AS Minister of Mines & Energy in the late 1990s, once considered to be the toughest job in Indonesia, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, 62, actually had an easy time. “It was not difficult at all,” he recalled, laughingly.

Those were the good times compared to his latest job as Chairman of the Aceh-Nias Rehabilitation & Reconstruction Agency (BRR), which he took on in 2005 and will relinquish this week. “The complexities I faced as mining minister