`If You Leave Us, We Will Die'
Robinson, Geoffrey
ON THE AFTERNOON Of September 13, 1999, I joined one of the last United Nations patrols to venture out into Dili, the capital of East Timor. Clad in flak jackets, but unarmed, we toured the...
...The main reason for equivocation by the United States and its allies on the matter of human rights investigations and trials in East Timor was a desire to restore good relations with Indonesia as quickly as possible, in particular with its armed forces...
...Within hours of the end of voting on August 30, pro-Indonesian militia groups and members of the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) began a rampage of violence so sustained and so ugly that it surprised even seasoned observers who had predicted a backlash...
...In keeping with that philosophy, and because of his friendship with Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas, he was more inclined than others in the UN to accept assurances of good faith offered by Indonesian officials...
...For the story of East Timor illustrates that there is a sound basis for the skepticism with which U.S...
...The message was unambiguous: Indonesian assurances were meaningless, and DISSENT / Winter 2002 n 95 EAST TIMOR swift international intervention was essential...
...and its objections effectively torpedoed an idea that did have some support in other departments, notably in the department of political affairs (DPA...
...government, making it difficult to know exactly what was said...
...If you leave us here, we will die...
...there was a strong sentiment that international UN staff should not leave before the fifteen hundred refugees had been taken to safety...
...Some observers have blamed the tragedy instead on the incompetence of the UN...
...But as legal and human rights experts noted, there were fatal problems with the mandate and the makeup of these courts...
...In Australia, Canada, and much of Europe, angry demonstrators demanded swift international intervention...
...The preoccupation with the safety of foreigners was evident even in the statements of officials known for their sympathy toward the East Timorese...
...THE DECISION to proceed stemmed partly from the fluidity of the situation on the ground and indications that the violence might yet be brought under control...
...A diplomat of the old school, Marker was a firm believer in the value of cordial face-toface discussion...
...Why had the UN decided to proceed with the vote in spite of widespread predictions of violence...
...Whatever its failings, it is worth recalling that the UN helped to achieve something in August 1999 that had long been considered impossible—a legitimate act of selfdetermination for the people of East Timor...
...So many previously "imEAST TIMOR possible" things happened in 1999, that one simply cannot say with confidence whether, if vigorously advocated, the idea of international forces might have been accepted...
...It was only one of many units offering advice, and events would prove that its influence was limited...
...From the outset, Alatas had flatly rejected the idea of a referendum, and he made a point of reiterating that position during a visit to Jakarta by Albright in March 1999...
...Within hours of the end of voting, pro-Indonesian militia groups and members of the TNI began an unprecedented campaign of violence...
...Inside were some five hundred UN staff and more than fifteen hundred local people who had sought refuge there...
...Ostensibly acting against the threat of communist insurrection and political instability on its border, in early December 1975 Indonesia launched a combined land, sea, and air invasion of East Timor...
...Portuguese disengagement stimulated the growth of political parties in East Timor, including a social 88 n DISSENT / Winter 2002 democratic party called Fretilin, which declared independence on November 28, 1975...
...Crammed two or three deep in Ian Martin's office, the delegates were briefed on the crisis...
...More to the point, perhaps, it is not at all obvious that it would have been preferable to cancel the referendum...
...Worse still, we were asking fifteen hundred people to decide in a matter of just a few hours, whether to stay and await that fate or to flee through the night into the hands of the militia and TNI soldiers...
...Most glaringly, a presidential decision (No...
...in the words of one UN official, in those weeks he became "the desk officer for East Timor...
...Meanwhile, Indonesian authorities continued to drag their feet in a most disgraceful way in regard to the prosecution of those responsible for the violence in East Timor in 1999...
...The next day, September 11, the British foreign secretary announced the suspension of all arms exports to Indonesia...
...that the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had called for urgent international intervention...
...Within a week those forces began to land in East Timor...
...The folly of the velvet glove approach has been brought home by a number of alarming developments since 1999...
...As a Jakarta-based diplomat later admitted, "everybody conceded too much" in the course of those negotiations...
...The rejection of that package, the agreement made clear, would set East Timor on the path toward independence...
...Significantly, when the Security Council finally lent unanimous support to the Australianled Multi-National Force (MNF) in mid-September 1999, its resolution invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter and gave the MNF authority to use all necessary means to restore security...
...If they rejected it, he said, Indonesia would withdraw and East Timor would be on its own...
...Indonesia, he said, "must implement the results EAST TIMOR of the balloting, and they must allow an international force to help restore security...
...Once again, old habits and assumptions ruled...
...As the situation deteriorated, some two thousand East Timorese, the vast majority of them women and small children, sought refuge in the compound...
...Everyone understood that it was precisely those forces that were orchestrating the violence...
...Finally, saying that she and the others had no more time for talk, she excused herself and left...
...Still, it is unlikely that media images and reporting would have translated into a change in policy had there not already been a sophisticated worldwide network of legislators, religious leaders, and grassroots organizations in place long before the crisis...
...Out of nowhere, a young woman rushed up to the head of the delegation, Martin Andjabe of Namibia...
...When he named his vice president, B. J. Habibie, as his successor, few expected change...
...His statement of September 10 reflected his strong personal views on the matter and in particular his belief that claims of national sovereignty must not be allowed to stand in the way of effective international action in defense of human rights...
...Helpless in the face of the mounting violence, the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), which had vowed to remain regardless of the outcome, evacuated all of its district offices...
...After a series of meetings with Indonesian military authorities, the delegation came to the UNAMET compound...
...rOR ROUGHLY three centuries, the territory now known as East Timor was a colony of Portugal...
