TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Memories of ‘Pak’ Kun
Since 2005, Aceh has been conflict free. For Pak Kun, it was one of his proudest "build back better" accomplishments.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Adam Schwarz receives a “Hero of Aceh” award from BRR director Kuntoro Mangkusubroto during the Founding Fathers' Dinner in Jakarta on April 7, 2009. (Adam Schwarz/-)
I
n early May 2005, Pak Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, who passed away on Dec. 17, 2023, walked off a plane at Banda Aceh’s Sultan Iskandar Muda airport into a hot, clear-blue-sky day. It was his first visit to Aceh, slightly more than four months after a devastating tsunami had crashed into Aceh’s coastline on Dec. 26, 2004. Waves travelling at as much as 800 kilometers an hour, comparable to the speed of a jet plane, wreaked havoc up to six kilometers inland.
By the time the waves receded, more than 200,000 Indonesians had perished in one of the deadliest disasters in modern history. It took only minutes after the earthquake that caused the tsunami for the giant waves to slam into Aceh’s shores. Nobody saw it coming and it was over in a matter of hours.
Beginning in January 2005, Pak Kun, as he was universally known, started assembling a team to help structure a new agency, the Agency for the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Aceh and Nias (BRR). Its mission was to help collect and deploy funds to “build back better” the devastated stretches of Aceh’s coastline and the damaged island of Nias.
Pak Kun was handpicked by then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for the role. Pak Kun built his top team from different ministries and organizations and invited a handful of foreign institutions to join the team that would establish and operate the BRR, including McKinsey & Company, the World Bank and PWC.
Pak Kun was the perfect man for the job. A superior intellect with a broad range of interests, Pak Kun had a master’s degree in civil engineering from Stanford University and a doctorate in engineering from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). Above all else, it was the quality of his character that made him a natural leader. Three attributes made him a consummate professional: pragmatism, focus and inclusiveness.
When a group of us disembarked at the Banda Aceh airport, none of us had a clear plan. We were surrounded by scenes of devastation. Pak Kun said we should go to the coast northwest of Banda Aceh, one of the hardest hit areas.
As we trudged across the rock-littered beach, there was nothing to see in any direction. Every building, boat, home and structure was gone. There was one exception. Remnants of a small mosque still stood, meters from the receding waters, its minaret gone, its walls washed away but, miraculously, still there.
