Numerous media reports point to the bottlenecks in ferrying aid into Aceh and distributing it. On New Years Eve, an aircraft had to wait 14 hours in Banda Aceh for a takeoff clearance. At one stage the only surviving air traffic controller in Aceh was reportedly left to operate the airport alone. Trucks and fuel have been in critically short supply. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that US relief organisations in Medan, forced to rely on their own resources, had “begged, borrowed and rented” 80 trucks to provide transport.

The disinterest of the Indonesian military in the plight of Acehnese is most graphically revealed by the inexplicable delay in surveying the extent of the disaster on the west coast, which lay in the direct path of the tsunami. It took four days for the Indonesian air force to send a flight over Meulaboh, which one journalist likened to the scene after the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

Highly publicised relief operations are now underway by US and Australian military, which are providing key logistical support. US military helicopters flew the first significant supplies of aid into Meulaboh last weekend. The Australian military teams are in Banda Aceh providing clean water and other assistance. All criticism of the TNI and its appalling human rights has been shelved as these efforts are hailed in the media as ushering in a new period of cooperation.

These joint operations have very little to do with any genuine concern the victims of the December 26 disaster. Both Australian and the US have been seeking to reestablish working relations with the Indonesian military since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998. The relief efforts provide an ideal opportunity not only to work closely with the TNI but potentially to establish a foothold in Aceh—a key region with significant oil and reserves adjacent to the strategic Strait of Malacca.

As for the TNI, the support provided by the US and Australian military for relief efforts allows the diversion of additional Indonesian military forces into its operations against GAM. There is every indication that the Indonesian military has the tacit support of Washington and Canberra, which, unlike in the case of East Timor, have maintained a complete silence on Jakarta’s dirty war in Aceh over the last 18 months.

US military establishment thinking was revealed in a recent comment by the US-based Stratfor Global Intelligence thinktank. It noted that the tsunami disaster might prove to be a boon for the military’s campaign against GAM. “Yudhoyono will send more troops into the province to rebuild and clean up … If GAM does not agree to settle the problem peacefully, Yudhoyono will have more troops on hand to clean them out,” it noted.

What is emerging in embryo in Aceh is a return to the relations that existed prior to 1998, when the US, Australia and other major powers relied on the ruthless Suharto dictatorship to safeguard their economic and strategic interests in Indonesia and the region.

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