THE UN IN EAST TIMOR

Building Timor Leste, a Fragile State

Dr Juan Federer

Visiting Fellow, Charles Darwin University, Australia

1
Dedication
I dedicate this work to the memory of those who suffered so much during the long sad
years of the occupation of East Timor by the Indonesian military. I also dedicate the
book to the poor and downtrodden people that suffer under the oppressive rulers that
have betrayed the dream of independence in post-colonial weak, failing and failed
states. May a new international solidarity assist them to achieve the peace justice and
dignity they long for and deserve.

I can only regret that our outstanding colleague of the years of struggle for the
liberation of East Timor and good friend, Dr Andrew McNaughtan, who made such a
great contribution to the people of East Timor, will not be able to read this book.
Andrew died suddenly in December 2003 in Australia, as I was preparing to send him
a copy of the manuscript of this book for his comments. Let this book also be
dedicated to his memory.

Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the important assistance of the Faculty of Law, Business
and Arts of the Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia, which by appointing
me a Visiting Fellow has provided me the physical facilities to write this book. My
special thanks go to Dr Dennis Shoesmith Senior Lecturer in Politics at Charles
Darwin University for his useful comments, to my wife Maria do Céu Federer for her
valuable insights and patience, to my two daughters for their patience, to all those
who have provided their helpful comments. Finally my thanks go to all the friends in
Timor Leste and abroad with whom I worked for so many years on the rewarding
project of liberating East Timor.

About the author and the book

Chilean-born Dr Juan Federer has had a long and intense involvement with East
Timor that dates back to his first visit to the then colony of Portuguese Timor, in
1973, while residing in neighbouring Indonesia. His multicultural background, which
includes an extensive exposure to the people of the South Pacific, the Malay world of
South East Asia, in addition to his own cultural background as an Australia-educated
Latin American of European descent, made him relate very closely to East Timor.
Making good use of the connections he had in Indonesia and of his status as Honorary
Consul of his native country in Jakarta, he kept a close watch on the drama unfolding
in East Timor after Portugal withdrew and Indonesia invaded. The full impact of the
tragic situation of genocide proportions in the occupied territory, created by the brutal
invading army was effectively hidden from most of the outside world by Jakarta‟s
hermetic isolation of its new possession, and the collusion of important members of
the international community who had little interest in the poor, small and backward
territory, but felt they would have much to loose by displeasing the powerful military
dictatorship in control of the large and wealthy Indonesian nation.

Dr Federer, a multilingual practitioner of international relations and part-time

academic, gave over two decades of his life to assist in a key role the efforts of the
people of East Timor and their international supporters to rid themselves of the

2
occupation and gain their freedom in line with the human rights of self-determination
being denied to them.

After leaving Indonesia and settling in Australia, where he established a support base
for the international campaign of liberation of East Timor together with his part East
Timorese part African wife, in the northern city of Darwin, he spent years of active
and at times dangerous world-wide work for the resistance, in close cooperation with
East Timorese leader and world celebrity, Nobel Peace laureate José Ramos-Horta.

After the cause, previously considered unwinnable, had become „respectable‟ thanks
to the prestige given to it by the Nobel distinction, Juan Federer, together with Dr
Ramos Horta, utilised the opportunities made available to them to intensify the
international campaign for the liberation of East Timor, establishing non-profit
corporate entities in Australia under the direction of Dr Federer. Soon afterwards, a
major Asian financial crisis produced a change of presidency in Jakarta, which
changed previous policy on East Timor. The United Nations Organisation was invited
to hold a self-determination referendum, which to the surprise of the Indonesian
authorities they lost. Massive destruction and violence instigated by the withdrawing
Indonesian army caused an international intervention followed by a 30 months‟ UN
transitional administration to prepare the territory for independent statehood. Dr
Federer was active during this period as the head of the main East Timorese aid
organisation.

Given the very rudimentary conditions in the territory at the time and a variety of
obstacles, the cumbersome UN peace-keeping cum state-building effort was not
successful in the author‟s assessment. As such, the independent state, or quasi-state of
Timor Leste that emerged, using terminology employed in the book, was a premature
birth in the author‟s view. More still, he shows how the UN constructed a failed state,
as a review of local developments in the first two years of Timor Leste show. The
newest addition to the international states‟ system thus joins the rank of so-called pre-
modern weak and failing states. Dr Federer deplores this unnecessary situation, which
led to a result so far removed from the vision that drove the long years of struggle for
freedom of the suffering people of this unique land. The book is a plea to developed
states to devote the necessary time and resources to state building so that local
governance institution can be properly developed in such chaotic pre-modern states to
obviate the further suffering of their peoples. Based on the lessons provided by the
East Timor experience, which the author hopes the book will help to disseminate, it is
hoped that the international community, through the UN will handle other cases of
failing pre-modern quasi-states‟ strengthening and modern state-building in a more
effective way.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword

Contents

Foreword ................................................................................................................. 8

Chapter I : Introduction .................................................................................... 13

Independence celebrations ................................................................................... 13
The beginning...................................................................................................... 14
A personal note ................................................................................................... 17

Chapter II : State sovereignty , the international system, state failure ......... 21

Post World War II trusteeship, decolonisation, self-determination ....................... 24
The post-colonial international system ................................................................. 26
The contemporary world ...................................................................................... 27
Pre-modern failing and failed states ..................................................................... 30
Shadow states ...................................................................................................... 32
International tutelage, trusteeship ........................................................................ 33

PART 1- THE EAST TIMOR BACKGROUND............................................... 37

Chapter III : Portuguese Timor, failed decolonisation, Indonesian Timor

Timur 37
Decolonisation in Asia and Portuguese imperial collapse ..................................... 37
Timor history....................................................................................................... 38
Portuguese Timor ................................................................................................ 39
Failed decolonisation: end of Portuguese rule, stillborn first Democratic Republic
of Timor Leste ..................................................................................................... 47
Timor Timur ........................................................................................................ 49

Chapter IV: Response to Indonesia’s East Timor occupation ............................. 63

The international community ............................................................................... 63
The 1980s ............................................................................................................ 65
The 1990s ............................................................................................................ 67
The Timorese diáspora ........................................................................................ 69
The international solidarity network for East Timor ............................................. 82
Nobel Peace Prize ................................................................................................ 86

Chapter V: International intervention: self-determination consultation,

destruction, international peacekeeping force...................................................... 88
Developments at the UN in the late 90s ............................................................... 89
UNAMET- UN Assistance Mission in East Timor and the Popular Consultation . 90
International intervention and INTERFET ........................................................... 99

PART 2- STATE BUILDING AND OUTCOMES.......................................... 105

4
Chapter VI: UN state-building administration- UNTAET .................................105
East Timor: a special situation ............................................................................106
The UNTAET mandate.......................................................................................107
A unique mission: sovereignty and state-building ...............................................108
Genesis of the mission ........................................................................................109
The initial phase: late 1999 to mid 2000 .............................................................112
The middle phase: mid 2000 to August 2001 ......................................................125
The final phase: September 2001 to May 2002 ...................................................133

Chapter VII: Timor Leste- an early assessment .................................................148

Timor Leste, early 2004 ......................................................................................148
A lost opportunity? .............................................................................................159
State failure? ......................................................................................................161
What went wrong and who is at fault? ................................................................164
What if?..............................................................................................................167

Chapter VIII: Conclusion ....................................................................................170

APPENDIX I ........................................................................................................175
Acronyms and Abbreviations..............................................................................175

APPENDIX II ......................................................................................................176
A Gradual Path to Full Sovereignty in East Timor ..............................................176

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................179

.................................................................................................................................. 8

Chapter I : Introduction .................................................................................... 13

Independence celebrations ................................................................................... 13
The beginning...................................................................................................... 14
A personal note ................................................................................................... 17

Chapter II : State sovereignty , the international system, state failure ......... 21

Post World War II trusteeship, decolonisation, self-determination ....................... 24
The post-colonial international system ................................................................. 26
The contemporary world ...................................................................................... 27
Pre-modern failing and failed states ..................................................................... 30
Shadow states ...................................................................................................... 32
International tutelage, trusteeship ........................................................................ 33

PART 1- THE EAST TIMOR BACKGROUND............................................... 37

Chapter III : Portuguese Timor, failed decolonisation, Indonesian Timor

Timur 37
Decolonisation in Asia and Portuguese imperial collapse ..................................... 37
Timor history....................................................................................................... 38
Portuguese Timor ................................................................................................ 39
Failed decolonisation: end of Portuguese rule, stillborn first Democratic Republic
of Timor Leste ..................................................................................................... 47

5
 Timor Timur ........................................................................................................ 49
My induction ................................................................................................... 49
The years of isolation....................................................................................... 53
The opening ..................................................................................................... 55

Chapter IV: Response to Indonesia’s East Timor occupation ............................. 63

The international community ............................................................................... 63
The 1980s ............................................................................................................ 65
The 1990s ............................................................................................................ 67
The Timorese diáspora ........................................................................................ 69
Fretilin „External Delegation‟ .......................................................................... 69
José Ramos-Horta............................................................................................ 72
CNRM ............................................................................................................. 75
CNRT .............................................................................................................. 80
The international solidarity network for East Timor ............................................. 82
Nobel Peace Prize ................................................................................................ 86

Chapter V: International intervention: self-determination consultation,

destruction, international peacekeeping force...................................................... 88
Developments at the UN in the late 90s ............................................................... 89
UNAMET- UN Assistance Mission in East Timor and the Popular Consultation . 90
International intervention and INTERFET ........................................................... 99

PART 2- STATE BUILDING AND OUTCOMES.......................................... 105

Chapter VI: UN state-building administration- UNTAET .................................105

East Timor: a special situation ............................................................................106
The UNTAET mandate.......................................................................................107
A unique mission: sovereignty and state-building ...............................................108
Genesis of the mission ........................................................................................109
The initial phase: late 1999 to mid 2000 .............................................................112
New tensions ..................................................................................................117
Timorisation: the emergence of a local elite ....................................................123
The middle phase: mid 2000 to August 2001 ......................................................125
The final phase: September 2001 to May 2002 ...................................................133
Elections .........................................................................................................133
Other state-building activities .........................................................................141
The last stage ..................................................................................................142
Need for ongoing support: UNMISET ............................................................144
End and beginning ..........................................................................................147

Chapter VII: Timor Leste- an early assessment .................................................148

