Newsweek highlights the challenges faced by the province of Aceh in the wake of the tsunami. Like a mass extinction, the chaos in the aftermath of the disaster has opened up niches ready to be exploited by all manner of opportunists, while the Indonesian army is keen to regain control as soon as possible.

Before the tsunami hit, Aceh had become, in essence, a fiefdom of the Indonesian Army. Commanders ran business empires and oversaw smuggling, illegal logging, protection rackets and extortion. GAM exported drugs, kidnapped for ransom and taxed villages under its control. Each side benefited from the status quo. "Both the [military] and GAM are happy to keep the war going because they're making money," says one senior religious leader in Aceh. Both sides accused the other of provoking skirmishes late last week.
...
At the same time, the chaos has opened up the space for change in Aceh, for good and ill. On one end of the spectrum, women's groups, human-rights organizations and Indonesian journalists previously bullied out of the province are back to stake claims on Aceh's future. Take Radio 68H. The public-service broadcasting network had its top journalist in Aceh threatened at gunpoint and brutalized by soldiers in 2003. But in the days since the tsunami it has helped rebuild four radio stations in the province.
...
Sinister figures have also set up shop. Pemuda Panca Marga, a Jakarta-based youth group known to be thugs for hire, put on a show of force in Banda Aceh last week. The group, which is linked to the Indonesian Army, gained notoriety in 2003 after it ransacked the offices of a prominent human-rights group. The Islamic Defenders Front, famous for smashing up nightclubs in Jakarta as affronts to Islam, rushed in hundreds of volunteers to "guard Muslim society because there are so many infidels here" for the international relief effort, one member told reporters. A third incoming extremist group is Hizbut Tahrir, which supports establishing a global Islamic state and is allegedly linked to terrorists. And U.S. forces involved in relief operations are reportedly keeping an eye on dozens of members of Laskar Muhajidin, a radical Islamic group that has set up a relief camp in the province.

These extremist carpetbaggers might sound scary, but the most ominous force in Aceh remains the Indonesian military. It's unclear whether it will surrender its lucrative fiefdom without a fight. Suspicious generals believe that their GAM adversaries support peace initiatives only to buy time to regroup; they think the arrival of foreigners, naive to the intricacies of Acehnese politics, could bolster the rebels. There are rabid nationalists within the ranks who suspect the West harbors a secret agenda to break up Indonesia.

Let us hope that sufficient aid can be administered to the people of Aceh to resume some level of normality and resumption of institutions before troops and aid agencies are forced to choose between abandoning the province and becoming mired in the conflicts of the region.