Wright, who has lived in Australia since 2000, has covered the release of Nelson Mandela, the marriage and funeral of the Princess of Wales and the Boxing Day tsunami in Aceh in 2004.
To mark today's launch of Guardian Cities, our new website devoted to urban living and the future of cities all over the world, Guardian correspondents have spent time in six of them – New Orleans, Ishinomaki, Port-au-Prince, Banda Aceh, Christchurch and Galle – to investigate how our cities are reinvented after disaster strikes.
Barbara Walter of the University of California, San Diego points to Suharto's abuses, as president of Indonesia, against separatists in Aceh.
Religion is partly behind that: homosexuality is legal in Indonesia except for Aceh, a conservative Muslim state.
Indonesia is torn by secessionist movements in Aceh, in northern Sumatra, and in Irian Jaya, at the other, eastern, end of the long archipelago.
Aceh produces much of Indonesia's oil and gas exports, and Irian Jaya is home to the world's largest gold and copper mine (and Indonesia's biggest taxpayer), operated by a subsidiary of Freeport-McMoRan, an American firm.
Armoured vehicles rumbled through the streets of the regional capital, Banda Aceh.
This provoked resentment and insurrection in resource-rich provinces such as Aceh, which saw their wealth plundered by a corrupt elite.
Besides the rebels' abandonment (for now at least) of their independence demand and the government's move on political representation for the rebels, there are also signs that the authorities in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, are more committed to a settlement of the Aceh question than before.