Timor Leste, early 2004 ......................................................................................148
A lost opportunity? .............................................................................................159
State failure? ......................................................................................................161
What went wrong and who is at fault? ................................................................164
What if?..............................................................................................................167

Chapter VIII: Conclusion ....................................................................................170

APPENDIX I ........................................................................................................175

6
 Acronyms and Abbreviations..............................................................................175

APPENDIX II ......................................................................................................176
A Gradual Path to Full Sovereignty in East Timor ..............................................176

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................179

7
Foreword
In this book I look at the process of creation of the Democratic Republic of Timor
Leste, or East Timor, as it is better known - the last European colonial territory to
achieve independence. This achievement was only possible after an international
intervention, followed by a very special type of UN tutelage whose objective was to
create conditions for a viable and sustainable independent state replicating the modern
model bequeathed by European imperialism to the world. That the future state should
also be democratic and abide by the standards applying to UN member states was
implicit. East Timor is a distinct case, set apart from other decolonisation and
independence experiences for having been among the lengthiest and most complicated
of these. The process involved an attempted neo-colonization by a neighbour, itself a
weak post-colonial state intent in brutally subjugating it rather than preparing it for
independent statehood. This elicited an ongoing resistance -both internally and
externally- which eventually produced international action in support of self-
determination of East Timor. The international community was called upon to
intervene in order to conclude the process of decolonisation of this territory whose
previous European colonial master, like the subsequent occupier, had failed to prepare
its people for independent statehood in violation of UN requirements. This
international intervention happened almost a quarter century after the interruption of
the original decolonisation. The almost three decades-long transition of the former
Portuguese Timor, via the Indonesian province of Timor Timur to the independent
state of Timor Leste -the UN‟s latest member- is indeed a unique history. A
decolonisation case of the complexity of East Timor is not likely to recur, even if
some parallels exists with Western Sahara, and may be even with the Indonesian
province of West Papua/Irian Jaya.

Politically, the East Timor case put UN human rights norms and principles regarding
self-determination and decolonisation to the test, and provided a unique intervention
experience for the UN, which for the first time assumed full sovereignty over a
territory without a pre-set time limitation. While initially occupied East Timor had
been unsuccessful to invoke self-determination principles in its favour, once the
political climate had changed, the uncritical application of self-determination
propelled the territory to an independence that -in my view- was premature, and as
such jeopardized the country‟s future. The assumption in the Timor Leste case that
bridging the gap to successful independent statehood from what had been a colonial
society in which the past ruler(s) had provided virtually no mentoring in governance
could be accomplished in a few months of reluctant tutelage by a cumbersome and
inexperienced UN, was indeed extraordinary. It led to high expenses and an ultimately
unsatisfactory result. The East Timor experience therefore presents important lessons
for the international community relating to state-building tutelary interventions in
weak, failing or failed states, the need for which is becoming increasingly important
as a means to handle long-term improperly resolved legacies bequeathed to the
contemporary world by former colonial empires. I shall use the term „state-building‟
rather than the also often used term nation-building to denote the activity of creating
or improving the institutions of a modern democratic state by an intervening agency,
such as the UN, in post-conflict situations in failing or failed states. I have borrowed
R. Jackson‟s terminology of „quasi-states‟ to refer to weak post-colonial states, such

8
as East Timor, whose sovereignty exists only by virtue of the international
community‟s guarantee for it, rather than their own capacity to uphold it 1.

My close involvement and commitment as a not-unimportant actor in the 27 year

process whereby the former tiny and backward Portuguese colony in the eastern part
of Timor Island, lying between eastern Indonesia and northern Australia, became the
world‟s newest sovereign state in May 2002, gives me sufficient authority to talk
about East Timor/Timor Leste. I have worked tirelessly, together with the outstanding
East Timorese international activist and diplomat, Nobel Peace Laureate Dr José
Ramos-Horta, campaigning internationally for justice for East Timor during those
long years when it was under a brutal occupation by the military government of
Indonesia under the Presidency of General Suharto. Those were years of great
sacrifice and, at times, personal danger, when sensitive missions in the territories of
the occupier and the occupied needed to be carried out. They were, however, also
years of great reward, of spiritual peace and satisfaction, derived from knowing that
we were engaged in a valuable pursuit that transcended our individuality, serving
humanity in a broader sense. So at least, myself, and the many people the world over
who supported this cause, thought. We were inspired by the image we held of a future
independent East Timor, with its free people diligently working to construct a well-
functioning, just and democratic state, one able to ensure that its people‟s happiness
was attained. Our vision for the independent state was one of a small but active
member of the international community, carrying out a principled and dynamic
foreign policy, which would contribute to making the world a better place for
humanity. Having had such an extremely difficult accession to independent statehood,
we were confident that the new country would be a strong advocate for justice, human
rights, and respect for the rule of law, both internally and internationally. It was a
beautiful vision that soon proved to be excessively idealistic…

I have several aims in writing this book. I would like to reflect on the significance in
terms of international relations of the events that took place, to refer to some of the
myths that were created, and, most importantly, to stress the significance of the UN
interregnum in East Timor through UNTAET. This administration should be seen as a
precedent for much-needed tutelary action in our contemporary world, where a
significant number of post-colonial states are failing or have failed, creating not only a
humanitarian problem but also a threat to international security. The East Timor
state-building experience is of importance, not only for its own people but also as an
exemplar of how the international community should not handle such cases, if a new
international order is to be built that is to successfully address the longer-term
negative legacy of some three centuries of European colonialism in the world. The
slide of several post-colonial states towards failure, occurring even as late as in the
beginning of the 21st century, gives evidence that this legacy is still present. Global
integration, justice, and security concerns require that solutions be found to this
problem. These solutions should not only appear to serve the interests of the strongest
members of the international community, but should also satisfy those of the people
of its weakest members, such as those of East Timor. This case had a great potential
to be a success yet unfortunately it was mishandled since the international community
was not ready to respond adequately -because of the prevalence of outdated
conceptions of state sovereignty- as I aim to show through the following pages. This

1
Jackson, R.H., Quasi-states, (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

9
needs to change in order to find an effective solution to the problem of post-colonial
state failure.

I have been encouraged to reflect on these matters as a result of my personal

experience with East Timor and my direct participation in its independence process
and, at the time of writing, its almost first two years of independent government. The
contrast between rhetoric and reality, both in East Timor as well as by the
international community, and the disappointed expectations of the East Timorese
population, have led me to ponder about the experience we lived through and how it
could have been improved. I hope that my exposure of these considerations will
stimulate some broader reflection on the problem faced by weak, failed and failing
post-colonial states, and that it also will encourage discussion, leading to much-
needed advocacy to reform this aspect of the international system. Whether the new
weak Timor Leste state will or will not join the rank of failing or failed states only
time will tell. At the time of writing, it is clear that the state created under UN tutelage
is very weak, but expectations for its success still exist, even if analysts such as
former UNTAET District Administration Head, and student of UN Peace Keeping
Missions, Professor Jarat Chopra states categorically “the UN has given birth to a
failed state” adding that its development indicators compare with the most severely
collapsed states in the world, and the 30 months of UN administration has had little
effect on a social and political reality that has evolved by itself 2.

The problem of state failure will be my subject for another book. There I will look at
premature decolonisation and argue against the uncritical application of the principle
of self-determination and the ensuing unconditional respect for the sovereignty of
resulting states if these entities do not fulfil certain minimal criteria. It is my
conviction that in our contemporary highly interdependent globalise world the classic
principle of strict non-intervention in sovereign states‟ affairs needs to be revised in
the case of those states where sovereignty is merely formal and whose ruling elites do
not show an acceptable degree of commitment to advance the benefit of their people,
creating instead conditions that could lead to state failure. Of course, the intervening
entity would need to show a genuine commitment to the advancement of the interests
of the local populations, and not be driven primarily by self-serving aims. A neutral
multilateral body such as the United Nations seems the most appropriate to perform
this task, with the currently dormant Trusteeship Council being one of its institutions
that could be revived and properly built up for this purpose, provided the political will
for such action could be mustered. Whether that can be done is a moot question.

As a word of caution, I would like to stress that I am aware that my views advocating
increased international multilateral intervention in the case of dysfunctional states
may be misinterpreted, as several of my proposals do clash with conventional
international egalitarian wisdom, as held for the last half-century or so. My views
regarding the need for a return to some form of international tutelage for failed and
failing quasi-states could be perceived by some as reactionary, paternalistic and
reflecting pre-World War II ideas of racial superiority and European primacy. This is
not the case. Even if I am of European stock, but with a very mixed ethnicity, I grew
up in the developing world, feeling close affinity and identification with several non-

2
Jarat Chopra, „Building State Failure in East Timor‟, Development and Change, 33(5) 979-1000, p
979.

10
European cultures. What drives me to express my views is an honest and genuine
desire to identify some misconceptions and to suggest some realistic improvement
that may be of benefit to the millions that suffer from the weaknesses of the current
international reality. I believe that it could be easily shown quantitatively that many
people suffering under misgoverned weak states would favour international tutelary
state-building intervention, if only they could express themselves and be heard. Also,
I would like to stress that it is not my objective here to criticize or belittle the efforts
of the people of East Timor, to whom I am linked very closely, even by marriage. I
have made great personal sacrifices for many years at great cost, material,
professional and emotional, to contribute to their liberation and to materialize our
shared vision of a free country that could create conditions of democracy, well-being
and happiness. I am therefore not approaching their decolonisation history in a
negative way. What I am trying to do is to use the insights I gained from my close
involvement, in order to dispel some misunderstandings, misperceptions, and
misinterpretations that partly led to the mistakes that have been committed. I also do
not judge those in East Timor who have responded to the situation in an opportunistic
way. It is natural and part of the human condition. What is necessary is to develop the
state institutions that do not make such striving detrimental to the interests of others.
This was one of the tasks that democratic state building should have accomplished if
East Timor was to be properly prepared for independence. Unfortunately it couldn‟t
have been done in the insufficient time allowed for it. I am aware that, given a cultural
tradition that discourages criticism and plurality of views, expecting conformity and
submission to the authority, my views are likely not to be well received by some in
Timor Leste. I am sorry for that, as my intention is not to offend but merely to state
the facts as I saw them so as to draw lessons form the experience.

