Singapore Mends ties with aid in Indonesia
Originally published in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune (Jan 14, 2005). Highlights:
UPDATE: A mention of SAF personnel interpreting for US military medical personnel here.
The whole article is reproduced below:
* * * * *
Singapore mends ties with aid in Indonesia
By Wayne Arnold
International Herald Tribune (Jan 14, 2005)
New York Times (Jan 14, 2005)
MEULABOH, Indonesia: Lam Chee Yong, a major in the Singaporean Army, strolled across the muddy schoolyard that his troops have turned into a landing zone for the heavy-lifting Chinook helicopters flying relief supplies into this devastated city and explained in fluent Indonesian to a local marine how they would use the surrounding rubble to firm up the soggy ground beneath them.
Lam and the Singaporeans were the first to land aid in Meulaboh, where fishing boats still rest in city streets and each day the wreckage still yields up grisly corpses.
But Lam was no stranger here. Waiting for him in Meulaboh was one of his classmates from an officer-training college near Jakarta he attended last year, an Indonesian major who Lam had been told was still among the missing.
"When we landed and I saw him, I was really happy," said Lam, who leads engineering efforts in what has become the largest military operation his nation has ever mounted. As fate would have it, his classmate also happens to be in charge of the Indonesian Army's operations in Meulaboh. "And became I know them and they know me, I think that really helps," he said.
Contacts like Lam's, say relief officials and other military officers, have helped make Singapore's contribution to the aid effort in Aceh Province an early success story. Unlike the United States, which curtailed links with Indonesia's military in response to allegations of human rights abuses, tiny Singapore maintained contact with the forces of its sprawling southern neighbor, even sending officers like Lam to study in Indonesia.
Now, after delivering relief with a scale and spontaneity that has impressed even Indonesians, Singapore's military is using those ties to build bridges between Indonesian forces and other foreign aid groups as they arrive, including the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
"They're doing a great job," said Bo Asplund, the United Nations Development Program's resident coordinator in Jakarta, who visited Meulaboh this month. "They're sensitive and professional and very attuned to the way the population is affected by the situation."
Singapore has pledged more than $13 million in tsunami relief. Its operation also promises to pay dividends in its often turbulent diplomatic relationship with Indonesia. "It will definitely improve the relationship," said Jusuf Wanandi, a columnist and director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. Singapore's reputation as a purely economic animal has deepened the mistrust many Indonesian feel toward Singapore, he said. "But now they have shown their willingness to show solidarity and empathy, and that is against the grain of what was before the stereotype."
So close that they can see each other's shores on a clear day, Singaporeans and Indonesians are bound by a centuries-old trading relationship as lopsided as it is vital. On one side is Indonesia, rich in resources and home to 220 million people, most Muslim and poor. On the other industrialized Singapore, a trading entrepôt through which much of Indonesia's exports pour, with only four million residents, most of them ethnic Chinese and comparatively rich.
Adding to the antagonism is the fact that Singapore serves as a sanctuary to Indonesia's wealthy ethnic Chinese minority, and when times get tough in Indonesia, they and their money find refuge in Singapore.
Singapore's response to the tsunami has provided an inadvertent balm.
Even as the U.S. carrier Abraham Lincoln arrived off the coast of Banda Aceh to ferry supplies along the coast by helicopter, Singapore's officials decided that they should focus their efforts closer to their efforts closer to the epicenter of the quake that set off the tsunami.
"Banda Aceh was getting lots of attention but Meulaboh was cut off," said Colonel Tan Chuan Jin, commander of Singapore's humanitarian assistance support group, aboard one of Singapore's two helicopter landing ships that arrived at Meulaboh on Jan. 1'.
There is no sign of resentment among Meulaboh's desperate population about the fact that their aid comes from ethnic Chinese.
"Singapore is great," said Zulkifli, a 56-year-old survivor of the tsunami. He said he had taken his sister to the field hospital that Singapore had-set up in Meulaboh so she could get treatment for cut. "She got well in three days," he said. "If she had taken medicine from an Indonesian doctor she'd still be sick."
[A]fter delivering relief with a scale and spontaneity that has impressed even Indonesians, Singapore's military is using those ties to build bridges between Indonesian forces and other foreign aid groups as they arrive, including the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.The article, by Wayne Arnold (NYT, IHT), is still not available online (as far as I can tell). It was briefly mentioned in this article in Lianhe Zaobao, which prompted me to have my dad (who works for Zaobao) help locate it. It makes a nice follow-up of points I made in earlier posts: here, here and here.
