After Tsunami, Intentions to Build but No Road Yet

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: October 9, 2006

By Jane PERLEZ

KEUTAPANG, Indonesia, Oct. 5 — A $245 million stretch of blacktop intended to be the signature good-will gesture from the American people to the Indonesian survivors of the 2004 tsunami has instead become a parable of the problems of Aceh Province’s recovery.

Construction of the 150-mile road along the devastated coast has yet to start, stalled by a host of obstacles like acquiring right of way through residential and farm land, and, particularly, through several hundred graves of mystical and religious significance.
Though villagers welcome the idea, some have reservations about an American-style thoroughfare with a wide shoulder on either side that will replace the existing ribbon of mostly churned dirt and mud.

Villagers say they fear speeding traffic — they have thrown rocks at fast-traveling cars of foreign aid workers — and want to be able to sell snacks and tea from stalls snug by the roadside, as they have always done.
The difficulties of getting started on the road, one of the largest infrastructure projects in Indonesia, reflects the weariness among tsunami survivors with the long return to normality.
A demonstration outside the main Indonesian reconstruction agency turned violent last month when protesters complained that they still lacked basic services and demanded more financing for education.

The patience of American officials is wearing thin, too. They complain that the government has been too slow in buying up the land and resolving the fraught issue of the graves.
Lately, the Americans have become so disconcerted about delays that they have tried to pry more action from the Indonesians by suggesting that the money for the road would be diverted to the reconstruction efforts in Lebanon.
“It was threatened they would take the money away,” said Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the director of the Indonesian rehabilitation and reconstruction agency in Aceh. “That’s standard,” he added with a shrug.

The Indonesians say the Americans are imposing first-world standards of efficiency on a poor region that was pounded by civil war and then swamped by the tsunami, which killed more than 100,000 Indonesians. Records of land titles were washed away, and questions of inheritance among devastated families take a while to decide, they say.
The idea for the road evolved soon after the tsunami when the Bush administration wanted to show that the United States cared about Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, in its moment of need.
It was decided early on to finance one substantial American project that would make a splash, rather than a number of smaller ones. At first, rebuilding a significant portion of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, into a kind of “signature city” was discussed.

Instead, a well-engineered road from the capital to Meulaboh, the southernmost coastal town, which was nearly completely wiped out, was considered a more fruitful project that played to the American strength of fast and modern construction.
But the Americans did not anticipate the long negotiations over compensation for land or the strong local feelings about the graves.

Tucked under a grove of coconut trees, a pale-hued boulder and an ancient tree trunk represent this village’s most mystical grave, the place where a white tiger is believed to stand guard. Nearby, red and yellow flags left by surveyors indicated the American road was set to plow right through the sacred spot.
A local elder, Mohammad Noor, 60, who forded a river and clambered over fences to show off the grave, says he cannot imagine that it could ever be moved.

The problems with the road also involve more than Indonesian sensibilities. An audit by the Inspector General of the United States Agency for International Development last March said that the design of the road was delayed because the development agency requested the contractor to modify the design plan at least four times. It also noted that when the contract for the engineering work was awarded to the American firm Parsons, it was awarded in November, four months late.

By May, when the process was bogged down, a veteran of building big American projects abroad, Roy R. Ventura Jr., was brought in to expedite things.
On June 29, Mr. Ventura said he presented the Indonesians with the final plan for where the road would run. He was told by Indonesian government officials, he said, that right of way would be ready so construction could begin for the first portion of the road to the village of Lhong by July 25, and by Oct. 3 in the area farther south to the town of Calang.
According to that schedule, American officials said they expected the first five miles of the road to be completed by Aug. 23, and that new sections of the road would continue to unfold after that.

But instead, the American aid agency is paying the Indonesian road contractor, Wijaya Karya, about $100,000 a month to maintain the old road, money that should be going toward the new construction, American officials say.
“The Americans are arguing that there should have been land acquisition a year ago,” Mr. Kuntoro said. “But how could that happen when we did not know from the Americans where the road was running until June 29?”
Mr. Kuntoro, a graduate in engineering from Stanford University, has become the point man for many of the problems.
He has been visited in his office in Banda Aceh by the American ambassador to Indonesia, B. Lynn Pascoe; by Mr. Ventura; and this week by investigators from the Government Accountability Office in Washington. They all ask the same thing: When will enough continuous land be ready so that bulldozers can begin clearing the way?

In fact, Mr. Kuntoro said in an interview on Tuesday that he had just written a letter to Mr. Pascoe saying that his agency had gained title to about 3.5 miles worth of continuous land and that major construction could start.
But on Thursday, Mr. Ventura said that he was not satisfied that the titles were transferred and that work could begin only on a bridge involving a sliver of land.
“The road itself is no different to anyplace in the world,” said Mr. Ventura, who was with the Montana Highway Department for 10 years and has managed construction sites in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Philippines. “The process of getting right to the land to get the road built is very different.”
In an exchange with the governor of Banda Aceh, Mustafa Abu Bakar, the frustrated Americans suggested that the governor should consider using eminent domain procedures for speedy possession of the land. In reply, the governor said in a letter that in order to keep community support for the road he would use eminent domain only as a last resort.

“The government sees the people here as victims of the tsunami and very vulnerable,” said Eddy Siregar, a construction manager for Wijaya Karya, the contractor, as he sat on the side of the old road in the village of Pasi. “It would be a big trauma if their land was taken. So they want to try the soft way.”
Late Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Noor, the local elder, received word that his village leaders had agreed with the provincial authorities to move the grave the white tiger is believed to guard.
“I can’t imagine how they will do it,” a crestfallen Mr. Noor said. “Will they do it nicely, or will they do it roughly?”