Also, my aim here is not to criticize the UN, or its personnel, who are subject to the
policies of member states, in particular of the Security Council. I have worked closely
with many UN officials for a number of years, both in New York and Dili, seeing how
dedicated and well-intentioned many of them were and the hard conditions they had
to face. I count several of them among my valued friends. It is also not difficult to
place oneself in the position of the UN Secretariat staff in New York and to
understand their decisions, given the constraints under which they have to operate.
Even the decisions of the Security Council are understandable, given the policy
framework that applies. What is needed, and what I am advocating for, is a shift in
understanding: a paradigm shift. There needs to be developed an acceptance of the
reality that a class of entities exists in our contemporary world that requires nurturing
from the international community before their aspirations to sovereign membership in
the egalitarian international system can be adequately fulfilled. These entities
comprise failed independent post-colonial states, and included the East Timor
decolonisation case.

Whether East Timor, the Benjamin of the world‟s independent states, will be
successful remains to be seen. My hopes and prayers are that it will be. But if the
Democratic Republic of Timor Leste should fail, who is to blame? If the just and
democratic state that could have been created with adequate international tutelary
nurturing does not eventuate, if peace remains elusive and the country again becomes
a threat to regional security and an international disturbance, while its people once
more have to suffer and even endure the tragedy of a humanitarian catastrophe, whose
fault would it have been? I would say that rather than blaming the East Timorese

11
people for it, an answer should be sought by first examining an outdated paradigm
regarding the handling of weak and failing states by the international community, and
then modifying it to suit the needs of our times drawing on the lessons the Timor
Leste experience has taught us. At the base of it, we would find that our outdated
conceptions of state sovereignty need to change.

Having made my position clear, and hopefully having gained the reader‟s
understanding of my motives, let us proceed. The starting point of the first chapter
will be East Timor‟s big moment of glory- Independence Day, an event that drew the
world‟s attention to the new statelet, thanks to the strong public relations effort of the
UN, aimed at portraying a successful result of its operations, which at the time the
organization was in great need of. Chapter 2 presents some analytical tools useful in
the development of the argument of the book. Chapter 3 and 4 will provide a
historical background to East Timor, where I select mainly those aspects with which I
was familiar through my involvement with the liberation struggle that I deem of
greatest relevance to the political argument of this book, which centres on
decolonisation, self-determination and preparedness for sovereign statehood. Here
my central point is that while East Timor was woefully unprepared to uphold its right
to self determination and independence, the capable and committed advocacy efforts
of one particular East Timorese, José Ramos-Horta -working in tandem with a
dedicated international network of supporters assisted by some diáspora East
Timorese- created the conditions for an eventual international intervention in favour
of self-determination. Chapter 5 traces the background to the belated international
intervention in 1999, and Chapter 6, the core chapter of the book, refers to those
aspects of the UN interregnum that I consider to have been central to determine the
basic aspects of the tutelary state-building process that took place. For me, this
process was too short to be able to be effective. This was so because of a lacking
political will by the international community to take the time required and bear the
corresponding expenses to do the job properly. Paradoxically, because of lacking
institutions capable of handling these types of interventions, and the use of other
institutions designed for different purposes, great expense was incurred -somewhere
of the order of US$ 3 billion (plus another billion for aid)- but unfortunately its
application was far from optimal. The penultimate chapter briefly characterizes the
main features of the Timor Leste state in the first twenty months after independence,
concluding that a greater success would have been achieved if the international
community had allowed the necessary time for the state-building task to be properly
accomplished. This should be a lesson for the future. My concluding chapter attempts
to relate the East Timor experience to the broader question of failing and failed
postcolonial states, using Robert Cooper‟s very apposite depiction of our
contemporary world 3.

3
Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century (Atlantic
Books, 2003).

12
Chapter I : Introduction
Independence celebrations
During the night of 19 to 20 May 2002 the small town of Dili hosted the greatest
number of important international figures that had ever been seen in the region.
Presidents, Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers, Ambassadors, International
Organization chiefs, starting with co-host, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, and an assortment of celebrities from political, cultural, media, and academic
life from all over the world were gathered in this obscure island township on the
fringes of South East Asia and Oceania. The prominent guests had come in
acceptance of Secretary-General Annan‟s invitation to all heads of the UN member
states to participate in the independence celebrations of the first state of the new
millennium, whose process of birth the UN, acting simultaneously as a proud parent
and a proud and self-congratulating mid-wife, was celebrating. The gathering of such
prominent guests reflected the importance still being accorded to the increasingly rare
event in the early 21 st century of a post-colonial people acquiring sovereignty and
joining the international community as an independent state.

For a day, which was the average length of time the important guests stayed in its
poor and decrepit but naturally beautiful capital Dili, East Timor was one of the main
foci of attention of the world media. Yet the country was not unknown to the most
audacious international reporters. It had attracted media attention on many occasions
before, since being invaded by the neighbouring Indonesian military regime in 1975,
as the colonial master Portugal was preparing to decolonise. The persistent Indonesian
defiance of international law and UN resolutions for over two decades, and the
hypocrisy with which it attempted to legitimise its strongly resisted occupation of the
tiny territory, had aroused the indignation of wide sectors of international public
opinion. Massive human rights violations, and the unprincipled response of leading
UN members, including neighbouring Australia, the USA, Japan, and most
Europeans, more interested in protecting their lucrative relations with the Jakarta
regime, had given progressive journalists a special interest in the East Timor.
Therefore the fate of East Timor‟s martyred population did attract international media
attention periodically during the almost 25 years of the oppressive occupation and the
local people‟s hard struggle against it. A body of loyal and committed journalists to
this just cause thus existed in the world, and those of them who could do so were in
Dili on 20 May 2002 for the momentous independence event.

The activities of the evening of 19 May were funded and organized by the UN
Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), and also involved the East
Timor Transitional Administration (ETTA), created by UNTAET. The celebrations
were to be the grande finale of a unique and unprecedented 30-months of governance
in East Timor under a mandate by a 1999 Security Council Resolution. The
UNTAET mission was unique in UN history, even if a full awareness of the fact did
not seem to fully exist at the time-only the cases of West Papua briefly in 1962-63
(also an Indonesian-created problem) and Namibia (in 1989-1990) came closer to the
East Timor case in terms of the UN mission‟s authority. Those missions had been,
however, significantly more limited in scope and duration than this one. With
UNTAET the UN was for the first time completely in charge of a territory, acting as

13
its sovereign authority, effectively holding trusteeship over it in the name of the
international community, even if the term was not explicitly used to describe the
arrangement. Speaking of tutelage or trusteeship at the time would have been deemed
politically incorrect!

The Independence Day ceremonies started with the inauguration of simple city
landmarks designed to remind future generations of the passage of UN personnel
through the country, giving opportunities for Secretary-General Annan to deliver
speeches in praise of the work of the personnel of the UN Mission. A beautiful
example of such work was the UN Volunteers Park, on the Dili waterfront, which was
inaugurated with moving words by both Dr Annan and the Head of the UN Volunteer
Program. Little would they expect that the beautiful gardens would be in ruins in a
few months, due to lack of maintenance, with the goats and pigs who roam the city
having eaten up the plants. A sunset reception for the dignitaries and for the newly
emerging UN-created local political elite followed. At the same time, a Catholic high
mass aimed at the bulk of the population, who strongly follow the rituals taught to
them by their Portuguese Catholic colonial masters of several centuries, was
celebrated by the Bishop. After these events, the way was clear for the moment of
climax, at the end of the last day of the UNTAET administration. All the dignitaries
plus a few thousand people gathered in the crisp dry-season tropical night, a few
kilometres outside Dili, for the final phase of the celebrations as midnight approached.
Even President Megawati of Indonesia made a much awaited and very contested late
Cinderella-like appearance, escorted by her prince-charming of the night, the new
statelet‟s President-elect Xanana Gusmão, despite her and her nationalist party‟s well-
known distaste for an East Timor free from Indonesia. Mr Kofi Annan congratulated
the international community, the personnel of his organization and the East Timorese
people for the immense accomplishment of the state-building process that was
culminating that night. From his lips the East Timorese learned about their great
success in achieving the independence that was to be handed to them in only a few
more minutes. Then, after a display of fireworks, the people heard the new National
Anthem heard in public for the first time, and saw the new national flag being raised,
as soon as the sky-blue UN emblem that had become familiar to them for the last
couple of years was lowered. Expressions of congratulations and demonstrative
embraces between Mr Annan and Mr Gusmão followed, covered by television and
radio world wide, marking the moment the first state of the new millennium, the
Democratic Republic of East Timor, was born. I could not but admire the skillful
way in which the UN gave dignity to an event that in my view had a different
significance. Rather than marking a moment of joy, I saw the premature granting of
independence to the improperly prepared state as a betrayal of an international
obligation to adequately nurture the people of one of the last remnants of European
colonialism, so that they could attain a sustainable independent statehood.

The beginning
The first official act of the new statelet on the initial day of independence was the
raising of the flag in front of the beautiful seafront Portuguese-built, Indonesian-
damaged and UN-refurbished central government building. Next came the swearing
in of the first Timor Leste government, witnessed by dignitaries which included
former President Bill Clinton, as envoy of US President Bush in representation of the
superpower, the Prime Minister of neighbouring Australia, the Presidents of Portugal,

14
and of Mozambique, to list but a few, and many other important political figures from
far away. The Indonesian President had disappeared right after the midnight
ceremonies, preferring to return to her country, a few minutes travel by helicopter
away on the other half of the island of Timor, unlike Cinderella, without leaving
behind a crystal slipper. Instead she left behind a couple of warships that she had
insisted in bringing along to protect her, and which attempted to enter the territorial
waters of the new state without asking permission, in an incident which almost caused
the country‟s first diplomatic crisis. They were still seen sailing back towards their
own islands, lying only a few miles away on the horizon.

