The cruel sea.

The article reports on how The Indian Ocean region is struggling to recover from the aftermath of the biggest earthquake seen for 40 years. The victims--many tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands displaced, millions coping with loss--were mostly the poor, vulnerable and remote. Entire villages of uncounted, nameless fishing people were swallowed by the sea. The tsunami wreaked havoc around the Bay of Bengal, from India, Sri Lanka and the low-lying islands that make up the Maldives in the west, to Thailand and Malaysia in the east. How many died may never be known. Across the region, hospitals and mortuaries overflowed. The tsunami battered some well-established tourist destinations where the travel business has brought a degree of prosperity. The cost of relief and rehabilitation will run into billions of dollars. Rebuilding their lives is the challenge facing the relief effort. It will be a logistical nightmare, since in many places, such as Sri Lanka, much of the infrastructure needed to reach the stricken villages has itself been destroyed. The tsunami, it was argued, offered some political hope of reconciliation between hostile communities: Muslims and Buddhists in southern Thailand, Acehnese and the Jakarta government, Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka.