Meulaboh – The two-faced attitude of United States troops in the province of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD) in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami has been revealed. Apart from carrying out humanitarian missions, the troops from the US have been caught out providing logistical aid to the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in Calang, the capital of Aceh Jaya District.

This dual role of US troops was recorded in photos taken by officers from the Aceh Jaya Military District Command. Ujang R (55), a volunteer from Bandung, saw the photos of US soldiers giving logistical aid to an armed civilian group in Aceh Jaya.

"I was shown the photos. But I don't know when and where the incident happened," said Ujang, after arriving in Meulaboh from Calang. What was clear was that "those receiving it were armed civilians, and who else would they be except GAM" said this fan of travelling.

According to Ujang, the situation in Calang was still dilemmatic. The impact of the disaster in the city was unbelievably bad, in fact the whole city, which is on the coast of the Indian Ocean, had been wiped out. So immediate aid was needed.

But humanitarian volunteers coming to the place were being pressured and limited from two camps at the same time: TNI [Indonesian National Military Forces] and armed civilian groups. "This is what has been hampering our movements," said Ujang.

Apart from organic troops [i.e. those under local area command], the area was being guarded by non-organic troops from the TNI marines and Kopassus [the special forces]. They were the ones strictly limiting the movements of volunteers, and frequently overseeing every phase of humanitarian operations.

"In the mornings we were ordered to report in, and also in the afternoons when we got back. If we wanted to go anywhere we'd be asked why, where, and what we were taking. It was as though they wanted to limit direct contact with those locals who survived the disaster," Ujang said.

This city on the western coast of Aceh is on the black zone list of bases of the Free Aceh armed civilian group.

Banjarmasin Post journalist Dhony Harjo Saputro, who has just returned from Banda Aceh, said that the Meulaboh District, one of the regions 90 per cent totally destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami, was a GAM base.

At the moment almost two thousand military personnel (TNI, ed.) were monitoring the area closely. "Every day, hundreds of TNI personnel from the Special Forces sweep the area," he said.

The information concerning US troops dropping logistics to armed civilian groups has only just become a topic for discussion amongst certain groups.

However, it is thought that senior TNI officers have already received reports of it. "The thing is that the Commander (Gen E. Sutarto) went to Calang last week, and I think it's been reported. The Commander also dropped by our post there," said Ujang.

TNI Information Chief Maj-Gen Syafrie Syamsudin could not be contacted for confirmation at the time of this report. Neither could the Military Provincial Commander of 012/Teuku Umar, Col Geerhan Lantara, who is based in Meulaboh.

Meanwhile, in Banda Aceh yesterday [25 Jan], TNI Commander Gen Endriartono Sutarto stressed that security restoration operations were still being conducted. The frequency of armed contact between TNI and GAM, Sutarto said, had also increased. There are currently around 60,000 TNI personnel in the Aceh region.

[From BBC Monitoring Service.]