The rest of the morning was dedicated to official acts. First, the new 88-member
parliament held its inaugural session. It had never been elected as such, but appointed
by UNTAET decree, without consultation with the people, as the metamorphosis of a
Constituent Assembly popularly elected nine months earlier. After hearing a brief
speech by the new nation‟s President, the Parliament‟s President and the Prime
Minister, a resolution to join the United Nations and to sign all UN Human Rights
Conventions was adopted. Immediately following, the Prime Minister and his
colleague from Australia signed the Timor Sea Treaty, intended to create an
exploitation regime for the rich oil and gas resources of the area in the Timor Sea over
which both countries held exclusivity claims, and from whose revenues Timor Leste
was expecting to live in future. Critics who were concerned that the Treaty was not
advantageous to Timor Leste, and that its signature could jeopardize future claims to a
more equitable arrangement, were startled by the haste with which the big neighbour
urged the small one to sign. It was clear that the rulers of the new statelet, which was
totally dependent on aid for its revenue and had virtually no productive activity that
could sustain its economy, were in desperate need for the oil and gas revenues. In
three years these were expected to start covering most of the USD 100 million or so
required to run the annual state expense budget, thus ensuring the survival of those in
power. Australia had to finally accept the fact it had so long resisted, that it could no
longer present East Timor as an Indonesian province. Hence the oil exploitation
agreement over the disputed sea area it had signed with Indonesia, and for which
purpose it had to consider legally legitimate an occupation that no other states in the
world so openly accepted, was no longer valid. Given this, Australia was now in a
hurry to commit the new Republic to sign the new treaty, before it would have time to
develop second thoughts about the equity of the deal.

The remainder of the first day of independence of Timor Leste also saw a meeting of
the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (Comunidade dos Países de
Língua Portuguesa-CPLP) hosted by its newest member, Timor Leste. In attendance
were the President of Portugal, of Mozambique, the Foreign Minister of Angola, and
other high officials of Brazil, Cabo Verde and São Tomé. This link with fellow
members of the Portuguese-speaking world, recalls the country‟s colonial history, and
gives it a unique relationship that sets it apart from its neighbours in the Malay and
English-speaking world. However, the fact that only a small minority of the
population, comprising primarily the UN-sponsored political elite that returned from
exile mostly in Africa, and a few older people that lived through the occupation years
have a grasp of the Portuguese language seemed not to matter. Portuguese had
constitutionally been declared an official language, together with the still very basic
and developing local lingua franca, Tetum. The Indonesian language, despite being
spoken by the vast majority of the population, and especially having been the

15
language in which the few existing young higher education graduates were schooled
and which they thus mastered, was ignored. This adopted language policy became an
additional matter of division and an added obstacle to the functioning of the country‟s
administration, given the lack of competence in it of the vast majority. The new
country‟s special links with Portugal were further underlined by the presentation of
credentials by the Portuguese Ambassador as the first foreign envoy to be accredited,
followed by the inauguration of a Portuguese donated monument to Independence,
personally inaugurated by that country‟s President. To close the day, an evening of
performances showing the country‟s rich and attractive cultural heritage at the newly
refurbished Cultural Centre was held. That the refurbishing job of the old colonial
Portuguese military barrack, funded through international donor grants, was not fully
finished at the time did not matter. Two years later, however, the job had still not been
completed due to some local dispute no one in the government was able to resolve,
and the building was still not in use, beginning to deteriorate again.

By the second day, the most prominent guests had left as swiftly as they had arrived,
after participating in a UN event of major symbolic importance, but of little practical
consequence. Some of the more practically oriented state delegations used the trip to
Timor Leste to attend to basic international relations formalities such as establishing
diplomatic relations, presenting Ambassadorial credentials, and signing formal
cooperation agreements. After all, this newest member of the international system of
states was not only peripheral in importance, but also in geographic location, and it
was by no means clear when a new visit to it would be justified. The result was an
exhausted Timor Leste Foreign Minister, who despite his extraordinary stamina and
work capacity, did begin to show the strains caused by the procession of diplomats
from all over the world that called on him during those two or three days, a procession
that probably would never be repeated in Timor Leste‟s foreseeable history.

After the party was over, and the guests had departed, life in Dili appeared clearly
different. It could be said that it was returning to normal after the intensity of the
previous three years. With no one left to tell the East Timorese how joyful and proud
they should be now that they were independent, the looks of many seemed to me, if
anything, rather confused and preoccupied.

For most of the people, oblivious of the major concerns about the future of their
destitute country, which acutely lacked skilled human resources for effective self-
government, and had no tradition of democratic government, life continued as normal,
that is, a struggle to survive in poverty, ignorance and poor health. The major
difference now was the disappearance of the foreigners, the maligned malai, who
nonetheless were seen to be the source of what little material welfare had been
available since the destructive days of 1999.

As I looked out at the picturesque Dili harbour at sunset at the end of the second day
of independence, and pondered on the future of our little country, I could not help but
recall the visit two weeks earlier of an old and shrivelled poor man from Atauro
Island, the remote district of my wife, his wrinkled face reflecting the decades long
martyrdom of the people of this country. The message he was sent to convey by his
community was very simple: “Please tell the foreigners not to leave. Without their
presence, we will again only murder one-another.”

16
While we did not share his simple pessimism as applying to the immediate future, his
words did resonate with our own misgivings about the process that was taking place.
It was clear that the country was far from ready to join the international community of
sovereign states on an equal footing, despite the ceremonies of the last days
proclaiming it a member.

The process I had witnessed made me also reflect on the meaning of such sovereignty.
In my previous experience and understanding, sovereign states were entities that had
acquired this status, as a result of the efforts of their rulers and peoples. In the past,
once acquired, such sovereignty needed to be successfully defended against those
challenging it and potentially capable of extinguishing it, or it could be lost.
Nowadays, with the advent of the UN and the strengthening of international norms
against aggression, international society provided protection for states not able to
defend their sovereignty. But, I had as yet not taken time to reflect upon the existence
of that new class of states, characteristic of our times, whose sovereignty was not
earned by themselves and protected through their own efforts, but was bestowed upon
them and legally protected by the international community. The brand new
Democratic Republic of Timor Leste was the latest addition to this club, whose
membership includes a good half of the member states of the UN.

A personal note
By now a note on my own background and relationship to East Timor will probably
be welcomed by the reader. The fact that I have, contrary to common scholarly
practice, chosen to bring my own personal observations, experiences, judgments, and
views closely into the argument developed in this book, makes it necessary to provide
more details on my personal involvement with the country. It started in 1973, when I
was residing in Jakarta, and was invited by the then Consul-General of Portugal to
visit his country‟s most remote and hardly heard of colonial outpost on the fringes of
the Malay archipelago. Having been in earlier years a frequent visitor to the, for me,
most attractive islands of the South Pacific, which lie on the route between my
homeland, Chile, and Australia, where I undertook my tertiary education, I accepted
the invitation with much enthusiasm. Arriving in Dili, I thought I had found a time
capsule, a living document of what the European colonies in the Pacific must have
been like in the 19th century. Not only was the natural setting very beautiful, but also
the people were most endearing. Culturally they appeared on first sight to be a hybrid
of the Malay world in which I was currently residing, and the South Pacific peoples I
had so often visited in my student days. In addition, the Portuguese cultural and
administrative influence gave the place a vague air of similarity with Brazil and the
Latin American society I had grown up in. Indonesia seemed so very far away,
despite the shared land border and its neighbouring islands so clearly visible on the
horizon. The apparent distance being further increased by the lack of contact across
the border, and the lack of knowledge and interest of the colonial population
regarding the surrounding South East Asian region. Macau, Mozambique, Angola and
Portugal were so much closer in the minds of those whose thoughts could go beyond
the affairs of their own village and their own daily subsistence struggle. For me,
Portuguese Timor appeared to be a charming, physically relatively near to Indonesia,
yet culturally so very distant place to retreat to for holidays. With that in mind I

17
purchased a property in Dili, and started to acquire a number of friends among the, for
me, culturally so attractive local population.

That was the beginning of a relationship that would profoundly shape my life. Months
later, the seemingly eternal status quo abruptly changed. Within two years the
previously forgotten haven of peace was in the media headlines all over the world as
the hapless victim of a brutal invasion by the sly Suharto military dictatorship then in
power in Indonesia. Positioned in Jakarta, I was able to provide some humanitarian
aid to the victims of the unfolding tragedy, and importantly, through my friends
obtained a clearer picture of the tragedy unfolding in the former Portuguese colony,
which the hermetic sealing off by the Indonesian military prevented the international
media and public opinion to fully grasp. As my sense of indignation with the
injustices being committed in East Timor and the lies about the situation being
propagated grew, so did my efforts to get details and make them known to the outside
world, within the limits that my personal security needs imposed and my position in
Jakarta allowed. This led me to eventually meet a young East Timorese woman,
holder of a scholarship to study at the University of Indonesia, who I married five
years later, after we had overcome the many barriers and separations which the war
situation imposed on us. My intention to marry her was one of the reasons why I
persevered for many months to obtain a permission from the Indonesian military to
visit the then closed „province‟, by now called Timor Timur. Access to and from it
was barred for all civilians including Indonesians, East Timorese, and, especially so,
for foreigners. Fortunately for me, there was nothing that an appropriate enticement
could not obtain from a venal Indonesian official, whether civilian or military, so the
necessary permit, highly official looking with its many stamps, signatures and seals,
was eventually forthcoming once the appropriate „gifts‟ had been given, and so to Dili
I went. The desolate picture of oppression, social and cultural destruction, as well as
the demolition of previous governance institutions and their replacement by non-
functioning Indonesian military ones, was a great shock for me. Clearly, a major
calamity had struck the poor place, which now bore little resemblance to the last time
I had seen it. Portuguese colonialism was hardly ideal, but the current situation was a
disaster. One could not but feel a strong indignation about what had been done
towards the place and its unfortunate people. Making maximum use of the validity of
the permit, I travelled to Dili three times in as many months in 1980. By the end I had
no doubt about the brutality of the occupation, the extreme victimization of the
people, and the fact that, despite the lies being propagated internationally by
Indonesia and its allies, this situation was totally unacceptable. My resolve to assist
the victims in their legitimate struggle for liberation grew, which I did covertly from
Jakarta over the next few years, making use of the facilities at my disposal there.