...In retrospect, it may seem odd that a one-day reprieve would be the cause for rejoicing...
...Paramount among these was the question of justice...
...That decision meant, in effect, that the IMF would not disburse some $460 million in mid-September as planned...
...When I asked a Canadian diplomat what it was that had finally convinced his government that it must support intervention, his answer was unequivocal—it was the NGOs...
...By 1980 church and human rights sources estimated that two hundred thousand of a pre-invasion population of less than seven hundred thousand had already died...
...President Bill Clinton and Australian Prime Minister John Howard by telephone, asking what they were prepared to do...
...Although our work was cut short by the escalating violence, we were able to establish that Gomes's assailants had been local militiamen, sporting red and white bandanas and armed with swords, homemade guns, and knives...
...Unfortunately, these investigations and the idea of an international tribunal very quickly lost the support, if they ever had it, of the United States, Australia, the European Union, and other key governments, which began to push instead for an Indonesian judicial process that everyone knew would ultimately fail...
...The United States had also drawn up contingency plans and would certainly have been in a position to deploy troops had the command been given...
...Moreover, notwithstanding the earlier claim that a force would take at least three months to deploy, the MNF was on the ground within a week of the Security Council resolution...
...ALTHOUGH WE did not realize it until later, an equally critical turning point had come twelve hours earlier on September 10, when Kofi Annan issued an unusually strong public statement about the crisis...
...Some of those privy to the UN-sponsored negotiations of early 1999 have suggested that the agreement on security was a necessary compromise...
...The most powerful message, however, did not come from UNAMET officials, but from East Timorese refugees, during a tour of the compound guided by Sister Esmeralda...
...As I discovered during a working dinner with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in late February 1999, some in the State Department were still searching for ways to avoid a direct popular ballot in East Timor...
...But the portrait of UN incompetence does not really capture the political and moral complexity of the situation in East Timor...
...In pressing for UN intervention in early September, for example, New Zealand's foreign minister said, "What one hopes comes out of the Security Council of course is that you can somehow cordon off those UN-related people over there and give some kind of protection for them...
...and it helps to explain why later on the idea of an international tribunal for East Timor was so quickly abandoned...
...Like most arguments about realism in politics, this is a dubious one...
...They pointed out that any delay would only benefit the side responsible for the violence, the side that did not wish to see a free expression of popular will...
...WHAT BROUGHT this dramatic change in the posture of the international community and, in particular, what finally changed the policy of the United States...
...If that part of the May 5 Agreements appeared too good to be true, there was another element that from the outset was fatally flawed—the agreement that placed sole responsibility for maintaining law and order in the hands of Indonesian security forces...
...These moves sent a clear message to the TNI that it was being eased off the hook, long before any serious measures had been taken to resolve the matter of justice Pentagon official have sought to justify this resumption of military ties on the grounds that such ties are the best way to guarantee respect for human rights and civilian rule in Indonesia...
...The parallels were difficult to ignore, especially for those with some direct involvement in the earlier debacles...
...Also unchanged was the overwhelming power of the Indonesian Army in East Timor and the implacable opposition of most of its officers to independence...
...Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who would later criticize Congress for slashing peacekeeping budgets, gave no hint of support for peacekeepers in East Timor until well after the referendum...
...And with Habibie's announcement in January 1999, the trickle became a flood...
...Insofar as this approach was expressed in public, it also gave a skewed impression of what UNAMET actually knew and thought about security and political conditions...
...EAST TIMOR MEANWHILE, a sense of outrage began to grip other UN staff and the handful of journalists and observers who had taken refuge in the compound...
...But this argument overlooks the fact that thirty years of close ties with the TNI did nothing to prevent the widely anticipated violence in East Timor in 1999...
...That arrangement began to unravel rather dramatically in 1974 when, in the aftermath of its own revolution, Portugal set about to relinquish control of its colonies...
...On September 7, the UN's department of public information notified Kofi Annan that they had already received sixty thousand messages calling for urgent action to assist East Timor...
...At about the same time, the World Bank announced that it had frozen $300 million that had been scheduled for disbursement the following week...
...In this, they were taking their cues from Alatas and army officers, not from President Habibie...
...In February and March 1999, dozens of people were reported killed—some in very gruesome ways—and tens of thousands were forced to flee, after which their houses were burned...
...The main agreement, between Indonesia and Portugal, stipulated that East Timorese would be asked to accept or reject the special autonomy package...
...Almost immediately the question arose about whether it was wise to proceed with the vote—and that remained a preoccupation throughout the summer...
...But the basic policy did not change, and the matter was left in the hands of Indonesian authorities...
...The first known victim was a local UN staff member, Joao Lopes Gomes...
...Later that evening, Habibie declared martial law in the territory with effect from September 7. Far from improving, however, the security situation worsened...
...We are so afraid...
...The strongest opposition to the peacekeeping option in the United States appears to have come from the Pentagon, though the White House also resisted at least until some time in the second week of September...
...For most of the ensuing twenty-four years, however, a succession of Australian governments sought to downplay reports of gross human rights violations in the territory and provided substantial military training to Indonesian forces...
...That declaration was the final straw for Indonesia's President Suharto, an army general who had come to power in a military coup in 1965...
...As one of those trapped inside the UN compound in September 1999, I was deeply relieved to hear that military forces were coming...
...In one sense the answers lie simply in the self-serving policies of the United States and other Western governments, which were reluctant to offend the government of Indonesia, and so resisted calls for armed intervention both before and after the vote, and sought quickly to restore ties after the violence had subsided...
...Perhaps most important, they coincided with the views of the main resistance leader, Xanana Gusmao, and many other East Timorese who thought the vote should proceed without delay...
