MYSTERIOUS WAYS:

In Sri Lanka's Time of Agony, a Moment of Peace: One extraordinary facet of the response to the disaster has been cooperation between the two sides in Sri Lanka's brutal civil war. (DAVID ROHDE, 1/04/05, NY Times)

Inside a crumbling, bullet-riddled building in rebel territory in northern Sri Lanka, low-level representatives of the country's government and Tamil Tigers rebels - mortal enemies in a brutal civil war - are sitting together and planning the distribution of relief aid to tsunami victims.

In other parts of the country, ordinary government and Tamil Tiger soldiers have worked together to repair tsunami-damaged roads, according to international monitors. Checkpoint commanders on both sides have loosened rules to ease the flow of aid. And a government hospital has even accepted an injured rebel official for treatment.

Even though the rebels still tightly control aid in their territory, any open signs of cooperation are extraordinary here, where the rebels have maintained what is effectively a separate country for two decades.

Arne Folleras, a Norwegian aid worker and member of the new task force, said this was the closest cooperation between the two sides since they signed a shaky cease-fire in 2002.

"It's all gone very, very smoothly," he said, as small trucks laden with aid hummed in and out of the makeshift headquarters. "It's a very different atmosphere. We all feel like we are working toward the same goal."

The increased grass-roots cooperation between the two sides appears to be one facet of a deeply felt, deeply emotional response that has swept across this island nation of 19.5 million since a merciless sea swept away 30,000 of its people on Dec. 26.