Posted on 01/01/2005 7:23:40 AM PST by Prospero
"Words fail," they say, and they do, they do indeed.
Having just finished a first-stage restoration of my father's 45 year-old home movies, which included scenes of Djakarta, where our family briefly lived, I've always felt a sub vocal kinship with Indonesia and her millions.
They say I spoke Bhasha, the Malay tongue spoken there, and would translate for my parents instructions for the house servants, who were probably also spies for the Junta, the Communists, or both. Perhaps I dream in that language, occasionally, but this week I retreated into a walking nightmare, early on after the first indications that the Banda Aceh Christmas Earthquake of 2004 had swamped the parameter of the east Indian Ocean, strongly hinting at what the world would find when the northern end of Sumatra was finally heard from.
In America, for days, we could watch a handful of the same "amateur videos," from Phuket and Sri Lanka, and the horror there was bad enough. The only such video I've seen of the torrent that scraped over Banda Aceh, however, appears to have taken almost a week to make it to the Internet. I have yet to see it's like on television. It makes what happed to the beaches in Thailand and Sri Lanka look like a creek over running its banks after a brief summer storm.
Let's just say, what happened to the sex tourism spots and coasts and more distant islands elsewhere is nothing in comparison to the fate of Banda Aceh and the western shore of Sumatra. Since so many can't find the words, here are a thousand of them:
Now, if you had told me a week ago that an American Marine expeditionary force would be in Banda Aceh on New Years Day, my first reaction would have been that the President had decided upon a bold and unexpected strike in the War on Terror, jumping ahead on the timeline of that effort's multi-generational strategy. I might have thought it was a bold and necessary move, and I would have believed you if you had said they had located and captured Osama Bin Laden there.
As it was, in our shock, probing in from the parameter toward the epicenter of the Banda Aceh Earthquake, only a few have considered whether the hand of the Almighty reached out and sliced off a decade from what still promises to be a protracted conflict with Islamo-Fascism.
Consider that Indonesia is largely a Muslim country with a population similar to that of the United States, and developments there have been "the elephant in the living room" few wanted to consider as we cleaned out Islamo-Fascist terror nests in Iraq, Afghanistan and the southern Philippines.
Banda Aceh was, until a week ago, home of a Taliban-like, semi-autonomous government that had succeeded in establishing the Sharhia Islamic law, though the central government on Java nominally "allowed" this legal code on a "separate but equal" basis, for Muslims only. That was in 2002, and it was hoped the restive Islamo-Fascist insurgents who have fought for independence from Djakarta for more than twenty years would be satisfied. The locals had even just recently succeeded in putting into place, shall we say, "heavy legal penalties" for anyone who tried to prosthletize a citizen of Greater Islam... meaning Christians, of course.
Not a week passes without stories emerging from Indonesia of an on-going persecution of its Christian minorities, and the central governments failure to put a stop to it, especially the further one travels further from Djakarta to the myriad islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Remember the bombing of the nightclub in Denpasar on Bali, the only refuge for Hindus in Indonesia? The Australians haven't.
When he was forced to leave Sudan, Osama Bin Laden considered moving to Yemen, Afghanistan and Banda Aceh. He decided upon Afghanistan, of course, and may still be holed up there, or on the border with Pakistan, or under the nervous refuge of the Mullah regime of Iran. In fact, the Grand Mosque in Banda Aceh is right up there with Karbala, Qom, Medina and Mecca in everyone's top ten list of Muslim "holy places."
Today, it's an open air morgue, and if they find Osama among the dead there, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
Sooner or later, we were going to have to deal with Indonesia, in general, and Aceh in particular. And things weren't looking too good.
Things are looking up.
Consider that the Christian Reformation, perhaps even the American Republic, has roots in the Black Death of 1349. People faced with such tragedy question their Worldview, abandon or are, at least, forced to examine their beliefs and habits, and the rebirth of Philosophy and the scientific method in the West began again in the centuries immediately after the plagues of the 14th Christian Century. They certainly questioned the magic of their priests and closely examined the "mysteries," resulting in a rebirth of Bible study that continues to this day. Unquestioned obedience to Rome ended with the Black Plague, and the True Belief of many a young muslim, of their Imams, may come to an end in the aftermath of the Christmas Earthquake.
Now, some might think I'm suggesting the God of Abraham did an angry thing of "biblical proportions" when He decided to shake Sumatra, and that he's on our side, loves George W. Bush, answered the humble prayers of the persecuted, etc., etc. But, this natural tragedy doesn't strike me that way at all. You won't find me cheering the deaths of a million people on Sumatra, and particularly in Aceh.
