By Jordi Calvet
Banda Aceh (Indonesia), Dec 23 (IANS/EFE): Sriwahyuni sweeps the porch of her small house, number 10 in a row of identical units hurriedly constructed by international humanitarian organisations after a tsunami devastated the Indonesian region of Aceh a decade ago this week.
Emergency dwellings like hers, mangrove barriers planted to anchor soil to the earth and a brand-new highway running along the coast, stand as reminders of the monumental humanitarian aid operation triggered by one of the newborn century's worst natural disasters.
On Dec 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake measuring 9.1 on the open-ended Richter scale created a gigantic wave of water that killed 170,000 Indonesians and destroyed 800 km of coastline in the northern part of the island in Sumatra.
Dozens of non-governmental organisations from around the world came to the assistance of Aceh, bearing $6.7 billion in aid money to deal with the more than 200,000 destroyed homes and 560,000 displaced people the tsunami left behind.
"The devastation was so severe! There was just land left. There were no death certificates nor papers showing ownership of property. It was very difficult to decide where to construct the houses. We began from zero," explained Myrna Evora, director of the Plan Indonesia organisation.
The Indonesian government moved quickly to set up the Aceh reconstruction agency, BRR, to direct and coordinate the clean-up and reconstruction operation that hardly left any physical signs of the tsunami's devastation by the end of the government's term in 2009.
"For me it was a show of great coordination, it was very well-planned. If not, we wouldn't be in such a stable condition," says Buchari, who was elected mayor of Aceh Besar after the tsunami.
However, a closer look reveals deficiencies in the colossal task undertaken, owing to difficulties in coordination between donating organisations and their rush to exhaust their allocated budgets which led to more houses being constructed than had been destroyed.
Half a dozen strips of plastic tape indicate the number of times Sriwahyuni has had to repair the holes in the walls of her home, a quality defect which she attributes to the hurried pace of the reparation work.
"The house is so-so. But it is better than the one that I had," she says while showing the warped boards and iron bars protruding from the ceiling, which a mere six years after it was built, was already corroded by humidity.
"The work was enormous and those who donated wanted to help immediately. But we still didn't know what we needed. We had not made any evaluations," explains Buchari.
"There was a lot of money. The entire humanitarian aid sector came and coordination was difficult," says Evora, while admitting that problems also arose from competition between NGOs to undertake projects.
"It weakened recovery efforts. Fishermen who asked for one boat ended up with three, and the problem of overfishing which had been brought under control, spiralled out of control again," she adds.
The other great difficulty centred on the three-decade long war between separatist guerrillas and the Indonesian government, which immediately after the disaster removed restrictions on international organisations from accessing Aceh.
Analyst Lilianne Fan, who has worked in Aceh since 1999, praises the authorities for the manner in which they used the occasion to improve relations with the people in the region and the BRR management, who involved local people in the construction effort.
"They realised that it was an unprecedented problem and they were brave, dedicated and serious enough to able to design a response," says Fan.
However, the analyst criticises the fact that international aid focussed solely on material damages and not on the rehabilitation of a society plagued by the armed conflict that ended eight months after the tsunami struck.
The region, which enjoys a great deal of autonomy, is today governed by former guerrillas who, just as they did during the war years, control major economic sectors such as mining, forests and plantations.
"It was a missed opportunity for a structural change. The functioning of the economy has not changed since the days of the conflict," according to Fan.
Evora, however, highlights the extent to which the affected communities took part in the reconstruction process, an important objective for her organisation.
She also points out how the experience in Aceh served as a reference in dealing with the consequences of other disasters like the Haiti earthquake or the Haiyan typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.