The construction of this bridge is part of a road project from Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh Province, to Calang to reconnect displaced communities to the outside world.
But long before the end of the planned 93-mile route, the roadway halts at a partly constructed bridge over a river. Local residents operate a raft to ferry vehicles from one shore to the other.
The project is in many ways an apt testament to the extraordinary reconstruction effort mounted here after the tsunami that struck five years ago, slamming 13 countries and killing about 226,000 people. This province, Aceh, bore the brunt of the catastrophe: an estimated 170,000 people were killed, including 35,000 whose bodies were never found.
Since then, more than 800 nongovernmental organizations, multilateral agencies and donor countries have spent $6.7 billion here to build homes, schools, clinics and roads. But they have had to contend with many more obstacles than most suspected, including lagging coordination, local resentment, obscured questions of land ownership and the remains of a 30-year separatist conflict.
“There have been so many issues,” said Wahyu Purnama, construction manager for Wika, the Indonesian contractor hired by the United States Agency for International Development, to build the road from Banda Aceh. “I have worked on foreign projects all over the country, some very big projects, including major roads. But I have never seen anything like this.”
The United States had high hopes for the project — a $250-million highway along a chunk of Aceh’s magnificent western coast that would reconnect displaced communities to the outside world. American officials foresaw a showcase for Western engineering and a better profile in a conservative Muslim area isolated by the civil war.
The Indonesian government saw the project as vital both to immediate reconstruction and to Aceh’s economic development for decades to come.
And indeed, the successes are many.
“The new road has made getting around so much easier,” said Romi, 42, who lost his wife and his house in the tsunami and now sells fish to people visiting the river near his new home in a small village an hour west of Banda Aceh. Like most Indonesians, he uses one name.
“Before the road, this area was totally isolated,” he said. “But now people can drive an hour from Banda Aceh to sit by the river and have picnics.”
Before the tsunami, he said, very few people traveled to his village because of the fighting and the many military checkpoints along the old meandering road between his home and the provincial capital.
Mr. Romi’s new house lies hundreds of yards inland from where his old one had stood near the water. It is one of several hundred, all identical and bearing the names of their builders — Mercy Corps, Oxfam, International Red Cross. The village also has a new schoolhouse, mosque and clinic.
“It’s difficult for me emotionally,” he said. “But I got married again and have a new home. And I have a job. These things help me to move on. Nothing will ever be the same, but things are getting better.”
But some villagers along the route, unhappy with payments they have or have not received for their land, continue to resist the project, erecting blockades of barbed wire and boulders to obstruct traffic and further construction.
The Agency for International Development “just said, ‘This is where the road will go,’ without consulting much with us,” said a 38-year-old man named Ilias, sipping coffee by a food stall in Leupung, a town near Banda Aceh.
He added: “Sometimes they planned for the road to go through cemeteries. We were angry.”
The usefulness of the road, though, helped change attitudes. “Now that this section is finished, I think most people are happy,” he said. “I mean, we can go to Banda Aceh now in half the time we could before.”
Land acquisition was a major problem, for the road project as well as for many others.
Throughout the province, 140,000 houses have been built, along with 1,700 schools, almost 1,000 government buildings, 36 airports and seaports and 2,300 miles of road, according to the Agency for the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Aceh. But in many cases construction was delayed for months or even years because land titles were lost in the tsunami or never existed. The owners of many properties who did have documentation were killed in the tsunami.
Before the governor’s office could begin buying the land for the road, A.I.D. surveyed the planned route and determined that 3,280 parcels would need to be bought. There were disputes over the value of properties that had been ravaged by the tsunami.
Contractors and agency officials continue to spend their days traveling the planned route, dismantling barrica
des and negotiating with communities.
A peace agreement negotiated and sealed in the months after the tsunami struck ended the civil war, creating a new political reality and unexpected challenges.
