The restive Indonesian province of Aceh, the closest landfall to the huge quake and resulting tsunami which has devastated Asia, is fraught with a decades-long civil war, its rebel insurgents continually goading the military, its supporters fighting for an independent nation.
But the massive tsunami that hit Aceh province has brought a temporary halt to fighting between rebels and government troops in the region, with analysts hoping that a ceasefire could spur efforts to settle the conflict.
The Free Aceh Movement has ordered a ceasefire so that relief agencies can safely deliver supplies to the province, where the government estimates more than 25,000, and up to 45,000, may have been killed in Sunday’s disaster.
Military and police say they are concentrating on helping the survivors, not hunting down rebels. And the government has eased regulations imposed during the conflict preventing foreign journalists and relief workers from travelling to the province.
Aceh has been under military lockdown for more than a year during a government drive to crush a separatist rebellion. A ban on foreign aid agencies has just been lifted, but with no network in place they face a battle to get started.
“We’re holding back,” says Lieutenant Colonel Ali Tarunajaya, a police chief in the insurgent stronghold of north Aceh.
“We’re not going to arrest the rebels. They’re looking for members of their families, just like many of our police members are looking for theirs. We’re all crying together.”
Great tracts of land remain under surging tides in the province, on the northwest tip of Sumatra island, 150 kilometres from the epicentre of the natural disaster which has claimed more than 55,000 lives, half of them in Indonesia.
As night fell three full days after the quake, there was still no contact with many parts of the worst-affected area.
A frantic appeal from what remained of the main west coast town of Meulaboh warned that looting was breaking out and starvation loomed for the few survivors unless aid was swiftly dispatched.
But blocked roads, collapsed bridges, treacherous seas and fuel and vehicle shortages hamper relief efforts. Humanitarian groups warn that disease outbreaks could claim even more lives.
Returning from a reconnaissance flight over Meulaboh and nearby islands, Vice President Yusuf Kalla told journalists there appeared to be no sign of life in the town, which was home to 40,000 people.
And nearby, the district council head for the Aceh Jaya district, Sri Hamdani, says that half the 95,000 people living in his region, north of Meulaboh, may have perished.
But a correspondent for the ABC, Tim Palmer, says a coordinated effort, and maybe even an acknowledgement of the ceasefire, may be a way off.
“We’ve seen soldiers by the thousands in the areas where people are trying to recover bodies, but mostly dressed in full combat gear, carrying rifles, wearing helmets seeming to patrol the area rather than carrying shovels and being in overalls actually doing anything,” he says from the capital, Banda Aceh.
“Heavy equipment, the few items of heavy equipment we’ve seen moved into Banda Aceh, they don’t seem to know where to put them, a lot of them have been just parked by the roadside and they’re doing nothing.”
Relief officials say they did not expect the conflict, which has killed 13,000 people since 1976, including at least 2,000 in the last year, to affect rescue efforts.
“We’ve been told that the vice president has instructed the air force to facilitate the arrival of foreign assistance upon arrival.”
And analysts say the military could use the disaster to win the hearts and minds of the province’s 4.3 million people by joining in with rebuilding efforts.
“It sounds awful, but this disaster is going to give the Indonesian army a good reputation. Since the disaster, all you read about is army, army, army,” says a peace activist who has campaigned in Aceh, Dede Oetomo.
“I’m actually thinking that the army is using this disaster to win over the hearts and minds of the Aceh people by showing themselves as necessary, that they are the good guys.”
In one sign that the region could come together over the tragedy, survivors in the deeply Islamic province see the catastrophe as a divine message to end the province’s long-running conflict.
Struggling in the ruins in a search for his missing sister, Imran Hamid says “I felt that this disaster was God’s warning to Acehnese and Indonesians that we should get our acts together and learn the message behind this calamity.”
