The Aceh Tsunami catastrophe one year after

Andrew Steele, Jakarta

The wagons are already circling. In just over one month, swarms of journalists and humanitarian icons spanning from U2's Bono to former U.S. President Bill Clinton will descend on Aceh to take stock of the recovery and reconstruction efforts that have occurred in the wake of last December's tsunami. Field vests will be dusted off and parachuting pundits will arrive prepared to pass judgment on a situation with which they have had only fleeting familiarity and no direct observations since their immediate post-tsunami visit.

Given the unprecedented US$4 billion in donations and the more than 200 non-governmental organizations working in Aceh now, the international community is expecting results. In Jakarta, aid workers who have been central to the process from the outset are preparing for a negative assessment of the relief work to date. That stems mainly, they say, from the rosy estimations laid down last year regarding where the rebuilding of Aceh would be after one year.

"No one in January would have thought the people in tents then would still be in tents 10 months later," admits one World Bank official in Jakarta. But to cite that as a failure on the part of relief workers, including the Indonesian government's own Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency (BRR) for Aceh and Nias, is unfair at best.

The unrealistic expectations and overly optimistic projections that pervaded the dialogue last year should not be used as a benchmark for judging the reconstruction efforts. Those that have not witnessed the efforts day in and day out should tread lightly and consider the unforeseen obstacles that have impeded efforts before they denigrate the process.

There certainly have been speed bumps that could have been avoided; for example, to date there is still no formalized monitoring of the rebuilding of homes by international aid groups. That has allowed for occasional shoddy construction and has led to jealousy among villagers regarding the differences among homes being built. Some villages have actually rejected newly built homes. Also, relief groups have at times competed with one another where coordination would have been more appropriate.

For sure, the Indonesian bureaucracy is a problem, too. The red tape is often exhausting, aid workers say. And the government at times seems to lack a sense of urgency. It also has no system to disperse emergency funds efficiently.

Let us not forget what the reconstruction entailed, however. The death count, according to the UN, sits at 131,000 with another 37,000 unaccounted for, and tsunami costs are estimated at US$5.1 billion. Furthermore, there are few roads to bring supplies in and there is no working port. The cost of sending supply ships into Aceh is inflated, as they have no cargo to pick up to finance the return voyage.

The decades-long insurgency in Aceh that the tsunami interrupted leads to the only appropriate analogy that comes close to capturing the magnitude of the resuscitation of Aceh: that of a post-war reconstruction. Under these circumstances, the Indonesian government, the BRR, and aid agencies like the World Food Programme deserve serious accolades.

There have been major successes in the relief efforts to date. The Indonesian government managed the initial stages very well and buried the bodies in a timely manner, staving off a second crisis that could have resulted from disease. There also have not been issues of starvation to date. Houses are now being built at a faster pace than at any time to date, and the health care and education services might even be better now than they were before the tsunami.

That said, the reconstruction efforts are hardly out of the woods. This has aid agencies worried that donor fatigue may set in with Aceh. Given the other disasters that have occurred since last year, including Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the earthquake in Pakistan that killed some 70,000 people, available funds are going to be increasingly scarce.

It will be easy for the press corps to look around and see that a vibrant and prosperous city has not sprung up in the last year. The devastation in Aceh, however, is unprecedented in the modern era; appraisals of the recovery effort have no analogous historical precedents. The work done thus far in rebuilding Aceh must be judged as a unique response to a unique disaster. Let the news accounts of Aceh's condition after one year reflect the enormity of the task at hand rather than the unrealistic goals offered in the immediate post-tsunami period.

The writer is the Managing Editor of the Van Zorge Report. He can be reached at asteele@vzh.co.id.