Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta – Four years after the Boxing Day tsunami that wiped out large parts of coastal Aceh, almost everyone involved in the Indonesian province's reconstruction is talking up the special agency President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono created for the task.

But as that body prepares to shut its doors, storm clouds are brewing for the society that spent decades at war with Jakarta.

The nationally mandated Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) for Aceh and the nearby island of Nias, headed by apparently incorruptible former mining minister Kuntoro Mangkusobroto, winds up in just a few weeks after managing about $US7.2 billion ($11 billion) in pledged funds.

The figures are impressive: 134,000 houses built, more than a thousand schools, thousands of kilometres of roads, dozens of harbours, 12 airports.

But with the country heading to national elections, simmering tensions in Aceh have already erupted into clashes and what appear to have been politically targeted assassinations.

There are fears the violence could build even further as groups – including elements of the Indonesian military – vie for power in the increasingly wealthy province. Yesterday, at what has become an annual meeting in Jakarta to show international donors how well the reconstruction is going, Dr Yudhoyono outlined details for a new agency that will continue BRR's work, albeit with greater direction from provincial authorities.

Tellingly, the name of the newbody is the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Continuation Agency. Its birth enables the President, who came to office promising a corruption-busting, governance-promoting term, to point to an out-and-out success by closing the original office and declaring its work done, whilst quietly allowing its mechanism to continue.

Dr Kuntoro reported yesterday that about $US6.7 billion of the total pledged amount – or 93 per cent – had been committed to reconstruction projects.

However, there is still a long way to go. "The things that remain to be done is a lot of roadwork, houses – well, the houses have been built, but a lot of them still don't have water or sanitation, or electricity," said Simon Field, head of the UN Development Program in Aceh, after Dr Yudhoyono opened proceedings in the grand arena of the Jakarta Convention Centre.

"The President is going to Aceh in a couple of weeks to open a new airport that still doesn't have full computer systems or even proper luggage conveyor belts and is operating with its old control tower, and a museum that I think will still be empty," hesaid.

"You can see it as a kind of election issue – the President gets to say that his efforts at governance reform have succeeded. In fact, nothing has (been) finished, there's still a lot of money, but it certainly gives a closure date for Kuntoro."

Closure for Dr Kuntoro, heavily tipped for a senior minister's position in a second Yudhoyono government, is one thing. Continued electoral legitimacy for Aceh's wily Governor, Irwandi Jusuf, could be quite another.

Dr Irwandi, a US-trained vet and leader in the former rebel Free Aceh Movement (GAM), has had to constantly duck and weave as he pulls his province into shape after winning office as an independent in Aceh's first real elections two years ago.

Two former GAM guerillas were shot dead in the past week in what many are reading as direct military intimidation of the group, which has more recently gained political legitimacy through the vehicle of its Aceh Party. A spokesman for the Aceh Transitional Committee (KPA) – the body created after the 2005 ceasefire to accommodate former GAM fighters – sounded an ominous warning.

"The two cases indicate that the KPA and the Aceh Party are being targeted by persons who do not want to see peace in Aceh," Ibrahim Syamsuddin said. "Do not provoke us into ratcheting up tensions prior to the elections. Terrorists and killers must be captured before things get worse."

Fortunately, the belligerent language was mostly posturing and anger. The UNDP's Mr Field insisted yesterday that "rent-seekers" and jostling between competing interests had been behind most of the incidents, rather than genuine political agendas. "It's low-level stuff; there definitely won't be the level of conflict again in Aceh that there was," he predicted.