But the day came when it was no longer possible to continue operating in the
dangerous environment of the Suharto regime. By then married and with a daughter,
my family and I moved to the security of democratic Australia, which provided a
safer environment for advocacy for the East Timorese cause. A network of
inconspicuous and loyal Indonesian assistants carried out the necessary work on the
ground in East Timor, keeping in close contact with us. After some disappointments
with the not very effective nor too honest leadership of the Fretilin External
Delegation, I decided by the early 1990s to work full-time for the East Timorese
cause with the independent but most visible and effective East Timorese self-
determination advocate Jose Ramos-Horta. The ensuing decades-long association

18
proved personally very rewarding for me. We were able to achieve much, and played
a key role in the process that lead to the liberation of East Timor. The first phase of
our cooperation saw me holding the position of Director General of International
Relations of the so-called national Council of Maubere Resistance (CNRM), a
supposed umbrella organization of the pro-self determination political forces of East
Timor, whose existence was more on paper than in reality, but which even so, served
a useful purpose of providing the needed „institutional‟ image to legitimise our work.
After gaining a significant measure of credibility for our cause through our successful
work to obtain a Nobel Peace Prize award in 1996, I left CNRM, which had become
an increasingly inept peg for our advocacy work, to set up a legally registered non-
government advocacy organization, the East Timor International Support Centre
(ETISC), based in Darwin, Australia, the closest viable location to East Timor. Its
objective was the promotion of the right of self-determination of the people of East
Timor. Having now better access to funds, which I had the task of raising, I was able
to staff it with professional personnel working with me as their Executive Director.
José Ramos-Horta was the organization‟s Honorary Chairman, and the staff included
a few East Timorese working with a team of non-Timorese professionals supporting
the cause of human rights and self-determination for East Timor.

ETISC earned a good reputation for its productivity and the effectiveness of its
worldwide information dissemination and lobbying work, as well as its coordinating
work of the efforts of international East Timor supporters. On another, less publicized
level, it provided logistic support to the resistance in East Timor and to its supporters
in Indonesia. By 1998 we decided that for this purpose, and also in order to handle the
increasing need for humanitarian assistance for both resistance members and civilian
sympathizers in East Timor, and to help in capacity building of personnel, an aid
NGO organization was needed. So I proceeded to create Timor Aid, also incorporated
under Australian law with the objective to provide humanitarian and development aid
to the people of East Timor, West Timor, and the surrounding region. It existed at first
in close symbiosis with ETISC, sharing its Darwin offices and facilities, and some of
its personnel including myself as its first Chief Executive. As soon as conditions
allowed it in Indonesia after the replacement of the harsh President Suharto by his
more lenient successor, President Habibie, a Timor Aid was also registered in Jakarta
under Indonesian law, for the provision of humanitarian and development aid in the
province of Timor Timur. The Australian Timor Aid funded it, and it officially set up
offices in Dili, where it engaged in projects in accordance with its mandate, as well as
providing supports to some of the clandestine activities of those advocating for an end
to Indonesian rule. This became one of its predominant function in late 1999 when,
contrary to its commitments to the UN and Portugal, Indonesia victimized those
promoting the anti- autonomy vote in the popular consultation held in August 1999
that led to the end of Indonesian rule. As a result of its eventually obvious anti-
autonomy sympathies, Timor Aid in Dili was destroyed in the massive violence that
followed the announcement of the results of the ballot that precipitated a major
humanitarian crisis. ETISC had achieved its purpose of advocating for the right of
self-determination of East Timor once an international intervention took place in late
September 1999, and therefore was closed. Timor Aid now had a major task ahead,
first to provide emergency and reconstruction aid, which it did, in association with
foreign partners, to the amount of several million dollars; and subsequently, as a
member of the local civil society, to become a non-governmental agent of
development for East Timor. I led Timor Aid in its first two phases, transforming it

19
from an Australia-based to an East Timor based corporation, and, as its founder, have
retained my links to it, in its third and long-term development aid phase, as the
President of its Governing Board, after leaving is management in late 2001, in the
lead up to independence, when the strongly nationalistic mood at the time, and the
unjust accusations I was subjected to since I was a foreigner, made me realize that it
was no longer possible for someone like me to hold a position of authority in such an
environment. It was necessary to be East Timorese to be effective. The acceptable
role of a foreigner now was only to advise. Timor Aid‟s management subsequently
became fully East Timorese, with the assistance by a few expatriate advisors.

This, then, is the story of my long involvement and commitment to East Timor/Timor
Leste. In addition, during the first year of independence I served the country‟s Foreign
Ministry as Senior Advisor, on an honorary basis. It should not be difficult to
conclude that therefore I have a strong stake in the fledgling country‟s success as a
democracy that is able to provide its people the just, peaceful and prosperous life they
have been deprived of for so long. But, has the foundation that was laid during the
hasty UN administrative presence been sufficiently strong to make this possible? Only
time will tell.

The pages of the following chapter are aimed to present some analytical tools that
should be of help to gain a better understanding of the country‟s experience.

20
Chapter II : State sovereignty , the international system, state failure

Despite growing global interdependence, and the growing need to centrally manage
issues that affect the population of the planet as a whole, our world is still devoid of
institutions of global governance. Instead, the sovereign state system created after the
1648 treaty of Westphalia that profoundly modified the hegemonic Holy Roman
Empire is still formally in place. The cornerstone of this international system is the
18th century norm that one state should not intervene in the internal affairs of another,
first articulated by the Swiss international legal theorist Emmerich Vattel.

The sovereign states system first encompassed Europe and later, as interaction among
peoples of the world increased as a result of Portuguese-pioneered European
expansion and technological advances, came to cover the whole globe. Initially
members of the system were exclusively European. Other entities, unable to assert
their sovereignty, became dependencies of the system‟s sovereign members. By the
late 18th century, the USA, of European cultural ancestry, also joined the system after
succeeding to defeat its colonial overlord in a war of liberation. Descendants of
metropolitan settlers in most Spanish colonies in the Americas were also able to
secure their independence after their victories in wars of liberation against Spain in
the 19th century, and joined the international system as sovereign states. Later on
some powerful non-European states like Japan were admitted to the system, and in the
early 20th century a number of other dependencies of European powers outside the
Americas became independent and joined the expanding system. After the second
world war, under the leadership of the primary winner, the United States of America,
itself born from a successful revolt against a colonial power, the international system
moved towards the formal equality of all peoples, constituted as states, as a result of
the primacy of the self-determination principle applied to overseas European
dependencies in Africa, Asia, and Oceania, which made formal dependency
relationships illegitimate. With the abolition of colonialism, the system underwent a
major change in the two decades following World War II. Sovereign states, albeit
very sui generis ones, thus proliferated covering the entire globe. East Timor is the
last of these territories to become a sovereign post-colonial state, after a protracted
decolonisation process that included over two decades of Indonesian occupation.

At the end of the 20th century two striking facts about the international system have
become evident. One, that many of the new post-colonial states, which make up an
important proportion of the close to 200 members of the system, are unviable and fail
to fulfil the security and good governance needs of their peoples. They are able to
retain their sovereign status only because the system protects it, not because of their
own capacity to do so. Two, that in an increasingly interdependent world, or
„globalised‟ world as it is currently referred to, the sovereign state system is
increasingly showing its obsolescence since matters of global concern can not be
satisfactorily handled by a system lacking some central authority to oversee a rule of
law. The next stage in the evolution process of the international system thus suggests
the need for an increased development of global central governance mechanisms, with
a corresponding weakening, if not eventual disappearance, of the sovereign state. I do

21
not aim to enter into details on this subject in this book. It is a subject that absorbs the
attention of an already not insignificant and growing number of people in the world 4.

I will focus my attention here instead on the problem of weak, failing and failed post-
colonial states, the rank of which Timor Leste has joined. The question that I, as an
actor directly involved in the process that led to the birth of Timor Leste, cannot cease
asking myself is whether the people of the country are well served by the formally
independent sovereign status they gained in 2002. Would another path have served
them better? In trying to come to terms with this question, I will also briefly look at
other weak, failing or failed post-colonial states, whose people would be greatly
benefited by different conditions than those currently existing under the state‟s formal
sovereign status.

Before proceeding, a closer look at the concept of state sovereignty will be useful.
Stephen Krasner identifies four meanings of sovereignty that I find of help to
understand the sovereign status of states like Timor Leste5. These four meanings of
sovereignty are: interdependence sovereignty, domestic sovereignty,
Vatellian/Westphalian sovereignty, and, international legal sovereignty.
Interdependence sovereignty is the ability of states to control movements of people,
capital, goods, ideas or disease vectors across their borders. This capacity has never
been absolute, and is even less so today in an increasingly interdependent world. For
weak states like Timor Leste, this capacity is very limited. For failed states it is
absent. International Legal sovereignty refers to mutual recognition among states. Its
basic rule is that recognition is accorded to juridically independent territorial entities.
It gives small or large, weak or strong states formal legal equality and allows their
political leaders to enjoy formal equality among their peers. This situation also applies
to many of the post-colonial states that emerged after World War II. As a result,
political office bearers of Timor Leste internationally enjoy a formal status of equality
with their peers, despite the feebleness of their country. With the exception of one
prominent East Timorese personality, Nobel Laureate José Ramos-Horta, who has
succeeded to achieve an international standing on his own, the remaining leading
figures derive their standing only from the formal independent status of their state. It
follows that they have a strong personal stake in the state and are strongly committed
to its continuity in order to maintain their standing and consequent privileges.
Domestic sovereignty refers to authority structures within states and the ability of
these structures to effectively regulate behaviour. It has two aspects: the acceptance
or recognition of a given authority structure, and, the level of control actually
exercised by authorities. In the case of weak or failed states, this control is
respectively minimal or non-existent, even if the international legal recognition exists.
The weak state constructed by the UN in Timor Leste shows the growing inability of
its authorities to regulate internal behaviour and cross border movements. Krasner
calls the exclusion of external sources of authority inside a state Vatellian/
Westphalian sovereignty. In the international states system, this is embodied in its
basic rule of non-interference by member states in the internal affairs of other member
states. The idea is that states have the right to exclude external authority sources and
to determine their own domestic structures. For ease of reference, I prefer to use the
rule to call this type of sovereignty non-interference. The increasing legitimacy
4
See for example www.globalsolutions.org, www.wfm.org, www.worldgovernment.org
5
Stephen D Krasner, „Globalization, Power and Authority‟, paper presented at the annual meeting of
the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, August 29-September 2, 2001.

22
accorded to the Right of Humanitarian Intervention, i.e. interventions on humanitarian
grounds by multilateral forces in states whose governments create or are unable to
prevent large scale human suffering and human rights violations shows that this type
of sovereignty is presently also waning 6. The multinational intervention in East
Timor in 1999 that put an end to the Indonesian occupation was legitimated along
these lines.

These four meanings of sovereignty can coexist in various combinations and may not
all be simultaneously applied at all times. Some may be upheld while others are
violated or compromised. Only international legal sovereignty tends to be consistently
honoured nowadays, even if a state may not possess the capacity to uphold the other
dimensions of sovereignty. In the case of weak states, despite their recognition as
sovereign entities in the system, a notorious lack of interdependence sovereignty,
domestic sovereignty and non-interference sovereignty applies. In the case of failed
states, domestic sovereignty has broken down and interdependence sovereignty is also
lacking. Foreign intervention would signal a loss of non-interference sovereignty.

