INDONESIA has responded to requests from Australia and promised to boost security amid fears of aid workers that the world's humanitarian mission may be caught in the crossfire of the separatist struggle. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday there would be growing concerns over safety in the coming months as Australians helped rebuild the devastated western Sumatran coast. Fuelling the volatility of the region, fundamental Islamic activists are also flooding into the region in a bid to guard against what they regard as dangerous Western influences.As relief efforts continued yesterday, the death toll in Indonesia from the Boxing Day earthquake and tsunamis jumped by almost 20,000 to 113,306, taking the total number of dead across the region to more than 165,000. Australian aid workers in Aceh told The Australian yesterday that Indonesian soldiers had warned they could not guarantee security outside Banda Aceh. Workers were being urged to travel in large convoys that were clearly marked for safety. There were also unconfirmed reports of several cars belonging to a non-government organisation being held up by a firefight involving TNI soldiers and rebels. Indonesian sources say the chief concerns for the safety of aid workers and unarmed defence personnel are Free Aceh Movement (GAM) separatists looking for publicity, criminal gangs attached to GAM, and Islamic fundamentalists concerned about the influx of Westerners.
One hardline Islamic group took aim yesterday at an Australian Catholic charity, Father Chris Riley's Youth off the Streets, planning to set up an orphanage in tsunami-ravaged Aceh, warning it not to try to convert Muslim children. Chief of the radical Islamic Defenders Front, Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, warned the group to stick purely to humanitarian work in Aceh — the only Indonesian province to have fully implemented Muslim sharia law. Mr Downer said it was "political suicide" for Islamist militants to attack now, but there would be concerns for Australians as the program dragged on. "The assessments of our agencies is that it is very unlikely that Islamists groups would commit acts of violence against people providing humanitarian aid simply because it would be an act which would be enormously unpopular in Indonesia, would set their cause back a very long way, even if it was some sort of an attack on foreigners," he said. "In terms of Islamist groups it is quite unlikely in the short term, I'm not talking about the medium term — over the five years of this program, that is something we'll have to assess."