to him, the sending of small number of military personnel with complete equipment was more effective in speeding up the operation and rehabilitation of the regions hit by the disasters. (Dimas Adityo-Tempo News Room)

President seeks foreign input on rebel issue

Laksamana.Net - January 11, 2005

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Monday (10/1/05) met with the ambassadors of Britain, Japan, Libya, Singapore, Sweden and the US to hear their views on how to resolve the separatist conflict in Aceh, said a senior government official.

"The government continues to strive to find a peaceful solution to the problem while handling the aftermath of the Aceh quake and tsunami," State Secretary Yusril Ihza Mahendra was quoted as saying by state news agency Antara.

He said the president asked the ambassadors of Sweden and Singapore to encourage GAM leaders living in exile in the two countries to support the government's initiatives to bring a lasting peace to Aceh.

"The Indonesian government actually wants to resolve the Aceh problem directly with GAM, but the obstacle is that its leaders are in Sweden. So we have asked the Swedish ambassador to pass on this message," Yusril was quoted as saying by detikcom online news portal.

Peace offers

The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) on Monday called on the government to prove its commitment to ending the conflict with GAM. "Indonesia's central government must take concrete measures when offering peace deals to GAM," Kontras coordinator Usman Hamid was quoted as saying by detikcom.

He said the government should: give GAM access to humanitarian aid; offer amnesty to all rebels; and release five GAM peace negotiators presently serving jail sentences of between 12 and 15 years.

The five rebel negotiators survived the devastating December 26 earthquake and tsunamis as they had recently been transferred to jails in Java, whereas hundreds of other rebels detained in Aceh were killed when the gigantic waves destroyed their prisons.

Hamid said the government should seek to establish a new ceasefire agreement with GAM leaders living in Aceh, rather than the exiled leaders residing in Sweden.

He also said future peace talks should take place in Aceh to improve the government's understanding of the real situation in the province. "This is only a matter of efficiency, as holding talks overseas would reflect a lack of psychological concern for the disaster victims in Aceh."

Hamid proposed that Japan be appointed to as a third party mediator for future peace talks, as the Japanese economy is "dependent" on trade with Indonesia.

There are hopes that Yudhoyono will be more successful than his predecessor Megawati Sukarnpoputri in bringing peace to Aceh. Yudhoyono was Megawati's chief security minister when Indonesia signed a short-lived truce with GAM in December 2002.

Mediated by the Geneva-based Henry Dunant Center, the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement initially resulted in a steep decline in violence in the resource-rich province, where GAM has been fighting for independence since 1976.

But the level of violence soon escalated, with each side accusing the other of violating the terms of the pact. Megawati's administration abandoned the peace deal in May 2003 and launched a massive military operation aimed at exterminating GAM.

Since then, the military claims to have killed about 2,500 rebels, while many more have surrendered or been arrested. Rights groups claim many of those killed were innocent civilians.

Dual disasters: The tsunami and military rule

John Roosa - January 11, 2005

On December 25, 2004, one day before Aceh was devastated by an earthquake-driven tsunami, the Indonesian military (TNI) announced that it had just killed eighteen guerrillas in the province.[1] Such news had long since become routine. A week earlier, the TNI killed five.[2] TNI chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto stated in early December that his men had killed 3,216 Acehnese since martial law was imposed upon the province in May 2003.[3] In all these reported armed clashes, very few Indonesian soldiers died. The war was lopsided, with Acehnese, especially civilians (posthumously labeled "rebels" by the TNI), bearing nearly all the casualties. Aceh was already a killing field before the Indian Ocean wreaked havoc on the land.

Under martial law, the military became the government. The military stationed nearly 40,000 security personnel in the province (about one soldier or policeman for every 100 civilians), replaced many civilian officials (such as district heads) with military personnel, banned foreigners, issued new identification cards, forced Acehnese to attend public ceremonies at which they pledged loyalty to the Indonesian state, and set up countless checkpoints on the roads. The transition from martial law to "civil emergency" in May 2004 was a cosmetic change; the 40,000 troops remained and the killings continued. The seawater was one of the few things the military did not try to control.

One should not imagine that the severity of the tsunami in Aceh (the latest estimate is more than 100,000 dead) renders this history of military rule irrelevant. The Indonesian government is now using the military as its primary coordinator of relief aid. Worse, the military is still waging war on the pro-independence Free Aceh Movement (GAM). Mother nature inflicted enormous damage on Aceh but did not fundamentally alter the pre-existing social institutions. The TNI remains intact (with claimed losses so far of about 500 personnel), as does GAM, whose guerrillas are mostly in the hills. The war between them has been remarkably perdurable; it has lasted on and off since the late 1970s, through the collapse of President Suharto's dictatorship, through the tenures of three post-Suharto presidents, foreign mediation, peace talks, and cease-fires.

The Indonesian military has been waging a counterinsurgency war against GAM. As in all such wars, including the one the Dutch fought in Aceh during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, the military's goal has been to terrorize civilians so that they will not support the guerrillas.

The Suharto regime, after very limited hostilities with GAM in the late 1970s, turned Aceh into a free-fire zone in 1990. The terror has been fairly constant since then. The only let-up (and that only partial) was in 1998-99 when the nation's political system was in crisis after Suharto's fall. During that brief reformist pause, the government sanctioned a human rights investigation that conservatively estimated that the military had killed about 2,000 to 4,000 people from 1990 to 1998.[4]

As part of the counterinsurgency war, the military indiscriminately rounded up civilians for interrogations that invariably involved torture.

Mutilated corpses were left by roadsides in the 1990s as a form of what the military called "shock therapy." The civilians at whom this "therapeutic" practice was directed did not respond like good patients and retreat into a collective catatonic state. At the start of large-scale military operations in 1990, GAM consisted of several hundred armed guerrillas. It did not have mass support. Most Acehnese were as integrated into Indonesia as any other ethnic group. It was the military's manner of suppressing the rebels that fueled the revolt. Human rights activist Muhammad Isa noted last year that "when Aceh was declared a military operations zone, there were only a few hundred GAM insurgents in Pidie, North Aceh and East Aceh. Now, there are a lot more throughout Aceh." [5] Indonesia specialist Edward Aspinall wrote: "Many journalists and others who interviewed new GAM recruits in rural Aceh in 1999 noted that many of them were motivated by a desire to exact revenge for family members who had been killed, tortured or sexually abused by security forces earlier in the decade." [6]

In a remarkable demonstration of public opinion, nearly a million people (one quarter of the population) attended a rally in 1999 calling for a referendum on independence. After nearly a decade of counterinsurgency warfare, the military had made succession mainstream opinion. Today, it nevertheless stoically persists in its Sisyphus-like labor, creating enemies in the process of killing them.

Not all Acehnese, on coming to hate the military for its atrocities, have turned to GAM as an alternative. GAM has not articulated a coherent political program (its founder wishes to revive a monarchical form of government) and has not always followed the Geneva Conventions (it has, for instance, frequently taken Indonesian civilians as hostages). The military's repression of all forms of political dissent in Aceh has made it nearly impossible for any resistance to be waged except armed resistance.

Acehnese who have tried to resist in civil fashion have been denounced as GAM members in disguise and have either been jailed, killed, or forced into exile. Tens of thousands of Acehnese have fled to other parts of Indonesia or foreign countries.

The refrain one often hears from Acehnese is that the military has never bothered to distinguish GAM members from non- combatants. TNI troops view all Acehnese with suspicion. The main English daily newspaper in Indonesia, The Jakarta Post, in a rare moment of candid reporting, noted last month that a frequent remark by soldiers at the checkpoints was "Are you Acehnese? Then you must be GAM." Human rights campaigner Munir was not being hyperbolic when he stated last year that "ninety-nine percent of those detained are non-combatants, not GAM but NGO people, local politicians, students." [7]

For the Acehnese, the tens of thousands of soldiers in the province are not a source of security; they are equivalent to a plague of locusts. The troops are expected to earn their own money, as the government covers only a part of their expenses. Thus, checkpoints have become moneymaking franchises; soldiers shakedown passing truckers, motorists, and motorcyclists. Many journalists have written about this practice since it is carried out so openly. Other fundraising methods are less obvious.

It is unknown how much the military receives from the ExxonMobil natural gas plant in Aceh (which was unaffected by the tsunami). ExxonMobil pays the military to guard its enclave and, like all other businesses in Indonesia, must pony up money to meet periodic TNI requests for funds. This plant is a sore point for Acehnese. The Indonesian government earns about $1.2 billion annually from it but the Acehnese people see very little of that money. Most of the profits are pocketed by officials in Jakarta.

Jakarta would like to use the tsunami as a means of wiping the slate of history clean. In the Indonesian media, officials frequently comment that they hope the tragedy will prompt Acehnese to put aside their comparatively petty political concerns and cooperate with the Indonesian government in the common struggle against nature. If the military suddenly abandoned its ingrained, institutional ethos of treating all Acehnese as subversives, ended its corruption, and began to selflessly assist in Aceh's recovery, then perhaps Jakarta's hopes will be fulfilled. This tiger, however, is not likely to change its stripes.

Reports by Indonesian volunteers and journalists in Aceh indicate that the military has not changed even in the midst of such staggering devastation.

Consider the following account written by a wealthy Indonesian woman who flew to Aceh with her mother to carry some medical supplies. Within her narrative (which she wrote in English and circulated on an email list), she describes an encounter with a military checkpoint on December 31 while driving out of the capital city of Banda Aceh. The city was in ruins, but the soldiers still practiced their customary shakedowns at checkpoints:

"As we reached the outskirts of the city we were stopped by military with rifles in hand. They initially blocked the way and refused to allow us to continue driving along the coast. They checked all of our boxes and asked us to hand over the goods to them. We knew that if we gave them the goods that they would never be distributed so a friend lobbied until we were able to pass in exchange for some women's underwear that we had brought. We are still puzzled by that one, but it was a small price to pay."

When she returned to the city she brought with her several starving villagers who approached a colonel at the military headquarters, the center for the distribution of relief aid:

"When one of the villagers explained to him that his village was in desperate need of food aid the colonel started interrogating and giving him a hard time. My mother and I listened on incredulously as he began asking for proof that there were indeed 300 hundred survivors and he said that he had a hard time believing that there were even that many survivors.

Again with a friend's persuasion, the villagers were finally able to convince the colonel to give in and allow them to take 50 boxes of supermie [instant noodles] and a few hundred kilos of rice. We couldn't believe our eyes that this man was giving these villagers such a hard time as all around us there were hundreds of boxes of aid in the form of food, chainsaws, generators, pipes, buckets, you name it, piled high against the walls. My mother and I were even offered to help ourselves to a buffet of food that was laid out on two big tables. It dawned on us that the military was controlling all of the incoming domestic and foreign aid and that there had been little done to distribute any of it! Apparently they were expecting the villagers to come to the posko [command post] or refugee camps in Banda Aceh, which was unlikely since a lot of these stranded survivors were just too far away, not to mention some severely wounded, with no means of transport to get themselves there. We also discovered that the military was afraid that the aid would come into the hands of GAM rebels, which seemed to us such a minor problem in the face of such a catastrophe."

The Jakarta government took the very positive step of allowing foreign journalists, relief workers, and military personnel into Aceh. Reports indicate that the military is no longer trying to monopolize aid distribution; though they are selling some aid that should be distributed freely, including food. But with foreigners inside Aceh, the military is worried, that the unaccountability it has enjoyed for 19 months may be coming to an end.

Journalists are reporting that the military still checks Acehnese for their identity cards. Soldiers try to determine a person's political loyalty before handing out aid. Soldiers are weeding out people at the refugee camps and taking suspected GAM supporters into detention. The military is being stingy with its aid since it wants to ensure that not a grain of rice winds up in the hands of GAM. Any person carrying more than he or she can immediately consume is suspected of carrying goods for GAM. One journalist, reporting on January 7, observed soldiers at a checkpoint 40 kilometers outside of Banda Aceh: "All morning, troops wearing combat kit had been stopping those heading south, accusing them of forming new supply lines for rebels in the hills." [8]

Most of the some $4 billion that has been raised worldwide for tsunami relief will likely be devoted to Aceh. The only other country that needs a large amount of aid is Sri Lanka. Both Thailand and India have stated they do not need foreign aid. This means that Indonesia's military in Aceh is now under an international microscope. There is no reason to believe, however, that this will guarantee better behavior.

The last time the whole world was watching, in East Timor in 1999, the military laid a country to waste, accomplishing a level of destruction to rival a tsunami. The TNI worried little about international opinion during that September 1999 scorched earth campaign. It burned down 70% of East Timor's buildings, looted much of the country's wealth, killed hundreds, if not thousands, and forcibly deported about 250,000 people -- all while in the international spotlight. The generals responsible for those atrocities have enjoyed impunity; there has been no international tribunal. The general first appointed to head up Indonesia's Aceh relief effort was Adam Damiri, one of the key commanders responsible for the 1999 destruction of East Timor. The military high command replaced him at the last moment to avoid causing any friction with other governments.

Although foreigners are now in Aceh, one should not believe that they are immune from eviction. Jakarta allowed in international observers in December 2002 after it signed a peace agreement with GAM. It then sent them packing only five months later when martial law was declared. Morever, the military high command, especially under the army chief of staff Gen. Ryacudu, has cultivated a paranoiac attitude towards foreign governments, arguing that they are fomenting internal unrest in a conspiracy to break up Indonesia.[9]

Acehnese attitudes concerning independence will probably not change even with the remarkable outpouring of sympathy from Indonesian civilians, who have volunteered to serve as relief workers and contributed large sums of money. The Acehnese have never had major problems with Indonesian civilians; their problems have been with the military. Only if Indonesian civilians in Java and the rest of the archipelago are able to appreciate what Acehnese suffered prior to the tsunami and work to restrain military operations will there be a possibility for true rapprochement with Acehnese. But substantive military reform appears a distant goal, especially with a former general just voted in as president.

It is obvious that immediate relief work and long-term reconstruction can not proceed if Aceh is a warzone. Foreign governments and international agencies need to pressure Jakarta to resume negotiations with GAM so that a cease-fire can be established. Both sides say they would like a cease-fire and that they are only carrying out defensive actions. But both blame the other for not reciprocating. Without negotiations to iron out the details and relieve the atmosphere of tension the armed clashes will continue.

Jakarta has been quick to blame GAM for any gunfire (such as a shooting near the UN compound on January 8 which some Indonesian officials now say was done by a stressed-out soldier) or accident (such as the crash of a US navy helicopter that cabinet minister Alwi Shihab suggested was the work of GAM). A journalist has noted that Jakarta wishes to make foreign relief workers frightened of GAM as "gun-toting killers who are attacking aid convoys and using survivor camps as hideouts." [10] GAM, meanwhile, has issued statements assuring relief workers that it will neither attack them nor interfere with the aid distribution.

SIRA, the leading popular organization supporting a referendum on the region's political future, has called for international mediation in the war: "A political resolution between Indonesia and GAM must be found immediately at the international negotiating tables and the war must end for the sake of humanitarian aid, peaceful development, and the long-term liberty of the Acehnese people. If a peace process is not immediately conducted then the suffering and oppression of the Acehnese people will be compounded in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster." [11]

Footnotes:

1. Agence France Press (AFP), December 25, 2004.

2. AFP, December 17, 2004.

3. Jakarta Post, December 3, 2004.

4. Laporan Akhir Komisi Independen Pengusutan Tindak Kekerasan di Aceh [Final Report of the Independent Investigation Commission on Violent Actions in Aceh] (Jakarta: Komisi Independen Pengusutan, July 2000).

The report estimated 1,000 to 3,000 killed plus another 900 to 1,400 disappeared persons presumed dead. Human rights groups estimate that another two to three thousand Acehnese were killed from 1999 to the declaration of martial law in May 2003. Some 1,300 people were killed in 2002 alone. Human Rights Watch, "Indonesia: Human Rights Key to Lasting Peace in Aceh," press release, December 11, 2002.

5. Jakarta Post, December 13, 2004. Gen. Sutarto stated that GAM had 10,000 guerrillas by May 2003. Jakarta Post, January 11, 2005.

6. Inside Indonesia, Oct-Dec 2003.

7. AFP, May 18, 2004. Munir was given a lethal dose of arsenic while on a Garuda flight in early September 2004. Many suspect a military hand but no proof of that has emerged yet. The case is still under investigation.

8. The Australian, January 7, 2004.

9. Detik.com December 25, 2003 ("60,000 foreign agents enter Indonesia to weaken TNI -- Ryacudu"); Kompas, December 26, 2003 ("Pernyataan KSAD Soal Pemilu dan Agen Asing Perlu Diperhatikan" [The Chief of Staff's statement on the election and foreign agents needs attention]; and Detik.com, May 12, 2004 ("Aggressor States Conspiring to Destroy and Control Indonesia: Army Chief").

10. Michael Casey, Associated Press (AP), January 10, 2005. Also see the interview with Gen. Sutarto, Jakarta Post, Jakarta Post, January 11, 2005.

11. Open Letter by Sentral Informasi Referendum Acheh, Banda Acheh, January 6, 2005.

[John Roosa, Assistant Professor of History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, is co-editor of The Year that Never Ended: Understanding the Experiences of the Victims of 1965: Oral History Essays (Jakarta: Elsam, 2004).]

Clamps down on aid workers amid alleged rebel threat

Agence France Presse - January 11, 2005

The Indonesian military imposed sweeping restrictions on foreign aid workers in tsunami-hit Aceh, saying the move was needed to curtail a growing threat from separatist rebels.

Military chief General Endriartono Sutarto told reporters the armed forces would accompany and monitor aid groups on all missions outside the provincial capital of Banda Aceh.

Foreign aircraft and ships bringing supplies into Banda Aceh, the hub of the humanitarian effort following the December 26 disaster that killed more than 100,000 people in Aceh, will also no longer have unrestricted access.

Sutarto said a military officer will now be placed on board all foreign aircraft and ships and they would be given clearance to operate in the province for a maximum of 14 days.