...And in the years after the invasion, successive U.S.-administrations—both Democratic and Republican—funneled hundreds of millions of dollars of economic and military aid to the Indonesian regime and protected it from any serious political challenge to its illegal occupation of East Timor...
...In a series of internal assessments written in June and July, for example, the political affairs office argued that none of the security criteria spelled out in the secretary-general's memorandum of May 4 had been met, and that the referendum should therefore not go ahead...
...One of the responsibilities of the political affairs office in which I worked was to provide advice on that question to Ian Martin, the head of mission in East Timor...
...We also learned that, at the time of the attack, they had been accompanied by TNI soldiers and the local military commander...
...From our perspective in political affairs, Marker had a tendency to understate the seriousness of the security situation and to let the Indonesians off the hook far too easily...
...Indeed, by the time the decision was announced, the army had already set in motion plans to ensure that the vote would favor integration, or would never happen at all...
...Canada was not alone in this regard, though the precise composition of the NGO network varied from place to place...
...The DPKO position coincided with the views of powerful states within the UN Security Council, particularly the United States...
...But we took our responsibility seriously, and it cannot be said that the decision to proceed was taken lightly...
...Instead, the concerned states stuck steadfastly, one might even say pigheadedly, to the position that security was the responsibility of the Indonesian authorities...
...Shortly thereafter, the president of the Paris Club of creditors announced that the group had decided to delay any decision on credit for Indonesia until the next year because of the situation in East Timor...
...Almost immediately, however, the wisdom of that decision was thrown into question...
...policy is viewed in much of the world and good reason to doubt the sincerity of America's professed opposition to the use of violence against civilians...
...96/2001) limited the jurisdiction of these courts to violations that had occurred in April and September 1999 in only three of East Timor's thirteen districts...
...That afternoon, the Security Council delegation met President Habibie in Jakarta, and discussed the deployment of international forces and the evacuation of the refugees...
...Likewise, the personal commitment of the secretarygeneral, and his decisive diplomacy at the height of the crisis, were critical in bringing about a change in the political balance...
...The recommendation to evacuate was made by the head of mission, Ian Martin...
...I told Antonio and the journalist this, although I was deeply pessimistic at the time that Antonio or anybody else would be able to leave...
...We were encouraged to hear that France had dispatched a navy vessel to the area...
...Notwithstanding the earlier claims by security, CivPol, and MLO chiefs that most of their staff were anxious to evacuate, by about 9:00 p.m...
...Over the next few weeks, most towns and villages in the territory were burned to the ground...
...I give you my word...
...And yet, this simple view cannot easily explain why these very powers decided to intervene militarily in mid-September 1999...
...Gareth Evans, the foreign minister from 1988 through 1996, has now admitted that much of Australia's military training "helped only to produce more professional human rights abusers...
...The news came to UN headquarters in Dili in a garbled radio message...
...Clarifying the policy, the foreign minister, Ali Alatas, said that East Timorese would be asked whether they accepted or rejected a UN plan to grant the territory "special autonomy" within Indonesia...
...The same morning we heard that militias had attacked Bishop Belo's residence and the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), where many had sought refuge...
...Just two weeks after the historic UN-supervised vote in which some 80 percent of the population had opted for independence from Indonesia, the city was a hollow, smoking shell...
...In what had been a bustling city of a hundred thousand, there were now almost no local people in sight—only scavenging black pigs, a handful of Indonesian soldiers, and militiamen wearing red and white bandanas, loading up trucks with loot, heading for the border with West Timor...
...Huddled inside the compound we slept on scraps of cardboard and grew accustomed to the constant clatter of automatic and homemade weapons fire outside...
...It was also the legacy of the death of U. S. peacekeepers in Somalia in 1993, and the presidential directive that followed from it (PDD 25), which imposed strict conditions on U.S...
...It was also clear that they were mobilized, trained, and supplied by Indonesian authorities, and that the violence was coordinated, or at least condoned, at a very high level...
...This weak posture had its roots in a long tradition of international acquiescence in Indonesia's occupation of East Timor and in its appalling human rights record...
...While greeted by some outsiders as a refreshing sign of change in Indonesia, there was deep concern among the East Timorese and human rights experts that the Indonesian report would simply be used as a foil by the military to deflect demands for an international inquiry and tribunal...
...A fifty-year-old school teacher and father, Gomes was stabbed in the back and killed as he helped to load ballot boxes into a vehicle near Atsabe village in Ermera, just after the polls had closed...
...However obvious the need for peacekeepers seemed to those who had been in East Timor, the idea never got off the ground...
...Haunted by memories of UN inaction or flight in Rwanda and Srebrenica, we wondered what the legacy of our mission might be...
...That evening Kofi Annan spoke by telephone to the president of Portugal, to the Australian prime minister, and finally, after 10 p.m., to President Habibie...
...The impact of media reporting was accentuated by the presence of international UN staff and a handful of foreign journalists and observers in Dili as the violence descended...
...But peacekeepers were never mentioned...
...Although some within the political affairs office remained skeptical on this score, most UNAMET staff came to believe that it would be best to proceed...
...He urged Indonesia to accept this help, and warned that "if it refuses to do so, it cannot escape responsibility for what could amount, according to reports reaching us, to crimes against humanity" The allusion to crimes against humanity buoyed our spirits considerably because it indicated a new level of commitment on the part of the UN...
...As one East Timorese health worker commented to a foreign journalist, "If there is trouble, the UN will send in peacekeepers, right...
...That group included Madeleine Albright, who was ambassador to the UN when the United States blocked the Security Council from sending peacekeepers to Rwanda during the genocide...
