The Artifice of Aceh’s Anniversary

Indonesia’s national news magazine, Tempo, invited me to write a guest column for its tsunami 10th anniversary English and Indonesian editions. It was an honour to be asked and a privilege to write the column. Tempo published it yesterday.

It’s often strange how life turns out. One moment you are getting on with everything as usual, the next it upends in the most unexpected way. That happened to me with the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. I did not expect to play any role in the tsunami recovery operations let alone a central one helping to lead the reconstruction operations from the top as the Indonesian Government’s senior adviser. But that’s the way it turned out.
I emerged from the experience a little over four years later battle scarred and burnout blurry but with enormous professional satisfaction at having contributed to one of the world’s great humanitarian causes. Little did I know I would also emerge as a global expert on disaster management, crisis leadership and the politics of international humanitarianism, or at least key strategic aspects of them. But that’s what happened in the strange world where things make a little more sense in retrospect than they ever do, did or could at the time.
And so, with the passage of time and the approach of the tsunami’s 10th anniversary, which is upon us this very week, Tempo invited me to write an insider’s perspective on the great national and international rebuilding program. The original text follows below. Before I come to it, however, a few words on this picture I have selected to accompany this article.

I took the photograph in the final stages of the Aceh reconstruction program when people were wrapping up and handing out various awards and acknowledgements. One was given to my then boss, Indonesia’s tsunami minister, Dr Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, a good man and wonderful program leader who proved the power of positive leadership in advancing the cause of humanity.

We were standing in the covered walkway outside the office we shared in Banda Aceh. The country director of UNHCR, Bob Ashe, another good leader and exemplary humanitarian, had just presented Dr Kuntoro with a plaque to thank him for his contribution to tsunami recovery. It was one of those ironic moments because it should have been reversed: we should have been thanking Bob and his team, not the other way around.
Be that as it may, I took the picture after noticing how the plaque reflected Dr Kuntoro’s image. To me, it is an iconic representation of all that was good about the Aceh (and Nias) recovery program: terrific teamwork; the warmth of professional friendship; the camaraderie of mature common endeavour; practical engagement and positive political support; humanitarianism of the highest order; excellence in national leadership; and a unified UN system marshalled by highly intelligent, well-meaning individuals like Bob Ashe whose contributions and experience would have been sorely missed had they been absent.
With those thoughts in mind, here is the Tempo column. I wrote it to contrast the contrived credit various agencies and organisations will take from the Aceh experience as they pat themselves on the back for a job they supposedly did well. Supposedly. While mindful of the many positives represented in the photograph, I am also under no illusions about the wilful incompetence, calculated corruption and political nastiness that also lurked in every corner of the reconstruction program; and of the contempt with which too many agencies readily whitewash their darker deeds while claiming credit for any others.
I chose one Indonesian government agency to represent the intrusive incompetence we faced as part of the Aceh recovery program. The Indonesian Foreign Ministry, known for short as Deplu, loved to crash the party at the last minute to push others out of the way while claiming it was in charge of the enormous foreign contribution to rebuilding Aceh. Either that, or it would insist that it, and it alone, would make all necessary arrangements for whatever event was being held but then not turn up on the day leaving us to pick up the pieces. Either way, Deplu won a special place in my heart as the iconic representation of the challenges we faced in rebuilding Aceh. Foreword by Bill Nicol

