'05 tsunami unleashed big flood of assistance

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — A wide range of contrasting and often paradoxical effects are now being felt a year after the tsunami killed 181,000 people as it devastated the coastlines of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand and other countries around the Indian Ocean.

The looming threat of civil war in Sri Lanka, for example, stands in stark contrast to the extraordinary shift 1,100 miles away in the Indonesian province of Aceh. There, ethnic separatist guerrillas have turned in their weapons and are retooling themselves as a political party. In Aceh, the tsunami and aid helped quiet a 30-year-old civil war. All told, the tsunami generated a record $13.6 billion in aid pledges, according to the United Nations.

Just as rare, donor countries kept their promises. The U.N. Office of the Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery says 75 percent of the $10.5 billion pledged for reconstruction of tsunami-affected countries has been secured; by comparison, independent studies have found that no more than 10 percent of aid pledges were honored after the 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran.

The progress report on relief and reconstruction is, however, mixed. In Sri Lanka and Indonesia, nearly all tsunami-affected children are back at school. Swift intervention averted major outbreaks of disease. In Sri Lanka, 70 to 85 percent of adults who lost their livelihoods have regained their main source of income, and 41 of the island's 52 damaged hotels are open for business, according to a report prepared jointly by the United Nations and the government.

Yet many hurdles remain. Of the 1.8 million made homeless last year, only 1 in 5 are in a permanent home, the aid agency Oxfam has found. Some 67,000 Acehnese are still languishing in tents. The vast majority are in charity-financed shelters.

The deluge of tsunami aid has actually yielded a paradox of plenty, and money itself, or how to share it in the case of Sri Lanka, has widened the divide.

Reconstruction has already felt the impact of coming war and peace. In Sri Lanka, the tensions have begun to slow aid operations. In Aceh, fighting halted in part to allow aid groups to work in safety.

In Sri Lanka, the outpouring of tsunami aid has prompted some charities to take a hard look at whom to help. The tsunami made 458,000 people homeless; the 20-year-long war in Sri Lanka displaced 341,000.

"If you go into an area where you have a whole bunch of have-nots and you help half of them, you're going to entrench some serious problems down the road," Paul Shanahan of the Australian Red Cross argued. "The principle of impartiality is that you respond to the greatest need."