...In a press conference in New York announcing the agreement, Ali Alatas told reporters that "throughout our discussions, UN peacekeeping forces have not been an issue that has been raised...
...Whatever else may happen," she said, "this referendum has removed any doubt that East Timorese wish to be free...
...Passed by word of mouth through the compound, this news was greeted with groans of disbelief...
...These included an immediate ban on rallies by armed groups, and the prompt arrest and prosecution of those inciting or threatening violence...
...At the end of its visit, on August 12, the delegation's spokesman said, "Unless Indonesia is going to live up to its obligation, we believe it is critical for a peacekeeping force to be sent to the territory immediately...
...support for the idea of an international force...
...inESPITE THESE ominous developments, when Portugal and Indonesia met under UN auspices in March and April, they agreed to the idea of a direct ballot, paving the way for a set of accords known as the May 5 Agreements...
...As the news spread through the compound, there was quiet jubilation...
...It is now known that Australia was privy to Indonesian plans to invade in 1975 and had details of the atrocities that Indonesian forces committed throughout...
...Moreover, while it is true that the UN as a whole failed to prevent the widely predicted violence in East Timor, and chose to move ahead in spite of dire warnings, some within the UN acted in ways that saved lives...
...Habibie emerged from the cabinet meeting in the evening and made the announcement that effectively brought an end to the crisis...
...In the months after that coup, Suharto had helped to organize the killing of between five hundred thousand and a million members of the Indonesian Communist Party and the imprisonment of about a million others...
...but even if they only repeated it verbatim, Suharto and his aides must have taken heart from the meeting...
...Again Indonesian Army and police forces had done nothing...
...It was soon evident that these militia groups were involved in a major campaign of terror and 90 n DISSENT / Winter 2002 intimidation against supporters of independence...
...And yet, we are not surprised that you plan to leave us now...
...a move later followed by the European Union...
...It is sobering to think that without such pressures they would in all likelihood have done nothing at all...
...Those critics are correct, however, in thinking that the decision to move ahead was strongly influenced by political pressures emanating from the UN in New York and from the capitals of major powers...
...Through their personal experience of the violence, and of the mendacity of Indonesian officials, the delegation was transformed into a powerful advocate for intervention...
...But the reality was that, against the backdrop of the original plan for a total evacuation that very night, twenty-four hours seemed an eternity...
...But many of us were also worried about being party to a humanitarian disaster...
...The beginning of the end of this impasse came in May 1998 when Suharto was forced to step down after more than thirty years in power...
...The Nobel Prize raised hopes for independence to unprecedented levels and further increased the leverage of East Timor support groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs...
...UN staff who ventured outside saw militias burning and looting while TNI soldiers and police DISSENT / Winter 2002 n 93 EAST TIMOR looked on...
...According to the U.S.-State Department's own estimates, roughly 90 percent of the military equipment used in the 1975 invasion was supplied by the United States...
...Its report, released in January 2000, called for the indictment of thirtytwo people, including the then—TNI commander, General Wiranto...
...The outpouring of concern was so great that the department had to set up a separate computer server to handle all the messages...
...The United States was not alone in lending its support to Indonesia...
...Because there will be trouble...
...Only a few months later, however, it was clear that the international community had failed to resolve, or even adequately address, a number of other serious problems...
...After that meeting the Indonesian cabinet convened to discuss the same issues...
...Conveniently, a special investigation team of the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission was quickly established to look into the violence...
...As widely predicted, by mid-2001 none of the suspected perpetrators had been brought to justice, and Wiranto had been removed from the list of suspects...
...Nor was it a foregone conclusion, as some critics have implied...
...But State Department briefing notes for the meeting advised Ford to say that the United States "recognizes the seriousness of Indonesia's security concerns" in East Timor and that "we have proposed the approximate doubling of the present level of our security assistance to Indonesia...
...And, because it was assumed that neither of these things would happen, we were told it was "unrealistic" to expect peacekeepers...
...Martin and others believed that sustained political pressure might convince the Indonesian authorities to rein in the militias and allow the ballot to proceed with only minor disruptions...
...that Canada's prime minister had said the international community would have to step in if the violence continued...
...In New York, there was an unusual open debate in the UN Security Council, in the course of which some fifty states spoke, most of them arguing in favor of urgent international intervention...
...Supporters of independence were beaten and raped, while others were killed...
...that Japan's prime minister had said that the world "cannot just stand by...
...Political leaders were also moved by some of the decisions and actions taken by UNAMET staff in Dili...
...This remarkable shift in the government's position seems to have been set in motion by international pressures, specifically by a December 1998 letter from Australian Prime Minister John Howard to Habibie urging the government to adopt a more flexible approach on East Timor...
...You must promise...
...For one thing, the U.S...
...In Auckland the following day, Clinton reiterated U.S...
...that insistence on an international armed force was simply not politically "realistic" in light of Indonesia's opposition to the idea...
...Outside I was confronted by a journalist from the Sunday Times who demanded that I make an exception to get an East Timorese friend and his family on to the UN evacuation flight and likewise threatened media exposure if I should fail to do so...
...Although the State Department gave the idea more support, it scrupulously avoided mentioning peacekeepers in its public statements...
...In mid-July the head of mission expressed the same view, on behalf of UNAMET, in a number of memoranda to headquarters...
...The next day, I joined a small investigation team that flew to the scene of the attack by helicopter...
...Indonesia's claim to sovereignty over East Timor was never recognized by the UN...
...In February 2000, and perhaps earlier, the Pentagon began quietly to restore military education and training (IMET) programs that had been cut in midSeptember, and the European Union formally ended the arms embargo that it had imposed about the same time...
...92 n DISSENT / Winter 2002 Congressional delegation made an equally emphatic statement in late August...
