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In recent months, East Timor has witnessed
a tragic renewal of violence. In May, after the government dismissed
about one-third of the country's soldiers, fighting broke out
among the security forces. Gangs of unemployed youth, possibly
manipulated by some political leaders, set much of East Timor's
capital of Dili ablaze. Amid warnings of a full-scale conflagration,
a temporary Australian-led international peacekeeping force entered
the territory to quell the violence. At least 37 people have
died since conflict reignited. About 150,000 displaced persons
are taking refuge in camps for fear of fresh fighting.
With the current peacekeeping
mandate set to expire on August 20, the UN Security Council is
meeting this week to discuss East Timor's future. Before the
Council is a report by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan based
on a recent country assessment by a team of experts. The report
outlines the unresolved grievances among the population as well
as the conflicts within and between the local military and police,
and calls for a sustained commitment by the international community
to East Timor in the years ahead. This would consist of a renewed
UN mission focused on an international police presence, revamped
training of local security personnel, and a variety of measures,
including anti-poverty efforts, aimed at genuinely stabilizing
the territory. A UN Special Commission of Inquiry is also investigating
the violence of April and May.
These UN discussions and investigations are crucial not only
for determining the fate of East Timor, which became independent
in 2002 after a storied fight for freedom, but also the future
of UN efforts at what is loosely called "nation building."
With a history of involvement in the island's history, the United
States will also play a central role in the outcome. There is
good reason to be optimistic about East Timor's prospects-but
only if the key actors, including the UN and the United States,
are mindful of the country's painful history.
Roots of
Conflict
In December 1975, then-U.S.
President Gerald Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger,
went to Indonesia on the eve of that nation's brutal invasion
of the Portuguese colony of East Timor. Although the Indonesian
archipelago spans an area the size of the continental United
States and East Timor is about the size of New Jersey, Indonesian
leader Suharto apparently feared the establishment of an independent
left-wing state in his region. Washington sympathized. Indeed,
the testimony of various U.S. officials plus documents released
in recent years through the National Security Archive make it
clear that Washington could have prevented the Indonesian invasion
with timely diplomatic action. Moreover, th roughout Indonesia's
24-year-long occupation of East Timor, the United States backed
Jakarta both with arms shipments and by blunting criticism of
the regime in Congress and the UN. East Timor's truth and reconciliation
commission has determined that at least 180,000 people, more
than a quarter of the population, perished from the effects of
Indonesian rule from 1975 until 1999. After East Timor voted
to leave Indonesia in 1999, Indonesian-backed militias laid waste
to the territory, killing at least 1,000 East Timorese and destroying
much of the territory's infrastructure. The United States missed
a second chance to avert a calamity. If the Clinton administration
had challenged Jakarta, international peacekeepers may well have
been present months earlier and might have prevented the militia
rampage. East Timor's bishop at the time, 1996 Nobel Peace Prize
co-Laureate Carlos Ximenes Belo, repeatedly urged the United
States to take a strong position with Indonesia, but his words
were not heeded until it was too late.
The United States did
ultimately help secure Indonesia's withdrawal from East Timor
in 1999, and U.S. forces did play a role not only in establishing
the subsequent UN peacekeeping mission but also in helping to
warn off militia elements still threatening the territory in
2001. In 1999, when the UN began its transitional rule of East
Timor, Bishop Belo warned that the history of division brought
about by the Indonesian occupation underlined the need for at
least a decade-long international administration.
Despite such warnings, the
Bush administration, in order to save money on peacekeeping costs,
began to push for the withdrawal of UN troops as soon as East
Timor became independent in 2002, and by 2005 most had departed.
The eruption of the conflict in April 2006 has exposed the folly
of this policy.
A New U.S.
Policy
The Bush administration appears
likely to back Kofi Annan's proposal to establish a 1,600-strong
police contingent backed by 350 troops that together will help
maintain order in East Timor until the 2007 elections. But a
much longer mandate is needed.
A t their height in 1999-2000,
UN peacekeepers in East Timor numbered 7,500. By 2006, all but
a tiny handful had been withdrawn. The recent outbreak of violence
and destruction suggests an international police force backed
by some troops will be needed to build long-term security in
the country. Additional UN involvement is necessary, including
institutional support for the new peace-building commission that
is working on reconciliation in East Timor and involving churches
and civil society in the governance process. The UN must also
be mandated to organize the upcoming elections in 2007 and appoint
an electoral committee. Otherwise, the possibility of unfair
elections, and further turmoil, is very high. In other words,
the UN-with U.S. support-must not only undertake a peacekeeping
mission but also fulfill the larger mandate of nation building.
The UN must also reexamine
the kind of support it has given. The Secretary General's August
8 report acknowledges that "independent technical evaluation
of advisers is needed" and that "adequate measures
should be taken to ensure that recruitment and contract renewals
are undertaken on technical and professional grounds" in
the next phase in East Timor. Although half the hundreds of millions
of dollars in reconstruction aid reportedly went into the pockets
of foreign consultants and expatriate officials, relatively few
of the international advisers and consultants working in East
Timor really added value to the process. The balance of available
funds could be much better used for widespread skills training,
job creation, and other public works initiatives to engage unemployed
veterans and youth, with a special emphasis on women. Such an
approach, in East Timor and elsewhere, could foster genuine stability.
These suggestions echo calls
from East Timor's Catholic bishops that U.S. and other international
economic aid-and, importantly, proceeds from East Timor's natural
gas revenues-must be directed toward boosting local employment.
With widespread feelings of injustice among youth and former
resistance fighters, and more than 50% of young people and other
veterans of the independence struggle without jobs, upheaval
in East Timor is guaranteed to be endemic unless effective counter-measures
are taken.
How should the East Timorese
example influence future UN efforts at nation building? Certainly,
the UN should institute long-overdue competency testing. It should
also direct an overwhelming proportion of its "nation building"
budget to productive employment for local people. At a deeper
level, the UN should give people knowledgeable about local history
real decision-making power-which would help to tap authentic
public sentiment-rather than dismissing their comments as too
"negative."
The record of official American
diplomatic and military support throughout most of Indonesia's
24-year occupation of East Timor gives the United States a solemn
responsibility to help the people of East Timor to achieve a
better future. Justice for the crimes of April and May 2006 is
only a small part of the equation. Washington should also support
the demands for justice and accountability for the crimes of
1999. Secretary General Annan has also declared that there should
be no immunity for these crimes.
Despite these huge problems
and the dire newspaper reports, East Timor is on the road to
recovery, with life returning to normal and numerous pledges
of international assistance pouring in. The country is fortunate
to have a host of effective leaders in government, church, and
civil society. One of these, Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta,
will head up an interim government until elections in May 2007.
Horta is making extraordinary use of the skills that helped him
build international support for his nation's independence over
many years and for which he shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize
with Bishop Belo. Together with East Timor's popular President
Xanana Gusmao, Horta should be able to successfully address existing
grievances and midwife a second rebirth of the country.
Arnold Kohen, international coordinator of Global
Priorities, has written extensively about East Timor, including
From
the Place of the Dead (St. Martins Press, 1999), which received
the Christopher Award for Non-Fiction.
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