Black-jacketed volunteers from one of Indonesia's most militant Muslim groups scraped away the clammy mud that clung to the walls and floors of a badly damaged house here on Sunday. They moved the once handsome dining room chairs outside to dry. In a few days, they said, the owner of the house, Azman Ismail, an imam at Banda Aceh's central mosque, would be able to move back in. The men, members of Lasker Mujahedeen, a paramilitary group that has fought Christians elsewhere in Indonesia and has had links to Al Qaeda, are among hundreds of Indonesian Islamic militants who have come to Aceh in the name of helping their fellow Muslims, they say, to offer a dose of Islamic teachings to the already devout Acehnese, and to recruit members.The groups, including Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia and Islamic Defenders Front, arrived in the disaster area on Indonesian military transport planes, and on a commercial flight organized by the Indonesian vice president, Jusuf Kalla. The military distributed the protective gloves, rubber boots and the masks they needed to dig bodies out of the rubble, the volunteers said. In the buzz of activity at the airport, and in the ruins of the city, the militants have not tried to hide their identity. Some are camping at the military airport here near where American helicopters land to load relief supplies and distribute them to remote coastal areas. "Islamic law enforcement," is written in English on a sign at the huddle of small igloo tents where some of the Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia volunteers sleep among the much larger tents of the contingents of foreign military, though not the Americans, who have come to help.
The Americans return at night to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, which is off the coast. For the moment, the militants say they are willing to tolerate the work of the Americans, whom they usually denounce as infidels and imperialistic occupiers of Muslim nations. "As long as the American soldiers' involvement is for humanitarian reasons, they are welcome," said Imam Salman al-Farisi, the leader of the 80 volunteers of Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia here. Majelis Mujahedeen is an umbrella organization of militant groups founded by Abu Bakar Bashir, who is on trial, charged with organizing the terror attack in Bali in October 2002. Mr. Bashir is the leader of the terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, which is blamed in the Bali bombings and the attack on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2003.