The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Tsunami leaves a world of ghosts'

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Tuesday, Jun 21, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Tsunami leaves a world of ghosts'

John Aglionby — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

BEFORE THE December 26, 2004 tsunami I had never met anyone who had suffered so much that they had effectively lost their identity. In regular trips to the devastated regions in the last six months I have met thousands of such "ghosts"; once proud people reduced to bedraggled, grieving bodies dressed in donated clothes and kept alive by the world's largesse.

It is only when one considers what it takes to rebuild someone's identity that one gets a sense of the size of the reconstruction task in Aceh and North Sumatra, the Indonesian provinces that bore the brunt of the December 26 earthquake and tsunami.

First, you need to find two persons you are not related to who can vouch for you. Then you need to see the village or neighbourhood chief. Then you need to take his letter to the sub-district chief. Only then do you get an identity card. Meanwhile, you start discussing with your neighbours who owns what land. You all go to the village chief and have letters drawn up confirming what has been agreed. Then the village gets its land ownership "map" approved by the sub-district chief. You all go to the land agency and get your title deeds. Then you rebuild your house, return to your livelihood and — hey presto! — you have your identity back. Simple.

Multiply that process by half a million — not forgetting all the government offices lost, the devastated infrastructure, the fact there is a secessionist war going on and the psychological trauma affecting everyone — and you get an idea of why the head of the Indonesian Government's new reconstruction agency demanded a four-year mandate.

And that is just the theory. Once you hit the ground and start getting into fine detail, the reality of what is required becomes apparent.

Take, for example, the task of getting an identity card. In many villages surviving neighbours were scattered across distances of dozens of miles. Many village and sub-district chiefs also died. "There are just so many priorities, it is hard to know where to begin," one United Nations worker told me.

Securing a land title is even more complex. Before the tsunami most Acehnese had no idea what a title deed was, let alone possessed one.

So this has been less a document replacement exercise, more an educational process. And for the officials it has been a case of climbing up a mountain of applications in the most trying circumstances imaginable. That assumes the land still exists.

For many coastal communities, the waves washed away their land. Many people made their living from the sea, but the new coast belongs to someone else. So where should the former community be relocated?

It is not only the land registry officials who are struggling. Everyone is in the same boat.

Everyone wants their house rebuilt, everyone wants a job, everyone wants a school for their children, everyone wants a health clinic, everyone wants a plough to prepare their fields for the August rice-planting season. But it just is not going to happen.

Amid the mind-boggling statistics and army of so-called logistical experts, it is easy to forget this has been a human tragedy. An Oxfam project coordinator in Greater Aceh district told me that, in many of the villages he is responsible for, only 10-15 per cent of the community was showing real initiative and a desire to rebuild their lives. While some of the rest are undoubtedly lazy, expecting the aid to fall into their laps, many are still too traumatised to act.

In such circumstances reconstruction cannot be rushed, argues Jon Lindborg, of USAID, the United States Government's development agency. "Until they're ready to rebuild their own communities, you can't do it for them," he said. While undoubtedly true, one also cannot just sit back and wait — which, to an extent, the Indonesian Government has been guilty of doing.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has exhibited a commendable sense of urgency, but the same cannot be said of those around him. At least six weeks were wasted while the planners wrote their 12-volume blueprint and a reconstruction and rehabilitation agency was established.

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