Sutarto said the measures were needed to protect foreign aid workers from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), which has been fighting for independence since 1976 -- a rebellion which the military has violently suppressed.

The rebels' supreme commander Muzakir Manaf, in a statement, condemned the move and accused the government of "dispatching false news about our forces engaging in harassments of aid delivery". He said the rebels would guarantee the safety of all international volunteers.

Aid officials in Aceh and an analyst rejected Sutarto's assertions, saying there was no threat from rebels to the relief effort.

Sutarto said there had been one incident of a foreign medical officer being taken hostage for a short while, as well as others of rebels ambushing relief convoys. "GAM tried to stop food assistance, they robbed all the food and medicine there," Sutarto said, without giving any details about the alleged incidents.

Sutarto said in an interview published in the Jakarta Post on Tuesday that there was a danger the rebels may attack foreigners in Aceh. "That's why you see that a lot of our soldiers are still carrying weapons. That's one way that we provide protection to foreigners here," he said. "You know that killing a foreigner here will attract international attention, and they need it."

Sidney Jones, an expert from the International Crisis Group on Indonesian military and security affairs, told AFP that claims of a GAM threat were disingenuous.

"GAM has absolutely no interest in attacking foreign aid workers," Jones said. "What they want more than anything else is for an international presence to be there and stay there for a long time. It would go completely against the grain for them to mount attacks [against foreigners]."

Jones said the government's real motive for raising the security alert and restricting the movements of foreign aid workers was to reassert the military's control as it seeks to crush the rebellion. "I think the Indonesian military is very, very worried that two years of intensive military operations against the GAM is going to go to waste if there is an increased ability for people ... to move around the province," she said.

The Indonesian military imposed martial law in Aceh in May 2003, banning most foreign journalists and aid workers from the province, as it mounted a major new military offensive against the rebels.

The government lifted the restrictions on aid workers and journalists immediately after the disaster, although a state of emergency remains in place.

Mona Latzo, regional advocacy coordinator for international aid group Oxfam, said the organisation did not see GAM as a security risk. "We haven't seen any threat. We did have some trucks coming in [to Aceh] and they arrived safe and sound," Latzo said in Banda Aceh.

Despite the military claims of the rebel threat, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said the government was holding initial ceasefire talks with the insurgents. He said there had been a "gentleman's agreement" between the government and the rebels to halt fighting, although there had been no formal ceasefire pact.

Graft fears stalk Indonesia tsunami aid efforts

Reuters - January 11, 2005

Andrew Quinn, Jakarta -- As cash donations pour in from around the world for the victims of Asia's tsunami, fears are rife that corruption will divert big chunks of the aid money before it reaches the disaster zone.

Foreign governments and donor institutions such as the World Bank -- along with private citizens from London to Beijing -- have opened their pocketbooks for the tsunami crisis, with pledged aid and donations reaching more than $7 billion by Tuesday.

For Indonesia, ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world last year by Berlin-based watchdog Transparency International, the influx is both a lifeline for desperate victims and a temptation for unscrupulous officials.

"The government faces a second tsunami of aid," said Luky Djani of Indonesia Corruption Watch, a non-governmental group. "They are deluged by the huge amount of donations and they don't know how to manage and how to deliver it in the right way."

For the United Nations, it's chance to prove it can manage the finances of major humanitarian missions after accusations it mishandled its oil-for-food programme in Iraq. Billions of dollars are believed to have been lost during that seven-year programme from kickbacks and skimming off contracts.

Corruption fears aside, the need for help remains acute. In Indonesia, the country worst hit by the December 26 earthquake and tsunami it spawned, more than 100,000 people died and another 600,000 are homeless.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who took office in October pledging to eradicate graft, has said he will keep a sharp eye on aid distribution. The Minister for Social Welfare, Alwi Shihab, has told reporters relief payments will be audited so as to avoid "damage by greedy hands".

But analysts say the scale of the foreign assistance headed for Indonesia will put even the best intentions to the test. "Problems with corruption are so high it is almost inevitable," said Sidney Jones, an Indonesia expert with the International Crisis Group. "There is simply no history in Indonesia of the monitoring mechanism necessary to stop it."

Scattered reports, bigger fears

Indonesia's record of official graft gives cause for concern. Transparency International says the country's former President Suharto was among the most corrupt leaders ever seen, stealing anything up to $35 billion during his decades in power. His lawyers have denied the accusation.

Corruption watchdogs are already receiving scattered reports of problems with aid in Aceh, where officials have been accused of small-scale pilfering or reselling of aid supplies.

Aceh has seen a long-running conflict between government troops and separatists and is heavily patrolled by the Indonesian military -- itself a frequent target of corruption charges.

Analysts say the situation is likely to worsen once emergency relief shifts to reconstruction work, with big projects promising bigger profits for corrupt officials. "If you look at the past, 30 to 40 percent [of aid] can be lost," Djani said.

Most aid agencies have thus far kept quiet about their fears, anxious not to discourage contributions. "We are aware corruption is kind of rife, but we're hoping it's not going to happen," an aid worker in Aceh said. "We have to hope that ultimately people are going to get what they need."

But some countries are speaking up. Australia, unveiling its biggest-ever single donation of A$1 billion ($750 million) for tsunami relief, insisted on control over how it is dispersed. "The last thing [the public] want is to see some of that money being siphoned off for corrupt purposes. That would turn the Australian public violently against aid of any kind," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told reporters.

Jones of the International Crisis Group said aid groups and UN agencies would have to keep checking aid spending, while Indonesia Corruption Watch said it would send monitoring teams of its own to watch how much help was making it to local people.

The United Nations is applying lessons learned from the now- defunct Iraq oil-for-food programme by adopting measures to ensure greater accountability and transparency for the global tsunami aid effort, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Monday.

The world body has accepted a no-fee offer from accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to help track tsunami aid, said Kevin Kennedy, a senior official in the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Among the measures being prepared are a way to let the public track every aid dollar via a Web site and the drafting of new rules to protect UN staff whistle-blowers.

Local analysts said the disaster marks an opportunity for Indonesia to show it could keep its own house in order. "Our reputation and credibility as a nation is at stake," Jakarta Post editor-in-chief Endy Bayuni said in an editorial this week. "If we can't handle this, and if the money so generously donated for victims of the disasters is embezzled, siphoned off, marked up -- in other words, corrupted -- it will bring a terrible shame to this nation."

Protection of women victims should receive priority

Jakarta Post - January 12, 2005

Two-thirds of the total fatalities in the tsunami disaster in Aceh were women and children as they were the ones left at home along the affected coastline.

They were helpless when the giant waves ripped through the town. The executive director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (Unifem), Noleen Hayzer talked to The Jakarta Post's Sari P. Setiogi on her concern for the women victims.

Question: What is Unifem's concern with regards the women victims in the tsunami disaster?

Answer: We are saddened by what happened here. However, we believe that women are the hub of the relief and reconstruction process. Two-thirds of the total people killed in the disaster in Aceh were women. They are renowned for their central role in society. Women there play multiple roles: heading households, sustaining subsistence economies, raising children and caring for the sick.

What can be suggested by Unifem regarding that?

First, the women need protection and security to protect them from multiple trauma. We received reports saying that there are some women in Sri Lanka and Aceh as well who have been molested and sexually harassed.

From the report that you have, how many of the women victims in Aceh have been sexually harassed?

I'm afraid we do not have the actual figure, but from the information coming in it was the volunteers, activists who came there to help. So I think it's extremely important to provide protection for the women volunteers, as well as to the community, so they are not being exposed to the second wave of danger or trauma.

Does this prevention effort include distribution of contraceptives to women?

We will concentrate on providing training and resource materials for the relief and reconstruction workers in existing UN guidelines related to protect women and girls from violence and other human rights abuses.

Do you think it will be feasible, considering that we are facing an emergency situation?

Well, it is very important to change the mindset of most workers and the military that they are now in an emergency situation and they are doing humanitarian work.

Are there any other suggestion that you can give?

The livelihoods of the women are important as well. The tsunami disaster had not only destroyed the infrastructure and the economy, but also the human spirit. Building the spirit of the victims should be done side by side with the rebuilding of infrastructure.

We should make sure that the women are engaged as part of the solution and not victimize them even more. Their leadership is important.

Unifem need to make a rapid mapping of women's networks in the affected communities. They might need community support to take care of their children, for example.

Revitalization of the family is the most important thing for the rebuilding of the affected areas, I would say. Therefore, we should invest in women.

Don't convert Muslim children, priest is warned

South China Morning Post - January 12, 2005

Marian Carroll, Jakarta -- An Australian Catholic priest yesterday announced an alliance with Indonesia's second largest Muslim organisation to build an orphanage in devastated Aceh province, despite warnings that radical Islamic groups could stir up tensions.

Father Chris Riley's Youth Off The Streets group, which claims no religious leaning, has teamed up with Muhammadiyah, which represents 40 million Muslims in Indonesia and runs 300 orphanages.

The Indonesian government estimates 15,000 children may have been orphaned in the tsunami.

News of the alliance comes after an extremist Islamic group -- the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), best known for raiding Jakarta's nightclubs and bars during the Muslim holy month -- warned Father Riley not to attempt to convert Muslim children.

Father Riley had not felt personally threatened, his spokesman said. He had received a warm reception from local groups for his plan to provide relief "in a way that respects and supports the culture and identity of the children". But prominent Aceh experts warned that the small number of extremist Muslims who had sent volunteers to provide relief in Aceh could target the thousands of western aid workers and troops now working in the province.

Aceh, the only province in Indonesia allowed to apply sharia law had been closed to foreigners since martial law was imposed in 2003.

"The potential is clearly there for the whole situation to erupt," said Sidney Jones, southeast Asia project director for the International Crisis Group. "Hardline groups like the Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia (MMI) seem to see their role not only as providing help to victims of the tsunami but also as a way of guarding against 'infidel' influence."

MMI, which wants an Islamic state in secular Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has been referred to as the public face of al-Qaeda-linked terrorist network Jemaah Islamiah.

MMI's paramilitary arm, along with the FPI and other Indonesian extremist groups have sent hundreds of men to Banda Aceh, where they are earning respect for carrying out dirty jobs like collecting corpses while attempting to stir up sentiment against the US and its allies, according to reports.

Analysts said the potential for their hostility towards the west to turn into violence should be taken seriously. "In the last week, there have been a lot of rumours circulating in text messages mentioning the efforts of certain Christian groups to open orphanages or to take Acehnese children out of Aceh," said Azyumardi Azra, head of Jakarta's State Islamic University.

"This of course will create tension and we may see Muslim hardline groups conducting demonstrations to appeal to the government to implement strict regulations about this."

While the Australian government, whose embassy in Jakarta was targeted by terrorists last year, said it would be political suicide for hardline groups to attack western relief workers in Aceh at least in the short-term, analysts disagreed.

Radical Islamic groups in Indonesia were not concerned with what was politically popular, said Tim Lindsey, University of Melbourne associate-professor in Asian law.

"JI and extremist terrorist groups in Indonesia couldn't give a damn what the public think. Their main motivation is to destabilise the Indonesian state and set up an Islamic state. If they attacked aid workers, western aid agencies would pull out and the government would look incapable of doing its job."

Australia backs restrictions on foreigners in Aceh

Associated Press - January 12, 2005

Canberra -- Australia's prime minister on Wednesday supported the Indonesian government's demand that foreign aid workers and journalists report their movements outside tsunami-battered Aceh's provincial capital.

Indonesia's Aceh province was worst hit by the December 26 earthquake and tsunami, with more than 106,000 people killed. The region had been under military rule because of a long-running separatist insurgency, but has become the center of a huge international relief effort.

Earlier Wednesday, Indonesia's chief of relief operations, Budi Atmaji, issued a statement ordering international aid groups and reporters to inform the government of their travel plans outside the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, citing possiblerebel attacks.

Prime Minister John Howard described Indonesia's demand as "a good idea." "It is very, very important that in the process of giving full effect to this magnificent international response, that we recognize the difficulties in Aceh, but that we don't overreact to them and we don't dramatize them," he told reporters.

But Australian defense expert Clive Williams said the order from the Indonesian government was more likely spurred by their desire to keep close tabs on foreigners in a bid to conceal possible military corruption.

Williams, a former Defense Department bureaucrat, said Howard was taking a risk by cooperating with Indonesia's military, which is also accused of killing hundreds of East Timorese after the former Indonesian colony voted for independence in 1999.

"The big problem with dealing with [the military] in Aceh is that they're involved in a lot of corruption there and the reason I think they don't want people to go to some areas is because they're involved in human rights abuses in those areas," Williams said. "Having a situation of martial law and then civil emergency has allowed them to get away with a lot," he added.

Growing doubts on Aceh's relief effort

The Australian - January 12, 2005

Damien Kingsbury -- The arrival in Aceh of militant Islamic fundamentalist groups has raised the prospect of conflict with foreign aid workers and troops, including Australians, who are helping the tsunami relief operation. Indonesian and Australian authorities have claimed the Islamist organisations do not pose an immediate threat, and that the Indonesian military (TNI) can provide sufficient security.

But this was the claim made in East Timor in 1999, when the TNI actively supported militias. There are some parallels with Aceh.

The leader of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) has already threatened foreigners by saying un-Islamic behaviour in public, such as drinking alcohol, will not be tolerated. The even more militant Laskar Mujahidin (LM), which is also in Aceh, has engaged in sectarian warfare against Christians in Ambon and Central Sulawesi.

The presence of these organisations in Aceh has disturbed many Acehnese, not least the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), which has rejected them as corrupting Islam. While GAM members are devout Sunni Muslims, GAM itself is not an Islamic organisation and it rejects Islamic fundamentalism.

Radical Islamist organisations have attempted to work in Aceh in the past, in particular the Laskar Jihad and, more recently, Jemaah Islamiah. GAM rejected their advances and they found no support among local Acehnese.

For a province that has suffered almost three decades of conflict, the presence of TNI-backed militias is not new, and many see the FPI in particular as just another imported militia organisation. The FPI began life in August 1998 as a civilian militia, organised by military leaders to attack pro-democracy protesters.

Under the leadership of a Saudi educated Arab-Indonesian, Habib Rizieq, the FPI took on a more explicitly Islamist hue, smashing up bars and nightclubs it claimed offended Islamic faith. The FPI also operates "protection" rackets in Jakarta and elsewhere, and is comprised mostly of street thugs.

LM is a much more disciplined and focused organisation, being the military wing of the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI), which was established and headed by alleged Jemaah Islamiah leader Abu Bakar Bashir.

LM fielded the most highly trained and well-armed militia in the Ambon and central Sulawesi conflicts. The TNI retains active links with the FPI, and although its association with LM is far more murky, being through military intelligence, the LM was armed with standard issue TNI weapons and uniforms during combat in Ambon.

There is an increasing view in Aceh that these organisations have not been brought in to help, but to act as a third force in the conflict between GAM and the TNI.

This view is supported by official Indonesian Government financing of the organisations to travel to Aceh. The strategy of introducing militias has proven effective where predominantly Javanese militias operate in central Aceh. But the Javanese have not been welcomed in the more populated coastal areas.

Hence the arrival of groups that some believe can appeal to the Islamic faith of the local population. Meanwhile, the TNI is trying to present GAM as the only security threat to the aid program. It has claimed that GAM guerillas have dressed as TNI soldiers and redirected refugees and aid. The TNI has a history of being less than frank about its own activities and it is unlikely that GAM has the capacity or interest in dressing as TNI, especially when it is currently under sustained TNI attack.

GAM declared a ceasefire the day after the tsunami struck, and says it has stuck to that despite being attacked (the two TNI losses have been acknowledged as being from "friendly fire").

The deteriorating security situation, therefore, appears to be largely of the TNI's making. The question is why at this time of great disaster?

Outsiders have had limited access to Aceh for many years and after May 2003 it was effectively closed off during the TNI's bid to finally crush GAM.

The TNI was initially reluctant to allow in foreign aid workers and it has been clear that it wants them to leave as soon as possible. As it did when the UN was bundled out of East Timor after the ballot in 1999, a deteriorating security environment provides the perfect justification to achieve that.

The TNI cannot conduct its campaign against GAM and many ordinary Acehnese with the eyes of the world fixed on it. Nor, under such scrutiny, can the TNI rake off a large share of the aid that is currently flowing in to Aceh, although even with their presence some TNI personnel are selling food aid to refugees. It has been a rule of thumb in Indonesia that only about 10 per cent of aid arrives where it is intended.

There are various unofficial "taxes", and inflated construction and transport costs by TNI companies. Aid officials in Aceh are hoping they can keep losses down to about 30 per cent.

Access to some of the hundreds of millions of dollars of aid money would, however, help fund the TNI's campaign in Aceh, which ran out of money in mid-2004. As a largely self-funded institution, the TNI has a quick eye for a dollar.

The TNI is also committed to containing GAM, at least to the extent that it only provides an excuse to maintain a military -- and business -- presence in Aceh. Therefore, if Aceh's security is now an issue, one need not look far for the principal cause.

[Damien Kingsbury is director of International and Community Development at Deakin University and author of Power Politics and the Indonesian Military (RoutledgeCurzon) and The Politics of Indonesia (third edition, Oxford). He recently completed an Australia Research Council project on TNI business activities.]

US, UN want Jakarta to clarify aid restrictions

Reuters - January 11, 2005

Banda Aceh -- Leaders in the international tsunami aid effort expressed concern about how curbs on the movement of workers and a deadline for foreign troops to leave would affect relief in Indonesia's worst-hit Aceh province.

On Wednesday, rich creditor nations meeting in Paris agreed to freeze debt repayments for all affected nations, freeing badly- needed funds for rehabilitation.

Indonesia is the nation worst hit by the December 26 earthquake and tsunami and owes about $48 billion. It would have to pay more than $3 billion in principal repayments alone this year -- about the same amount it says it needs to recover from the crisis.

"The suspension takes effect immediately," Jean-Pierre Jouyet, president of the Paris Club of creditor nations, told a news conference after the talks.