* * *

The Artifice of Aceh’s Anniversary

Anniversaries can be strange. Deeply personal at one level, they can be coldly functional at another, set-piece events for pretenders keen to be seen.
I vividly remember the first anniversary of the 2004 tsunami.
It drew VIPs from around the world, overloading Banda Aceh’s crinkled airport with private jet traffic.
Deplu stepped in to take control at the last minute, desperate to appear involved and important. What a mess it made of things, as usual.
Take just one incident.
It detained US Ambassador Lynn Pascoe at the commemoration security check-in in Banda Aceh when his bodyguards were found to be armed, understandable in a place where war had raged for 30 years and sporadic firefights continued.
Then, despite the US being one of the biggest donors to Aceh’s recovery, Deplu officials insisted Ambassador Pascoe sit way up the back of the large temporary hall we erected for the ceremony, a shining example of discourtesy to a country that had given over $500 million to rebuild Aceh.
And there was more.
A stand-up argument ensued with the responsible Deplu official who physically tried to stop me as I installed a new row of seats for the Ambassador by pushing forward the armchairs placed at the front for the Indonesian President and his wife.
The Ambassador stood in embarrassment while everyone in the crowded room looked on listening to the raised voices as the farcical scene unfolded.
And, yes, we inserted the additional row of seats. And, yes, the ceremony continued when the President arrived.
But the charade was typical of Aceh’s massive reconstruction program, so much of it hit and miss.
The recovery leader, Dr Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, my boss, took the greatest hits.
In the smokescreen just beyond the first anniversary commemoration, the sharks of Jakarta circled to be rid of him so they could get their hands on the billions flowing through Aceh’s reconstruction.
The mantra of “going too slow” had taken hold of ignorant minds clueless of how long it takes to build the momentum of such a large program, particularly when supply chains are well and truly broken.
Reporters started the mantra and it kept repeating to the delight of the Jakarta naysayers keen to roll Kuntoro.
They had tried to do this even before his appointment, bureaucrats deliberately removing key clauses from the Presidential Perpu to severely limit his power. And now they were at it again.
As the battles raged to remove him, the Red Cross stepped in with a $100 million transitional shelter program to get tsunami victims out of tents, visibly lifting the momentum that grew to eventually build 140,000 new houses in four short years—housing being the tip of the reconstruction iceberg and its key political success measure.
Kuntoro would not have survived were it not for that Red Cross initiative. Nor would the reconstruction program. I doubt anyone but Kuntoro could have delivered it. And if anyone should know, it’s me.
I sat beside Kuntoro as his senior adviser over the full course of Aceh’s recovery, travelled with him on many of his international trips negotiating with donors and keeping their money warm. So I saw exactly what he did. And it was stunning by any measure.
Leadership is the defining element in human progress. I have written about it in my many books, one being Tsunami Chronicles, the unofficial, six-volume story of Aceh’s recovery in which I meticulously document the many political games that daily ripped, tore and gouged at Aceh’s recovery.
The great stresses came together in BRR, the agency Kuntoro led.
We were small until the peace settlement with GAM that required us to employ a thousand former combatants, something Kuntoro did with a smile knowing peace was the main game in Aceh. We could do nothing without it.
But employing the GAM 1,000 skewed BRR mightily, splitting it between the non-Acehnese professionals there to help at great personal cost and the Acehnese who considered any money, power or privileges they could extract, often at knife point, to be their birthright.
It was a nightmare for Kuntoro as daily he balanced the contending forces with the art of a leader who understood that managing the political elements was key to delivering the technical ones. There were advantages, of course.
Kuntoro kept the GAM leadership structure in place to maintain some control over its unemployed foot soldiers extorting money from international field programs throughout Aceh. Had the GAM leadership fractured, the whole reconstruction program could have failed, particularly if any combatant had killed one Red Cross or UN staffer.
Kuntoro won the day with an adroit combination of personal charm and strategic foresight but paid a painful price.
Senior Acehnese managers in BRR mounted a calculated campaign to divide Kuntoro from his key Javanese deputies, two in particular, Sudirman Said, now a Jokowi Minister, and Widja Widjajanto, a former national journalist who, with Sudirman, played a pivotal role in every aspect of BRR.
Both deserve medals for their contributions but instead got sacked as Kuntoro distanced himself from them in the great balancing act few could see let alone appreciate but which lay at the heart of Aceh’s recovery—assuming it has fully recovered, which is doubtful.
Huge obstacles remain. Aceh’s local government budget is pathetically small, hardly enough to deliver basic services let alone continue development. Shariah law, foisted on Aceh in the peace process, will keep it a backward joke, divided from a secular country by religion that should be a matter of personal preference not state imposition. And corruption remains the ever-present threat as former GAM leaders continue to enjoy the spoils of war far beyond anything they deserve. All are things to which the Jokowi Government should pay attention.
As for the Kuntoro legacy, this goes well beyond but hinges upon Aceh. Failure there could have easily damaged the Indonesian psyche given the tremendous power and money at his disposal. I could imagine others saying: “If he couldn’t do it with all that, no one else could, so don’t bother trying”.
This thought and Kuntoro’s great reform agenda kept me working up to 20-hour days seven days a week leading to long burnout that still lingers another six years on.
But Kuntoro did succeed. At least we did—Kuntoro with the tremendous help, and politics, of the international community. For it was in the end a great team effort. Thousands came to help from around the world in a mass demonstration of human kindness.
At its core was leadership. Kuntoro’s leadership. And politics. Always politics. Plus incompetence, of which Deplu was far from alone. And competence too, always inspired by genuine concern for a community smashed by the fist of nature.
* Bill Nicol was senior adviser to the Indonesia Government for Aceh’s reconstruction and is the author of Tsunami Chronicles: Adventures in Disaster Management, the definitive analysis of the Aceh recovery program. He can be reached through his website, www.nicolnotes.c

Nine years since Indian Ocean tsunami struck.

