Don't betray Aceh - Get coordinated

Don't betray Aceh - Get coordinated

Endy M. Bayuni, Jakarta

Bodies are still scattered on the streets and under the rubble in
Banda Aceh, Meulaboh and many other towns in Aceh. Tens of
thousands of survivors are still without food, clean water,
medicines or even clothes to change into.

Their ordeal and suffering continue.

Such is the scene depicted by Metro TV on Thursday, five days
after the deadly combination of a strong earthquake and massive
tidal waves devastated Aceh.

For the dead and the living, help is still not coming, or it
is not coming fast enough.

The situation in Aceh seems to be getting more desperate by
the day.

And it's not as if help is not forthcoming.

Relief supplies sent from national and foreign organizations
and governments are reaching the Banda Aceh airport. In fact,
supplies are literally piling up there by the ton. But they are
not being distributed quickly to the intended targets.

Metro TV's Najwa Shihab, who has kept the nation abreast of
developments -- or in this case lack of developments -- in Aceh
these past few days, could not hide her frustration as she
reported on camera live on Thursday.

"There is no coordination," she said as her voice faded and
replaced by sobs. "I have seen little change from yesterday."

Indonesia faces a Herculean task. The country has never
experienced a calamity of this magnitude before -- over 45,000
dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Still, a little more coordination could ease the pain and
suffering of the people in Aceh.

Take the issue of burying tens of thousands of dead as an
example.

There aren't enough workers left in these areas to bury the
dead. Many Acehnese are either too stricken by grief to do
anything because they have lost loved ones, or simply too weak as
they have been without food, clean water and medicines.

The job is left to volunteers brought in from the outside. But
there is only so much they can do. The task of moving badly
mangled and putrefying bodies from under the rubble and burying
them inevitably takes much of their time.

Bringing in volunteers from outside requires good
coordination. They have to bring their own tents to sleep in, and
their own food. They cannot eat rations intended for victims or
use the limited number of tents available in the area.

And they need heavy equipment, like cranes, to bury the dead
en mass.

Then, there is the question of the lack of trucks to take
relief supplies from the airport to the people. And even if there
were enough trucks available, there is not enough fuel to run
them. And then there is the question of clearing roads of debris
before they become passable.

The Metro TV reporter hit the nail on the head when she
hammered at the lack of coordination on the ground in bringing
help to the people of Aceh.

Coordinating the relief operation is now the biggest
challenge.

The outside world is ready to help the people of Aceh. Massive
fund raising campaigns are underway throughout Indonesia and the
rest of the world. But it is frustrating to see that the relief
operation has been hampered by poor, in fact almost non-existent,
coordination.

Whose job is it then to coordinate the relief operation?

The Aceh provincial administration and its structure were
decimated. It is estimated that only half of the administration's
employees in Banda Aceh survived the tragedy. And most government
offices in Banda Aceh were destroyed.

Without a government structure in place, coordination becomes
almost non-existent.

The central government had to step in. There is nobody else
around to do the job.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla only announced this decision on
Wednesday when it could have been taken on Day 1 or Day 2 of the
calamity. And even after the announcement was made, someone down
the bureaucratic line insisted that the Civil Emergency
government in Aceh was still in control.

Another sign of poor coordination was the question of permits
for foreign relief agencies to operate in Aceh. By invoking
national disaster status, the government effectively opens the
way for these groups to send aid directly to Aceh. Jusuf Kalla
reaffirmed this, but yet another lower ranking official insisted
that they must all obtain permits from the government, which can
take two weeks or more to issue.

We can understand why it took two days for the government to
restore power and telecommunication facilities in Aceh: many of
the power and telecommunication workers in the area were also
killed in the tragedy.

But five days after the disaster struck, surely the relief
supplies should start reaching the victims.

Where is the coordination?

The presence of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice
President Jusuf Kalla in Aceh earlier this week brought a lot of
hope and comfort to the people there that help was on its way.

Their presence also led to the impression that they were there
to supervise hands-on the rescue and relief operations.

But the reality on the ground on Day 5 has been very
disappointing to say the least.

Unless help gets underway soon, the goodwill created by those
presidential visits will quickly dissipate. And frustration, as
expressed by the Metro TV reporter, will start to set in. Her
frustration is a reflection of the frustration of the people of
Aceh, and of people in the rest of the country.

Unless help gets underway soon, we will be confronting yet
another horrific calamity: The number of deaths will soar, and
not because of the discovery of more bodies in some remote
villages. This time, the fatalities will increase because of our
own neglect and our failure to help them on time.

This republic has done its utmost over these past few years to
defuse separatist sentiments among Aceh people. At times, the
military acted over-zealously at the expense of people's human
rights as it fought the separatist rebels.

If this nation, and particularly this government, still
believes in the "territorial integrity" of Indonesia that
includes Aceh, then we must show it, with the same zealous
determination that we have shown to keep Aceh a part of the
Indonesian state.

Save our Aceh. Save our Souls.

The writer is editor-in-chief of The Jakarta Post.