More than 106,000 died in Indonesia during the disaster, 30,000 in Sri Lanka, 15,000 in India and 5,300 in Thailand.

US officials said they were seeking clarification from Jakarta on a statement that it wanted the thousands of foreign troops helping organize the relief to leave by March.

The Indonesian government is edgy about a large foreign presence in an area where separatists have fought the army for three decades, although both sides have avoided major clashes since the tsunami.

"Obviously, I think that we want to make sure that there is rapid and immediate relief provided to all the affected persons," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

"And that remains a priority for the United States, as well as the international relief organizations in the area. And so we'll seek further clarification from Indonesia about what this means."

The United Nations said it had met Indonesian officials about restrictions announced on the movement of aid workers in Aceh.

Margareta Wahlstrom of Sweden, the deputy UN relief coordinator, met Indonesian officials to get clarification "and assess the operational impacts, if any, of this announcement," said Kevin Kennedy, a senior official in the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs.

Jakarta has said it cannot guarantee the safety of foreign workers outside the provincial capital Banda Aceh and the devastated city of Meulaboh, just 150 km from the epicenter of the magnitude 9 earthquake that set off the tsunami.

It has asked that they accept army escorts if moving outside these cities. "We certainly well understand there has been a conflict in Aceh for the last quarter of a century," said Kennedy. "However, we are concerned that any requirements that would create additional bottlenecks or delays or otherwise adversely reflect our operations need to be reviewed very carefully."

Indonesia backs off rebel claims

Associated Press - January 10, 2005

The Indonesian government said that separatist rebels were not infiltrating refugee camps in tsunami-hit Aceh province and were not responsible for a shooting near the main UN compound, contradicting assertions a day earlier by the country's military and police.

A top official also said the government and rebels were negotiating indirectly through a group of religious scholars in hopes of securing a lasting peace in a region that has been wracked by conflict for years.

The police and military's claims about the rebels Indonesia's army has been fighting for decades heightened worries for the security of the massive aid operation under way in northern Sumatra island, where more than 104,000 people died in the December 26 disaster.

But Welfare Minister Alwi Shihab, who is heading the country's relief effort, said a troubled Indonesian soldier, not a rebel gunman, was responsible for a burst of gunfire close to the main UN compound in the provincial capital Banda Aceh on Sunday. The soldier was in custody, Shihab said.

"I have a report from the [military] that a soldier was in a stressful condition and opened fire," Shihab said. "GAM [the rebel group] was not involved in this." The military had not said previously who it believed was responsible for the shooting, but police blamed the rebels.

Shihab also dismissed the military claim that rebels had infiltrated refugee camps, reported on Sunday by the Antara state news agency. "Banda Aceh is full of rumours these days," Shihab said. The military gave no details of the alleged infiltrations.

The Free Aceh rebels, known by the Indonesian acronym GAM, have been fighting a low-level war against Indonesian troops for an independent homeland in Aceh for more than 20 years. Indonesian forces are accused of brutality in the region and are widely despised. Officials regularly blame the rebels for shootings and violence in Aceh, even if there is little evidence of their involvement.

GAM declared a unilateral ceasefire in Aceh after a huge 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the province, and the military said it would not target suspected rebels during the emergency. However, there have been reports of clashes in recent days. The United Nations has said it does not believe aid workers were targeted in the shooting early on Sunday, in which no one was injured.

Shihab said the government was doing everything it could to secure the safety of the many foreigners in the region to help the disaster victims. "There is no need for extra precautions," he said. "Security is under control." He said the government was communicating indirectly with the rebels through a group of Muslim religious leaders and scholars.

"We do hope they will join efforts with us to rebuild Aceh," Shihab said. "The GAM side will not be easy to convince. I hope [the intermediaries] will be able to convince them." The religious leaders, Shihab said, are "trying to convince [the rebels] Aceh should be peaceful and prosperous." Shihab said other reports of violence around the province, previously blamed on rebels, were also the result of Indonesian soldiers cracking under pressure.

Survivors still without aid, two weeks after disaster

Agence France Presse - January 9, 2005

Concerns remained that an unknown number of tsunami survivors in Indonesia's Aceh province have not received any aid, two weeks after the disaster that killed more than 104,000 people there.

Aid groups reported the unprecedented humanitarian operation continued to gather momentum amid enormous logistical and infrastructure problems, but conceded some of the most desperate and isolated communities may not have been reached.

"It's impossible to estimate how many people we're feeding," Maria Theresa De la Cruz, head of relief operations in Indonesia for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), told AFP. "We don't know whether the food air-dropped is distributed in all areas. In some areas it's organised. In other areas, as soon as the chopper lands, everyone rushes there."

The IOM, which was one of the few foreign non-government organisations operating in Aceh before the December 26 disaster, is coordinating airdrops to areas cut off by road with the US navy.

Another prominent aid group conducting relief missions in Aceh, Oxfam, said there were over 100,000 people in 200 makeshift settlements across the province with populations ranging from 30 to more than 3,000.

Oxfam's regional advocacy coordinator, Mona Latzo, said a lack of coordination among aid groups and the Indonesian government meant there was no way of knowing how regularly some of the settlements were receiving aid.

"It's likely that many people have not received continued aid. With over 200 communities, it's very difficult to keep on top of who is getting what and when," Latzo told AFP.

In Meulaboh, an isolated city on the west coast where more than 28,000 people have died, relief workers said survivors who originally fled to higher ground were being forced by hunger to return to scavenge for food in the ruins.

"Groups of displaced persons continue to flow into Meulaboh from the surroundings," said Bertus Loun of Global Relief. "After no longer being able to find enough water or food [in the mountains], they have begun to walk towards the larger population centers."

The logistical problems at the two main airports serving as hubs for aid distribution throughout Aceh is also continuing to plague relief efforts. The airports -- in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh and the city of Medan in the neighbouring province of North Sumatra -- remain overwhelmed by the numbers of planes trying to deliver supplies, aid groups said.

Latzo said a flight carrying vital equipment for Oxfam arrived in Medan a week ago, but remained stuck there for five days as they could not get landing permission at Banda Aceh airport because of the massive congestion.

She said Oxfam eventually decided to bring the equipment in by truck, a much longer journey that was extended after one vehicle went missing for two days.

"The [aid distribution] situation has improved but we are still experiencing a good number of challenges and we are trying to be creative and think of many different ways to do our work," Latzo said.

The IOM also said it would begin a steady supply of road convoys from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta to Aceh on Monday to avoid the chaos at Banda Aceh airport. "These road convoys will result in more food becoming available. We are basically getting around the bottleneck at the airport," the IOM's spokesman for Indonesia, Chris Lom, told AFP.

Meanwhile, survivors receiving regular food and water at camps in and around Banda Aceh were experiencing the next painful stage of their recovery: looking for financial security with their homes, businesses and livelihoods destroyed.

"My life is in a mess now. Unless aid funds come to us directly and quickly, we may all have to bury ourselves together with the dead," 20-year-old Anita told AFP as she queued to collect a bowl of rice and potato at a relief centre.

Anita, who worked in a brick factory that was destroyed in the floods, said she would need 25 million rupiah (2,500 dollars) to rebuild her house and for other financial assistance. "But if you ask me what's in store in the future, I just don't know. I don't see any light unless we get some financial aid soon," she said.

TNI accused of selling food aid

Radio Australia - January 10, 2005

As the Aceh aid effort gathers pace, reports have been emerging from the battered province that Indonesian troops sent in to help distribute aid have instead been selling the supplies to the hungry and desperate victims of the tsunami. The Indonesian military meanwhile has claimed Acehnese rebels have themselves been blocking access to clean water supplies.

Presenter/Interviewer: David Mark

Speakers: Nurdin Abdul Rahman, Liaison Officer for Australian Acehnese Community; Damien Kingsbury, Deakin University

David Mark: Security has become a major issue in Aceh. Aid workers and foreign troops have been banned from much the province as battles continue between the TNI and the Aceh separatist movement. The TNI have accused the rebels of attempting to disrupt aid deliveries in Aceh.

Now come fresh accusations that the TNI, which controls most of the refugee camps in aid distribution centres in Aceh, is profiting from the aid pouring in. Nurdin Abdul Rahman is the liaison officer for the Acehnese Community of Australia and has extensive contacts in his homeland. He's been told by two Acehnese academics that TNI troops have been selling aid supplies intended for refugees in Lhokseumawe in Aceh's north.

Nurdin Abdul Rahman: Three days ago they found and they got information that TNI personnel in Lhokseumawe sold noodle, instant noodles to the victims. This instant noodles was supposed to be delivered freely to the victims, but these two professors who are taking money from the victims approached this military and asked why they ask for money but this military man kind of threatened him then.

David Mark: Are people paying for the food?

Nurdin Abdul Rahman: Yeah, some of them did pay, but some of them refused to pay because they didn't have money.

David Mark: Damien Kingsbury, the Director of the Masters Program in International and Community Development at Deakin University, has heard the same rumours, and set out to confirm the story via a contact in Banda Aceh.

Dmien Kingsbury: Yes, I've heard a number of stories about the TNI stockpiling food and distributing in selectively and indeed selling it to refugees. It seems that the staple that they're selling at the moment is dried noodles and they're selling these for about 500 rupia a packet or about 10 cents Australian.

David Mark: And have you had this confirmed?

Dmien Kingsbury: Yes, I've had it confirmed from a number of sources. In particular a university student who's a contact of mine in Banda Aceh has directly confirmed this.

David Mark: What did that student do to confirm these reports?

Dmien Kingsbury: He went to an aid distribution centre seeking the food and they said well yes, it's available, you have to pay for it, and he did, and that certainly happened.

David Mark: How is this actually operating? How are the TNI in the first instance getting the food and how are they selling it and where are they selling it?

Dmien Kingsbury: They're selling it through or from distribution centres. They're getting it directly from the Indonesian Government by way of aid from Indonesian Government to the Acehnese people, and also some of the supplies that are coming from the international community which are being stockpiled by the TNI, which are being warehoused by the TNI awaiting distribution are being pilfered or directly sold off.

The Australian Council for International Development and Care Australia both say they're unaware of the allegations that TNI has been selling food aid, but a spokesman for Care says their staff in Aceh would investigate.

Divisions over handling of Aceh security

Financial Times - January 10, 2005

Shawn Donnan in Jakarta and David Ibison in Banda Aceh -- The government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono threw open the doors to Aceh, the scene of a long-running separatist insurgency, in the days following the December 26 tsunamis that left more than 100,000 dead in the province, ending a de-facto ban on foreign aid groups working there.

Alwi Shihab, the minister in charge of aid efforts in Aceh said on Monday that open access would continue and played down any threat to security from rebels from the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM.

He said the government had begun "behind the scenes" negotiations with GAM using religious scholars as intermediaries. "The world is behind Aceh," he said, "and there is a momentum to reconcile and leave arms." However, a military spokesman, Colonel Ahmad Yani Basuki, on Monday accused GAM, which declared a ceasefire following the disaster, of "taking advantage of the situation" and disrupting aid efforts, and said the Indonesian military, or TNI, "must react".

"Starting from now, the TNI is increasing security to protect the humanitarian mission [and] smooth the aftermath of the disaster," Colonel Basuki said. "Without security there is not going to be any humanitarian mission." Some Indonesian officials have proposed restricting the movement of foreign aid workers to either Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, or Meulaboh, the west coast city nearest the epicentre of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake. International aid groups have also been told they will not be allowed to open offices outside those two cities, aid workers say.

The differences between the military and civilian government have escalated in recent days and present what could become a major obstacle to the delivery of aid in the province.

A December 2002 peace agreement in Aceh broke down after six months in large part because of efforts by hardliners within the Indonesian military to undermine it. Since then the province has been under what rights groups charge is an often brutal military control.

The fear among diplomats in Jakarta is that divisions between the TNI and the civilian government could lead to a similar scenario, whereby the TNI would seek to undermine aid efforts and retain its grip on the province.

"It's something we're watching very, very carefully. It's going to be a major issue in the coming months," said one diplomat. Moreover, the diplomat said, the risk of an attack on aid workers by GAM, which has never targeted foreigners in the past, remained small and "paranoia and further restrictions" were likely to "impede the humanitarian effort more than any potential violence".

An attack on aid workers "would be something you'd think the GAM commanders there would be trying to prevent," the diplomat said. "They want international attention and sympathy for their cause." Although there have been sporadic skirmishes between GAM and security forces in the past two weeks, the level of violence in Aceh has fallen significantly since the December 26 disaster.

Questions have also been raised about who is responsible for those incidents that have occurred.

Security forces blamed GAM for a weekend attack on a senior police official in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. But according to UN and Indonesian officials the incident was actually the result of a stressed soldier opening fire.

"To the best of our understanding this was a one-sided incident and there's no indication that it was directed in any way at the UN or the international aid community," said Daniel Ziv, a UN staffer in Banda Aceh.

A GAM spokesman, Sofyan Daud, insisted on Monday that rebels continued to abide by a ceasefire and accused the Indonesian military of "slander".

"They are worried about the presence of many foreign troops and international aid workers and are trying to worsen the situation in terms of the conflict and security," he told the Financial Times. The military, he said, "hope that all foreigners will get out as soon as possible".

[Additional reporting by Taufan Hidayat in Jakarta and Jake Lloyd-Smith in Banda Aceh.]

UN urges Aussie peace role in Aceh

Australian Associated Press - January 9, 2005

The Australian government should be more vocal about calling an end to hostilities in Aceh, the United Nations Association said.

Thousands of Acehnese have died in three decades of fighting against Indonesian troops over independence for the region, which is now coming to grips with the loss of more than 100,000 people in the Boxing Day tsunami.

The Indonesian military have admitted to continuing some elements of their operations against the Acehnese separatists despite the disaster. There have also been some reports of rebels firing on Indonesian soldiers protecting those involved in the aid effort.

UN Association national president and former Labor senator Margaret Reynolds said the federal government had a duty to ensure Australia's $1 billion aid package to Indonesia was used properly.

"It's an extremely strong response and therefore has to be recognised as such," Ms Reynolds told AAP. "But equally we have to, as a country, be absolutely vigilant as to how this aid package is used in Indonesia because of the situation in Aceh.

"And it seems quite extraordinary to me that fighting is continuing in the province where there's been such devastation. And I think that while recognising Australia's very positive and timely response ... the Australian government should be much more vocal about calling [for] a halt to military incursions against the Acehnese."

Ms Reynolds said Australia was now well placed to call for talks to ensure Aceh's long-term peace and prosperity, given the generous aid package and the world's focus on the region.

"Since East Timor, Australia and the UN and probably a number of other administrations like the US and even the Europeans has backed off over Aceh and West Papua [which is also seeking independence]," she said.

"I think Australia, having given so promptly, is now in a very strong position to call for peace talks and lead peace talks in this devastated region."

"Because there's been a natural disaster, the man-made disaster of conflict could be resolved as part of the rehabilitation and rebuilding process. It's no use rebuilding Aceh just to see it in conflict." But she said the priority should be immediate relief.

Rights group warn military impeding relief effort

Agence France Presse - January 8, 2005

Indonesia's military campaign to crush a long-running rebellion in Aceh and restrictions imposed on aid groups in the remote province are hindering disaster relief efforts, human rights groups warned.

Human Rights Watch called for the military to be stripped of its role in distributing relief supplies and escorting charity groups amid reports of tsunami survivors linked to the rebels being denied aid.

It also urged President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to revoke a state of emergency imposed in 2003 as part of a fresh military offensive in Aceh that banned non-government organisations and the foreign media from the province.

The restrictions have been loosened in the wake of the December 26 tsunami disaster, which has killed more than 101,000 people in Aceh, to enable relief efforts, but martial law remains in place.

In an open letter to Yudhoyono, Human Rights Watch executive director for Asia, Brad Adams, said many soldiers had performed a vital task in addressing the immediate needs of the survivors with dedication and compassion.

"Human Rights Watch appreciates the commitment of so many in the Indonesian armed forces to provide protection and assistance at this critical time," Adams said.

"However... it is important for duties to be handed over to the appropriate government agencies and experienced, professional aid organisations -- both national and international -- as soon as possible." Adams said aid groups were capable of delivering supplies in Aceh without the need of military escorts, and that soldiers would be more effective spending their time rebuilding roads.

"These organisations know well how to operate in areas of conflict and should be allowed to get on with their crucial tasks," he said.

"They should be allowed to deliver aid directly to populations in need, without military escort or presence, except where their physical security necessitates a military presence." Adams referred to reports that aid agencies had been pressured, and occasionally forced, to turn over aid to the military for delivery.

"We urge you to publicly issue instructions that any such practices be halted. There is no justification for agencies to be required to deliver aid via the military." He said non-government organisations had reported "that some in the army have not distributed humanitarian assistance in an impartial manner, denying help to perceived GAM supporters".

The GAM is the Indonesian acronym for the Free Aceh Movement, the rebel group that has been fighting for independence for the resource-rich province since 1976, with the conflict claiming thousands of lives.

The rebels and government forces both announced ceasefires in the days after the tsunamis struck, but there have been many reports of clashes since, with the military reporting at least three insurgents have been killed.

The military has accused the rebels of attacking aid convoys, an accusation vehemently denied by insurgent leaders who say they are only using their weapons in self-defence.

A coalition of human rights activists in Canada also expressed grave concern over the role of government forces in Aceh.

"It is completely unacceptable that the military is engaged in launching attacks against the civilian population and delivering relief aid at the same time," says Nancy Slamet, of the KAIROS' International Human Rights Program.

Alex Hill, of another Canadian rights group, Alternatives, accused the government of continuing to cover up its military offensive in Aceh.

"The Indonesian military is afraid to allow international aid organisations and journalists free access to the region because the military has been engaged in a dirty war there for many years," Hill said.

Military-rebel tensions complicate relief in Aceh

New York Times - January 8, 2005

Jane Perlez, Lamlhom -- In the shade of a stand of coconut trees, Basri Ahmad buried his 19-year-old son on Friday, a victim not of earthquake or ocean waves but of the civil conflict that sowed death in Aceh long before the recent devastation.

