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When relief fights belief

BY LETTA TAYLER | STAFF CORRESPONDENT

January 23, 2005

Villagers in Krueng Sabe help unload food dropped in a H-60 Seahawk helicopter by the U.S. Navy. The U.S. military is performing its largest humanitarian rescue mission in history in helping victims of the tsunami. (Newsday / Letta Tayler)

KRUENG SABE, Indonesia - The barefoot children and old men run past the few shacks still standing in this tsunami-struck village, eager to meet the U.S. Navy H-60 Seahawk as it whirrs onto a patch of earth.

"Thank you! Thank you!" they call in their native Achinese as they grab the sacks of rice and crates of vacuum-dried meals that the helicopter workers unload.

Asked who their benefactors are, however, many villagers pause, puzzled. "I don't know and I don't really care," says Abdul Rachman, a frail 80-year-old, as he peers at the slate-gray chopper. "I just want the food."

From the relief perspective, the U.S. military's massive humanitarian operation to help feed and rescue tsunami survivors on Sumatra Island's Aceh Province, the region hardest hit by last month's killer tsunami, has been a tremendous success. But the jury's still out on whether the mission will win hearts and minds in this predominantly Muslim archipelago and the broader Islamic world, as several U.S. officials from President George W. Bush on down contend.

In addition to tsunami survivors who don't even recognize the Americans, both the Indonesian government and many in the population at large appear ambivalent over the U.S. military's role here. Significantly, the government here has said it is completely onboard with the Pentagon's announcement Thursday that it will immediately start phasing out tsunami relief efforts for Aceh, shifting responsibility to international relief agencies and the Indonesian government over the next two months.

"The fact that the U.S. military came here with its ships and its helicopters and its troops for humanitarian relief should leave a good feeling in many Muslim people's minds," said John B. Haseman, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former defense attache at the U.S. Embassy in the capital of Jakarta.

But, Haseman acknowledged, for some Muslims who vehemently oppose such U.S. policies as the war in Iraq and an alliance with Israel, "Whatever the United States does is going to be viewed negatively."

Many Indonesians, citizens of the world's most populous Muslim nation, turned a cold shoulder on the United States after its 2001 attacks on Afghanistan, where several Indonesian Islamic fundamentalists had trained with al-Qaida in the 1980s. Some of those trainees formed militant groups in Indonesia such as Jemaah Islamiyah, the organization suspected of the terror blasts on Bali in 2002 and an attack at a Marriott Hotel in Jakarta the following year.

But Indonesia's view of Washington took the biggest nosedive after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The popularity of the United States sank from 61 percent among Indonesians in the summer of 2002 to just 15 percent a year later, according to a poll by the Manhattan-based Pew Research Center.

Nearly three-fourths of Muslims in Indonesia fear their country might be attacked by the United States, according to a separate poll released by the Pew center in June.

"So far, America has come here like an angel," said Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, the Aceh chief of the radical Islamic Defenders Front. "But if it turns into a Satan as it did in Afghanistan and Iraq, we must fight it."

Among the suspicious, rumors abound here that the United States has its eye on the vast oil and gas reserves of Aceh's coast. Last week, Indonesia media reported that a text message forwarded around the country asked, "After Iraq, will Indonesia be the next U.S. target?"

"There's a perception of the United States as a superpower with lots of hidden agendas," said Sidney Jones, a Singapore-based expert on Indonesia. "With the nightly news showing the war in Iraq and abuse of Muslim prisoners by U.S. soldiers, a humanitarian mission may not be enough to change people's opinions - particularly the farther you get from Aceh."

Launched Jan. 1, six days after the tsunami struck, Operation Unified Assistance, the name for the U.S. mission for tsunami victims, is the biggest relief drive in U.S. military history - and its biggest military operation in this region since the war in nearby Vietnam.

More than 18,000 troops, 100 aircraft and two dozen ships are involved in dispatching food, water, tents and medicine to areas impassable by land. In more than 1,300 missions, the troops have dropped 3.3-million tons of relief supplies in Aceh province, where the tsunami killed some 100,000 people and left nearly a half-million homeless. They've also flown hundreds of injured and stranded Indonesians to emergency clinics.

While officially welcoming the U.S. troops, Indonesia and Washington have danced between tension and diplomacy since the get-go.

In mid-January, the U.S. Navy abruptly pulled its aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, the backbone of its relief efforts, out of Indonesian waters. The official explanation was that it was easier for its fighter pilots to fly mandatory, twice-monthly training missions. But reports persist that Indonesia refused to allow the exercises in its airspace.

That same day, the Indonesian government announced it wanted all foreign troops aiding tsunami recovery efforts out by March 26. Though the government later backpedaled, saying the date was merely a target goal, the Marines immediately scratched plans to build roads or clear debris in tsunami-ravaged areas.

Instead, the Marines and other U.S. troops remain in their aircraft or on the Indonesian military base in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, setting foot on Indonesian soil only for scant minutes to unload relief supplies and flying back to nearby warships at night. That's in sharp contrast to the Australian, Russian and Malaysian troops, who help out in refugee camps.

Like other foreign troops here, the U.S. troops don't carry arms, at the Indonesian government's behest.

Jones cautioned that some of the Indonesian government's actions may cater to domestic voters who want assurance their sovereignty is intact. In addition, she noted, Jakarta is wary of any foreign eyes on Aceh, which it had placed under martial law and sealed from the outside world nearly two years ago as part of a three-decades-long battle with separatist rebels. Human rights groups claim the Indonesian military has committed widespread abuses in its counterinsurgency campaign.

Despite its peaceful thrust, the U.S. mission has not been without incident. U.S. choppers frequently get stormed - not in anger, but in desperation by hungry villagers. On Thursday, an Indonesian soldier firing into the air to scare off a gaggle of lunging tsunami survivors narrowly missed the chopper's rotor blades.

But many U.S. troops in Aceh say the mission has been an eye-opener - and sometimes a respite from the focus on Iraq.

"I feel like we've really made a difference, and people are extremely grateful," said Lt. Cmdr. Greg St. Pierre, the Navy pilot making the food drop to this tiny village on Aceh's western coast on a recent day.

And, even if it's incremental, recognition that the U.S. military is showing its softer side is growing. During a quick break from his duties in a communications tent at the Indonesian military air base in Banda Aceh, Pfc. Randy J. Thomas, 30, a U.S. Marine from National Park, N.J., distributed some of the troops' Pop Tarts to Indonesian children.

"Australian?" a woman with the children asked Thomas.

"No! American," a boy who'd taken a Pop Tart corrected her. Asked what Thomas' job was, the boy replied, "To help."