...The decision provoked a storm of protest within the compound and brought to a head fundamental questions about the UN's priorities and responsibilities...
...DISSENT / Winter 2002 n 97 EAST TIMOR From the outset, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica were on the minds of UN officials in Dili and in New York, and they played a role in the deliberations of various states...
...Those of us inside worried that the militia might come over the wall at any time, unimpeded by the Indonesian army soldiers who were ostensibly protecting us...
...And the fact is that the troops that arrived in late September did an admirable job in bringing an end to the violence and easing the militias and the TNI out of the territory by the end of October...
...WITH THAT fragile guarantee, in late May 1999 UNAMET began to deploy its personnel in East Timor with the seemingly impossible task of conducting a referendum some time in August...
...And it must be said that the arguments in favor of proceeding had merit...
...From my perspective in Dili, the critical turning point was the visit of the UN Security Council delegation on September 11...
...Indonesian authorities were adamant that East Timor would remain a part of Indonesia...
...And we learned with disbelief that the most important state of all, the United States, was still equivocating...
...The news of the attacks on the bishop's house and the IC RC reached New York early on Monday, September 6. At a meeting of the Core Group later that day, the Australian ambassador argued for the first time that an international force must be deployed without delay...
...And when we had, she spoke...
...It was also influenced by a group of five states specially convened in New York for this purpose, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, together known as the Core Group...
...The victims were among the humanitarian workers assisting the East Timorese who had fled their homes in 1999, and the perpetrators were the very militiamen who had forced them to flee...
...What was it that made international military intervention a possibility in mid-September when so recently it had been said to be impossible...
...That was a story I would learn many weeks later...
...Memories of Rwanda and Srebrenica probably influenced members of the Security Council too, particularly those that had stood in the way of effective intervention...
...Using U.S.-supplied OV-Bronco warplanes, Indonesian forces conducted large-scale aerial bombardment of the countryside...
...When UN staff or outside observers asked about or urged the possible deployment of peacekeeping forces, the answer was more or less the same: it would be impossible to deploy peacekeepers without Indonesian approval, or by invoking Chapter VII of the UN Charter...
...Indeed, although more than four hundred local and international UN staff did evacuate as planned some twenty-four hours later, a skeleton UN staff stayed in the compound until the safety of the refugees could be secured...
...Among those who did listen, and who reached similar conclusions, was a join parliamentary-NGO delegation from Canada...
...Whoever the architects of the policy were, opposition to peacekeepers prevailed in the United States and the UN until September 10— almost two weeks after the militias and the TNI began their campaign of violence...
...Nor did those ties stop the violence once it had begun...
...By the middle of September, 70 percent of all the buildings in the territory had been burned or destroyed, an estimated four hundred thousand people—more than half the population—had been forced to flee their homes, and at least one thousand had been killed...
...The refusal of many UN staff to evacuate from Dili on September 8 forced key UN member states to act to avoid sharing responsibility for a political and humanitarian fiasco...
...For some time, Marker had the ear of the secretary-general, and of his chef de cabinet, Iqbal Riza, a fact that inevitably led to a softening of the positions that UNAMET advocated from the field...
...Without any doubt, however, the darkest day in the compound was September 8. That evening, a decision was taken to evacuate all remaining UN international staff, effectively leaving some fifteen hundred refugees to their fate...
...What had prevented it from happening earlier was not political reality, nor even logistical difficulties, but an acute lack of political courage, imagination, and leadership...
...As the reports on UN failings in Rwanda and Srebrencia, as well as a recent report on UN peace operations, make clear, there is room for improvement in the UN's handling of humanitarian and political crises...
...Whether or not that was the case, Security Council action, and in particular its visit to East Timor, was critical in forging a consensus on concerted international action...
...Although there were two brief postponements, the process went ahead without significant interruption...
...Within the UN Secretariat, the argument against a pre-ballot deployment of armed peacekeepers was put most stridently by the department of peace keeping operations (DPKO...
...Outside the UN compound, beyond Dili, in the capital cities of powerful nations, on the streets and on front pages, over telephone lines to the offices of Indonesia's president and armed forces commander, the pressure had begun to build—indeed, the critical decision may already have been made...
...The problem was that for more than two decades no concrete action was taken to give effect to these resolutions...
...The detailed transcripts of that meeting have been heavily censored or, in official parlance, sanitized, by the U.S...
...No state with any real power in the UN had the inclination to challenge so important a political and economic player as Indonesia— the fifth (later fourth) most populous country in the world, a bastion of anticommunism in Asia, and an economic prize—for the sake of a half-island the size of New Jersey...
...When asked why the United Stated had not taken the lead in resolving the mess in East Timor, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger reportedly said that his daughter's university dorm room was also a mess, but that didn't mean the U.S...
...Seizing his hand, she said, "Please do not leave us here...
...More important, there was a sense that a critical turning point had been reached...
...Perhaps by coincidence, although probably not, September 10 was also the day that the United States finally changed its tune on the question of peacekeepers...
...It was as though by mere repetition this pipe dream would come true...
...Surprised, but I believe also heartened, by this show of resolve, Martin conveyed the news to UN officials in New York by telephone...
...In that sense, the military intervention was an enormous success...
...To do so might have prevented the post-ballot violence, but it would also have deprived East Timorese of a chance to determine their own future and to escape finally from a brutal twenty-four-year occupation in which nearly one third of the population had already died...
...And it seems clear that the argument for such a force was abandoned without being seriously tried...
...Although the scale of the killing declined somewhat over the next two decades, Indonesian forces continued to be responsible for human rights violations on a staggering scale...