"This is a misunderstanding," Mr. Basri said of the death of his son, Andriansyah, one of seven men killed Thursday by soldiers. "I plan to ask the army for clarification."

But while the military commander of Aceh Province, Brig. Gen. Endang Suwarya, said he would investigate, he also had a ready answer for the killings. Despite the devastation, he said, "Aceh is still in conflict."

Such killings have been the hallmark of the long civil conflict in Aceh, but they have gone virtually unreported over the past two years as the military sealed the province and pressed its drive to put down the rebel movement, which is seeking independence for the region.

Now, in the aftermath of the disaster, there are increasing concerns that fresh clashes will disrupt the aid effort, and that fighting may intensify as the military takes advantage of the disaster to cement its control here.

If nothing more, the deaths demonstrate that the Indonesian military continues to patrol on a hair-trigger in a province where some 10,000 people have died in more than 25 years of strife.

While his father and mother maintained that Mr. Andriansyah was not part of the rebel movement, the tensions that have riven Aceh are evident even in the aftermath of a disaster that observers had hoped might bring all sides together.

"The Indonesian Army shoots people easily," said Mr. Andriansyah's mother, Mariana, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. "They are supposed to ask whether people are rebels or not."

Though the presence of some 40,000 government troops in Aceh helped in rescue efforts immediately after the tsunami on December 26, the army clearly remained unpopular in much of this village, 25 miles southwest of the provincial capital at Banda Aceh. Lamlhom was spared the worst destruction and had become a gathering point for refugees.

Before the tsunami hit, the government had declared Aceh effectively off limits to outside human rights groups, United Nations agencies, journalists and foreigners. But nature reversed in just days what years of fighting could not.

In recent years, the army has badly weakened the rebels, chasing fighters into the mountains and shattering their intelligence network. Many rebel leaders were imprisoned when martial law was imposed two years ago.

Last May, the government downgraded martial law to a "state of civil emergency," which officially put the police in charge rather than the military. But in fact, Acehnese say, the military continued to be the most important authority.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced this week that the United States would relax restrictions on aid to Indonesia's military, which has a spotty human rights record, and provide spare parts for cargo planes that can be used to bring aid to Aceh. While American officials say they were assured that the planes would be used for relief purposes only, in the chaos that prevails in Aceh, it may be hard to tell.

Some are hopeful that the disaster could change the dynamic in Aceh, an area that is rich in natural gas but remains one on Indonesia's poorest regions.

"If well handled, the relief effort could improve the government image and ease Acehnese resentment toward Jakarta, paving the way for a more serious discussion of grievances, including justice for past abuses," Sidney Jones, an expert on Indonesia, wrote Friday in The Asian Wall Street Journal.

But earlier this week, General Suwarya, the regional commander, left no doubt that the military intended to keep a tight grip on the province when he announced that soldiers would kill anybody looting goods from the ruins left by the tsunami.

In a sign that the army's role would be pervasive -- even in the long run of this aid effort -- the officer in charge of relief, Maj. Gen. Bambang Darmono, said soldiers would guard the large refugee camps where the United Nations plans to set up more permanent shelter to replace the ragged tents that protect many survivors now.

This week the head of the army, Gen. Ryamizard Ryacudu, ordered soldiers in Aceh to be on alert to secure all transport routes to prevent rebel activities. Aid officials said they hoped that the general's orders were not a prelude to military escorts for aid.

An official of Catholic Relief Services, Wayne Ulrich, said Friday that he was concerned that fighting between the rebels and the military could disrupt the relief effort. "I hope it doesn't put fear into the humanitarian community to the point that we can't get our job done," he said. So far, he said, the Indonesians have been generous in allowing aid trucks to go where they wanted, but it was far from clear how long this would last.

Several relatives of the men killed near here gave similar accounts of what happened. Ms. Mariana, Mr. Andriansyah's mother, said he had left their home at about 9 a.m. Thursday, explaining that he was going with friends to retrieve a motorcycle that had been buried in the muddy debris.

About 1 p.m., some villagers came to the house with news that soldiers were reporting her son had been shot, she said. They demanded that a relative go to identify and collect the body, she said.

She sent her son's uncle, Fadli, and he returned a little after sunset with the body. Her son had been shot in the crown of his head and below the right knee, she said.

"There was gunfire at Lampuuk between the army and GAM," General Suwarya explained, using the acronym for the Free Aceh Movement. "We got two weapons from them."

At a small all-male refugee camp not far from the house, one man, Zainun, told how he had been asked by the village leader to go to the site where the men were killed. His brother Basir had left the camp that morning saying he was going back to his village to salvage what he could from the ruins of their house.

Mr. Zainun lost his home, his wife and one child in the tsunami, and the loss of his brother in the shooting seemed too much. He wept as he told of being asked by the village headman, Ali, to go and identify his brother's body. "They were face up in a field of rice," he said of the dead men. "They were naked except for their underpants."

Mr. Zainun and another man from the refugee camp whose cousin was also shot said they buried the men in a makeshift grave.

But the village leader of Lamlhom, Mr. Ali, had a different version of what the dead men from the village had been up to. He basically accused them of being couriers. "They went to take some supplies, including cigarettes, to other rebels," he said. He was sure, he said, that Mr. Andriansyah was a member of the movement.

Annihilation to haunt generations

Washington Post - January 8, 2005

Peter S. Goodman, Meulaboh -- From the indentation her head left in the mud, the girl seemed about 5 years old. The soldiers recalled they found her face down under a collapsed brick wall.

A fluffy yellow Big Bird doll lay slumped across the earth six feet away, near a pink halter top bearing English words -- "Life Changes." Nearby, the soldiers found a man's driver's license. Whoever he was, he was probably dead, too.

Nothing else was known about the little girl extracted on Friday morning from the rubble of a house near the Suak Indrapuri mosque. She was found here on the coast of death, the isolated western side of the island of Sumatra that was closest to the epicenter of the powerful undersea earthquake 12 days ago. The quake unleashed an enormous tsunami that crashed into 12 nations and killed more than 147,000 people in the latest count.

The carnage inflicted elsewhere by the catastrophe, what happened here will evoke horror and amazement for generations to come. In a city of more than 100,000 people, somewhere between 25,000 and 35,000 perished in a single day, according to reports from government officials and aid workers.

The tsunami severed Meulaboh from the rest of the world, slicing into the coastal highway, a lifeline to the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. Along the road, houses were destroyed, fields turned into swamps, trees splintered and telephone and electrical lines downed.

The Indonesian soldiers who found the girl carried her to the road. Indonesian Red Cross volunteers wrapped her in black plastic sheeting, dropped her in a truck with other corpses, then drove her to a mass grave. They took no fingerprints and did not check for any special markings. In their hand-written report, they logged the finding only of another dead child.

Just before the sun dropped into the ocean, a bulldozer lifted more than 60 bodies into the pit. Without ceremony or funeral rites, the machine scooped earth on top of the pile. Without recognition that these unidentified people had been daughter or son or husband or mother to anyone, they were buried in a 10-by- 20-foot grave.

Death landed with such enormity that it disrupted the traditional rhythm of burial and mourning. So many bodies are waiting to be extracted from beneath collapsed buildings that Indonesian Army rescue crews have simply taken the bodies they've found and buried them en masse.

For predominantly Islamic communities already reeling from loss, the absence of physical remains has intensified the grief. Many people were left wondering what happened to their kin. Many will be left wondering forever.

"I know that all my family is gone, but we have to get the bodies," said Johansyah Alibasyah, who rode here on a motorcycle from his home nine hours away to try to recover the remains of his uncle and his three children. "We have to know where they are buried so we can visit them."

Water like a mountain

On higher ground, above the coast, a semblance of normalcy has taken hold. Markets are open again, offering fresh vegetables; restaurants sell fried rice wrapped in banana leaves. But much of the city remains a wasteland. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, with everyday items -- sewing machines, electric fans, concrete blocks, tires -- strewn about in a mud- covered mosaic.

"It was Armageddon," said Maisura Zainol, 30, who survived the waves on the second floor of her concrete house, even as dozens of her neighbors were washed to their deaths. "The water was like a mountain. We thought we were going to die."

On Korpri Street, a road near the beach lined with handsome, two-story houses, Diana, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, mourned the loss of her sister. She picked through the pile of boards that was her house, looking for whatever useful items she could scavenge.

She had been holding on to her sister tightly as they stood in the street when the water swept in around them, she recalled. She shouted an Islamic prayer, "There is no God but God." But the force of the water pried her sister from her arms. The next thing she knew, she was atop a neighbor's roof, floating. Her sister was gone.

A neighbor pushed the floating roof toward her house and she stepped off on her second floor, then grabbed onto the top of a tree. When a second wave came, it snapped the trunk and flung her to the ground.

She slogged through waist-deep water, through bodies and debris, across the street to a mosque. She took refuge there on the second floor, looking down as a third wave swept in. She watched it wash over people stuck out in the street.

What had been a relatively affluent neighborhood, home to civil servants and their families, was now a grisly swamp. A woman who lived next door was swept away by the wave. So was another in the next house down.

Through the afternoon and evening, a street where people often sat on their verandas taking in the salt air and the breeze off the ocean was filled with screams for help, calls to unseen relatives.

She listed the names of the friends she could not find, people who were almost certainly dead: "Jamali, Nonong, Sri. ... In normal times, when our neighbor dies, we visit their house and pray to God," she said. "We help in the funeral, we give them rice, some money, sit and have coffee."

Now, most people don't have houses. Rice comes in the form of a ration from a government aid station or a handout from one of the helicopters constantly buzzing overhead. Even the mosque across the street is closed, damaged by the water. "We can't do anything," she said.

But Diana at least has a semblance of peace denied to so many others here: Her family found her sister's body. On the evening of the first day, her brother-in-law carried his wife through waist-deep muck for an hour, then loaded her on to his motorbike and drove her to his house in a village above the damage. They washed her body and wrapped her in white cloth. Then they said their prayers and buried her.

Sense of siege

In the first days after the December 26 cataclysm, life here was dominated by the stench of rotting flesh, fear of another wave and a desperate sense of siege, according to survivors.

The first international aid reached the city on January 2. A Singapore armed forces medical team flew in by helicopter with 11 doctors and 21 support staff. One of the city's two hospitals had been completely destroyed. The other was standing, but nearly all of the staff members were dead or busy searching for missing relatives. An Indonesian medical team had arrived, but lacked equipment.

The Singapore crew found about 20 people standing outside the hospital who had broken bones and other injuries from flying debris. In four refugee camps in the city, they found people with cuts, gangrene, tetanus, fever and diarrhea. From surrounding towns and villages, people came seeking medical help. "People are walking five days from the outskirts to come and see us," said one of the Singaporean physicians, Sean Leo.

Tens of thousands of survivors took refuge in more than two dozen camps set up around the city, according to Jean-Sebastian Matte, a logistics coordinator with the French aid group Doctors Without Borders.

At the Ah-Noor mosque, near the city center, the Friday afternoon call to prayer typically draws 500 people. About 700 arrived on this day, prostrating themselves in reverence, then listening to the imam, Syarifuddin Baharuddin, describe the disaster as vengeance from an angry God.

"This was caused by our sins," the imam said afterward in an interview, noting that the earthquake and tsunami came a day after Christmas. "Some Muslim people celebrated Christmas, they drank alcohol and they danced on the seashore in violation of the Muslim way. This was a big mistake."

Mass graves

In the first three days after the disaster, Indonesian Red Cross and army rescue teams carried corpses to a makeshift morgue at a city hospital, allowing families to come and identify their dead. But the number of bodies quickly overflowed the space. The order came to take them directly to mass graves.

Sabiri Yusuf, a Red Cross volunteer was dumping corpses -- 59 in two hours -- into one pit next to a cemetery. The graves had been stripped bare by the torrent, leaving only the markers. "The bodies are so destroyed that we can't identify them," he said.

The Red Cross plans to launch a service to help relatives find remains, "after everything is quiet, everything is back to normal," said Gene Sudiartha, head of the organization's effort here. But he said rescue crews were taking no steps to identify the bodies they recovered and simply dumping them into the graves without markings.

On Friday evening, as a giant rainbow soared overhead, Roslaini Ismail, 44, arrived in Meulaboh with her family following a two- day journey down a treacherously muddy road to inspect the wreckage of her mother's house. "We haven't found the bodies yet," she said, as her 6-year-old daughter plucked a working flashlight from the ruins.

For Lan Xiang, the gnawing sense of incompleteness comes every day, as she sits on her porch looking out toward the empty patch of mud that was her brother's house. On the day when everything changed, she took refuge upstairs, on the second floor of her house, above the Chinese restaurant she operates with her family. She stood at her window, safely perched above the onrushing water and watched something she will never forget: Her older brother, Li Jun, and his 18-year-old son, tried to escape on a motorbike. They were too late. She watched the giant wave take them.

When the water receded, Lan and her family began sifting through the debris for sign of the two men. They never found them, and never bothered to make a missing person's report at the local army base. "Waste of time," Lan said. She holds out little hope that she will ever see their bodies, though she wants to bury them in the family cemetery in Meulaboh.

But the one thing that deprives her of peace is what is going on a half-mile away, where bulldozers drop unknown people into the ground. They could be her people. They could be anybody. "If we don't have the remains, we have an unsettled feeling," she said. "As if we don't really know what happened."

Washed off the map, Acehnese chart uncertain future

Reuters - January 8, 2005

Dan Eaton and Achmad Sukarsono, Banda Aceh -- Drive south from this devastated city and the road just stops.

Ahead lies territory whose features have been erased -- just like the hopes and plans of hundreds of thousands of its residents left homeless by the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Tarmac is peeled off roads for kilometres down the western coast of Aceh province, on the northern end of Indonesia's Sumatra island, which bore the brunt of the tsunami's force.

Old maps of these parts no longer apply. There is water where once was land, flat earth where once were town. Plans are now being laid for new communities and new names on maps.

"If I went back, I don't know if I could even find my street. Nothing's there. If I was to say 'that land is mine', I couldn't prove it. Where are the boundaries?" said Budi, 50, of Banda Aceh, as he waited at the airport for a military flight to the city of Medan, some 450 km to the southeast and away from the destruction.

"We just want out," he said, indicating his wife and three small children perched on the sweltering apron of the runway with dozens of other refugees.

In Banda Aceh, the provincial capital of some 300,000 people, a line was carved diagonally, southwest to northeast, by the massive waves triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake on December 26. North of the line, roughly half of this staunchly Muslim city, known by Indonesians as "The Veranda of Mecca," is a wasteland. No homes. No suburban streets. Just a flat expanse of mud, splintered wood and twisted metal as far as the eye can see.

Residents who survived the killer water now huddle by the thousand in makeshift refugee camps and on roadsides around the city.

The United Nations and Indonesian authorities have begun preparing relocation camps that could eventually hold up to 500,000 people as new permanent communities are built.

"We prefer a new place. We want new homes. Our old place doesn't exist any more. It has become sea," said Ibnu Yusri, who lost his wife and child along with his home in the devastated port area of the city.

Others said they hope to return to rebuild their old communities. "Our houses have been flattened to the ground. We want to go back, but at the moment the bodies are still rotting beneath the rubble," said Marjani, whose husband and two children were among the more than 100,000 Acehnese killed by the quake and tsunami. "I'm not sure what we can do. This place will always remind us of the disaster."

Back to business

The United Nations and Indonesian government hope to open the first relocation camps by next week, starting with four in the Banda Aceh area. "We will start with temporary relocations. But, at the same time, we have plans to set up community development settlements, compounds for the more permanent settlement for the internally displaced persons," said chief social welfare minister Alwi Shihab.

"The people themselves are willing to move into a better environment. We will ensure that the camps meet all their requirements. Security, sanitation and purified water."

But UN officials stress the process must be voluntary. "No person should be displaced by force. It must all be done on a voluntary basis," said Michael Elmquist, the UN coordinator for humanitarian assistance in Indonesia.

In Banda Aceh, parts of the city have already returned to a semblance of normality. Food markets are open, traffic lights are working and many shops and restaurants are doing a roaring trade, even as other parts of the city rely on the massive flow of international aid arriving at the airport.

But outside the city, the situation remains desperate, with some areas yet to receive aid nearly two weeks after the killer waves. Pilots and aid workers running helicopter missions down the west coast say in some parts even the geography has changed. Areas that used to be land have been reclaimed by the sea, new contours that feature on no maps.

In some places, officials say whole towns, where almost the entire population and all infrastructure are gone, may have to be abandoned. "The only way to describe some of the villages is 'extinct'," said Scott Cohick, a US marine helicopter pilot. "The roads are gone and they won't be able to plant rice there for a very long time."

Jakarta slow to meet huge challenge

Melbourne Age - January 8, 2005

Matthew Moore, Banda Aceh -- Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has labelled the tsunami calamity "the greatest challenge of my presidency so far".

For a man who has been in office less than three months, it was an odd remark but also a sign of how difficult it has been for Indonesia's Government to understand and respond to what has happened in Aceh.

In the first hours after the tsunami, countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh issued appeals for international aid. But no request was made in Indonesia on the Sunday, even though the tsunami struck at 8.25am and many of the 40,000 soldiers and police in affected areas had direct communication with Jakarta.

It wasn't until Tuesday that Vice-President Jusuf Kalla met a group of ambassadors. He later said he would welcome foreign aid, without actually calling for help. By then, many of those critically injured were dead. But even if there had been an immediate call for help, there was little prospect of saving them because of Aceh's isolation.

Physical isolation was only part of the problem. The 30-year separatist war has seen foreigners all but banned from the province. The idea of suddenly allowing them in required a huge change in Government thinking.

The Indonesian and foreign aid effort has been slow, although the arrival of nine ships from the US Navy has finally brought supplies to isolated west coast towns.