  Nine years since Indian Ocean tsunami struck.

What are the Lesson's Learned?

It has been nine traumatic years for those families and friends who lost loved ones in the tsunami. which struck so quickly and silently on 26 December 2004. The grieving goes on, and for many there is no closure as thousands of bodies were never found. But life goes on and if you travel today to the worst affected countries of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, India and Thailand, life in those affected coastal areas can be described as normal, or in many cases the infrastructure is better.We built back better.

Of all the stories I have read on the tsunami, this one written two years ago really moved me and I share it with you. It is a story of dispair and hope.

Wati, second right, poses for a photograph with her father Yusuf, right, mother Yusniar, left, and younger brother Aris

A girl who was swept away in the Indian Ocean tsunami seven years ago told today how she broke down in tears after tracking down her parents, who had long lost hope of finding her alive.

The 15-year-old showed up in Aceh province's hard-hit town of Meulaboh earlier this week, saying that not long after the wave hit she was "adopted" by a woman who called her Wati and forced her to beg, sometimes beating her and keeping her in the streets until 1am.

When the teenager stopped bringing in money, she was told, "Go ahead, leave ... go find your parents then, they're in Meulaboh."

With only patchy memories about her past - she was only eight when the tsunami hit, an age where most children do not know their relatives' full names - Wati began her search, telling people she thought her grandfather was "Ibrahim."

She met a pedicab driver in Meulaboh, who brought her to a man by that name. Though she did not look familiar, he, in turn, quickly summoned her parents. 

Some time back I discussed the tsunami work with John Ekelund from the Finnish Red Cross who had worked in Sri Lanka for almost four years on the  recovery operation. John said, " It was the commitment of Red Cross volunteers and staff that gave us the edge." We also displayed vision, we thought ahead when planning for schools or hospitals and tried to visualise the expanding needs in ten years. So we built for the present and the future and this approach has really paid off."

John was somewhat scornful of organisations that came in and with poor planning, and little liaison with community or local authorities, rushed through construction, took photographs and left, often leaning many liabilities and defects for other to manage.

" The Red Cross built quality houses, hospitals,water systems, schools and clinics and took a holistic approach and when working with communities, we built not only houses but toilets, clean water to each house, livelihoods and even playgrounds for the children." he said.

Since the tsunami struck nine years ago, I have been working on the tsunami recovery operations in India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Indonesia. I finished my tsunami work in Sri Lanka in July this year.

I am now working on the Haiyan (Yolande) typhoon operation and in our early recovery and recovery planning, I draw a lot from experiences and lessons learned from the tsunami.

For each of past eight solemn  years I have been at a commemoration ceremonies in India, Indonesia, Thailand  and at Phuket recall the grief, emotions, wailing, the blank look on faces as families floated candles out to sea on rafts, or tied miniature lanterns to kites and sent into the night sky.

I can repeat what I have said and written hundreds of times in praising the Red Cross volunteers, staff, engineers, day laborers, the affected communities in displaying unprecedented solidarity and commitment in responding and building back better. Where there were vulnerable communities in 2004 when the tsunami struck, the majority I have seen in the last few years are safer, and people much more resilient.

But I want pause for a moments and categorically say that the most important single thing we can do is to capture the lessons learned so we minimize the effects of future earthquakes and tsunamis.

Lessons were captured from the tsunami and two good publications are the Tsunami Legacy, and another cracker, A Ripple In Development. Although good, these two publications did not drill in deep enough to where recovery really goes off the rails, and that is in  the poor or weak governance at local, regional and national level. Bill Nicol's authoritative book, Tsunami Chronicles is a classic.

Tsunami Chronicles - A must for every disaster or recovery manager.