...Two days later, all remaining UN staff and refugees were safely evacuated from Dili to Darwin by giant Hercules C-130 aircraft, and the next day the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1264, lending its full support to a swift deployment of a multinational military force...
...Nor was there much serious support for the idea in Congress until very late in the game...
...As far as I could tell from Dili, the Permanent Five and the Core DISSENT / Winter 2002 n 91 EAST TIMOR Group were anxious to move ahead with the referendum, despite warnings of danger, and reluctant to do anything that might unduly upset the Indonesian government and military...
...Army leaders reportedly put up little resistance to Habibie's proposal in cabinet, but that did not mean they supported it...
...With this sort of backing, and with support from many other countries as well, it is hardly surprising that for more than twenty years Indonesia refused to contemplate any challenge to its claimed sovereignty in East Timor...
...In a largely successful attempt to deflect international attention, the Indonesian government announced plans to establish ad hoc human rights tribunals to try these cases...
...WHEN THE POLLS opened at 6:30 a.m...
...The decision to proceed in spite of predictions of violence appeared to have been vindicated...
...Populations thought to be supporting the resistance were resettled in an Indonesian version of the strategic hamlets strategy used by U.S...
...Then, just as fear had begun to turn to despair, the picture began to brighten...
...As the rest of the colonized world fought for and won independence after the Second World War, East Timor remained largely unaffected, and lived more or less harmoniously with its enormous neighbor, the Republic of Indonesia...
...This is not to say that these powers remained silent in the face of the mounting violence...
...He also made it clear that he would stop the referendum process should he find that these criteria were not being met...
...The time has clearly come," he said "for Indonesia to seek the help of the international community in fulfilling its responsibility to bring order and security to the people of East Timor...
...government should clean it up for her...
...The decision effectively guaranteed that the majority of crimes committed during 1999 would never be investigated or tried...
...So it was that the UN found itself utterly unable to do anything as the violence descended on East Timor...
...Before coming to UCLA, he worked for six years at Amnesty International's research department in London...
...This essential groundwork meant that when the crisis came, the lobbying effort did not have to start at square one...
...The same day, the International Monetary Fund, citing the problems in East Timor, decided to suspend talks with Indonesia on its economic recovery program...
...Some measure of the lack of support for the peacekeeping option may be found in various post-ballot planning documents developed within the UN Secretariat starting in mid-July 1999...
...government's war against terrorism...
...Video footage of the massacre was broadcast worldwide, prompting outrage and stimulating the formation of East Timor support groups throughout the world...
...Later that night, he called Xanana Gusmao and told him that he was determined that the UN would not leave East Timor...
...In the end, however, that position did not prevail...
...While we sat immobilized inside, the country burned...
...The decision to proceed, like the earlier decision to leave security in Indonesian hands, was also influenced by the personal representative of the UN secretary-general for East Timor, Ambassador Jamsheed Marker of Pakistan...
...The day before, Clinton had issued an executive order severing ties with the Indonesian military...
...None of the plans I saw discussed the matter of peacekeepers at all...
...A U.S...
...Andjabe first answered somewhat stiffly, saying that the UN would do everything possible to ensure their safety...
...Indeed, the UN Security Council and General Assembly passed a series of resolutions deploring the Indonesian invasion and recognizing the inalienable right of the people of East Timor to selfdetermination...
...Faced with this combination of forces, even the most reluctant of the major powers, as well as such institutions as the Pentagon, found it virtually impossible not to act...
...But it was deeply distressing to read in the press that Ambassador Marker, a member of our own team, had "refused to lend credence to reports of [Indonesian] military support for the militia" when for months we had carefully documented and argued precisely that case...
...Just as important, the statement indicated that the secretary-general was prepared to bring to bear the full weight of his office in finding a 96 n DISSENT / Winter 2002 solution...
...For conducting it, we will always be grateful to UNAMET...
...In July 2001 the Bush administration announced its intention to seek a full resumption of military sales and ties to Indonesia...
...The more practical and cost-effective approach, a series of policy and planning memoranda from New York explained, was to insist that the Indonesian authorities live up to their obligations for maintaining peace and security...
...We were also told, as early as July, that it would take too long, three months at least, to mobilize such a force, so there was no point in discussing a pre-ballot deployment...
...As it happened the man in question, Antonio Belo, was also an old friend of mine, whose safety I would have done almost anything to secure...
...Sister Esmeralda waited patiently for us to finish...
...The sheer stupidity of this comment aside, it made it clear that the United States was still insisting that responsibility for restoring order rested with the Indonesian armed forces...
...Gathered anxiously around a radio in the UN compound with East Timorese friends, we listened as he declared that Indonesia would welcome the assistance of the international community in restoring peace in East Timor...
...The final obstacle had been removed...
...Historical memory also played a key part...
...As one official of the UN Secretariat told me, there were simply no advocates of a delay at headquarters...
...By the end of the evening the decision to evacuate UN staff had been postponed by twenty-four hours...
...By this point, Annan was personally involved in every detail of the crisis...
...One way of reassuring the TNI of their friendship was to ensure that it would never have to face any serious accounting for the crimes it committed...
...support for any UN peacekeeping mission...
...Clad in flak jackets, but unarmed, we toured the city in three vehicles...
...He is the author of The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali...
...government and its allies remained reluctant to offend the Indonesian authorities and continued to operate according to old political dicta...
...At the same time, he informed them that General Wiranto, TNI commander, had urged UNAMET to stay and said that the TNI officers on the ground had concurred...
...A further critical development came in 1996, when two East Timorese, the international spokesman for the resistance, Jose Ramos Horta, and the Bishop of Dili, Monsignor Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize...