Co-ordination has been plagued with problems, including Indonesian air-traffic controllers in Banda Aceh unable to handle the volume of traffic but unwilling to accept help. Government advisers acknowledge this and other bottlenecks, and a new air co-ordination committee should finally fix the problem.

The media have criticised the Government for the lack of co- ordination and its financial response, with a Jakarta Post editorial labelling emergency spending in Indonesia's third- poorest province as "stingy".

Even so, there is no evidence that Dr Yudhoyono is in political trouble because of his Government's belated response. The many foreign leaders who came to his summit on Thursday seem certain to restore his standing as a decisive leader.

The difficulty ahead will be rebuilding the shattered province where around 100,000 have been killed. Plans are under way to build permanent refugee camps for at least 250,000 of those who lost houses.

The tsunami also filled wells with salt water, poisoned farmland and swept away irrigation, water and sanitation systems. From the air you can see roads disappearing into the sea.

Despite this massive damage, the Asian Development Bank has made no change to its forecasts for economic growth in Indonesia because the oil and gas facilities in Aceh were unscathed.

This crisis will mainly affect poor coastal farmers and fishermen, not Indonesia's wealthy elite, a fact that will diminish the impact of any criticism of the Government's failures in dealing with the crisis.

The tiny tourism businesses offering surfing and diving have been wiped out, but they might benefit as aid workers moving into Aceh begin looking for recreation on days off.

With so many aid workers arriving, many of the poor face a new problem as the price of goods rises quickly thanks to a flood of aid money.

Divisions hinder Indonesia's aid relief

BBC News - January 8, 2005

Jonathan Head, Banda Aceh -- Indonesian soldiers say their tsunami relief work in the province of Aceh is being hindered by clashes with the rebels who have been fighting a bitter separatist conflict. The rebels in turn accuse the military of using the disaster as a pretext for a renewed offensive.

Indonesian soldiers have a new task -- disposing of the dead I counted more than 60 bodies packed in a mass of floating debris in the river below me. And I did not know what to think any more. Each one was so grossly bloated it bore no resemblance to the human being it had once been.

Squads of Indonesian soldiers moved around in rubber dinghies, hooking the corpses with ropes and pulling them back to the bank, where they were packed into body bags. At least they had body bags now, a few days earlier they had simply been leaving them uncovered in rows beside the road.

They did their work quietly, and they were watched by a silent crowd on the bridge.

And then I looked again, and I saw one of the corpses was wearing a bra. It was someone's mother, sister or wife. And another, smaller, was in a striped t-shirt and underpants, somebody's daughter. And I could not look anymore.

Nor could some of the bystanders on the bridge. Nearly everyone here has lost numbers of close relatives. Really lost them. This was a natural phenomenon so brutally destructive it almost seems evil.

Huge loss

They are probably dead, but their bodies are among the piles that are being dumped into mass graves outside the town, or crushed under mounds of concrete and mud, or floating in the river.

They will never be identified, never properly buried, just mourned without ceremony by survivors too shocked to make sense of their loss.

How are we supposed to report a human tragedy of this magnitude? The words and phrases used to capture the scale of previous disasters seem hopelessly inadequate this time.

And there is no one to blame, no failures to rectify that could prevent a recurrence. This was a natural phenomenon so brutally destructive it almost seems evil. Some parts of Aceh have been literally flattened by the disaster

Standing on the bridge and staring out at the mangled, foul- smelling mess of upturned cars and smashed fishing boats, and rubble stretching for miles, in what had once been a substantial neighbourhood, I found myself unable to imagine the power of something that could do all this, nor the terror of the people caught up in it.

You can see all the detritus, the evidence of once normal lives. Shoes, clothes, plates, toothbrushes, photographs, torn and tossed together in a ghastly grey wasteland. It seems so appallingly unfair.

Conflict and trauma

Aceh had already been dealt a lousy hand before the disaster, its people caught in a vicious war between separatist rebels and the Indonesian army.

It was a conflict the world took little notice of, even though thousands were killed. Sealed off from help by martial law, Aceh is one of the poorest regions of Indonesia, ill-prepared to deal with destruction on this scale.

Countless Acehenese, I have spoken to, have asked what they could have done to offend God. These are, for the most part, devout Muslims. But nothing in their religion explains the suffering they have had to endure.

The world is here now. Colin Powell, has visited areas ravaged by the tsunami. No one wants to miss the chance to take part in the most dramatic natural disaster of modern times, one day US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the next UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The Acehenese have never experienced such international scrutiny before. Everywhere the TV crews scour the faces of the displaced in search of the personal tragedies that will bring the scale of this disaster home to their viewers.

You do not have to look far. Every face tells a story, some so harrowing you wonder how these people have kept their wits. Some have not. Trauma is etched in the hollow eyes of many victims. They are also bewildered by the relief effort, no one has ever cared about them before.

The Acehenese are proud of their defiant history, fighting long wars against the Dutch, the Japanese and now the government in Jakarta, for more independence.

They have learnt to bear their suffering well, but I have just had a 56 year-old man sobbing uncontrollably in my arms, after telling me about his two sons, both missing, almost certainly among the countless unnamed corpses.

They are also bewildered by the relief effort, no one has ever cared about them before. Certainly not their own government, which has sanctioned the harshest tactics by Indonesian soldiers to suppress their separatist dreams. The temporary camps that have been established in almost every school, mosque or building are largely run by the displaced inhabitants themselves, with modest help from Indonesian volunteer groups.

They seem astonished to hear that so many people in the rest of the world want to help.

'Long-term presence'

But just how far is our commitment to the people of Aceh going to go? We, the news media, will be gone in a couple of weeks. And if the Indonesian government re-imposes its ban on foreign journalists, we will not be back.

Recovery from the devastating tsunami will take years. The UN and the aid agencies say they must be allowed a long-term presence to help get Aceh back on its feet, but that still depends heavily on the co-operation of the Indonesian military, which really runs this province.

That co-operation could come at a price, of funds siphoned off, of soldiers directing the flow of aid away from areas considered sympathetic to the rebels. The army's presence here is strikingly visible. Already there are signs they are moving in to control the relief effort.

That is not to say the aid workers are not making a difference. After a shaky start, life saving assistance is getting through to tens of thousands of victims, often through superhuman efforts. But when I tell the Acehenese the international community is going to help them get their lives back together, they ask me when.

Who is going to give them the money to rebuild their houses, their shops and fishing boats, who should they ask. And I tell them to be patient, it will come.

But knowing Aceh's wretched history of war, abuse and corruption, I cannot be sure that even now, they will not be disappointed.

West Papua

Papuan separatists on trial for treason

Jakarta Post - January 13, 2005

Nethy Dharma Somba, Jayapura -- Two Papua opposition leaders went on trial separately on Wednesday at the Jayapura District Court for treason.

Prosecutor Maskel Rambolangi said defendant Yusak Pakage, 26, led a ceremony to commemorate the self-declared Papua independence day on December 1 last year.

The defendant has been charged with treason, which carries a maximum sentence of death.

The prosecutor said Yusak also led a meeting on Nov. 28 that discussed preparations for the flag-raising ceremony.

He said the meeting at the Cenderawasih University Museum was attended by some 20 people.

The flag-raising ceremony was illegal because it supported the establishment of an independent Papua state, separate from Indonesia, said the prosecutor.

In leading the ceremony, Yusak damaged the sovereignty of Indonesia, according to the prosecutor.

The ceremony, which was held at the Trikora field in Jayapura, was attended by hundreds of people, who scuffled with police officers.

Yusak was not represented by lawyers at the hearing. However, the judges allowed the trial to proceed after the defendant agreed to hear the charges against him.

The trial of Filep Karma, 45, who was also arrested following the flag-raising ceremony, was adjourned until next week after Filep refused to attend the hearing without legal representation.

Yusak and Filep were the only suspects arrested following the ceremony.

Separatists have regularly commemorated Papua independence day since president Soeharto stepped down from office in 1998. However, since 2001 the government has been cracking down on expressions of independence in Papua.

Feature: The Money Trees

Sydney Morning Herald - January 9, 2005

Matthew Moore and Karuni Rompies -- They look like barbeque chips or mulga roots and exude a comforting smell drifting between fresh timber and flowers. Burn them and they produce rich smoke said to warm the lungs and drive out asthma. Distil them and they'll produce oil so potent it can perfume a beard for weeks.

This is gaharu, lumps of resinous, aromatic wood now in such demand that the best specimens can ring more per ounce than gold. In the southern tribal swamplands of the Indonesian province of West Papua (formerly Irian Jaya), gaharu fever has hit hard.

Whole tribes are leaving their villages to comb the jungles in the hunt for the perfumed wood that brings instant access to a new world of liquor, gambling and sex.

Each discovery of a patch of forest rich with the fungus-infested trees brings a wave of new fortune-seekers. In the remote riverside towns, bars and gambling joints have sprung up in places where missionaries' churches once dominated. Traders from Java and Sulawesi have arrived with fair-skinned prostitutes to take upriver where their services are swapped for choice bits of gaharu gathered by Papuan collectors.

Southern Papua is so close to Australia that its canoes regularly wash up on our northern coastline.

Buts its vast tangle of rivers has kept roads and visitors out and it remains one of Indonesia's most remote and inaccessible quarters where such developments take place far from view.

The arrival of missionaries in the 1950s gave the world its first glimpse of this region dominated by Asmat tribes. It quickly became famous for their spectacular woodcarvings, for totem poles five metres high carved with chains of tiny figures clambering skywards, for intricately worked shields and for elaborate prows on huge dugout canoes.

It was these spectacular works that brought Mark Rockefeller, brother of the then New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, to the region 43 years ago. He was at the mouth of the river Betsj collecting art for a new York exhibition when his boat broke down midstream. After waiting all night, he set out for shore.

Although a strong swimmer and a young man, the spectacle wearing Rockefeller was never seen again, prompting worldwide headlines that he had been caught and eaten by headhunters. The media contingent that flew in with his brother found no conclusive evidence, although talk of a white man's skull and a pair of glasses (virtually unknown in the area at the time) continued in the villages for years.

As in Rockefeller's day, travel through the swamps is still by dugout canoe, except for the new crowd of rich outsiders who have the money to get around in banged-up speedboats powered by specially made kerosene outboards that use the heavily subsidized cooking fuel. Headhunting and cannibalism have long since stopped, but the area remains unpredictable, something we were reminded of when approaching a canoe well upriver to ask permission to take photographs

As usual, the two oarsmen were standing upright as they paddled. But as we slowly got closer, one briefly dropped to the bottom of the boat and sprang up a moment later, his right arm already straining to hold back the rattan bowstring behind the arrow he was ready to fire at us. As we ducked instinctively, the skipper of the boat sped off and explained what had happened, 'He's scared because there's a wharf being built down the river and there's a story that the builders need some human heads as a sacrifice. He was scared that we were coming to take his.'

If you pick the right tides and can find enough kero on the river, six or eight hours in such a boat will get you from Agats, the capital of the Asmat region, upstream to Eci, the current gaharu hot spot.

Until a few years ago, Eci was so small it's not even on the few maps of the area. Now it has swelled to become the biggest settlement in the vast mangrove swamp that is southern Papua. It's a booming frontier town with no real roads or cars but plenty of satellite dishes, where scores of shops sell axes, spades and pressure lamps to new waves of gaharu hunters, and each week throws up another rough-sawn timber and corrugated iron building to sell TV's stereos or sex.

At last count there were nine brothels in Eci b believe the local police chief. Liquor is freely available and drunks stagger home by night and day.

The sand track that serves as Eci's main street is lined with tiny shops owned mainly by Chinese traders from Java or by Bugis ( traders from South Sulawesi).

From each open doorway floats the thick, sweet smell of gaharu made by scores of men sitting inside, where they scrape away earth from the piles of roots the collectors bring in (the best gaharu occurs in the wood, but fungus infested roots are also harvested). With the dirt removed, the gaharu is placed on tarpaulins and dried outside in the tropical sun before grading. This street is Eci's financial heart where shops have sacks of gaharu stacked against walls like bank vaults packed with cash.

Eci is awash with money and the police and soldiers from the local military base are taking their usual cut, receiving 'security fees' from the traders to ensure that their gaharu reaches its destination in far-off Jakarta or Singapore. Such payments are not bribes, the traders tell you, just gifts given in a culture where refusal would be impolite.

Gaharu is its Indonesian or Malay name, but it is also called eaglewood, aloeswood, agarwood and jinkoh and is sometimes confused with sandalwood, which is not found in Papua. Once common across much of Asia, gaharu has disappeared even faster that the region's tropical forests. Most is sold through Singapore where dealers like Mr C.P. Ng supply the world market.

It's 40 years now since he started buying it from Assam, in north-east India before stocks ran low.- 'When it ran out there the trade moved to Bangladesh, to Indochina, then to peninsular Malaysia, to

Sumatra, Kalimantan and then to Irian Jaya and Papua New Guinea. When there's no more there, and nowhere else to go, maybe we have to go to South America', he jokes.

Gaharu is really a form of natural incense and it has been traded for at least 1000 years. It is mentioned in the Bible, is a key ingredient in some traditional medicines and is highly valued in Muslim and Buhddist ceremonies. Most of it is sold to the Middle East, where it is called simply 'ud' (or 'ood') b and where it is used in everyday life as well as religious festivals.

In Yemen, men dab gaharu oil onto their beards and their shirts, the distinctive scent surviving three or four washes. They add it to tobacco mix in water pipes and burn it to impart a fragrant woody smell to clothes. A Yemeni man explained to American author Eric Hansen why it was so sought after: "When you walk by woman in the street and you smell 'ud, you know that she is from a good family. It is a sign of wealth, good breeding, refinement and status".

In visits to the royal families in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, Ng found gaharu used in a big boiler 'to give the whole palace a good smell'. The smoke, he says, "keeps the whole body warm .. and it's good for sex problems."

As supplies run down, the price has climbed. Ng classifies gaharu in a up to a dozen different grades, with top quality super AA weighed on jewellers' scales and selling for about $A2700 a kilogram. From Vietnamese trees hundreds of years old comes the most highly prized gaharu, called keena or kannam, which Ng says now brings $A24,000 to $A27,000 a kilo. This thick black gaharu is so dense that it sinks in water and to ensure none of its precious smack escapes, Ng stores what he can find in special airtight containers. With so much of the gaharu trade unregulated, it is difficult to know the size of the market but Ng estimates that gaharu worth more than $A 1.6 billion goes through Singapore each year.

In cyberspace, Western businesses offer gaharu for sale at up to $20,000 a kilo. Enfleurage, an aromatherapy store based in New York's Greenwich Village, attributes almost supernatural powers to it and the oil it produces. 'Deep, rich, earthy and personal, its sweet yet sharp balsamic woodiness will enter you through all of your senses. Beyond a pleasant smell, a drop of agarwood will softly invade your lungs, your mind, your body and spirit taking total possession of you .. the body heats, the heart expands, other scents retreat in the presence of oud. Oud is sexuality, passion, ecstasy and love".

The source of this unusual wood is certain species of Aquilaria trees, once reasonably common in Asia's lowland forests before they were felled in the hunt for the treasure within. Many trees were cut unnecessarily, as most do not contain the dark woody resin that can take decades to form. No one knows why, but trees recovering from injury seem to be the ones that develop gaharu, in the heartwood of the tree that is normally white.

Professor Robert Blanchette, from the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota, has

spent 10 years studying the reasons some Aquilaria trees contain gaharu and has managed to produce it in plantation trees that have been deliberately injured.

Working with the Rainforest Project Foundation, his team has been conducting experiments in Vietnam, Thailand, Bhutan and PNG, hoping new trees might replace the old-growth gaharu- bearing trees that have almost all gone.

He says gaharu in the experimental new trees grows quickly, has an "extremely fine aroma" and might eventually provide a commodity for poor farmers in rural areas. In the meantime, the gaharu hunters in Papua are going flat out to grab what's left.

In the tiny regional capital of Agats, a boardwalk town built on piles above the coastal mudflats, a Papuan man in his late 20s explains what happened when gaharu fever hit.

With no jobs, Lukas and his wife Paula (not their real names) were quick to join the early expeditions in the late 1990s. They joined friends taking longboats upriver and set up base camps in the forests, which soon grew into little towns with shops and food stalls servicing the mainly Papuan collectors.

The routine was always the same. Villagers built bamboo-framed shelters, lined them with sago leaves, then set off to gather the treasure. "We could make millions of rupiah in one day, sometimes one million ($A150) in one hour", Lukas recalls. But they never knew if they received fair prices because all transactions were done in the forest with police and soldiers on hand to provide "security" for the traders, who paid then to attend.

"When the Bugis came into the forest to buy, they were always accompanied by TNI [soldiers] in plain clothes who bought their rifles", he says, "So we couldn't bargain about the price because we were afraid of the TNI."

"If we asked for a higher price the TNI would get violent and threaten us, but sometimes, if the locals knew how to deal with the TNI, we could get a little bit more."

They never saw anyone shot or injured by the soldiers but the risk was there. sometimes we got drunk and fought and the TNI would fire warning shots into the air", says Lukas, who fears repercussions from TNI members still in Agats if his real name is published.

Paying soldiers was just one way the traders managed to keep the prices down. "In the early days we exchanged gaharu for the women", Lukas says.

Paula says that the pale-skinned prostitutes the traders brought with them from Java and Sulawesi were irrestible to the dark- skinned Papuans. "They all went to them; they were pretty, and at the time people had not seen women like that", she recalls, "even the old men would go after them".

But as the gaharu stocks dwindled around Agats, the town has grown quieter, the brothels have closed and the gaharu hunters have moved on, upriver to places like Eci.

Tadeus Hanahagi says he was the first person there to find gaharu when the commander at the military post showed him some wood from Borneo and asked if similar trees grown locally, A member of the Auyu tribe, the traditional owners of the land around Eci, Tadeus says the commander explained "inside this tree you can find something valuable."

"I told him that it came from a koro tree, which we have always used to get long strips of bark to weave into bags." After searching in the forest, Tadeus says that he found 130 kilograms of gaharu and took it to the post commander who gave him 10,000 rupiahs a kilogram, or about $200 for the lot.