Few natural disasters come bigger than the 2004 tsunami. It left a trail of destruction from one side of the Indian Ocean to the other. Hardest hit was Aceh in Indonesia’s west where the tsunami killed almost a quarter of a million people and left half a million homeless as it smashed into a strip of coastline 800 kilometres long and several kilometres wide. The global community rallied to help in the largest military deployment since World War II, then spent billions rebuilding in one of the most challenging reconstruction programs of its kind. Tsunami Chronicles: Adventures in Disaster Management tells the inside story of recovery. To order a copy, click here.
It lays bare the tectonic political and managerial forces that swept the rebuilding program along with no less force than the tsunami itself, forces that continue to dominate and debilitate other international recovery efforts. This is a powerful, first-hand narrative from a highly experienced journalist, author and consultant who played a pivotal role overseeing Aceh’s recovery then embarked on a global excursion to examine similar recovery efforts in places like Haiti. A series of six books in one,Tsunami Chronicles offers rare and refreshing insights into global disaster recovery that will annoy some, anger a few, excite others and inspire many. A study of management like no other, it will have special appeal to anyone who wants to know how things really work, or fail to work, in a multi-billion-dollar industry riven by the politics of power.

Bill Nicol left, in Geneva for my farewell party at IFRC and promoting his book Tsunami Chronicles to Bekele Gelata SG and Jagan Chapagain, head of Asia Pacific. Photo: Bob McKerrow

Six Books in one

Tsunami Chronicles: Adventures in Disaster Management is a series of six books published in a single volume comprising... 



Foreword: A Left Little Toe—introduces Chronicles as a study of the December 2004 tsunami while also establishing the author’s key role as senior adviser to the Indonesian Government for tsunami recovery and explaining how and why it was written



Book 1: God’s Punishment—constructs the platform of disaster recovery by describing the tsunami’s impact on Aceh and explaining the wider perspective of how the Indonesian Government responded to both the tsunami and the ongoing war in Aceh



Book 2: Rise of the War Lords—looks inside the purpose-built Aceh Reconstruction Agency, BRR, to see how it overcame the many political, military and operational challenges that distorted the recovery program





Joy Ching Muller with Bill Nicol in Geneva for his book launch.



Book 3: Consulting in Catastrophe—gets more personal as the author explore the role of technical advisors generally and my own in particular; it provides a bridge between the internal operations of BRR to which technical advisors contributed and the external role of international community from which most advisors came



Book 4: Cultures of Care and Contempt—opens the door on the international community's pivotal contribution to the reconstruction of Aceh while also explaining the bump and grind of working with the global players



Book 5: End Games—discusses the many great fights at the end as the massive reconstruction program was brought to an end in the grip of "victory disease"



Book 6: The Residuals of Recovery—steps back from the detail of Aceh’s recovery to take a broader view that explores lessons, looks beyond to subsequent missteps in Haiti and other places, and projects forward to speculate on the future.

If you want to learn more about disaster management, you must get a copy of Bill's book. It is available from Amazon.

Tsunami Central

It’s coming … Tsunami Central is on the way at last!

As we head into 2013, we also head passed the eighth anniversary of what was the world’s greatest natural disaster, the Boxing Day or Indian Ocean Tsunami of 26 December 2004.

I was engaged to help plan the recovery of what was Tsunami Central—Aceh, Indonesia’s the westernmost province.

What I thought would be my brief contribution turned into a major one that would last another four years working as senior advisor to the Indonesian Government overseeing the entire reconstruction program beside its leader, Dr Kuntoro Mangkusubroto.

Dr Kuntoro recognized the importance of what we were doing and asked me to write a book about it.

Little did I realize this would take me another four years after we finished in Aceh and would end up not as one book but as five.

Written under the working title “The Tsunami Chronicles”, as I approach publication I have chosen what I hope is he better titles—Tsunami Central.

This captures the fact that Aceh was indeed tsunami central, taking the most direct and greatest hit from the massive waves that smashed into it.

It also captures the central role I played in Aceh’s recovery, neither a role I sought nor particularly wanted but one I relished nonetheless as an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to humanity with a unique skill set garnered over forty years of professional practice.

Looking back, there is a certain retrospective logic the experience and skills I gained first as a journalist and then as management consultant.

While I did not recognize before, I had developed an accidental expertise in disaster response either by writing on various political and other calamities or, as a consultant, either preventing disasters or repairing organizations after they had experienced one.

So in some respects there was nothing extraordinary about my work on Indonesia’s tsunami response aside, that is, from its extraordinary scale.

The deaths and damage were massive. They demanded a herculean response from everyone involved, myself included.