...THE WATERSHED event was unquestionably the Santa Cruz massacre of November 12, 1991, in which as many as 270 people were gunned down or beaten to death by Indonesian soldiers...
...The heads of those units, he said, had given the impression that the majority of their staff were demoralized and anxious to leave...
...THANKS LARGELY to a handful of journalists who had stayed on, news of the dramatic escalation of violence began to make its way out of East Timor, where it prompted furious reactions from religious leaders, legislators, and citizen groups...
...The violence included a mass killing at a church in the town of Liquica and another at the home of a pro-independence leader in Dili...
...and his chef de cabinet, Iqbal Riza, who had served under Annan at that time...
...Now, on his way to a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group in Auckland, New Zealand, Clinton said that Indonesia must accept an international force...
...Defying threats by armed militias, many had walked for hours in their Sunday best for the chance to vote...
...Yet in spite of the widespread sympathy for the victims of human rights abuse and the international legitimacy bestowed by the Nobel Prize, the prospects for East Timorese independence looked bleak...
...A group of journalists demanded to speak to Martin, threatening to denounce the evacuation decision publicly...
...We are ready to support an effort led by Australia to mobilize a multinational force to help bring security to East Timor under UN auspices...
...Part of the answer surely lies in the shocking television images and other media coverage of the events of early September...
...Having heard this line before, the woman interrupted and, still holding his hands, said, "No, you don't understand...
...The bombing and forced relocations led to widespread famine and disease...
...Why had peacekeeping forces not been deployed before the vote to prevent the violence...
...And there was relief when all of the refugees in the compound were safely airlifted to Australia on September 14, and something close to glee when an armed international force was deployed less than a week later...
...When the figures were tallied at the end of the day, UN officials announced that an extraordinary 98.6 percent of registered voters had cast their ballots...
...At the UN, U.S...
...DISSENT / Winter 2002 * 99...
...Clearly much had changed, but much had not...
...Surrounded by people like the courageous Sister Esmeralda and others whom we had come to know in the preceding months, we could scarcely find the strength to speak...
...Martin did not disagree, but explained that the heads of security, CivPol, and MLO had all strongly advised evacuation...
...In Dili, armed militia gangs laid siege to the UN compound...
...Within a few days, all UN officials had been drawn back to the headquarters in Dili, and the compound was effectively under siege...
...But, as far as I was concerned at the time, the tide of our fortune had turned with those words: "We will not leave you...
...The annexation was formalized in July 1976, but resistance continued, and the human toll mounted...
...The dangers in the agreement on security were not lost on outside observers, nor even on those who helped to negotiate it...
...One senior Western diplomat involved in the East Timor issue told me that his country's policy "was not driven by realpolitik but by reactions to images on the television...
...In the United States, much of the work was done by private advocacy groups that had been working through the Catholic church and Congress since the 1970s...
...Kofi Annan, who had been head of the UN's department of peacekeeping operations at the time of the genocide in Rwanda...
...Looking straight into the woman's eyes, and then wrapping his arms around her, he said, "We will not leave you...
...UN experts duly visited East Timor in November and December 1999 and proposed that further international investigations should be conducted with a view to bringing those responsible promptly to justice...
...Nevertheless, events on the ground in East Timor and shifts in the international arena began gradually to weaken Indonesia's position through the 1990s...
...The UN itself, including its civilian police (CivPols) and military liaison officers (MLOs), would be unarmed...
...and that Australia's defense minister had said its forces could be ready to move within days...
...More precisely, a quick straw poll conducted at Martin's request had revealed that at least eighty of the hundred or so international staff still in the compound were prepared to stay on even if the evacuation went ahead...
...He called on the president to bring the situation under control within the next forty-eight hours or to allow the international community to do so...
...The United States, the EU, Australia, and other governments were never keen on breaking ties with the army, and they did their best to restore those ties as quickly as possible after the mayhem in 1999...
...Indeed, it was only after the United States and other governments cut their military ties and arms sales to Indonesia that the worst violence and killing were brought to an end...
...Elsewhere, NGOs such as Amnesty International had built up an unusually rich portrait of the human rights problem in East Timor and had established channels of access not only to the media but to government decision makers and officials at the United Nations...
...It was against these people, and in these places of refuge, that some of the most egregious acts of militia violence were committed in April of 1999...
...We are used to being abandoned in our times of greatest need...
...On the morning of September 6, we learned that militias had attacked refugees who had sought shelter in the cathedral in the town of Suai, killing dozens...
...Instead we wept, because we were sure that when we left all those inside would be killed...
...On the conEAST TIMOR trary, those best placed to help, such as the United States, declined to do so...
...From June to November 1999, he served as a political affairs officer with UNAMET in Dili, East Timor...
...As anyone who has worked within it can attest, the UN is not a monolithic organization, and even at its highest reaches its capacity for independent action is always constrained by the views and interests of the most powerful members of the Security Council...
...The DISSENT / Winter 2002 n 87 EAST TIMOR fact is that without that intervention we might be speaking today of tens of thousands killed rather than one thousand...
...However, the boldness of Habibie's move surprised even those who had been urging a policy adjustment...
...U.S...
...The fact is that it is far from clear that it would have been preferable, morally or politically, to postpone the process...
...In any case, the supportive posture of the U.S.-government and its allies became clear in the months and years after the invasion...
...forces in Vietnam...
...But the fact remained that the violence had been widely predicted, and the UN had failed to prevent it...
...In September 2000, Indonesian security forces stood by and watched as militiamen killed three staff members of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees at their office in West Timor, and then burned their bodies beyond recognition...
...Many of those who fled sought refuge in nearby churches or in the private homes of prominent citizens...
