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.
But the imam added a caveat. "If there are intelligence people among the American soldiers, I believe Allah will smash the United States."
A senior American official involved in Washington's relief effort said the United States had stopped short of protesting to the Indonesian government about the presence of the groups. But the official said he discussed the matter with the Indonesians in meetings last week. "This is something the Indonesian government has to watch very carefully," the official said.
The overt presence of the outside Muslim groups has, however, prompted some of the city's small Christian population to flee, said the Rev. Ferdinando, who leads the congregation at the Most Sacred Heart Catholic Church here. All but 15 of his 400 church members, most of them shopkeepers and of Chinese origin, were staying in Medan, the major city to the south, where they felt safer, he said.
"There is a fear by the Christians of the Muslims because in the past the Christians suffered," he said. "There is a fear that that suffering will happen again."
The militants are not the only Muslim groups that rushed to Aceh with volunteers and a modicum of aid in the days immediately after the tsunami struck.
As well, Indonesia's second-largest Muslim organization, Muhammadiyah, which has tens of millions of members, and the up-and-coming fundamentalist political party, the Justice Party for Prosperity, have been dominant in filling the void left by the collapsed government in Aceh, which has been racked a more than 25 years of civil conflict. The eagerness of the Muslim volunteers, though often thinly supplied and equipped, has stood in sharp contrast to the absence of government workers and to the lethargy of some Indonesian soldiers.
"The motto of the provincial government is: 'We serve not to serve,' " said Nasir Jamil, the leader of the Justice Party in Aceh and a member of the Indonesian Parliament, as he talked in a frantically busy aid post. "They don't do anything."
Justice Party members were out on the streets of the provincial capital just hours after the roaring waters of the tsunami finally quieted, Mr. Nasir said. Immediately, he and his colleagues started to pull bodies from the rubble and line them up for collection, he said.
On the second day, with telephone communication with the outside world still cut, the party, together with some university students, opened its first aid station. "We had a little bit of medicine but we had to dilute it so enough of it would go around," Mr. Nasir said.
Since then, the Justice Party, he said, has flown in 1,000 volunteers from around Indonesia.
The party now has 16 aid posts around the city and its outskirts where victims can find food and advice, Mr. Nasir said. The party has established seven water points, and plans 20 more. One of the most obvious efforts of the militants has been to concentrate on the most odious chore, unearthing bodies from the debris. On Saturday, a young squad from the Islamic Defenders Front, a militant group from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta that uses violence to enforce Islamic law against drinking, gambling and prostitution, was still recovering bodies in the middle-class neighborhood of Ajun.
"People are coming back to their houses to clean up," said Syarif, 36, an Islamic Defender Front member, as he walked the debris-filled streets. "They're interested in their cars, but they ask us to take care of the bodies."
The Defenders group won high praise from the Aceh police after it found the body of one of the province's most senior police officers, Sayyed Husaini.
The speedy arrival of the Islamic Defenders was ensured by Mr. Kalla, the vice president, who arranged a civilian charter for the group's members and allocated seats on Indonesian Air Force flights for them, said Hilmy Bakar Almascati, the leader of the group's contingent here. As well, he said he had spoken personally to the head of the Indonesian Army, Rymizard Ryacudu, who provided tents for the group.
Besides helping clean up the devastated city, Mr. Hilmy said he was planning to increase the Defenders' membership. Aceh is one of the most devout areas in Indonesia and Islamic law, or Shariah, is formally on the books, though not seriously practiced. Mr. Hilmy said it was a perfect place for recruitment.
"We are training people to be members of Islamic Defenders," he said. "I think Aceh is welcoming to that idea."