In East Timor the original aim of the international intervention through UNTAET was
to create the conditions for the existence of proper domestic sovereignty in a
democratic and stable context as pre-conditions for the granting of international legal
sovereignty. As this book aims to prove, unfortunately, the emphasis of the
international community was placed on the speedy granting of international legal
sovereignty to Timor Leste, irrespective of whether the conditions for its sustainable
domestic sovereignty -and therefore its interdependence sovereignty- were met. The
stage was thus set for Timor Leste to join the ranks of failed states, unless it is able to
develop the capacity to ensure its domestic and interdependence sovereignty. With a
significant interference in its affairs by its donors and the UN support mission after
independence, it can also be said that its non-interference sovereignty is limited. My
view is that given the weakness of the state that has been built, a greater degree of
outside interference is necessary until there is sufficient local governing capacity
developed, in other words, there is need for outside state-building tutelage in Timor
Leste as in other weak and failing states.

The pre and post World War two international systems differed fundamentally in their
understanding of sovereignty. Whereas in the pre WWII international system
empirical statehood, of adequate competence was a pre-condition for sovereignty (that
is, the capacity to uphold to a significant degree that four aspects of sovereignty
mentioned above), this no longer applied in the post World War II system with its
proliferation of new post-colonial sovereign states as the European empires were
dismantled. These new states, whether weak or strong, viable or unviable, have been
treated equally, as sovereign members of this formally egalitarian system. In the terms
used above, they have been accorded unconditional legal sovereignty.
Using Jackson‟s7 analytical (and not evaluative) terminology of „positive‟ (the
capability to actively assert a right) versus „negative‟ (a condition of being granted a
right) we can call the type of sovereignty enjoyed by the state members of the earlier
international system „positive sovereignty‟: the states were free from subjection to a
higher authority, being capable to act to deter others wishing to take away that
6
See International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, „The Responsibility to Protect‟
December 2001.
7
Jackson, R.H., Quasi-states, (Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.11

23
freedom. In contrast, „negative sovereignty‟ in this terminology signifies the opposite:
a right for a state to be free from outside intervention, not deriving from its proven
capability to successfully act against those wishing to take it away, but instead, a right
granted to it by the system itself, and protected by the system. Our contemporary
sovereign state system thus has two types of members: those with positive
sovereignty, and those with only negative sovereignty. Jackson calls the latter quasi-
states in his study of post-colonial states that came into existence mostly as a result of
the strong UN militancy in the early years after WWII in favour of the principle of
self-determination applied to European overseas dependencies. Such a quasi-state
would thus have the international legal sovereignty which is guaranteed by the
international system, but would exhibit a generally weak capacity to assert the other
types of sovereignty.

East Timor, physically but not legally abandoned in 1975 by Portugal, its colonial
master of several centuries, and then illegally occupied and administered by Indonesia
until late 1999, came, after a period of international administration through the UN,
which held sovereignty over it, to independent statehood in May 2002 as the
Democratic Republic of Timor Leste. It is the latest addition to the list of quasi-state
members of the contemporary international states system.

Post World War II trusteeship, decolonisation, self-determination

With the ascendancy to power post of the United States of America and the Soviet
Union after World War II and the creation of the United Nations as a democratic
global forum of formally equals states, sovereign state relations among such formally
equal members became the only legitimate relations between entities in the global
system, a few special cases of temporary duration excepted. The UN‟s 1946 Charter
espoused the cause of decolonisation, while also briefly retaining the „sacred trust of
civilization‟ doctrine of its predecessor, the League of Nations, which stated that
advanced states had „the duty to develop free political institutions [only] according to
the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages
of advancement‟. The Trusteeship Council, as one of the six top-level institutions that
made up the United Nations, was given the function of administering and supervising
the trust territories placed under its trusteeship so as to promote the political,
economic, social, and educational advancement of its inhabitants and their progressive
development towards self-government or independence, in accordance with the freely
expressed wishes of the peoples concerned, as stated in Chapter XII, art 75 and 76 of
the UN Charter. In addition, the UN Charter defines five other main institutions, i.e.
Security Council, General Assembly, ECOSOC, International Court of Justice and
Secretariat are the other main institutions defined by the UN Charter.

In following years, led by the emerging block of new post-colonial states the UN
increasingly began considering that all non self-governing territories should come
under international scrutiny with the aim of ultimately terminating remaining
dependency relations. Political changes and the increasing challenge to European
presence in Asia, Africa and Oceania, forced Europe to rapidly abandon trusteeship
doctrines of control in favour of the increasingly dominant principle of self-
determination for their former colonial subjects. This was advocated by the two
superpowers in unison with the United Nations. As time passed, the UN became
increasingly assertive on this matter, and its promotion of self-determination for

24
dependent territories also led to the effective dismantling of the trusteeship system
over a period of less than two decades. The growth in post-colonial state UN
membership allowed General Assembly Resolutions 1514 and 1541 to be passed in
1960. They strengthened the process of elimination of dependency relations by
formulating three acceptable egalitarian outcomes of decolonisation through an act of
self-determination: integration, free association and independence.

Only with the advent of the United Nations was the principle on national self-
determination, that played an important role in the emergence of European nation-
states in the 19th and early 20th centuries, applied to non-Europeans subjected to
colonial rule. In its Article 1 on the purposes of the United Nations, its Charter
mentions “the development of friendly relations among nations based on respect for
the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”, adding in Article 2,
“the organisation is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its
Members”. Even if the UN initially recognised unequal capacities for self-
government and the need for trusteeships, it very soon brought the principle of self-
determination to the fore. Self-determination became a categorical right of all
colonial peoples following the adoption in 1960 of General Assembly Resolution
1514, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and
Peoples, which was effectively a declaration of liberation of all remaining dependent
peoples. It says that “all peoples have the right to self-determination” and
“inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational, preparedness should never
serve as a pretext for delaying independence”. So the right to sovereignty of colonial
people was no longer determined by empirical statehood, and the „self‟ in self-
determination was no longer understood to be historical or ethnic nations but simply
comprised all people that had been under a particular colonial government. They
would henceforth be granted international legal sovereignty, to use Krasner‟s term.
Moreover, determination became synonymous with eviction of alien European rulers.
So, self-determination was equated with decolonisation, which in turn was a
„successful revolt against the west‟8. Given the heterogeneous ethnic composition of
colonial territories, this new understanding of self-determination led to the emergence
of new post- colonial states in Asia and Africa that were very fragile and prone to
internal discord, human rights violations and fragmentation. This hasty acceptance of
post-colonial states as sovereign members of the international system has in many
cases, primarily in Africa and Oceania, left a troublesome legacy that has been
strongly felt in the latter part of the 20th century and the beginnings of the 21st century.
In my view, a wiser and more beneficial course of action would have been to defer the
granting of sovereignty in critical cases, until suitable conditions were developed. For
this purpose, the international community should have developed the will and the
capacity to provide sate-building tutelage to such entities. It is my contention that
even if that was not done at the time of decolonisation, it is still necessary to do so at
this stage, in the case of weak failing and failed states. The experience of living
through the insufficient state building process of East Timor under the UN transitional
administration has made me come to this realization.

Returning to Jackson‟s positive –negative terminology, we can say that the new post-
colonial sovereign states that in many cases originated in actions of the international
8
Jackson p 82, citing Hedley Bull in Bull & Watson, The Expansion of International Society, ch. 14. In
this sense, decolonisation can be seen as a kind of positive sovereignty in a collective way, where the
international community has ensured the sovereignty of a class of entities.

25
society and the will of already established states were posited by the international
society, not having existed previously in any remotely similar geographical or
constitutional form. Colonialism or trusteeship had created their territorial
jurisdictions and bureaucracies. The application of the principle of self-determination,
had granted them negative sovereignty, a previously unknown concept in international
relations. The case of Timor Leste is an interesting example, where the initial
decolonisation process from Portugal, late as it was, would have been a typical case of
acquisition of negative sovereignty for the envisaged post-colonial entity. However,
the interruption of this process by Indonesia and its attempt at impeding Timorese
self-determination, led to an almost 25 year long struggle, that can be seen as a
Timorese effort to gain positive sovereignty. At least this is how it was presented. The
process furthermore had the effect of strengthening the concept of nation for the
people of the territory. It was also interesting in terms of international politics, as it
showed the equivocal position of the international community regarding self -
determination in cases where the sovereign was not European, but as in the case of
Indonesia, where it was itself a new post-colonial state.

The post-colonial international system

While in old laissez faire world a sovereign state had to prove its capacity to uphold
its sovereignty or perish, the contemporary post-colonial international system
resulting from UN support for self-determination possesses an elaborate normative,
legal and organisational structure aimed at ensuring the survival of the sovereign
members it has created. So, a two tier sovereign system now exists: developed states
with positive sovereignty, and underdeveloped states with negative sovereignty.
Many of these underdeveloped quasi-states are hardly sustainable in practice, even if
they are accorded international legal sovereignty. They are dependent on extensive
economic, military and other types of assistance received from the developed
members of the system. This assistance is, to a significant extent delivered through
the complex structures that have been created for this purpose, mainly by the UN. The
UN, its agencies and programmes, as well as the institutions created under the
sponsorship of former colonial powers, such as the Commonwealth of Nations by the
UK, La Francophonie by France, and the Comunidade dos Países de Língua
Portuguesa (CPLP) by Portugal, have built an elaborate international superstructure
to cater for the socio-economic needs of quasi-states, which is unprecedented in the
history of the modern states-system and is an important aspect of international
relations in the last three decades of the 20th century to date. In this way it is aimed to
bridge the big economic, welfare, education, health, social and political development
gap between the developed states and the underdeveloped, primarily post-colonial
quasi-states. The bridging of this gap is seen by most post-colonial states, and thus by
the UN, as a true fulfilment of the decolonisation process, which not only entails
political sovereignty but also equality of development. The provision of aid to
achieve this, while not a legal obligation, is seen as a moral one. In the case of post-
conflict or humanitarian interventions in quasi-states, aid is increasingly being
provided also for defence and administrative purposes, such as in Timor Leste.