"I bought a Polytron radio cassette player and then someone borrowed it and turned it on and then everyone knew that I had money and since then more people have been going into the woods to find gaharu.

Soon the post commander did not have enough money to purchase the gaharu, so Chinese traders came and the alcohol arrived and soon after that the prostitutes came b like a city, we had karaoke, girls, things that never existed."

Eci is a town split in two, Although the terrain is dead flat, everyone calls the two halves "up" and "down".

The old village, two kilometers inland from the river bank, is up. It's where the original Papuan villagers have lived for decades in simple huts now roofed with tin. The sago and jackfruit plants dotted around the place provide some of the food, and men still fish and hunt pigs with bows and arrows. If they weren't out chasing gaharu, they'd still go to the little Catholic church.

New Eci is down, a sprawling settlement by the riverbank where the split trunks of coconut palms form makeshift footways through the mud, leading to the karaoke bars and gambling houses.

Sheltering from a savage sun under a tree, the head of the old village, Matius Hanahagi, sits on his bench in the dust and contemplates the lumps of gaharu on the table in front of him. "Everyone in the family goes searching for this and once they have it, the men take it down, over there, to sell," he says with a wave of his arm. "Then they go gambling. They can spend two million ($A300) instantly. They are not used to getting money. Once they have, they get drunk and go to the brothel."

As he slowly and deliberately makes his points, those in the village who are not our gathering gaharu gather round, anxious to back up his stance. Their anger is clear, especially in the faces of the women who complain that they are losing their men.

"It's a lie if the police said there's no prostitution here", calls one woman standing barefoot in the dirt. "We discussed the prostitution problem with the pastor but he can't do anything".

"Every week the police receive 1.5 million [rupiahs] from the gambling and the alcohol." calls out a mother with a child on her hip.

"If the police chief comes from Merauke, they will usually close everything up for two days," a young man says. "This is their pantry, you cannot solve the problem, The police control everything here" another shout.

A proud grandmother in her 40's, Devota Armi badly wants to explain the impact the discovery of gaharu has had on her community. "At the time, in the 1990's we were very naA/ve, there was a lot of alcohol and night life and then husbands abandoned their wives and children."

Her husband stayed but she has watched many of her friends as their families broke up, including one female relative. "Here husband loves to stay in the bar now. They have one child, aged two and the father is always drunk, the bar is his second home. Gaharu men, they go into the woods for a week or two. He leaves his wife at home and when he gets back he goes straight to the bar."

While most in Eci want life to return to the simpler ways of the past, Devota Armi agrees that some like the new life, including some of the men who complain most loudly. "Small people like us want this unhealthy night life to be stopped, although there are probably some who love bars and gambling and women. There are two opinions among the people."

Pastor Decky Ogi has spent two years working at the little St Yosep's Catholic church now reckons gaharu now provides 80% of the town's income. He readily admits ht he has failed to stop the impact of the gaharu business.

"Kid's don't go to school now, they go to the wood to search for gaharu, they get money so they don't see any need to go to the school. The teachers also get only small incomes, and things are expensive, so some teachers don't teach anymore, they go looking for gaharu instead. Their salaries are 700,000 to one million rupiahs a month [$A100 to $A150], but in two weeks searching for gaharu they can get 10 million."

Two years ago his complaints prompted the deputy regent of the regional capital Merauke to make the long trip to investigate Eci.

"He came, he closed the hotel where the prostitutes worked and he replaced the police chef but now it is happening again," says Ogi. "They have the authority but there is no political will. They behave as f they can do nothing. Are the police so stupid they don't know what' going on, or are they part of the problem ?" He has reported what is happening in reports to his bishop in Merauke, hoping to force the regional government to act. But the involvement of the police and the army in the illegal business has defeated him.

Hundreds of kilometers from Papua New Guinea, way upriver, Eci seems a strange place to even have an army base. The soldiers are there thanks to former Soeharto, who left behind a territorial command system where the army has a presence in every town across the country. Suharto said soldiers were needed to guard against internal threat. The old dictator might have gone but his system remains, the big money made in resource-rich Papua ensuring its survival.

As well as "security fees" for providing the safe transport of gaharu, soldiers in Eci impose their own taxes on the flourishing illicit businesses, taking 200,000 rupiahs ($A30) for each ton of beer that's brought in, according to locals.

The officer responsible for the Eci troops, Lieutenant Colonel Paulus from Merauke, seems surprised buy questions about gaharu and refuses to give his full name. He has received "no reports" of his men working in the business. Asked if his men ever go to the forests with the local gaharu collectors, or work as middlemen for the traders, he replies, "I'll check".

Like everyone in Eci, the head of the local government, Yohannes Sumbung, knows how the game works. In theory he is the boss of the police chief but after 10 years in the town, he's not about to make enemies by taking him on. He agrees most of the community want him to close the bars and brothels, but he lacks the will and perhaps the power to do so.

Asked bluntly who really benefits from these businesses he replies: "We can't say who's behind then but there's sure to be someone who we know and it's someone stronger than the government", he says, breaking into a smile. "Yu know who it is and we know."

Just before sunset, when the sting has gone from the sun, Eci's Police Chief Riyanto likes to ride his motorbike though his town, visiting the gaharu traders, casting an eye over the bars. With no real roads, there are few motorbikes in Eci, but Riyanto has one of them. He is freshly showered, his white singlet highlighting his ample brown biceps, his authority further enhanced by his holstered handgun, six spare bullets snug in black leather rings.

Down at the aptly named Rizky karaoke bar, the owner Iwan knows who's in charge of his business.. Te day that we visit he has told Fanny from Blitar in east Java and the other girls to take the day off. "Riyanto told us to close the bar for a day or two because his boss was coming from Merauke", Iwan says. "Usually he sends one of his officers Pak [Mr] Piet to tell us when we can re-open."

Riyanto refuses to be quoted in the article, to discuss gaharu or who makes money from it. Still the diamond rings on both hands and his gold wristwatch suggests that he enjoys an income well beyond his monthly salary of $A200. He may not talk openly about gaharu but he clearly knows the business, proudly producing a key ring made from a lustrous, golf-ball sized lump of the best black gaharu we saw anywhere in Papua,

In towns dotted through the forests of Southern Papua, women have fought the same battles repeatedly when gaharu fever hits, the liquor and prostitutes arrives and the communities disintegrate. In Agats a few years ago, local women joined the wives of soldier and traders from other parts of Indonesia to form an anti- prostitution group called 'Birds of Paradise Against the White Doves' (birds of paradise are the symbol of West Papua). Their demonstrations and complaints to the military commander in Merauke finally had some effect and he issued a decree to stop the sale of alcohol and sex in the forest.

Upriver in Atsj it's been several years since women demonstrators forced the prostitutes to flee the town's only hotel. Traders still buy gaharu there but now the karaoke bar provides songs and no other services.

Women have tried the same direct action in Eci. Nearly three years ago, a group of mainly Papuan women demonstrated outside one of the bars, then forced their way in. One woman witness, who does not want to be named, was there as the demonstration turned violent.

"They just went straight into the bar where the girls lived and most managed to escape but one could not get away. The women beat her and kicked here and one

had a bottle of chilli and poured it onto her genitals. We waited at the clinic for her to be admitted but she did not come. Months later we heard that she died becase of that chilli."

When another demonstration got rowdy, Pastor Ogi says police fired warning shots as "an obvious mechanism to intimidate".

The town's only medico, Dr Pratono, has honed his suturing skills stitching wounds in women attacked by drunken husbands.

"There's a lot of drunks, fighting and killing," says the young doctor, who despairs at the medicine he's been forced to practice since big money from gaharu transformed the town, "At night they drink and gamble and go home and attack their wives. I've seen axe wounds in the head, axe wounds in the face. One woman was holding her eight year old daughter when her husband threw an axe at her and she swerved and it hit her daughter and opened up a 10 centimetre gash in her skull."

The 30 to 40 prostitutes living in the town at any one time also keep him busy. He has a HIV testing program in place and has taken blood from at a hundred. So far, 20 have bee positive and Pratono says that half number have developed AIDS.

Because of the big money that gaharu brings, Pratono holds little hope for his efforts to stop the spread of disease among his isolated communities. He's putting his efforts into teaching the community about the dangers of HIV and runs a clinic for the prostitutes, where he explains the disease and the need for precautions. But with six prostitutes already lost to AIDS, he's deeply pessimistic.

He is frustrated that he can't get the government and security officials to take the thereat seriously, because they don't want to jeopardize their financial interests. "The biggest problem is there's no coordination. If we had the police and the others on side, it would be better. But the police chief is always trying to cover up the HIV cases. He says, "You should test then but you don't have to publish the results, don't tell the community".

Most of the traders in the main street say Eci's days as the gaharu centre are already beginning to fade and that good quality gaharu is becoming increasingly scarce. As has happened across the region, the Papuan villagers will be forced to travel further and stay away longer to find it.

And as they move further upriver, deeper into the forests, Pratono's job will get harder. "The prostitutes are going into the forest because it's getting quieter here," he says, "Right now there's a camp four or five kilometers from here and there are five prostitutes there, three Papuans and two Javanese."

He doesn't have the time or resources to visit these camps, to provide the information, the condoms, or do the blood tests that he wants. Without something changing fast, he sees little hope. The gaharu will run out, the traders will move on, but the doctor is convinced its legacy will linger. I think it will be mass death there."

Labour issues

Workers threaten strike if government hands company to Cemex

Jakarta Post - January 14, 2005

Rendi A. Witular, Jakarta -- The labor union of state-controlled cement producer PT Semen Gresik (SG) will launch a massive strike if the government decides to hand over the company's Tuban, Java plants to Mexican cement giant Cemex SA.

The decision is one of six options being discussed by the government to solve the ongoing contract dispute with the Mexican company over its investment in SG.

The labor union assembly chairman Zubeir Halim said the strike had already been planned because the workers fear that "foreigners would dominate the cement market in Java, Bali and Kalimantan", giving them the power to control the price of the commodity.

"The Tuban plants supply 80 percent of market demand in Java, Bali and Kalimantan. We just can't stand to lose them," he told the House of Representatives' Commission VI for industry and trade on Thursday.

The hearing was also attended by SG's management team and a number of noted councillors from Gresik and Tuban, as well as local clerics and other prominent figures.

Zubeir said future cement price could easily escalate as the government could no longer use Gresik to balance pressure for price increases launched by other cement firms already controlled by foreigners.

Tuban councillor Nur Aziz claimed the residents in his district would also support and get involved in the protesting, unless the government dropped the option to sell the Tuban plants to Cemex.

"Tuban and Gresik councillors will also support the strike. If the government finally decides to sell the Tuban plants to Cemex, we will 'disturb' the operation of the company by all means," he warned.

The Gresik, East Java-based SG has three cement plants in Tuban, east of Surabaya, with an installed capacity of 7.5 million tons per year. SG plants in Gresik can no longer produce cement due to raw material shortages.

Sources at the Office of the State Minister of State Enterprises revealed that the option to buy the Tuban plants would likely be agreed upon by Cemex to settle its investment dispute with the government.

Despite possible asset losses, the government will still be able to retain majority control in SG, with the proceeds from selling the plants used to establish new cement plants in East Java.

However, SG marketing director Hasan Baraja reminded the hearing that setting up and operating a new cement plant would not be easy as it would take years for completion and eventual revenues.

"The option to sell the Tuban plants is not strategic and will cause long-term problems for SG's business," said Hasan.

The Cemex dispute emerged after the management of Gresik's subsidiary PT Semen Padang and local politicians opposed an option that allows Cemex to increase its shares in Gresik to a majority stake as stipulated by a legal investment contract in 1998.

Cemex took the case to the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), demanding the Indonesian government to pay damages for not upholding its contractual obligations.

However, Cemex agreed to postpone the hearing at ICSID earlier this week, pending the completion of out-of-court settlement negotiations.

Elsewhere, SG independent commissioner Tjuk Sukiadi, demanded that SG management and the government be transparent on the options being offered in the negotiations to prevent any irregularities in the deal.

"We are suspicious that there is something "fishy" going on in the negotiations between the government and Cemex due to the lack of transparency during the process. We must be allowed to monitor them to prevent state losses," said Tjuk. SG shares ended lower by Rp 1,500 to Rp 17,750 on the Jakarta Stock Exchange on Thursday.

NTP sale opposed by workers

Jakarta Post - January 13, 2005

Bandung -- At least 1,000 workers and former workers from state aircraft maker PT Dirgantara Indonesia (PTDI) held a protest on Wednesday in response to the PTDI directors' plan to sell the company's subsidiary PT Nusantara Turbine Propulsion (NTP) to private investors.

The company should not be sold because it was still profitable, said Deden Munadjat, the protest coordinator.

The company earned a profit of Rp 141 billion (US$15.6 million) and Rp 160 billion respectively in 2003 and 2004, he said.

NTP sells aircraft components and components for industrial purposes, and also provides aircraft maintenance services.

Government/civil service

NGOs, KPUDs reveal flaws in regional election law

Jakarta Post - January 10, 2005

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta -- The first hearing of a judicial review by the Constitutional Court last week of several contentious articles of Law No. 32/2004 concerning direct elections of regional leaders (provincial governors, mayors and regents) has revealed significant public concerns over weaknesses in the law.

A number of non-government organizations (NGOs) and provincial offices of the General Elections Commission (KPUD), which brought the case to the court, expressed their opposition to certain articles within the new law.

These articles, according to the plaintiffs, contravene the Constitution as they fail to ensure principles of fairness and impartiality during and after elections.

The plaintiffs also rejected as questionable sections of the law concerning the resolution of administrative and election disputes, and crimes arising from poll proceedings.

They demanded that a national system be applied for elections of regional leaders, rejecting Law No. 32/2004 that gives authority for conducting these elections to the provincial KPUD instead of the central government's General Elections Commission (KPU).

Firmansyah Arifin of the National Law Reform Consortium (KRHN), which is among the plaintiffs, said the problems stem from shortcomings in the Constitution that fails to guarantee a single election system in the country.

"The Constitution opens doors for various interpretations on the election system used at national and regional levels," he said.

The Constitution clearly stipulates that disputes over results of the general elections at the national level are settled by the Constitutional Court, but it says nothing about elections for regional leaders.

Firmansyah said Law No. 32/2004 authorizes the KPUD to conduct elections for regional leaders. But, the law also stipulates that KPUD, which is the regional arm of KPU, must be responsible for provincial legislative councils (DPRD).

Law No. 32/2004 ignores the existence of the KPU, which is authorized to conduct general elections, by excluding from any role in direct elections for provincial governors, mayors and regents.

Another problem, Firmansyah said, is the fact that the government and the House of Representatives, which enacted the law, appointed the Supreme Court to settle possible disputes related to the direct elections of local executive heads.

"The Supreme Court and lower courts still face a lot of problems. Our experience in the 1999 general elections showed that only four or five out of some 2000 election-related cases were settled by the courts," he said.

While the judicial review case is being heard by the Constitutional Court, Firmansyah urged the Supreme Court to appoint ad hoc judges to hear election-related cases in a bid to boost their independence.

Law No. 32/2004 came into force in October 2004. While the law was ostensibly enacted to nurture democracy in the country, many have warned of a possible backlash over its many confusing stipulations.

Local & community issues

Thousands demand resignation of Temanggung regent

Jakarta Post - January 13, 2005

Suherdjoko and Slamet Susanto, Temanggung -- About 10,000 people took to the streets of Temanggung regency, Central Java, on Wednesday to demand the resignation of Regent Totok Ary Prabowo for corruption and arrogance.

The largest protest ever held in the regency took place after more than 100 Temanggung civil servants "issued" a motion of no- confidence against the regent several days earlier.

The protesters, including civil servants, students and farmers, came from all corners of Temanggung. They descended on the Temanggung legislative council building in the morning and voiced their demand for Totok's resignation.

Protesters spilled out of the council building and into the street, paralyzing traffic. The wheels of government were also brought to a halt as hundreds of civil servants joined the action.

The protesters made speeches and unfurled banners and posters accusing the regent of being corrupt and demanding the police investigate him.

Responding to the protest, Temanggung councillors held a plenary meeting in the afternoon, with the result being a motion of no- confidence against the regent.

The plenary meeting met the quorum as it was attended by 31 councillors, or more than two-thirds of the 45 members of the regency council. The councillors also agreed during the one-hour meeting to question the regent on Thursday over the corruption allegations against him.

If the council is not satisfied with the Totok's responses, they can file a recommendation with the President for the regent's dismissal.

Law No. 32/2004 on regional government says regional councils do not have the power to dismiss regents, with that right residing in the hands of the president.

"We have to follow procedures. We have to exercise our right to question the regent before we make any recommendations. If we ignore procedures, the council's decision will be legally defective," said Bambang Soekarno, the speaker of Temanggung regental council.

The protest came after more than 112 government officials in the regency announced on Friday night they no longer acknowledged the leadership of Totok. The officials continued to show up to work and serve the public, but they refused to wear their uniforms or obey the regent's orders.

Twelve out of 20 district heads in the regency took part in the protest. "Civil servants are the servants of the people, not the servants of the Temanggung regent," said Agus Widodo, the head of Tembarak district.

The civil servants were reacting to what they claimed was Totok's arrogance. When asked for an example, they pointed to the fact that a few days after Totok took office last year, he ordered a rotation of civil servants in the regency.

Separately, the chief of the Central Java Police, Insp. Gen. Chaerul Rasyid, said he had dispatched a team of investigators to probe a Rp 12.7 billion (US$1.4 million) corruption case allegedly involving Totok. The regent is accused of embezzling election funds last year.

The protest in Temanggung was similar to protests last year by thousands of teachers and residents in Kampar regency, Riau province. The protests led to the dismissal of Kampar Regent Jefri Noer.

Human rights/law

Team aims to speed up Munir's case

Jakarta Post - January 14, 2005

Jakarta -- The fact-finding team formed to assist the police investigation into the death of rights activist Munir had its first coordinating meeting with the police at the National Police Headquarters on Thursday.

