Indonesia wants foreign aid workers out by 26 March
The Boxing Day tsunami relief effort is unsettling the government of Indonesia, which said yesterday it wants foreign workers -- particularly those wearing military uniforms -- out of the country as soon as possible but not later than 26 March.
The deadline is three months to the day after the massive 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed more than 100,000 Indonesians and left Northern Sumatra a wasteland.
Vice President Yusuf Kalla minced no words when speaking with state news agency Antara about the thousands of foreign troops labouring day and night to bring aid into the country -- particularly into Aceh.
"Three months are enough. In fact, the sooner the better," he said, according to SBS World News yesterday. "Foreign troops are no longer needed."
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told an Aceh newspaper that: "If it is possible, starting from February 26 will be a transition period and on March 26 we can handle all of this independently," SBS reported.
The militaries of several nations -- New Zealand, Australia, the United States and Singapore -- are on the ground in Aceh, numbering in the tens of thousands.
Some 13,000 US troops alone are said to be involved, with 6,000 on the ground every day, most either working directly with the survivors or in attempts to unsnarl the logistical chaos that has developed on the ground as the UN-coordinated effort has failed to find ways to move relief supplies out of airports to victims.
Part of that problem is down to the UN's slow start but even more of it is due to the fact that much of the equipment needed to repair the infrastructure of the country must arrive on ships -- military ships -- which have not yet made it to Aceh.
According to the New York Times, Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Ã?ngel Moratinos, said Wednesday night in Jakarta that a naval vessel was scheduled to leave Spain on Thursday and would not arrive until February. The ship will carry a military hospital, heavy machinery and an engineering unit capable of building roads, he said. Two Spanish military transport aircraft are set to land in Aceh on Thursday, he said.
An amphibious Australian Navy ship with 150 military engineers and bulldozers and heavy forklifts was to arrive in Aceh today to help restore ruined bridges and roads.
In addition to the more than 50 helicopters based on 21 US ships, including an aircraft carrier, already on the scene, the French military is deploying five Super Puma transport helicopters to aid food and medicine deliveries in and around Meulaboh, south of Banda Aceh and along Sumatra's western coast, Bloomberg said.
The Danish military is offering as many as 15 men to help load and unload equipment from airplanes arriving in Banda Aceh, though that deployment is awaiting Indonesian authorization, Bloomberg said yesterday.
And even the German military is making itself known to Aceh survivors.
According to Expaticathe German military supply ship Berlin is now on station off the Aceh coast.
The Berlin will support the Bundeswehr's already established emergency centre in Banda Aceh.
On board are 45 hospital beds, two operating rooms and two helicopters. The ship also picked up rice, blankets, baby food and other goods on a stop in India.
Three days ago, Singapore announced that it had sent a Mobile Air Traffic Control (MATC) tower to Banda Aceh airport to help with logistical problems.
But the logistical problems are only increasing in the absence of more helicopters, open roads and heavy trucks to move supplies out of Banda Aceh -- which has a single strip airport (satellite photo) that cannot handle heavy air freighters -- into the countryside. [For an extensive analysis of the logistical problems building at the Banda Aceh airport, click here.]
The Indonesian government's announcements came even as more military aid is headed toward the country -- and followed by one day pronouncements that civilian aid workers from foreign NGOS, as well as foreign journalists, would be confined to Banda Aceh and neighboring Meulaboh unless they receive special permission and are accompanied by Indonesian military units.
Most sources agree that the government is concerned that it may appear to be losing its grip on Aceh, in which it has been fighting a determined resistance movement for three decades, often under a draconian code of martial law.
But other sources say that the strict Muslim population of Indonesia is pressing for the expulsion of foreign military elements out of fear that they may become popular figures through their acts of mercy and charity.
Indonesia, with the world's largest Muslim population, has long been a powderkeg of competing interests, many of them based in religion, and earned the opprobrium of the world for the way it prosecuted a war in Timor.
But following the election of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, many had hoped that the country was moving toward stronger alliances with the West.
That hope, coupled with the Boxing Day disaster, led even the US to relax its Timor-inspired ban on the sale of military equipment to Indonesia far enough to permit the sale of spare parts for its aging military transport planes.
According to the New York Times, the US is sending former Indonesian ambassador and deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, to Jakarta this weekend to discuss widening the military relationship between the countries.
And General Yudhoyono appeared early in the crisis to warm especially to Australia, telling Prime Minister John Howard that he "will never forget" Australia's generosity in being the first to offer concrete assistance. Australia eventually pledged $A1 billion in special funds to assist Indonesian in recovering, the funds to be adminstered through a commission headed jointly by Mr Howard and the General.
But both the US and Australia have said they are in the relief effort for the long haul -- a period both imagined to extend considerably beyond 26 March.
Their inability to connect directly with the relief effort after that date could alter the entire landscape of the mission.
As The Australian noted in a 10 January editorial, that commitment to joint control of aid funds was meant to reassure Australians conscious of official corruption in Indonesia, but it: "... is equally directed at ordinary Indonesians, who are more familiar than Australians with the inefficiency and corruption that afflicts their nation."
The commitment to staying with the relief effort until it is complete, the Australian said, was more explicitly directed at the citizens of Indonesia, because "the task of reconstruction after the south Asian tsunami will be lengthy and difficult."
Even more so if no foreign soldiers -- the lifeblood of the effort so far -- are permitted to assist.
13-Jan-2005
