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Show WEDNESDAY, JANUARY WORLD NEWS 19,2005 DIXIE SUN Without women, small villages likely to go extinct after tsunamis the wall of water rushed eleYusnadi, a mentary school teacher, grabbed his three children, put them on his motorcycle As in, sped TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICE A new public report by the National Intelligence Council concludes that instead of diminishing terrorism, Iraq off. It was too late. A torrent trees carrying ripped-uslammed into them from behind. The water swept Yusnadi along for nearly two miles, but he survived. He never saw his children again, nor his wife, who was fleeing on foot, p i i along the Indonesian coast, men like Yusnadi tell similar tales: harrowing accounts of survival that end with the discovery that their wives and children perished. But the stories aren't just personal All tragedies. Relief officials believe that because so few women and children survived, it will be all but impossible to reconstruct the villages that the tsunami washed away. In Yusnadi' s village of Lam Kuta, about 30 miles south of the city of Banda Aceh, only 48 of the 600 residents survived. Among the survivors, just four are women and none are children. It's not clear why mostly men survived, other than the fact that they may be stronger and better swim- Yusnadi, who has a thin scar running from his right ear to the middle of his forehead and a gauze bandage wrapped around his foot, explains the situation. "It is difficult to go home since we don't have any fam--, dies," he says. "All the men lost their wives. Now, we're ust a group of individuals with nowhere to go." The loss of population means that some villages will never come back, said Mahdi Effendy, the head of he Lhong subdistrict, which includes Lam Kuta. Of the 28 villages in Lhong, only four escaped Jnscathed. Nearly half of the population of 11,812 is dead or presumed dead. By he time people are reset-led- , Effendy said he expects hat Lhong will have shrunk :o just 10 villages. "There's nothing we can do about it," he said. . .. has replaced prewar Afghanistan as a breeding and training ground for terrorists who may disperse to conduct attacks elsewhere. more than two picture to merge of the death and It's taken weeks for a Instruction in Indonesia, he country closest to the picenter of the earthquake 'Pat triggered the tsunami. The power of the Asian tsunami reduced parts of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, to rubble and destroyed much of the infrastructure Jan. 11. With roads washed away and with few other ways to communicate, places such as Lam Kuta had no way to report the destruction they suffered. Often no one survived to make such a report. A team from Knight Ridder reached this village aboard a boat on rough seas. There's no telephone service or electricity. A satellite phone can be used only sparingly because there's no way to recharge the batteries. The water rushed four miles inland, until it ran into the hills and finally stopped. Seaside villages such as Lam Kuta were obliterated. Not even crumbling buildings remain, just the concrete foundations of homes. Further inland, stronger houses withstood the torrent, while weaker ones were picked up and deposited in a pile of debris. In one such village, Lam Geuriheu, residents returned on Wednesday to salvage lumber and pieces of corrugated metal roofs. They talked about rebuilding, if the government gives them the In Lam Kuta, there's nothing to salvage, least of all a community. A herd of two dozen cattle, grazing on a patch of grass not far from where a dead cow lay on its side, provides one of the few signs of life. A lone man walks across the flattened landscape, a machete in hand to crack open fallen coconuts for a drink during his daily journey to pick up food at a government center and carry it back to his village. Another man, Fajri Rahman, looks out vacantly in the distance to the sea, across the destruction that d. four-mil- e once was his village. 3 New intelligence raise questions about U.S. mission in Iraq TRIBUNE SERVICE MEDIA and -- Then, he tears up, shielding his face with his black, kopyah, the formal Indonesian and then his hand. "I can't stand to see it," the government pharmacist said. The white tile floors remain intact where the head-wea- r, small house he built for his family used to stand. A short concrete driveway leading up a small ramp indicates where the garage was. Gone are the walls. Gone is the furniture. And gone are his wife and two youngest children, his only sons, ages 6 and 10. This was my youngest son's," he said, breaking down again after finding a small pair of jeans, still caked with wet sand in the humid Indian Ocean climate. He and his two teenage daughters were driving to Banda Aceh when the earthquake struck. They managed to escape to higher land when they saw the tsunami coming. When his oldest daughter, Eria Rahmalina, 15, returned two days after the tsunami, she almost fainted, and Rahman had to support her. His younger daughter, Norul Qamariah, 13, told him she never wants to go back. His eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep. The Two senior intelligence officials with access to classified reporting said Islamic militants allied with or inspired by Osama bin Laden were forging ties to Iraqi nationalists and remnants of former dictator Saddam Hussein's regime. The linkage is similar to the one that "Afghan Arabs" formed with Afghanistan's Taliban regime after the Soviet Union withdrew from that country, they said. The Bush administration claimed before invading Iraq that Saddam had strong ties to international terrorism, but most counterterrorism experts dispute that and no evidence has been found to support the claim. The sad thing is we have created what the administration claimed we were intervening to prevent: an a linkage," one of the senior intelligence officials said. The officials who were more pessimistic spoke on condition of anonymity, because the latest intelligence assessments are classified and their views are at odds with public statements from the White House. Even in their public remarks, top military offi- Iraqal-Qaid- cers and policy-maker- s are about the road ahead in Iraq All major U.S. intelligence agencies share a pessimistic prognosis for Iraq's future, according to a senior administration official. The assessment of the State Department's intelligence bureau is so grim that it's referred to as the "I agree with Scowcroft's analysis" report. That's a reference to retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser to Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush. Scowcroft said earlier this month that the Iraqi elections could deepen the conflict and "we may be seeing an incipient civil war." Bush and his national security team took issue with Scowcroft's remarks, but the pessimistic indicators have led a growing number of senior U.S. military and intelligence officials to say they worry that the mission in Iraq is becoming untenable for the American military. The United States faces an agonizing choice, they say, because an American withdrawal would hand militant Islam a huge victory and probably doom the transitional Iraqi government that will be chosen in less than two weeks. Another possibility is that the transitional government, expected to be dominated by Shiites, could give the United States a timetable to leave. The White House and State Department have said such a request would be honored. becoming more cautionary pharmacist has been helping take care of the injured and sick survivors at the local clinic, where his wife, Yurlina, once worked as a mid-wif- the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House compound in Washington, D.C. Dec. 20. |