[Singapore's] operation also promises to pay dividends in its often turbulent diplomatic relationship with Indonesia... "It will definitely improve the relationship," said Jusuf Wanandi, a columnist and director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. Singapore's reputation as a purely economic animal has deepened the mistrust many Indonesian feel toward Singapore, he said. "But now they have shown their willingness to show solidarity and empathy, and that is against the grain of what was before the stereotype."
UPDATE: A mention of SAF personnel interpreting for US military medical personnel here.
The whole article is reproduced below:
* * * * *
Singapore mends ties with aid in Indonesia
By Wayne Arnold
International Herald Tribune (Jan 14, 2005)
New York Times (Jan 14, 2005)
MEULABOH, Indonesia: Lam Chee Yong, a major in the Singaporean Army, strolled across the muddy schoolyard that his troops have turned into a landing zone for the heavy-lifting Chinook helicopters flying relief supplies into this devastated city and explained in fluent Indonesian to a local marine how they would use the surrounding rubble to firm up the soggy ground beneath them.
Lam and the Singaporeans were the first to land aid in Meulaboh, where fishing boats still rest in city streets and each day the wreckage still yields up grisly corpses.
But Lam was no stranger here. Waiting for him in Meulaboh was one of his classmates from an officer-training college near Jakarta he attended last year, an Indonesian major who Lam had been told was still among the missing.
"When we landed and I saw him, I was really happy," said Lam, who leads engineering efforts in what has become the largest military operation his nation has ever mounted. As fate would have it, his classmate also happens to be in charge of the Indonesian Army's operations in Meulaboh. "And became I know them and they know me, I think that really helps," he said.
Contacts like Lam's, say relief officials and other military officers, have helped make Singapore's contribution to the aid effort in Aceh Province an early success story. Unlike the United States, which curtailed links with Indonesia's military in response to allegations of human rights abuses, tiny Singapore maintained contact with the forces of its sprawling southern neighbor, even sending officers like Lam to study in Indonesia.
Now, after delivering relief with a scale and spontaneity that has impressed even Indonesians, Singapore's military is using those ties to build bridges between Indonesian forces and other foreign aid groups as they arrive, including the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
"They're doing a great job," said Bo Asplund, the United Nations Development Program's resident coordinator in Jakarta, who visited Meulaboh this month. "They're sensitive and professional and very attuned to the way the population is affected by the situation."
Singapore has pledged more than $13 million in tsunami relief. Its operation also promises to pay dividends in its often turbulent diplomatic relationship with Indonesia. "It will definitely improve the relationship," said Jusuf Wanandi, a columnist and director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. Singapore's reputation as a purely economic animal has deepened the mistrust many Indonesian feel toward Singapore, he said. "But now they have shown their willingness to show solidarity and empathy, and that is against the grain of what was before the stereotype."
So close that they can see each other's shores on a clear day, Singaporeans and Indonesians are bound by a centuries-old trading relationship as lopsided as it is vital. On one side is Indonesia, rich in resources and home to 220 million people, most Muslim and poor. On the other industrialized Singapore, a trading entrepôt through which much of Indonesia's exports pour, with only four million residents, most of them ethnic Chinese and comparatively rich.
Adding to the antagonism is the fact that Singapore serves as a sanctuary to Indonesia's wealthy ethnic Chinese minority, and when times get tough in Indonesia, they and their money find refuge in Singapore.
Singapore's response to the tsunami has provided an inadvertent balm.
Even as the U.S. carrier Abraham Lincoln arrived off the coast of Banda Aceh to ferry supplies along the coast by helicopter, Singapore's officials decided that they should focus their efforts closer to their efforts closer to the epicenter of the quake that set off the tsunami.
"Banda Aceh was getting lots of attention but Meulaboh was cut off," said Colonel Tan Chuan Jin, commander of Singapore's humanitarian assistance support group, aboard one of Singapore's two helicopter landing ships that arrived at Meulaboh on Jan. 1'.
There is no sign of resentment among Meulaboh's desperate population about the fact that their aid comes from ethnic Chinese.
"Singapore is great," said Zulkifli, a 56-year-old survivor of the tsunami. He said he had taken his sister to the field hospital that Singapore had-set up in Meulaboh so she could get treatment for cut. "She got well in three days," he said. "If she had taken medicine from an Indonesian doctor she'd still be sick."
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