It is interesting to reflect on the fact that the development work undertaken by the
international community in the post-colonial era takes over a function that was
supposed to be carried out by the imperial powers with regards to their own subjects
in colonial times. The degree of commitment and effectiveness with which this was

26
done by the various colonial powers varied from one to another and also between
possessions of a given power. In some cases adequate foundations for the building of
a successful post-colonial state were legated, while in other cases, such foundations
were very poor, leaving a disastrous legacy for the future. The worst foundations were
generally legated in Africa, where the new states were very weak, had little national
coherence, and generally followed colonial boundaries. Power was transferred to
unprepared political elites who proved unable to govern adequately, as can be seen
from the subsequent proliferation of failing and failed post-colonial states in that
continent, resulting in many humanitarian tragedies. The post-colonial small
Caribbean and Pacific island states have generally been peaceful, and some have been
successful, even if in many of them the quality of life has gradually diminished over
the decades since independence, leading, among others, to depopulation by
emigration. Caribbean states such as Haiti, independent since the 19 th century, and
Grenada have seen outside intervention to halt state failure. In 2003, Australia
intervened in two of its weak Pacific neighbours, Solomon Islands and Papua New
Guinea to halt their drift towards failure In the former case this was done with
military and police personnel, and in the latter with a „platoon‟ of accountants and
financial managers! Among the many post-colonial quasi-states that emerged since
the 1960‟s, the performance record of the former Belgian and Portuguese colonies in
Africa is the worst. Belgium only had colonies in Africa, while of the Portuguese
colonies that were able to get sovereignty, or more appropriately negative sovereignty,
only East Timor is located outside Africa. Of the former European colonies in Asia,
Indonesia is the weakest in terms of its state institutions and governance.

East Timor, the newest quasi-state fully fits the typical profile of underdeveloped
post-colonial states. It is almost totally dependent on financial, technical, and military
foreign aid for its survival, and after independence has become an important –if at
times somewhat defiant- client of the UN development aid agencies. Looking at the
record of its two colonial mentors, Portugal and Indonesia, with regards to the state-
building success of their former colonies or their own success respectively, one can
only conclude that the road ahead for Timor Leste is an arduous one. Given the fact
that its two colonists left a tragic history and so faint a legacy to prepare this waif of
decolonisation for a successful independence, the international community was called
to take over and nurture East Timor into independent statehood. The question arises
whether the approach taken by was really the most appropriate one. My view is, as I
shall often repeat throughout following chapters, that a longer-term tutelage for the
reconstruction of East Timor by the UN would have laid a more solid foundation to
the new state, and reduced the risk of it some day joining the growing ranks of failing
and failed states in the world. The UN presence in East Timor should have been less
driven by the UN culture of primary preoccupation with the granting of legal
sovereignty, and more with laying the foundation for the development of an adequate
capacity for domestic and interdependence sovereignty, if not also for the so-called
non-interference sovereignty.

The contemporary world

As noted earlier, I have found Cooper‟s classification of the early 21st century states
and his analysis of the dynamics of state interaction very useful to interpret the

27
experiences I have lived through in my involvement with East Timor 9. Cooper sees
the contemporary, post-Cold War, world divided into pre-modern, modern, and post-
modern states. The pre-modern states are those in which modern state structures are
weak or not functioning. Modern states are the traditional sovereign states, where
domestic and foreign affairs are separated. Post-modern states have a lesser
separation of domestic and foreign affairs, as the state has willingly ceded some of its
sovereignty to strengthen its cooperation with other states. Examples of the first type
are many of the dysfunctional post-colonial states, or in Jackson‟s terminology, quasi-
states. The second group comprises most established and strong states such as the US,
India, China, and many Latin American states, to name but a few. Among them the
classical state system remains intact. States retain monopoly of force and use it
against one another if needed to protect state interests. The third group in his
classification comprises the European Union and potentially Japan and some Latin
American aspirants.

The maintenance of order in the modern states system is ultimately dependent on the
utilisation of force, the monopoly on the use of which remains with the state. Balance
of power and/or the presence of hegemonic states are order-providing mechanisms in
this system. Order in pre-state territories was, in the past, assured by imperial
dominance exerted by strong, modern states. Among the post-modern states in the
EU, order is obtained through mutual trust among members of the system resulting
from openness and mutual interference in domestic affairs through the development
of a rule of law to which members adhere in their interactions with one another.
Security comes from transparency, which results from interdependence. Cooper notes
that at this point in time the modern states‟ system is collapsing in two ways: in the
case of post-modern states it is collapsing into greater order. In the pre-modern
system, it is collapsing into greater disorder since many of the post-colonial states, in
which European colonialism bequeathed its state structures and governing systems to
its former imperial possessions upon decolonisation, are failing.

The consequences of this collapse into disorder can be serious for the rest of the
world, especially in an era of close global interdependence and interconnection. Apart
from the suffering experienced by populations under conditions of disorder, which
raises humanitarian considerations, three security-related lessons have been learned
regarding pre-modern states: i. chaos spreads (for example the collapse of Sierra
Leone led to chaos in Liberia which in turn negatively affected neighbouring West
African states like the Côte d‟Ivoire); ii. state collapse and the associated loss of its
monopoly on force and of the rule of law allows privatised violence and private
profit-seeking to take over as principles governing the territory and aiming to get
control of its natural resources and other wealth or facilities -since crime spreads, this
is of concern to developed modern or post-modern states states; iii. a zone of chaos
can turn into a major threat for security elsewhere, by providing bases for aggression
to other developed states, as the example of the terrorist attacks of the Afghanistan-
hosted Al Qaeda terrorist organization on the US in 2001 showed.

How should the modern and post-modern world deal with the threats to its security
represented by chaos in the pre-modern world? What should the developed states do
to control the spreading disorder among pre-modern states? Since the traditional

9
R. Cooper, The Breaking of Nations….

28
imperial order-keeping method of colonization is no longer legitimate, and the
advanced states have little to gain from imperial territorial domination, the motivation
to bear the cost of taking direct control of such territories and their populations is
absent. Unless they become potential bases for attack on developed states, the latter
don‟t generally care about keeping order in failing pre-modern states even if the
existing situations there might elicit feelings of humanitarian compassion. Cooper
writes that a post-modern version of empire needs to be voluntary if it is to be
acceptable. Only international and voluntary arrangements will have the necessary
legitimacy to be able to work- nothing else will, as has been seen clearly in the 2003-
2004 US intervention in Iraq. If it is to last, intervention has also to be cooperative,
such I, for example, the acceptance of World Bank and IMF advice and supervision
by countries in return for financial assistance.

The author also sees Trusteeship as a form of far-reaching voluntary general

imperialism, exercised by the international community through the UN. It is usually
brief, giving people of a failed state breathing space and assistance to re-establish a
sustainable state. But this is not as effective as traditional imperialism. Because it is
voluntary, everything is subjected to negotiation and compromise; because the
administering authority is international, it lacks the clarity, decisiveness, and
accountability of a national power; because it is temporary, chances are it will leave
before the job is done properly. Empire is expensive, especially in its post-modern
voluntary form, since nation building is a long and difficult task that gives no
certainty of successful results. The case study of East Timor I present in this book
clearly substantiates these observations.

Given all these considerations, and evidencing the fact that he is primarily a
practitioner of diplomacy –the art of the possible- the author advises great caution for
developed states considering intervening the pre-modern chaos. It is best to intervene
early before the situation has become really troublesome, but this will normally be
rejected by the subject state unless the problem has become too obvious, by which
time it is too late. For Cooper, even humanitarian intervention is dangerous for the
intervener, as it is difficult to set clear objectives, thus, in his view, all conventional
wisdom counsels against intervention in the pre-modern world for purely altruistic
motives. Intervention motivated by power and interest is more likely to be sustainable
and thus is more likely to succeed needing, however, to be accompanied by political
efforts. If these fail, or if the military operations grow too big, withdrawal is the only
alternative.

From the perspective of an activist and scholar like myself, and looking at the longer-
term implications of the negative potential on world order of failing pre-modern
states, the human suffering they can cause to their own people, and based on my
personal experience with the East Timor case, I take a more sanguine view regarding
such interventions. The present political climate at the UN aside, I take them to be
necessary and should be undertaken, as long as this is done competently and with the
right intentions, i.e. to help the transition from pre-modernity to modernity of such
states, in cooperation with their peoples.

It will be seen through my account in the following pages of this book which look at
the East Timorese case of international community intervention in a disorder situation

29
in a post-colonial territory, how useful Cooper‟s model of the contemporary world is,
and, hopefully, that my own arguments regarding state-building tutelage do apply.

Pre-modern failing and failed states

The proliferation of weak post-colonial quasi-states or pre-modern states has led to an
increase in the number of failed state entities in today‟s world. The hardships of life in
weak underdeveloped states, or the progressively deteriorating conditions of life in
failing and failed states are most unsatisfying to the bulk of their populations. While
one sector of humanity reaches greater and greater levels of civilization and welfare in
the advanced world, the peoples of such weak, failing and failed states are condemned
to lives of hardship and suffering from which there seems to be no escape other than
relocating to more advanced countries, an option open to only a relatively
insignificant number of people. In our present formally egalitarian international
sovereign states system, the contrast between the conditions of life in the strong states
of the developed world and the weak, failing and failed underdeveloped post-colonial
quasi-states is constantly growing. Rather than one egalitarian international system,
we have in fact a system of formally equal states which can be classified into at least
two, if not three groupings, along the lines of Cooper.

The advent of the US „war against terror‟ has led to an increased international concern
with weak, failing and failed states as potential sources of regional instability, refugee
flows, and humanitarian catastrophes originating in the inability of weak states‟
governments to control their territory, protect their citizens or provide basic resources.
In our contemporary highly interdependent globalise world, unlike in previous times,
the existence of weak or failing states poses grave dangers -not only to their
immediate neighbours- but also to peoples far away, since international order requires
states to ensure domestic order as well the prevention of activities inimical to peace
spreading beyond their borders into the wider world, as mentioned above. Weak,
failing and failed states are also not able to adequately fulfil their obligations as
members of the international community. As weak links in the global chain, these
states can put the whole international system in jeopardy by becoming harbours for
groups carrying out activities, such as terrorism, dysfunctional to the international
system.