The long hours and often grueling physical conditions were challenging as were the managerial and political difficulties.

I have tried to capture these in Tsunami Central.

Writing it was even more difficult than working on the tsunami response proper, a lonely intellectual vigil in which I had to relive and make sense of the enormous complexities of the reconstruction effort again and again until I had captured their essence on the computer screen in front of me.

I did not expect or relish spending another four years on this project. But that is what it took to do the job well. And it deserved to be done well.

From all I have read on the subject, the literature on disaster recovery is, while extensive, also vacuous.

The many narratives are for the most part full of empty rhetoric and the so-called lessons are rarely lesson at all.

More often than not what purports to be lessons are merely political cover for the many screw-ups that are the inevitable reality of disaster recovery.

I have tried to fill the giant gap with as thorough an appreciation I could write of the overall tsunami response from the point of an insider working at the centre of the action—yes, Tsunami Central.

I have not found a traditional publisher for the five books so will likely be self-publishing, hopefully in early 2013 if I can master all the technicalities.

I also hope to publish the five books in a single volume, although I’m not sure if this will be possible given there are quarter of a million words in total plus many of my own illustrations.

So, coming soon to an e-book store near your computer is the best I can say in terms of any publication date.

Some people already know the contents as I have shared some early drafts of the manuscript among a number of people seeking early comments, all of which have been helpful.

Along the way, however, someone took the liberty of distributing all or part of the manuscript with a few naughty institutions that fell under my watchful eye both in Aceh and in writing the manuscript.

I am told they do not think highly of what I have written and in one particular case have been soiling their pants at the thought of what might befall them once it is published.

For my part, I am not courting controversy although will understand if there is some.

After all, politics is all too often a nasty business and politics abound through the pages of Tsunami Central.

Indeed a core theme of the work is the politics of management. This is a key element often missing or glossed over in the literature.

Jerry Talbot, Eddy Purwanto, Bill Nicol, Dr. Kuntoro Mankusubroto and myself. Eddy, Bill and Dr. Kuntoro are from BRR, the Indonesian Govt. Ministry in charge of Tsunami. at the UN New York where they presented the Tsunami Legacy report to Bill Clinton and Ban Ki-moon.

It results in a lie being told that suggests management is merely a technical craft. It is not. It is all about power and, therefore, highly political.

It is what makes management both difficult and interesting.

I would like to think that Tsunami Central offers the world a great case study (or, indeed, many studies) of management.

Students of the discipline should find much to enlighten and entertain them on the subject.

With that in mind, a chapter outline of Tsunami Central as it presently stands in its pre-publication format follows below.

For those of the mistaken view that what we did in Aceh is merely a matter of past history, bare in mind that post-tsunami recovery work is still going on in some countries like Sri Lanka.

And, more to the point, some very private and very powerful political lessons drawn from their Aceh experience by government donors continue to infect and undermine disaster recovery in other contexts, particularly Haiti.

The real story of Haiti’s recovery woes is in the final book, chapter 29 to be precise.

So any who think there is no ongoing relevance from our work recovery in Aceh should think again.

That said, here is the chapter outline…

Tsunami Central

Chapter Outline

Foreword: A Left Little Toe—introduces the books and myself as a key contributor to Aceh’s recovery from the tsunami

Book 1: God’s Punishment—constructs the platform of recovery, introduces the recovery leader and outlines the transition from war to peace that underpinned recovery

1.      Tsunami!—a short scene setter on the impact and challenges of the tsunami

2.      Fightback—the Indonesian Government’s emergency response to the tsunami

3.      Pitching for Peace—Aceh’s 30-year civil insurrection and the role of the Indonesian military in responding to the tsunami

4.      The Siren’s Song—the transition to peace in Aceh

5.      Mastering the Plan—the great effort by the Indonesian Government to plan Aceh’s reconstruction

6.      The Tsunami Tango—the Aceh recovery leader’s grooming and my engagement as his senior advisor

7.      The Battle Begins—how Jakarta politics almost scuttled the Aceh recovery program before it began

Book 2: Rise of the War Lords—explores the distortions of recovery from vicious internal politics to heavy donor drag

8.      Happy Landings—the Aceh Reconstruction Agency, BRR, begins its honeymoon

9.      Theatre of Hostility—the conflict environment in which the Reconstruction Agency operated and the challenges this gave rise to

