THE Indonesian armed forces which are engaged in counter-insurgency operations against the rebels of Aceh seem to have been surprised when the Indonesian government allowed the American armed forces to conduct rescue and relief operations. After East Timor broke off from Indonesia in 1999, the government in Jakarta had made Aceh out of bounds for foreigners. The Indonesian Indonesian government rightfully has rightfully concluded that if Aceh is allowed to secede, it would signal the beginning of the end of Indonesia as a nation. It was for the first time that the American troops set foot on Indonesian soil. After the tsunami struck, the Indonesian government and the rebels announced a truce. Many Indonesian soldiers and rebels lost their lives in the calamity. The Indonesian military had made known its preference for a rehabilitation team under the UN umbrella to do humanitarian work in Aceh. The international community wasquick to respond to Indonesian's appeal for help, but it was the American army ,withvast assets, that stepped into Aceh first. America's time-tested allies in the region---Australia, England and Singapore, also chipped inin . Interestingly, it was only after the Tsunami struck that the American government formally restored military ties with Indonesia, which the Clinton administration had suspended to protest against Jakarta's "poor human rights record".
Today, according to reports coming in from the ravaged province, only "Chinook" helicopters of the U.S. are to be seen bringing in relief materials and ferrying the injured to hospitals. The Indonesian government had initially refused permission for planes carrying relief to land in Banda Aceh, the capital. It wanted the planes to land in Medan, about 200 km away.
The civil war in Aceh was being fought far away from the glare of the international media. Now Aceh is very much on the international radar scene. Already there are reports in the western media that the people of Aceh will be showing real and long lasting gratitude to the American government. Among the top American officials who visited Aceh were the American secretary of State, Colin Powell and Jeb Bush, the Governor of Florida and the younger brother of the American President. The U.S. administration, which was initially slow in acknowledging the scale of the tragedy and stingy in its financial aid, has evidently viewed the situation caused by the tidal waves in South and South-East Asia as an opportunity to refurbish its image, especially in the Muslim world.
The US has sent warships, planes and helicopters, along with 13,000 military personnel to the Indian Ocean. Initially, it had taken President George Bush, BritishBlair and company five days to wake up to the scale of the humanitarian tragedy. What the United States government had originally offered was a ridiculously paltry amount. American commentators pointed out that the sum offered amounted to half of the money budgeted for Bush's inaugural bash in January. Jeff Egeland, the UN under secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs, said that the rich nations were being tight-fisted about aid as most of them failed to meet the UN target of 0.7 per cent of gross national product (GNP) of official development assistance (ODA) to the world's poorer nations.
UN officials were also not amused by the American led manoeuvre to isolate the international body in the global relief effort. A "core" group comprising the US, Japan, India and Australia tried to appropriate the role traditionally reserved for the UN in international disaster management. The British government had first ordered the despatch of Gorkha soldiers to Aceh for relief work. Blair had to hastily withdraw his order after protests from Indonesia. Gorkha soldiers had played a key role in defeating the Indonesian army when Jakarta tried to take over the kingdom of Brunei in the sixties. The Australian government was trying to reach aid directly to Aceh, bypassing both UN as well as Indonesian authorities. Good sense finally prevailed at the Jakarta isin the first week of January when the five countries agreed to the Indonesian proposal that all relief and rehabilitation work should be coordinated under the auspices of the UN.
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