But government planners and aid workers alike say the single, overriding issue is the availability and distribution of money. There's a lot of it at stake. For once in a natural-disaster recovery program, the problem isn't too few dollars but too many. Total pledges amount to more than $6 billion, yet most of that won't be disbursed until Indonesia and Sri Lanka, the two hardest-hit countries, can offer clear blueprints on how money will be spent in the reconstruction process. Of the major donors, just Japan and Saudi Arabia have delivered cash directly to governments. (India and Thailand said they could cope on their own, so only a little international aid has gone their way.)

The biggest problem, in a word, is corruption, or, rather, the potential for it. Next week, the Asian Development Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and corruption watchdog Transparency International will sit down in Jakarta with NGOs and government officials from around the region to address risks and safeguards. "How the [Indonesian] government plans to manage the pledges they receive is still unclear," says Matt Stephens, acting coordinator for the World Bank's program in Aceh. "Until they can come up with a convincing accountability structure, people will remain skeptical."

The key difference from past natural disasters is that this time the single largest share of the money—about a quarter—is coming from private donors. The experience of the United Nations Children's Fund is telling. UNICEF has often found it difficult to get sizable disaster-relief contributions from official sources. "Governments have to go through a huge process to approve releases of just $20 million to $30 million," says spokesman Gordon Weiss. But in the case of the tsunami, he says: "We had that much come in within a week—through credit cards."

Such generosity comes with an implicit condition. The millions of ordinary people around the world who dug into their pocketbooks to help the victims of the tsunami want their money to be well spent. "There's a much higher expectation of accountability from private donors," says Weiss. "They want to know exactly what their donation went toward." Weiss himself was on the ground in Aceh three days after the waves struck, hand-carrying health kits. "The system of checks and balances runs counter to the need for speed," says Weiss. "There's not a happy marriage there." Still, he knew what he had to do. When he and his colleagues hired a pickup truck at $3 a day to haul goods around Aceh, Weiss wrote a receipt daily for the driver to sign.

The unprecedented response from private donors has prompted the U.N. as well as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to hire external auditors to look at their books. In the first such arrangement, accounting powerhouse Price-waterhouseCoopers (PWC) is donating 8,000 hours of professional services to help the U.N. upgrade its existing system for tracking funds, and providing staff to investigate reports of misuse. PWC has roped in nine other professional-services companies, including software and law firms. Says spokesman Mike Ascolese: "It's the largest pro bono effort we've ever done."

And it's needed. In a survey Transparency International conducted last year of perceived corruption in countries, Indonesia came off fifth worst. Moreover, this moment in an aid exercise—when relief gives way to large-scale rebuilding—is especially dangerous, according to a recent Transparency International report, which noted that the construction industry is particularly prone to kickbacks. "It's one thing to hand out rations to displaced people," says the NGO's Asia-Pacific director, Peter Rooke, "but the building of houses for them all is fraught with danger on a huge scale. The big money hasn't even started going out yet."

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	Rising from the Rubble [Jan. 24, 2005] Devastated by war and natural disaster, can Indonesia's Aceh province find peace? Treat Them Like Kings [Jan. 24, 2005] Our culture says we cannot tell aid workers to leave Language Lessons [Jan. 17, 2005] In the wake of Asia's disaster, the world learns to choose its words carefully Race Against Time [Jan. 17, 2005] An inside look at the rush to beat disease, hunger and the destruction of the tsunami Naming the Dead [Jan. 17, 2005] Relatives and scientists turn to the grim task of identifying victims Global Agenda: Comforting Strangers [Jan. 17, 2005] Lessons to be learned from the world's generosity More Related Items | Search all issues of TIME Magazine