"Rather fear," I would think, betting on the "beginning of wisdom" might be the best response to this Catastrophe.
But... after you've digested the indigestible scope of the Christmas Earthquake, consider what you might have thought if Kabul under the Taliban had been wiped off the face of the Earth a week or so before our first boots hit the ground there after the destruction of the World Trade Center.
What has happened in Banda Aceh is no less miraculous and undreamed of a possibility, and, at this hour, American Marines are handing out water and food to the pitiable handful who escaped the 20 foot high, hundred mile wide river that swept over their island, again, making what happened in Thailand and Sri Lanka look like a simple storm surge in comparison. The Epicenter of fierce hatred, a sanctuary of Islamo-fascism is no more, as though Falluja had been hit with several hydrogen bombs.
Now you see them, now you don't.
Some of those locals, who have waited for almost a week for food and water, helping off-load our nation's charity are wearing T-Shirts with the image of Osama on them.
We certainly didn't cause this tragedy, but we'd be fools not to take advantage of the strategic miracle God has handed to us.
Sin causes suffering, but very often the one who does the sinning is NOT the one who does the suffering.
WOW.
Still, the fellows at Aceh have been at this independence thing since before the Battle of Batavia. Guess that proves God is slow to anger.
And His being slow to anger, I thank him also for being quick to forgive.
I am listening to the CNN reporter who was with our helicoptors from the Abraham Lincoln when they landed on Aceh....We are working very hard to help these people who consider us the enemy...I believe even the Indonesian govt had no access to this area before the earthquake..They are desperate for water and food.
I understood Banda Aceh was under martial law before the quake.
Pounding rain drenched the wrecked city of Banda Aceh and aftershocks shook the area Saturday, adding to the misery of homeless earthquake and tsunami survivors and heightening fears of waterborne diseases.
Aftershocks rattled the region, including a 6.5-magnitude quake 215 miles west of Banda Aceh on Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Smaller aftershocks hit northern Sumatra and the Nicobar and Andaman islands, a remote Indian archipelago just north of Sumatra.
Saturday's rainstorm in Banda Aceh was the first since last Sunday's disaster. Health workers have warned that heavy rain could spread diseases like cholera and diarrhea. Thousands of uncollected corpses remain in and around the city.
http://www.laksamana.net/vnews.cfm?ncat=48&news_id=7777
You are correct.
Church burnings have been an intermittent occurrence for the past 30 years. (Aceh was a forerunner in the significant increase of attacks on churches that has taken place throughout Indonesia.) The most significant protestant church in Banda Aceh, the capital, was burned down in the early 90's. Subsequently, permission to rebuild was refused.
Local church communities can have great difficulty getting permission to have a place for worship, e.g. having to build over water, or use the back of a shop.
Christians employed as teachers in schools (posted by the state education system) can come under enormous pressures to convert to Islam. Prayer for these isolated Christians is urgently needed.
The potential for conflict is perhaps greatest in South Aceh, where Batak ethnic communities include both Christians and Muslims. Without a clear ethnic-religious alignment, conversion to Christianity does not bring loss of ethnic identity and this can make conversion easier. Consequently, greater pressure could be brought to bear on the Christian community. (This is just my hypothesising about why South Aceh has been a region of conflict.)
Persecution of Christians is sometimes hard to distinguish from persecution of Chinese. During the massacres of "communists" in the 1960's, many Chinese Christians were killed. In Aceh a religious test was sometimes applied: if the person could not recite the Arabic confession of faith in Islam they were put to death. I had this from a Muslim person who narrowly survived the massacres.
Having lived there, I knew, sooner or later, we'd have to become closer or become enemies. Isn't it the most populated nation with a Muslim majority?
I rather think policy makers will be asking for more and more information about Indonesia in the coming weeks.
The link reminds me of the pressures on Djakarta to pass autonomy on. What an interesting understatement to read that the Civil Emergency in Aceh is, in effect, over.
Australia is our help in Indonesia, I believe...There are the militant Muslims and the not so militant Muslims who fight and the rest are always in danger.
http://www.terrorismanswers.com/havens/indonesia.html
At one time I had a link to a file by backhoe..I cannot find it.
Aceh was a problem for the Thais as well, in Rama I's time to be exact!
Great article. Great thread. It finally addresses some of the things I've been wondering about. You've added a whole new angle to the catastrophe.
Thanks, both of you.
Thank you!
Perhaps it's not a bad thing that there will be plenty of US forces milling about the area for some time to come. I hope we make some friends.
I forgot that this was the thread you listed all the research sites when I was a real newbie!
I saw the same report. I believe that the CNN reported mentioned how surprised he was at the generally polite demeanor of the survivors, even as the first relief supplies were distributed.
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