The peace agreement allowed, for the first time ever in Indonesia, local political parties to contest provincial elections. An election in 2006 put a former rebel leader into the governor’s seat. Last April, Partai Aceh, the political vehicle of the former separatist movement, swept the election for the provincial legislature.
As part of the broader effort to help reintegrate former combatants into society, A.I.D. has hired several of them as subcontractors to supply materials or to plant sod embankments. But extortion is a constant problem.
“I’ll ask for a certain amount of material, and they’ll show up with twice the amount we need,” said Mr. Purnama, the construction manager on the bridge project, shaking his head in disbelief. “We have no choice but to pay or they’ll block the road and disrupt construction.”
Mr. Purnama said the former rebels, many of whom were hiding in the mountainous jungle before the peace agreement, also fought among themselves for jobs.
“One group will come to me and ask me to get rid of the other group,” he said. “It is a constant discussion, endless meetings with everyone involved. It takes a lot of time.”
Despite all, A.I.D. officials said they were hopeful that the entire road would be completed within 18 months. Over the past five years, they said, they have learned how to operate in Aceh’s politically and culturally sensitive communities.
Nowadays, a dispute tends to be solved in a matter of hours, rather than the days or even weeks it took the Americans in the early going. The Acehnese provincial government has begun to help expedite the project, sending the police to mediate disputes and take down barricades.
Walter North, mission director for A.I.D., remains optimistic about the future of the region, envisioning an economic rebirth and maybe even a vibrant tourism industry along Aceh’s west coast served by the new road, which is less than half complete. “We are making progress,” he said, “and, in the end, I think people will be proud.”
But he also acknowledged the scale of the obstacles his project had had to face.
“There have been incredible challenges,” Mr. North said. “I think in the beginning we felt that if the international community could respond the way it did and that peace could come out of this immense disaster, then such spirit would make building a road a snap. But life turned out to be a little more complicated.”
des and negotiating with communities.
A peace agreement negotiated and sealed in the months after the tsunami struck ended the civil war, creating a new political reality and unexpected challenges.
The peace agreement allowed, for the first time ever in Indonesia, local political parties to contest provincial elections. An election in 2006 put a former rebel leader into the governor’s seat. Last April, Partai Aceh, the political vehicle of the former separatist movement, swept the election for the provincial legislature.
As part of the broader effort to help reintegrate former combatants into society, A.I.D. has hired several of them as subcontractors to supply materials or to plant sod embankments. But extortion is a constant problem.
“I’ll ask for a certain amount of material, and they’ll show up with twice the amount we need,” said Mr. Purnama, the construction manager on the bridge project, shaking his head in disbelief. “We have no choice but to pay or they’ll block the road and disrupt construction.”
Mr. Purnama said the former rebels, many of whom were hiding in the mountainous jungle before the peace agreement, also fought among themselves for jobs.
“One group will come to me and ask me to get rid of the other group,” he said. “It is a constant discussion, endless meetings with everyone involved. It takes a lot of time.”
Despite all, A.I.D. officials said they were hopeful that the entire road would be completed within 18 months. Over the past five years, they said, they have learned how to operate in Aceh’s politically and culturally sensitive communities.
Nowadays, a dispute tends to be solved in a matter of hours, rather than the days or even weeks it took the Americans in the early going. The Acehnese provincial government has begun to help expedite the project, sending the police to mediate disputes and take down barricades.
Walter North, mission director for A.I.D., remains optimistic about the future of the region, envisioning an economic rebirth and maybe even a vibrant tourism industry along Aceh’s west coast served by the new road, which is less than half complete. “We are making progress,” he said, “and, in the end, I think people will be proud.”
But he also acknowledged the scale of the obstacles his project had had to face.
“There have been incredible challenges,” Mr. North said. “I think in the beginning we felt that if the international community could respond the way it did and that peace could come out of this immense disaster, then such spirit would make building a road a snap. But life turned out to be a little more complicated.” 
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