The team, chaired by Brig. Gen. Marsudi Hanafi, consisted of 13 members of various backgrounds ranging from non-governmental organizations to government officials.

Munarman of the Foundation of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI) said that the team and the police investigators would draft a work plan for the investigation.

"The police will also share the results of their investigation into Munir's death with us today in the meeting. Hopefully, we'll be able to solve the case real soon," Munarman said before he stepped into the meeting room.

Munir, the founder of both Imparsial and the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), died of arsenic poisoning aboard a Garuda flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam on Sept. 7.

Legal experts warn government over new anti-graft law

Jakarta Post - January 13, 2005

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, Jakarta -- Legal experts urged the government to scrap an existing ruling, which requires law enforcers to obtain approval from the President in probing state officials in graft cases, arguing that the regulation has only hampered the investigation process.

"Everyone is equal in the eyes of the law, so why do we need such approval? Besides, approval letters from the President takes quite some time that could only hamper the investigation," said Romli Atmasasmita of the forum of anticorruption observers following a meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Wednesday.

The meeting focussed on the government's plan to issue a government regulation in lieu of the Anticorruption Law.

The forum also warned the government that the planned new regulation should not serve as a new draconian regulation that infringes upon civil rights.

They reminded that measures to curb corrupt practices should respect civil rights and legal procedures.

"We support the action to issue a government regulation in lieu of the law to strengthen anticorruption measures, but there are several issues in the planned regulation that needs to be reviewed," Romli said after the meeting.

He pointed out that a proposed measure to allow law enforcers to detain a high-profile corruption suspect from the start of the investigation process until the final legal verdict is issued by the Supreme Court could be inviolation of one's civil rights.

"The practice to detain people is no different from the one we once had under the Subversion Law," he said, referring to the era of the previous Soeharto regime where people could be detained for alleged subversion activities without prior court trial.

The Ministry of Justice and Human Rights is currently drafting the anti-graft regulation in a bid to help curb rampant corruption in the country. The ministry plans to discuss the draft with related offices and independent experts before implementing it.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has pledged to fight corruption, which has become increasingly unbearable to the economy.

The move to draft a new anti-graft regulation is made as the existing laws are deemed weak in the fight against corruptors. Proponents said corruption crime has now become an extraordinary crime, which requires extraordinary moves to curb the problem.

Meanwhile, another member of the forum, Muladi, said the government must have strong reasons for the issuance of government regulation in lieu of law such as an emergency situation.

"There should be a clear definition of the emergency state ... It should not violate human rights and we hoped that we could take part in the discussion in drafting the regulation," said Muladi, who is also a former minister of justice.

State Secretary Yusril Ihza Mahendra defended the move to draft the new anti-graft law, citing the already rampant level of corruption in the country.

"We need strict actions to deal with such rampant practices, these require immediate and extreme measures, which are not accommodated under the existing laws," Yusril said after the meeting.

Focus on Jakarta

Evicted squatters move to riverbanks

Jakarta Post - January 14, 2005

Jakarta -- Hundreds of squatters evicted from a three-hectare land owned by PT Kereta Api Indonesia (PT KAI) in Tanah Abang district, Central Jakarta have set up tents along the banks of West Flood Canal.

Many evictees said they were forced to stay on the riverbank because they had no other place to live. Others said they would rent rooms close to Tanah Abang market where they worked.

Maman, 40, one of the evictees, said he would erect a temporary shelter on the riverbank. "I don't have money to rent a room. I hope I will be allowed to erect a tent here," Maman, a hot coffee vendor, said on Thursday.

He claimed that he was not entitled to the Rp 500,000 (US$55.60) compensation from the administration because he was not registered as a squatter in the area, also known as a red light district.

Central Jakarta deputy mayor Dadang Efendi said each of the 885 families evicted on Wednesday would receive Rp 500,000 compensation from the administration. But many of the evictees did not know their rights.

Dadang confirmed that only registered squatters received such compensation.

According to Maman, he lived alone in Jakarta because his family lived in his hometown in Indramayu, West Java.

"I need to stay here to earn a living. I have been vending hot coffee in Tanah Abang market for over five years," said the man, who has two children still studying in elementary school.

Meanwhile, PT KAI said that it planned to build warehouses on the land, which was cleared from the squatters. Workers began fencing the land with zinc plates to prevent the squatters from returning..

Spokesman of PT KAI for Greater Jakarta Ahmad Sujadi said the company would also construct the first stage of double-track railways, connecting Tanah Abang to Serpong in Tangerang.

Currently, the Serpong-Tanah Abang route is only served by a single track railway.

Sujadi said his company cooperated with private company PT Bertono Yudha Kencana to construct warehouses.

Sujadi said PT KAI had to expand its businesses to other sectors because it needed money for the construction of the warehouses.

"To earn profit, we cannot rely just on our transportation services to the public," he was quoted by Antara as saying.

New cars on streets soar

Jakarta Post - January 13, 2005

Jakarta -- The often crippling traffic jams and a prolonged economic crisis have not stopped Jakartans from buying new cars.

The Jakarta administration reported on Tuesday the number of new cars on the city's streets has soared over the past four years.

"Our records show that the number of people asking for new vehicle registration documents (STNK) in 2001 doubled from an average of 138 people per day in 2001 to 269 people in 2004," Governor Sutiyoso said on Tuesday while introducing the 15 members of the new Jakarta Transportation Council. Sutiyoso said the number of new cars being registered grew by 7 percent annually from 1998 to 2004.

"The growth (in the number of new cars) is much higher than the growth of the city's roads, which is less than 1 percent a year," he said.

The governor said the growth of new car purchases was being fueled by a poor public transportation system, which encouraged people to use private vehicles rather than undergo the nuisance of inconvenience of buses or trains.

Quoting an official report, Sutiyoso said there were 4.4 million private cars and motorcycles on Jakarta's roads, or 98 percent of all vehicles operating in the city. In comparison, there are only 82,000 public transportation vehicles.

However, the public transportation vehicles account for 50.3 percent of trips in the city, while private vehicles account for 49.7 percent of trips.

"No wonder our public transportation vehicles are always crowded, unsafe and in poor condition," he said.

Sutiyoso warned the city would suffer total gridlock in five to 10 years unless the administration and residents made significant changes to the transportation system.

"There is a joke that by 2014, Jakarta residents will not be able to drive their cars out of the driveway because the traffic jams will have reached their neighborhoods," he said.

From 1978 to 2002, the administration has carried out studies on urban transportation in an effort to solve chronic traffic jams in the capital.

"Unfortunately, those studies have not been followed up with concrete action so the traffic woes remain untouched. That's why we took the initiative to draw up a plan for a macro transportation system, with the help of transportation experts," he said.

The comprehensive system will integrate a subway, monorail, busway and river transportation.

The administration and central government expect to begin developing the US$767 million (Rp 7.1 trillion) subway system next year. A $650 million monorail project, wholly financed by private companies, is under construction and is slated to be completed next year. River transportation is still far in the future.

News & issues

Workers, students protest fuel hike

Jakarta Post - January 13, 2005

Tangerang -- Hundreds of workers and students staged on Wednesday a joint rally at the Tangerang Municipal Council to protest the central government's plan to increase fuel prices as well as to demand a Rp 735,000 minimum wage for 2005.

Mikad, a student at Tangerang Syeh Yusuf University (Unis), said people across the country should oppose the fuel hike.

"We have been living in such poverty since the monetary crisis in 1997. By increasing fuel prices again, the government is being cruel to the people," he said, adding that there was no reason for the government to raise fuel prices.

Meanwhile, Ngadinah, coordinator of the Confederation of Independent Labor Unions (GSBI) said 93 percent of the country's workers were still living below the poverty line and that increasing fuel prices would greatly affect them.

She also claimed that Tangerang's 2005 minimum wage for workers of Rp 693,000 was no longer adequate, as it did not meet the minimum living cost. Although the GSBI was demanding a rise to Rp 735,000, she said this was still inadequate.

Environment

Ministry winds up Jakarta Bay probe

Jakarta Post - January 10, 2005

Jakarta -- The Office of the State Minister for the Environment says its investigation into pollution that damage coral reefs and mangrove forests in Thousand Islands is almost complete.

"Our investigation is nearly final. We have summoned two expert witnesses for their statements in this case," Dasrul Chaniago, head of the environmental law enforcement division of the office, was quoted as saying by Tempointeraktif.com.

The opinions of the two witnesses from the North Jakarta Tourism Office and Transportation Office, he said, were necessary to finalize the case file. He promised that the case file would be submitted to the court by the end of this month.

The Jakarta administration alleged earlier that oil spills and tar balls polluting the waters might be from oil rigs operated by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

Military ties

Indonesia wants US to lift weapon sales ban

Associated Press - January 14, 2005

Banda Aceh -- Indonesia wants the United States to lift a long- standing ban on weapon sales to its military, arguing that it could respond more effectively to disasters such as last month's tsunami if its forces were better equipped.

But rights groups and some supporters of the ban in the US Congress say Jakarta is using the disaster to twist the facts and unfairly pressure the United States. They say the 23-year-old ban should remain in force until Indonesia addresses unresolved human rights violations.

The debate forms part of the backdrop of a visit by US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to the tsunami disaster zone this weekend. He is scheduled to visit Thailand Saturday before traveling to the badly damaged Indonesian city of Banda Aceh and then to Jakarta for talks Sunday with Indonesia 's defense ministers and other government officials.

Indonesian officials say a lack of spare parts left 17 of its fleet of 24 American-made C-130 cargo planes grounded when the December 26 earthquake and tsunami hit Sumatra island, preventing it from reaching many remote areas cut off when roads and bridges were destroyed. Without the US ban, the planes may have been fit to fly, the say.

The US military and other foreign troops have spearheaded efforts to ferry relief supplies to hard hit areas on Sumatra's northwest coast and evacuating survivors.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said during a visit last week to the disaster zone that the US government would begin allowing spare parts for C-130s into Indonesia.

Indonesian officials are calling on Washington to go further and lift the ban on weapon sales and combat training. "For us, it's a question of the readiness and capability of the military to respond to any crisis throughout the country," said Dino Djalal, the spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. "The embargo one way or another has hampered that ability."

Supporters of the ban say Indonesia is lying about its C-130s parts to curry favor with the United States. They say Indonesia has been allowed to buy the C-130 spare parts under American law since 2002 and before that bought them on the black market.

"We told the Indonesians we would sell them these parts four years ago, but they chose to buy them elsewhere," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "Yet they have continued to falsely blame our law for denying them this equipment. It is a myth, used to push for a relaxation of our human rights conditions, so they can use these aircraft for combat purposes," Leahy, of Vermont, said.

The United States has pledged US$350 million to help the dozen countries hit by tsunami disaster, which killed more than 157,000 people and left millions homeless.

The ban was first imposed in 1991 when Indonesian troops gunned down unarmed protesters in East Timor, killing more than 250 people. Eight years later, the ban was tightened after Indonesian troops and their proxy militias killed 1,500 East Timorese after the half island territory voted for independence in a UN- sponsored independence referendum.

President George W. Bush's administration has campaigned hard for lifting the ban. Wolfowitz -- a former ambassador to Jakarta -- has argued that normalizing relations is justified by the need to help Indonesia fight Islamic militants who have been blamed for a string of deadly terrorists bombings the past four years.

But Congress has resisted, in part because Indonesia has failed to jail any military leaders allegedly responsible for the 1999 Timor violence.

Jakarta also has been criticized for not cooperating fully in the investigation into the killing of two American teachers in Papua province in 2002 -- a shooting the military says was carried out by separatist rebels but that rights group say was the work of the army.

In November, Congress enacted a law allowing weapons sales to the Indonesian navy if the secretary of state approves it. The conditions on the army, however, are much stricter and include accounting the East Timor violence and the Papua murders.

"There is nothing wrong with US soldiers and Indonesian soldiers working side by side to aid the victims of the tsunami," said Leahy, who wrote the law enacting the ban.

"But the Indonesian military remains a corrupt, abusive institution in need of reform," he said. "Our law gives them a choice -- show that you want to reform and we will help you. But if you continue to flaunt the rule of law there will be a price."

Business & investment

Indonesia's rising debt

Asia Times - January 12, 2005

Bill Guerin -- Indonesia's economy, the biggest in Southeast Asia, may not be badly hit by the devastating tsunami disaster. "Given that the energy [mainly oil and natural gas] production facilities in Aceh or Northern Sumatra have survived the tsunami, the overall damage to Indonesia's economy appears to be minimal," United States investment bank Morgan Stanley said last week. Aceh contributes only a little over 2% to the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

Yet, saddled with government debt equal to more than a third of its GDP, the new government has found it will need to allocate a sum equivalent to a quarter of its domestic tax revenues just to service the national debt for 2005.

Total external debts are around $136 billion, with some $78.81 billion of that government debt penciled in for debt repayments. Some $47.78 billion is owed to the Paris Club, a group of 19 creditor nations. This debt alone needs payment of $3.15 billion in principal and $1.36 billion in interest for 2005.

Almost all Paris Club donors are also affiliated with the World Bank-led Consultative Group on Indonesia, or CGI, which meets each year to discuss Indonesia's external financing needs from the international donor community. The Asian Development Bank and Japanese government are also included in the group.

During the presidential election, campaign promises were made that new borrowing would be reduced this year, though a draft government proposal shows plans to borrow another $3.09 billion from international lenders to help finance the budget. According to the draft, the government will ask the CGI for $2.77 billion, leaving other lenders to top up with $320 million. Last year, the CGI pledged $3.4 billion. The request will be discussed at the next CGI meeting, scheduled in Jakarta for January 19-20.

The country may be offered debt relief to ease pressure on the budget and give the economy some breathing space though some economists fear that such a move could downgrade the country's sovereign rating and create new pressure on the rupiah, thus raising the cost of servicing its debt. Debt rescheduling is little more than a temporary relief measure in coping with short-term cash flow problems. The impact on the net cash available to the government will be marginal. Economists point out that sustainable, robust economic growth that can generate larger tax revenues for the government is the best option for reducing the national debt. Much of this debt resulted from the misuse and squandering of loans by former authoritarian leader Suharto and his cronies.

Extending debt repayments by several years would pass the burden onto the next generation.

Several members, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan, have proposed a moratorium for Indonesia. The proposal will be discussed at a meeting of the Paris Club this Wednesday. Jakarta has said it wants to be certain

that any arrangement would not be tied to a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) program and conditions.

Growth

Morgan Stanley stands by its 4.5% growth forecast for this year, though in a year-end economic assessment, Coordinating Minister for the Economy Aburizal Bakrie said the government was confident that growth would reach 5% this year.

The IMF is making no predictions on the level of growth, but it upbeat on the prospects. "While GDP growth is still below Indonesia's potential and unemployment remains high, economic performance has continued to improve in recent months and financial markets have rallied," the agency said in a statement late last month.

Tax breaks

The government is targeting tax revenue of Rp297.51 trillion ($32.7 billion) in the 2005 state budget. Last year, it raked in Rp238.9 trillion -- Rp300 billion above its own target -- but only 2 million or so individual income taxpayers are on the books, not count ing civil servants and private sector employees whose income taxes are deducted from their salaries by their employers.

The unfavorable taxation regime in the country has long been seen as one of the main obstacles to attracting new investors. This looks likely to change with the Ministry of Finance finalizing a whole range of new tax break facilities to help improve the business climate and attract new investment, as well help reduce unemployment rates by encouraging further expansion by existing businesses. These are likely to come into force this month.

Director General of Taxation Hadi Purnomo said the incentives would include a reduction in the 30% withholding tax on dividends to 10%, and extensions on untaxable income due to operational losses would be extended from the current five years to 10 years. Another ruling would also allow companies to claim tax refunds on asset depreciation within two years, instead of the current five.

Businesses in underdeveloped regions, mainly in the east of the country, will be allowed to set aside a minimum of 30% of profits for investment and expansion, without having to pay for the expenditure tax at the end of their annual fiscal year. The government is also considering a tax amnesty, which could see the return of up to $60 billion in funds to help implement its major infrastructure plans.

A tax amnesty could encourage rich Indonesians who had moved their money out of the country or into foreign banks in Indonesia during and following the financial crisis in 1998, to reinvest their funds in domestic banks without fear of being questioned and slapped with tax demands.

Investment

Election promises to push growth to 7% by 2009 spurred an ambitious five-year plan for major investments in infrastructure. Roads, railways, ports, airports, power plants, telecommunication facilities, gas distribution, water plants, irrigation facilities and housing projects planned over the period will need between Rp700 trillion and Rp1quadrillion, expected to come from the private sector.

Around Rp200 trillion will be funded from the state budget and an equal amount by local banks but the rest needs to come from local and foreign

institutional investors, and the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. An Indonesian Infrastructure Summit set up by the Coordinating Ministry for the Economy and the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) has been oversubscribed.

At least 700 potential investors, foreign and domestic, have asked for one of the 500 seats available at next week's event. Both President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf Kalla will address the visitors, who include executives from General Electric, Siemens, Paiton Energy, Sumitomo Corp, Alcatel and Motorola.

The target is to increase investment from the current 20.5% to 28.4% of GDP by 2009. If the five-year plan succeeds, it should be sufficient to reduce the unemployment rate to 6.7% from the current 9.5%. About 40 million of Indonesia's 235 million people are either jobless or work fewer than 35 hours a week.

Almost 70% of the current workforce is comprised of elementary and high school graduates, or school dropouts. More than $4.2 billion worth of new oil and gas contracts were signed last month though these are unlikely to create many new jobs, unlike investments in the labor-intensive manufacturing and infrastructure sectors.

Cost of living

Retail spending represents more than two-thirds of the economy and consumers are likely to pay more for goods and services this year. Petrol prices will be raised early this year while tariffs for kerosene -- widely used for cooking -- and diesel -- used in the farming sector and in public transport -- will be kept low. Higher transport costs will also affect food prices, which account for 38% of inflation calculations. A 1.51% increase in the price of basic foods as well as a 0.31% rise in clothing costs contributed to 6.4% inflation in 2004.