10.  The General—continuing the military metaphor with the philosophy and practices of program leader Kuntoro Mangkusubroto as a Recovery General

11.  The Great Beast—the great operational struggles that beset the Recovery Agency

12.  Warlords—the internal power plays ripping at the Recovery Agency

13.  The Sharp End—the organizational and political challenges of the housing program, the lead performance measure for overall recovery

14.  Consulting in Catastrophe—the role of technical advisors generally and my own in particular as the hidden glue of recovery

15.  Walking the Technical Tightrope—insights into the immense drag imposed on an advisor like myself by bilateral donors and the media

Book 3: Cultures of Care and Contempt—tells of the bump and grind of working with the international community

16.  A Tsunami of Money—how the huge gush of money distorted the roles and contributions of international NGOs

17.  Purity and Practicality—how the internal battle between head office and field staff almost destroyed the Australian Red Cross recovery program

18.  Highway from Hell—the grinding contribution of the United States through its signature project, Aceh’s west coast highway

19.  Uniting the Nations—how we brought the great beast of recovery to heel through a new UN coordination mechanism

20.  The Travelling Troubadour—the UN’s coordination challenges

21.  Return of the Bureaucrats—how the World Bank turned from friend to foe with a little help from the European Commission

22.  Pride, Prejudice and Power—the destabilizing games that followed the marriage of minds by the World Bank and European Commission

23.  A Line in the Sand—rebalancing the animosity of the world community engaged in the Aceh recovery program

Book 4: End Games—explains the huge effort to wrap up the recovery program and whopping great fights at the end

24.  Hell’s Kitchen—tying the loose ends together in delivering a successful international reconstruction program

25.  Turning Inward—how the hyperbole of success led the recovery culture to turn inward on itself

26.  Payback—how the World Bank paid the price for its own cultural failings

27.  End of Days—closing out the recovery program to limp over the finishing line carrying the hubris of celebration

Book 5: The Residuals of Recovery—explores lessons from Aceh’s recovery and subsequent global developments including missteps in Haiti

28.  Lessons Lost—how disaster recovery lessons are turned to mush and generally lost

29.  Old Lessons, New Turf—comparing results and developments in other disaster contexts such as Sri Lanka, Myanmar, China and Haiti

30.  To Build or Not to Build?—the core question concerning housing, the recovery program’s single most important performance measure

31.  The Coordination Conundrum—the critical but difficult role of coordination in delivering a successful disaster recovery program

32.  Rhythmic Reflections—the rhythms of recovery explaining the natural dynamics of a post-disaster reconstruction program

33.  Leadership: the Mangkusubroto Factor—reflections on program leadership through the role and style of Kuntoro Mangkusbroto

34.  A Defining Moment—the legacy for Indonesia of its leadership of Aceh’s tsunami recovery program

35.  Moving On—developments since Aceh that continue to shape Indonesia’s future

36.  A Walk on the Moon—my personal summation of helping Aceh recovery from its tsunami calamity

Tsunami Central treads on many delicate toes. So I don’t expect it to be received well.

But will it be received at all? I wonder who will really read it.

It should be relevant to anyone working directly in disaster response—Government officials, UN and World Bank staff, the various participating societies of the international Red Cross movement, international NGOs and their many delivery partners from volunteers to engineers, logisticians and consultants.

It should also interest to anyone involved in management either at an academic level or as a practitioner. Anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of bad management or poisonous politics will appreciate the many studies of organizational reality within Tsunami Central.

And, of course, there’s all the little people, ordinary citizens who donate their time and money to good causes like the tsunami response.

I am often asked if the money donated by individuals and government was well spent in Aceh. I am proud to say that most of it was. Those who donated got a good bang for their buck.

This did not happen by chance. It was a result of some seriously hard work by many dedicated people under Dr Kuntoro’s overall program leadership.

I was one of a number who fought corruption and promoted good practices from the outset. While we did not win ever battle, we won most. That is what matters.

As a result, Aceh’s recovery stands as a testament to what can be achieved when good people come together under good leadership.

We challenged the status quo of Indonesian corruption and incompetence and delivered some great results as a consequence.

So Tsunami Central is not just about mean politics. It is also about excellence in delivery despite the cultures of contempt and corruption that are so often the hallmark of international disaster recovery.

The real lessons I draw as a consequence offer a positive model for the future, albeit one that politics will no doubt see off to oblivion as quickly as it can.