PATRICK DALY, R. MICHAEL FEENER, and ANTHONY REID, eds. From the Ground Up: Perspectives on Post-Tsunami and Post-Conflict Aceh. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012, xxxi+262p.

Abstract

From the Ground Up: Perspectives on Post-Tsunami and Post-Conflict Aceh PATRICK DALY, R. MICHAEL FEENER, and ANTHONY REID, eds. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012, xxxi+262p.On the book cover, the words Lebih baik disini kampung kita sendiri are scrawled on a wall of a disaster-hit house in Aceh. is better to stay here in our village. As its title suggests, From the Ground Up explores the country's recovery from natural disaster and military conflict from the perspectives of various participants, including scholars, practitioners, and ordinary Acehnese. Across the chapters, there is a sensitivity to Acehnese views, interests, and agency. This is buttressed by the inclusion of several Acehnese authors and a sustained inquiry, based on extensive fieldwork or personal engagement, into a society's recovery at the intersection of international, national, and local action.The book begins with a geological study of the Sunda megathrust and considers the likely timing and site of the next great earthquake and/or tsunami to strike Sumatra. The bulk of the volume is divided into two sections. The first, by far the more substantial, examines the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami which devastated Aceh, among other places in Southeast and South Asia. It critically addresses issues like the role of NGOs in relief work, the autonomous ways in which survivors responded to loss and trauma, the experiences and rights of women, reconstruction finance, and the need to rebuild Aceh's cultural heritage.The second part surveys the resolution of Aceh's separatist struggle. The landmark event here, as a counterpoint to the disaster, is the Helsinki Peace Accords brokered the following year between the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka movement and the Indonesian government which ended the long-running, low-intensity conflict. The tone in this section differs from the first with an emphasis on success and moving out of crisis. Although the authors generally acknowledge that more demanding challenges of truth and reconciliation and peace building lay beyond the end of the conflict, there is a lack of criticality present in the first section. The papers provide useful insights into the roles played by external parties in ending the conflict, such as the Indonesian leaders and the Aceh Monitoring Mission, but they sit rather awkwardly alongside the first group of papers.I shall examine several chapters in greater detail. The contributions on international NGOs crucially reveal a disjuncture in relief and rehabilitation work between the international and local levels. John Telford, drawing upon the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition reports, points to the failure of large, powerful international NGOs to be respectful towards local perspectives and traditions. He shows how the post-disaster operation focused excessively on relief work to the detriment of tackling long-term problems such as disaster risk, poverty, and under-development. Ian Christoplos and Treena Wu reiterate this point in highlighting the need for international NGOs to devolve the task of LRRD (linking relief, rehabilitation, and development) to local communities. Both papers underline the tension in post-disaster work between responding to the effects of a calamitous event and addressing long-term processes which have contributed to these effects. The work of various scholars (Blaikie et al. 1994; Pelling 2003; Nowak and Caulfield 2008) suggests that the two issues cannot be divorced: a disaster's impact falls hardest on those people who have been rendered particularly vulnerable by political, economic, demographic, and environmental developments. This point alludes to the book's failure to properly contextualize the history, politics and society of pretsunami Aceh.The shortcomings of post-tsunami rebuilding are also evident in the chapter on cultural heritage. Patrick Daly and Yenny Rahmayati highlight the failure to take into account the intangible cultural aspects of reconstruction. …