The government expects to peg inflation to 7% for 2005, an upward revision of its earlier target of 5.5%.

The fuel price hike may also trigger increases in other prices such as electricity, water and telephone charges. The price of several goods and services have already risen slightly on news that the government would go ahead with fuel price increases in line with its commitment to bringing domestic energy prices closer to world prices. Andrew Steer, the World Bank's Indonesia representative, pointed out that the subsidies are not "sound policies" and their reduction and eventual elimination should boost competitiveness.

Budget balancing

The total cost for reconstructing Aceh is expected to be at least $1.07 billion over the next five years but with major assistance pledged by the international community, the effect on the budget may be minimal.

Though the state budget has run deficits since 1998, the new administration plans to balance the budget by 2007. It wants to narrow the deficit to 0.8% of GDP in 2005 and is likely to push ahead with a sale of a $1.5 billion worth of bonds to help achieve this.

The deficit last year amounted to Rp27.8 trillion, or 1.4% of GDP, higher than the initial projection of Rp26.3 trillion, or 1.3% of GDP. The higher deficit was caused by a rise in fuel subsidies following soaring global oil prices.

The government paid out Rp70 trillion in fuel subsidies in 2004, though early in the year the cost was forecast at only Rp31.82 trillion. The 2005 subsidy bill is to be cut to Rp25 trillion and the 2005 budget deficit is estimated at Rp7.4 trillion.

Overall, promising

Improving macro-economic stability inherited from the previous administration has also encouraged Bank Indonesia to continue cutting interest rates, which stood at a record low of 7.41% in December. A stronger rupiah and a lower interest rate environment should continue to enhance the economy. Conversely, any pressure on inflation and the exchange rate could see the central bank increasing rates. The rupiah is forecast to average 8,900 to the dollar this year, hardly changed from its average strength of 8,925 last year.

Cheaper consumer loans has fuelled private consumption. Sales of electronic appliances, cell phones, motorcycles, and, particularly, cars, soared throughout last year. Indonesia is now the second-fastest growing automotive market after China. The Association of Indonesian Automotive Industries (Gaikindo) raised its 2004 vehicle sales forecast by over 7% to 420,000 units and predicts total sales of well over 465,000 vehicles for the year once the figures are in, an increase of around 30% on last year.

Though private consumption has been the main engine of growth, most sectors saw higher growth last year with the exception of the mining and extractive industries sector, which declined by 5.96%, bedeviled by various uncertainties, which stalled investment.

Ready to go

"In the midst of this grief, no matter how difficult, the government will complete the (100-day) program," Yudhoyono said last week prior to ringing the opening bell at the Jakarta Stock Exchange to mark the first trading day of 2005. His 100-day program outlines his priority reforms agenda and aims to improve public confidence in the new government.

Voters chose Yudhoyono for his pledges to fight corruption, reduce poverty and attract investors to create jobs. "The time for competition is over. The time is now for unity. If God wills it, and we can work hard and together, we will be able to build a better Indonesia, a safer, more just and wealthier Indonesia," Yudhoyono said when being sworn in as president. He has a lot of political capital, and, with his deputy now heading Golkar, one of the two leading opposition parties, is well positioned to push reforms through parliament to deliver on his promises.

[Bill Guerin, a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has worked in Indonesia for 19 years in journalism and editorial positions. He has been published by the BBC on East Timor and specializes in business/economic and political analysis in Indonesia.]

Opinion & analysis

Indonesia's Aceh mistake

Wall Street Journal Editorial - January 14, 2005

As if the people of Aceh, where at least 108,000 died in the tsunami, didn't have enough problems already. Now the Indonesian government -- and especially its military -- is putting obstacles in the way of international efforts to aid survivors in the devastated province.

In recent days, Indonesia has banned foreign aid workers from traveling to most parts of Aceh without prior approval or military escorts and insisted that the US and other foreign troops, who have rushed to aid the relief effort, leave before the end of March: "Three months are enough I think. The sooner, the better," said Vice President Jusuf Kalla.

The official reason for these restrictions is the same one that kept Aceh closed to outsiders until the urgent need for tsunami relief pried open its doors two weeks ago -- a separatist insurgency that means the military can't guarantee their safety. It's true there have been isolated reports of sporadic clashes between the army and rebels in recent days, despite the pro- independence movement's official declaration of a cease-fire in the wake of the December 26 tragedy.

But that hardly explains the decision to order the foreign troops to go home, or insist they can't carry weapons while in Indonesia. Already the restrictions are having a negative effect. US marines have scaled back plans to send hundreds of troops ashore to build roads and clear rubble while the USS Abraham Lincoln has been diverted to international waters, further away from the Aceh coast. And as Norbert Vollertsen writes nearby, the travel restrictions imposed on aid workers mean that stockpiles of aid are piling up in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, while the military pursues its campaign against the rebels.

It's scarcely surprising that the Indonesian military, which has profited from lucrative business opportunities in Aceh for many years while its closed status prevented outside scrutiny, should feel uneasy about this sudden influx of outsiders. The presence of Australian troops, in particular, ruffles the feathers of Indonesian nationalists by reminding them of the loss of that other rebellious province, East Timor.

But if they care about the welfare of their people, the priority should be to do what's best for the survivors. That means welcoming all offers of assistance, rather than adopting a grudging attitude that risks undermining the effectiveness of their efforts.

Rather than exaggerating the danger posed by a rag-tag band of rebels engaged in a decades-old nationalist insurgency, Indonesian leaders should focus on the far more grave threat posed by Islamic radicals who have flocked to Aceh under the cloak of the relief effort. According to the New York Times, these include members of Laskar Mujahedeen, a paramilitary group with links to al Qaeda, some of whom arrived on a flight organized by Mr. Kalla. Mr. Kalla has made most of the public pronouncements on the tsunami crisis so far, while Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has remained largely silent. But Mr. Yudhoyono, a retired general, has a track record of advocating conciliation as the only way to end the Aceh conflict. And if he can step forward and take the reins on this issue, Indonesia may yet be able to overcome the missteps of the past few days.

Xenophobia thicker than humanity

Jakarta Post - January 13, 2005

On Wednesday morning, a major radio station in Jakarta invited its listeners to comment on the Indonesian Military's (TNI) decision to restrict the movements of international aid workers and foreign military personnel while in Aceh.

The answers given by the listeners have likely upset the government, especially the TNI's top brass, because most listeners were not only opposed to the TNI's decision, but also questioned the real motives of the TNI. Such a reaction reflects the high suspicion that remains toward the military, who for decades were a tool of oppression.

"We should not be paranoid about the foreigners, who are very sincere in helping people in Aceh," one listener from Central Jakarta said.

It is obviously a good move by the TNI Chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto to say he wants to ensure the safety of some 2,000 foreign civilians, who are now working on the humanitarian mission in the tsunami-devastated province.

As a host, Indonesia is responsible for the security and protection of the humanitarian workers. Indonesia could not have handled this unprecedented disaster on its own. The nation needs international assistance.

Although it seems restrictive, the general's decision to require the volunteers to be escorted by TNI soldiers during trips outside of Banda Aceh actually makes sense because there is still a war going on. With seemingly little fear of the many risks inherent, the volunteers have come here out of a strong sense of compassion for the suffering victims and have been motivated to help the Acehnese build a totally new life.

Foreign military ships and planes are also required to have military liaison officers accompany them and get clearance from the TNI for all movements. Meanwhile, the government has indicated that the foreign presence would not last more than three months.

But, as reflected in the radio talk show, many people doubt that the restrictive measures are merely aimed at protecting the foreign volunteers.

TNI generals have admitted they would not have enough resources to handle the relief and rehabilitation alone, and thus need the foreign help.

So, why then did Gen. Endriartono make such a controversial decision, while thousands of guests are now in Aceh to help us? Most of them likely realize the dangers during their humanitarian mission, but still they have come. Why? Because of a sense of humanity; that is the only answer for their readiness to take a risk. A risk that may be in the form of armed gunmen, another earthquake aftershock or malaria.

We should thank the hard-working guests because without their help, the suffering of the victims of the natural disaster would be much worse.

Despite the radio listeners responses, it has become all too evident from local media reports that there is a growing feeling of xenophobia here, at least in certain parts of society. We accept the foreigners' relief, but at the same time we are suspicious of them and do not appreciate what they have done. From television reports, it has become abundantly clear that the Acehnese have welcomed the foreigners, including American soldiers. People who live far away from these appreciative victims still question the foreign presence, while for victims, they are saviors.

Perhaps it is ridiculous to say that such behavior also proves that many of us have no compassion for our brothers and sisters in Aceh, not just when they were oppressed by the government, but even now as they struggle to survive amidst such a horrible calamity. Many Indonesians are very firm in their opinion that the government must do everything possible to ensure the integrity of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI), therefore, they also feel that any rebellious acts in Aceh must be harshly punished to ensure that the soil of that province remains part of the nation state.

Of course, we also hope the foreign guests realize that they are guests in Aceh, regardless of how much we need their help. Guests are expected to adapt to the conditions of their hosts.

We do hope that the negative statements, xenophobia and a lack of appreciation shown by some members of society, will not discourage our Samaritan friends. We also hope they realize that the nation needs and truly appreciates their help.

The other tsunami

New Statesman (UK) - January 10, 2005

John Pilger -- The west's crusaders, the United States and Britain, are giving less to help the tsunami victims than the cost of a Stealth bomber or a week's bloody occupation of Iraq. The bill for George Bush's coming inauguration party would rebuild much of the coastline of Sri Lanka. Bush and Blair increased their first driblets of "aid" only when it became clear that people all over the world were spontaneously giving millions and that a public relations problem beckoned. The Blair government's current 'generous' contribution is one-sixteenth of the GBP800m it spent on bombing Iraq before the invasion and barely one-twentieth of a GBP1bn gift, known as a soft loan, to the Indonesian military so that it could acquire Hawk fighter- bombers.

On 24 November, one month before the tsunami struck, the Blair government gave its backing to an arms fair in Jakarta, "designed to meet an urgent need for the Indonesian armed forces to review its defence capabilities", reported the Jakarta Post. The Indonesian military, responsible for genocide in East Timor, has killed more than 20,000 civilians and "insurgents" in Aceh. Among the exhibitors at the arms fair was Rolls-Royce, manufacturer of engines for the Hawks, which, along with British-supplied Scorpion armoured vehicles, machine-guns and ammunition, were terrorising and killing people in Aceh up to the day the tsunami devastated the province.

The Australian government, currently covering itself in glory for its modest response to the historic disaster befallen its Asian neighbours, has secretly trained Indonesia's Kopassus special forces, whose atrocities in Aceh are well documented. This is in keeping with Australia's 40-year support for oppression in Indonesia, notably its devotion to the dictator Suharto while his troops slaughtered a third of the population of East Timor. The government of John Howard -- notorious for its imprisonment of child asylum-seekers -- is at present defying international maritime law by denying East Timor its due of oil and gas royalties worth some $8bn. Without this revenue, East Timor, the world's poorest country, cannot build schools, hospitals and roads or provide work for its young people, 90 per cent of whom are unemployed.

The hypocrisy, narcissism and dissembling propaganda of the rulers of the world and their sidekicks are in full cry. Superlatives abound as to their humanitarian intent while the division of humanity into worthy and unworthy victims dominates the news. The victims of a great natural disaster are worthy (though for how long is uncertain) while the victims of man-made imperial disasters are unworthy and very often unmentionable.

Somehow, reporters cannot bring themselves to report what has been going on in Aceh, supported by "our" government. This one- way moral mirror allows us to ignore a trail of destruction and carnage that is another tsunami.

Consider the plight of Afghanistan, where clean water is unknown and death in childbirth common. At the Labour Party conference in 2001, Tony Blair announced his famous crusade to "reorder the world" with the pledge: "To the Afghan people, we make this commitment ... We will not walk away ... we will work with you to make sure a way is found out of the miserable poverty that is your present existence."

The Blair government was on the verge of taking part in the conquest of Afghanistan, in which as many as 25,000 civilians died. In all the great humanitarian crises in living memory, no country suffered more and none has been helped less. Just 3 per cent of all international aid spent in Afghanistan has been for reconstruction, 84 per cent is for the US-led military "coalition" and the rest is crumbs for emergency aid.

What is often presented as reconstruction revenue is private investment, such as the $35m that will finance a proposed five- star hotel, mostly for foreigners. An adviser to the minister of rural affairs in Kabul told me his government had received less than 20 per cent of the aid promised to Afghan-istan. "We don't even have enough money to pay wages, let alone plan reconstruction," he said.

The reason, unspoken of course, is that Afghans are the unworthiest of victims. When US helicopter gunships repeatedly machine-gunned a remote farming village, killing as many as 93 civilians, a Pentagon official was moved to say, "The people there are dead because we wanted them dead."

I became acutely aware of this other tsunami when I reported from Cambodia in 1979. Following a decade of American bombing and Pol Pot's barbarities, Cambodia lay as stricken as Aceh is today. Disease beckoned famine and people suffered a collective trauma few could explain. Yet for nine months after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime, no effective aid arrived from western governments. Instead, a western- and Chinese-backed UN embargo was imposed on Cambodia, denying virtually the entire machinery of recovery and assistance. The problem for the Cambodians was that their liberators, the Vietnamese, had come from the wrong side of the cold war, having recently expelled the Americans from their homeland. That made them unworthy victims, and expendable.

A similar, largely unreported siege was forced on Iraq during the 1990s and intensified during the Anglo-American "liberation". Last September, Unicef reported that malnutrition among Iraqi children had doubled under the occupation. Infant mortality is now at the level of Burundi, higher than in Haiti and Uganda. There is crippling poverty and a chronic shortage of medicines. Cases of cancer are rising rapidly, especially breast cancer; radioactive pollution is widespread. More than 700 schools are bomb-damaged. Of the billions said to have been allocated for reconstruction in Iraq, just $29m has been spent, most of it on mercenaries guarding foreigners. Little of this is news in the west.

This other tsunami is worldwide, causing 24,000 deaths every day from poverty and debt and division that are the products of a supercult called neoliberalism. This was acknowledged by the United Nations in 1990 when it called a conference in Paris of the richest states with the aim of implementing a "programme of action" to rescue the world's poorest nations. A decade later, virtually every commitment made by western governments had been broken, making Gordon Brown's waffle about the G8 "sharing Britain's dream" of ending poverty as just that: waffle. Very few western governments have honoured the United Nations "baseline" and allotted a miserable 0.7 per cent or more of their national income to overseas aid.

Britain gives just 0.34 per cent, making its "Department for International Development" a black joke. The US gives 0.14 per cent, the lowest of any industrial state.

Largely unseen and unimagined by westerners, millions of people know their lives have been declared expendable. When tariffs and food and fuel subsidies are eliminated under an IMF diktat, small farmers and the landless know they face disaster, which is why suicides among farmers are an epidemic. Only the rich, says the World Trade Organisation, are allowed to protect their home industries and agriculture; only they have the right to subsidise exports of meat, grain and sugar and dump them in poor countries at artificially low prices, thereby destroying livelihoods and lives.

Indonesia, once described by the World Bank as "a model pupil of the global economy", is a case in point. Many of those washed to their deaths in Sumatra on Boxing Day were dispossessed by IMF policies.

Indonesia owes an unrepayable debt of $110bn. The World Resources Institute says the toll of this man-made tsunami reaches 13-18 million child deaths worldwide every year; or 12 million children under the age of five, according to a UN Human Development Report. "If 100 million have been killed in the formal wars of the 20th century," wrote the Australian social scientist Michael McKinley, "why are they to be privileged in comprehension over the annual death toll of children from structural adjustment programmes since 1982?"

That the system causing this has democracy as its war cry is a mockery which people all over the world increasingly understand. It is this rising awareness, consciousness even, that offers more than hope. Since the crusaders in Washington and London squandered world sympathy for the victims of 11 September 2001 in order to accelerate their campaign of domination, a critical public intelligence has stirred and regards the likes of Blair and Bush as liars and their culpable actions as crimes. The current outpouring of help for the tsunami victims among ordinary people in the west is a spectacular reclaiming of the politics of community, morality and internationalism denied them by governments and corporate propaganda.

Listening to tourists returning from stricken countries, consumed with gratitude for the gracious, expansive way some of the poorest of the poor gave them shelter and cared for them, one hears the antithesis of "policies" that care only for the avaricious.

"The most spectacular display of public morality the world has ever seen", was how the writer Arundhati Roy described the anti- war anger that swept across the world almost two years ago. A French study now estimates that 35 million people demonstrated on that February day and says there has never been anything like it; and it was just a beginning.

This is not rhetorical; human renewal is not a phenomenon, rather the continuation of a struggle that may appear at times to have frozen but is a seed beneath the snow. Take Latin America, long declared invisible and expendable in the west. "Latin Americans have been trained in impotence," wrote Eduardo Galeano the other day. "A pedagogy passed down from colonial times, taught by violent soldiers, timorous teachers and frail fatalists, has rooted in our souls the belief that reality is untouchable and that all we can do is swallow in silence the woes each day bring." Galeano was celebrating the rebirth of real democracy in his homeland, Uruguay, where people have voted "against fear", against privatisation and its attendant indecencies. In Venezuela, municipal and state elections in October notched up the ninth democratic victory for the only government in the world sharing its oil wealth with its poorest people.

In Chile, the last of the military fascists supported by western governments, notably Thatcher, are being pursued by revitalised democratic forces.

These forces are part of a movement against inequality and poverty and war that has arisen in the past six years and is more diverse, more enterprising, more internationalist and more tolerant of difference than anything in my lifetime. It is a movement unburdened by a western liberalism that believes it represents a superior form of life; the wisest know this is colonialism by another name. The wisest also know that just as the conquest of Iraq is unravelling, so a whole system of domination and impoverishment can unravel, too.