In Indonesia's Aceh province, end to war means freedom to rebuild

Published: 2007-04-02

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (CNS) -- Ever since the tsunami took away her house and 4-year old son, Suharni has felt that her whole life was washed away. Yet now she says she is counting the days until she moves into a new home being built by a U.S. Catholic agency. In May she'll abandon the cramped temporary barracks where she has lived for two years and, clutching a baby born since the giant waves swept over the low-lying shores of Indonesia's Aceh province in December 2004, she will return to her seaside village of Suak Sevmaseh. "Even though my new house will be exactly where my old house sat, it feels like a completely new place, a new start for our family, a new life for all of us," she said. Suharni, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, will be going home not just to a new house -- built by the U.S. bishops' Catholic Relief Services -- but also to a political landscape that has changed just as radically. Before the tsunami, a three-decade civil war raged throughout the province, pitting separatist insurgents against a central government that wanted at whatever cost to retain control of the resource-rich Aceh region. However, the tsunami washed away old tensions and pushed Aceh into a new opportunity to end the war and rebuild at the same time.

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