...The militias were said to have killed scores of refugees on the spot, while herding hundreds of others onto trucks and buses...
...The 1975 invasion, for example, was launched just one day after a meeting in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, between Suharto, U.S...
...Those feelings fueled a rebellion of sorts...
...But in January 1999, in an astonishing break with past government policy, Habibie announced that the people of East Timor would DISSENT / Winter 2002 89 EAST TIMOR be given a chance to express their views on the political future of the territory...
...With each day, the situation inside the compound grew more critical...
...Although many of the 94 n DISSENT / Winter 2002 refugees had brought some food with them, certain basic necessities—rations, drinking water, fuel—began to run low, and the logistical problems of housing two thousand people started to become serious...
...BY EARLY 2000, it was clear that this was exactly what was happening, as the United States and other major powers began to soften demands for an international inquiry and to suggest that an Indonesian judiEAST TIMOR cial process might suffice...
...And there is some truth in that assessment...
...This depressing scenario is not likely to be rectified any time soon...
...In 1989, Australia reaped its reward, signing the Timor Gap Treaty with Indonesia for the joint exploitation of the oil and mineral wealth lying off East Timor's south coast...
...Overcome with shame, we delegated one of our group to approach Ian Martin and convey our view that the decision to evacuate was wrong...
...President Gerald Ford, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger...
...The reason was simple: in the course of negotiations in April 1999, and throughout the summer, it was either ignored or actively opposed by elements within the UN Secretariat and by key powers in the Security Council, most notably the United States...
...Even a brief glimpse at the history of the Indonesian armed forces and their behavior in East Timor would have indicated what a dangerous approach this was...
...There was plenty of criticism, and even some veiled threats, for example, at a donors meeting for Indonesia in Paris in July, and again as voting day approached in late August...
...There was quiet rejoicing in the compound when we learned that the Indonesian government had agreed to allow an international military force to "assist" the TNI in ending the violence...
...This was possible, it turned out, because Australia had begun to mobilize troops as early EAST TIMOR as March 1999 for this very purpose and by late June had a contingent of six thousand troops ready to go...
...In other words, all that had been said about the impossibility of deploying peacekeepers was simply untrue...
...As IT BECAME clear that the vote would proceed in spite of the dangers, some UNAMET staff, not to mention East Timorese, took the view that an armed international peacekeeping force ought to be deployed before the vote...
...Particularly in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the arguments in favor of maintaining ties with abusive regimes will only become stronger, and the prospects for remedying crimes against humanity committed by those regimes will grow ever more remote...
...They brought news of further abominations—including rape by militiamen and TNI soldiers...
...On September 9, the night before the statement, Annan had spoken to U.S...
...This is where some critics, frankly, get it wrong, or tell only part of the story...
...In Lisbon, huge crowds lined the streets to greet Bishop Belo...
...It was preposterous to insist that they now be entrusted to stop it...
...Several months later, the prosecutor in the case announced that the six alleged perpetrators would only be charged with assault—a decision described by a diplomat as a "despicable whitewash''—and in May 2001 they received sentences of between ten and twenty months...
...As the days passed, we waited anxiously for news of the international intervention that we assumed was now inevitable...
...Wiping tears from her eyes, she went on: "We knew there would be violence after the vote and we hoped that you would stay...
...Terrible as it may seem, without the possibility that foreigners would die, key governments might never have felt compelled to act...
...on August 30, 1999, most voters were already in line...
...UN secretarygeneral Kofi Annan was so concerned about potential trouble that in a separate memorandum, dated May 4, 1999, he set out several criteria by which he would judge whether the security situation was acceptable...
...At the political level, the UN position was constrained primarily by the five permanent members of the Security Council—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China...
...Although UNAMET was never formally asked for advice on this issue, as early as July some of us began informally to convey this view to UN officials in New York and to any visitors who would listen...
...The questions were troubling, and impossible to avoid...
...Four of us from political affairs and humanitarian affairs were given the task of conveying the news to the community leaders in the compound...
...At that moment, Andjabe's countenance changed...
...The costs of such expediency will also be high for Americans and for the credibility of the U.S...
...The heavy censorship of the transcripts suggests that Ford and Kissinger may have gone well beyond this agreed script...
...Instead they repeated the mantra that, regardless of the outcome, in the post-ballot period the Indonesian authorities would continue to be responsible for maintaining security...
...98 n DISSENT / Winter 2002 Egregious human rights violations lay at the heart of the need for international intervention in September 1999 and led initially to calls for international investigations and even an international tribunal along the lines of those established for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia...
...I give you my word...
...GEOFFREY ROBINSON is an associate professor of history at the University of California Los Angeles, where he teaches about Indonesia and Southeast Asia...
...opposition stemmed in part from concerns that the United States would have to foot a large part of the bill...
...These images, together with the realization that the violence was being abetted by the Indonesian military, generated widespread outrage among ordinary citizens and provided the basis for mobilizing protests and demands for international action...
...The murders were met by a storm of international condemnation—from the United States, the World Bank, and the UN Security Council, which condemned "this outrageous and contemptible act...
...Anxious not to alienate an important neighbor, and eager to capitalize on the economic opportunities that cooperation would ensure, Australia chose not to interfere with the 1975 invasion, and later became the first and only major power to give de jure recognition to Indonesia's claim over East Timor...
...As East Timorese took advantage of Suharto's fall to demonstrate openly in favor of independence, reports began to trickle out about the mobilization of militia groups dedicated to maintaining the tie with Indonesia...
...In keeping with those resolutions, the UN continued to regard Portugal as the formal administering power in the territory...
Vol. 49 • January 2002 • No. 1