How are failed states characterised? Rotberg10 considers the road to state failure to be
marked by revealing signposts such as (a) on the economic side: rapid deterioration
of living standards, as elites deliver financial rewards only to certain favoured groups;
foreign-exchange shortages leading to food shortages and also to curtailed state
expenditures on essential services such as in education and health, as well as on
political goods; flourishing corruption; and (b) on the political side: elite subversion
of prevailing democratic norms, legislatures and bureaucracies coerced into
subservience to elites, strangled judiciary independence, blocking of civil society,
elite control of the security and defence forces, and exclusion of most social groups in
favour of some patronised group(s). As a result, the weak institutions of failing states
are unable to provide internal security and loose control over their borders, make

10
R. Rotberg, „Failed Sates in a World of Terror‟, Foreign Affairs, V 84, n4, p 127-32, July/ August
2002

30
available fewer and fewer services, are unable to collect taxes without undue
coercion, their rulers use terror against their own citizens, the wealth gap between
ordinary citizens and the rulers dramatically increases, infrastructure deteriorates and
is insufficient, high levels of corruption prevail, state agents having to fend for
themselves extort payments from the people, who feel less and less loyal to the state
and their self-seeking rulers. Life under such conditions is characterised by growing
poverty, deteriorating public health, dropping educational standards, escalating
inflation, a rise in criminal and political violence, rising ethnic, religious, linguistic
and cultural hostilities, rising levels of infant mortality, declining life expectancy,
declining levels of GDP per capita, basic food shortages leading to starvation. These
development leads to state failure, where the legitimacy of the state crumbles. In the
absence of democratic means of redress, people are driven to action, usually
mobilizing along ethnic, religious or linguistic lines, and violent conflict erupts. In
contrast, strong states are able to control their territories and protect their borders,
delivering a high order of political goods to their citizens and lay the foundations for
their economic prosperity. They are places of peace and order, capable of making its
people secure, prosperous, healthy, literate, and proud of their country. It is also a
fact that the number of such strong and effective states in the world has grown.

Weak states may go down the road of state failure, as in the case of Afghanistan,
Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and
Sudan. Or the may survive, and even reach varying degrees of strength again, such as
Bosnia, Cambodia, Lebanon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Tajikistan, and East Timor. They
may also fully fail, such as Somalia. International involvement is needed, both to help
prevent state failure once the danger signs are visible, or to regenerate the state.
However, this involvement requires a rare commodity: international political will.
Prevention of state failure once the signs of a state‟s progress down this road is
evident, requires a number of persuasive, mostly coercive, measures to be taken by
the international community against its rulers. At the simplest these involve
admonishment, increasing to the application of a variety of sanctions, and culminating
in suspension of sovereign state membership rights in international bodies. Should
these preventive measures be insufficient, so that the state slides towards failure, its
regeneration will require international intervention either by the UN (Cambodia,
Bosnia, and in the extreme, East Timor), or by regional or sub-regional organisations
(Liberia, Sierra Leone) or by well-meaning hegemonic powers (Lebanon, Tajikistan,
and even the recent Australian preventive interventions in neighbouring Solomon
Islands and Papua New Guinea). In Somalia, the initial brief involvement by the US
was discontinued after a few months, and the country has progressed to a situation of
total state failure.

Examining these cases of state failure Rotberg stresses the fact that successful state-
building can only be achieved if there is sufficient political will and targeted external
assistance, since the task of sustainable state reconstruction is a lengthy one, requiring
more than a “quick fix”, but requires a long-term commitment by outsiders to building
capacities, strengthening security, and developing human resources. He adds “the
uncomfortable but necessary lesson of these partially effective attempts is that the
revival of failed states will prove more successful if a regional or international
organisation takes charge and only very gradually relinquishes authority to an

31
indigenous transitional administration” 11. My association with the East Timor
experience makes me fully agree with this view. In fact, my central objective in
writing this book which presents an account of the international state-regeneration
intervention in East Timor is to argue that the effort would have been more effective
had the international political will existed to provide the long-term commitment
essential to its success.

By first reviewing in the next two chapters the historical background that preceded the
genesis of Timor Leste, and then looking at some aspects of the UN intervention and
transitional government in East Timor, I will try to show just how rudimentary the
starting base was, and how important therefore it would have been to take the
necessary time to properly accomplish the sate building task, so as to end up with a
viable and well-developed state. The hurried way in which the gestation process was
handled cannot but invite the question of whether the prematurely born state of Timor
Leste will be able to develop the capacity to provide the kind of life the majority of its
people expected, or whether another addition to the list of failed states in the world
has been produced.

Shadow states
The concept of „shadow states‟ put forward by W. Reno 12 gives a useful picture of
African failing states. I wonder how much of this picture could apply to Timor Leste
in future, once income from its oil and gas resources starts to flow, given the
weakness of its state apparatus, its weak administrative capacity, the lack of internal
controls and the general weakness of its civil society, the judiciary, and the
legislature. In my experience the definition certainly applies to Indonesia, a country
that has in many ways provided a governance model to the East Timorese, both under
the rule of Suharto and even today. The other inspirational model for the Timor Leste
elite placed in power by the UN transitional administration is Mozambique, another
weak state which, however, does have an increasing degree of civil society control
over its ruling elite, and as such seems to be on the way to become a sustainable
democracy.

The core elements of shadow states are personal rule, where decisions and action are
taken by an individual ruler and do not conform to a set of written laws and
procedures, although these might be present. Writing in January 2004, security
researcher and former UNTAET political officer Edward Reese states “ … reliance on
personalities rather than structures, policies and procedures is not unique to the
defence force and is a problem facing many other sectors of government [in Timor
Leste]”13. Shadow state rulers manipulate external actors‟ access to both formal and
clandestine markets by relying on global recognition of sovereignty, deriving their
status from Krasner‟s international legal sovereignty, and are thereby able to
undermine formal government institutions. This is often to their benefit, especially
since such institutions may acquire interests and powers at odds with the ruler‟s

11
Rotberg, „Failed States…”, emphasis is mine.
12
William Reno, “Shadow States and the Political Economy of Civil Wars,” in Greed and Grievance:
Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, ed. by Mats Berdal and David M. Malone (Boulder: Lynne Rienner,
2000).
13
E. Reese, Under Pressure, Falintil-Forças de Defesa de Timor Leste, Centre for the Democratic
Control of Armed Forces, Geneva, www.dcaf.ch, p11

32
efforts to retain power. Rulers also undermine formal government institutions by
weakening bureaucratic structures and manipulating markets so as to enrich
themselves and control others. In this way shadow states or “informal commercially
oriented networks” are created that operate alongside remaining government
bureaucracies15. Funke and Solomon add three elements to this definition. One, that
external actors are also usually involved with the shadow state rulers, supporting
them; two, regimes with strong presence of shadow state elements are usually also
heading for state failure; three, the need to strengthen civil society to combat the
growth of shadow state elements and setbacks to democratic institutions, corruption
and non-accountability. The point is made that shadow state rulers benefit from
sovereignty and international recognition of their states to foster their own private
interests. What is necessary, in the authors‟ view, is that the term sovereignty needs to
be revised to encompass broader groupings, more representative of people‟s needs.

I will argue in following pages that UNTAET empowered a group in East Timor that
was not representative of the majority of the population, even if on the surface it
appeared to have been legitimately elected. By giving this new power elite access to
the trappings of international legal sovereignty thus allowing them to pursue their own
interests, potentially to the detriment of those of the majority of the population, in a
context of no democratic traditions, very weak state institutions and weak civil
society, both unable to exert effective control to ensure transparency and
accountability, the conditions may have been laid for Timor Leste to develop „shadow
state‟ elements that could precipitate its failure.

International tutelage, trusteeship

Given the current reality of weak and failing post-colonial states in the world,
detrimental both to their own populations, save, at least in the short term, for their
governing elites, and to the overall peace and security of the world, the question arises
as to what is to be done to effectively resolve this problem. My experience with East
Timor has led me to believe that the current UN-based approach, which assigns
highest priority to the speedy granting of negative sovereignty, independently of the
country‟s capacity to govern itself, and is most preoccupied with total respect and
protection of the various dimensions of the quasi-state‟s sovereignty, is not the
answer.

I feel that sovereignty needs to take second position to other initial considerations,
namely, the capacity of a people to rule themselves effectively, for the good of the
majority. My lengthy exchanges of views with so many personal friends, mostly from
Africa, who have had to live through the vicissitudes of bad governance resulting
from a premature access to quasi-state status. Not being part of the privileged few in
the elites who have captured the resources of the state for their own benefit, such
people are not very committed to the, for them, not very useful international legal
sovereign status of their country. Sovereign independence of their country has for
them only meant a continuous drop in the quality of governance and services provided
by the state, in many cases to catastrophically low levels.

15
N. Funke & H. Solomon, The Shadow State in Africa, Occasional Paper No 5, Development Policy
Management Forum, Addis Ababa, 2002.

33
I see no way other than the international community taking on such premature quasi-
states for a temporary state-building trusteeship period.

I realize that the unfortunate post-2001 experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq may act
as a strong disincentive for any consideration of state-building interventions.
However, my arguments in favour of international tutelary intervention refer to
genuine efforts by the international community through well-established multilateral
agencies, aimed at mentoring weak, failing, and failed post-colonial states to
strengthen their capacity for good governance. This would require the consent of a
significant proportion of the local population, and would need to be sensitive to
majority preferences with regards to governing institutions, cultures, and styles.

Even if the post-WWII world has been formally egalitarian, and therefore, tutelage
over peoples that are unable to adequately cope with the governance demands of a
modern sovereign state is politically anathema for many, the concept of trusteeship by
more advanced nations over less advanced peoples was accepted until the mid 20 th
century. In the early part of the century, the victors of World War I allocated
themselves the colonial territories of the losers in the war, i.e. Germany, Italy, the
Ottoman Empire and Japan, through the Mandates System of the League of Nations.
The basic objective of the system was supposed to be the promotion of the well-being,
development and welfare of the people of the mandated territories by the trustees.
Invariably the trustees were European states (or as in the case of South Africa, a
European settler state), and the wards were non- European. In fact, the prime
motivation of the trustees was towards the achievement of order in the world besides,
of course, the direct benefits anticipated by the mandated state from an expanded
colonial presence. Claims to be seeking the improvement of conditions for colonial
wards and for humanity as a whole were also made by the trustees.

The UN Trusteeship System, under the Trusteeship Council was aimed at continuing
the tasks of the Mandated system, and preparing the people of the Mandated
territories to exercise their self-determination, leading to sovereign statehood as a
most likely outcome. While the UN held the territories in trust on behalf of the
international community, it delegated the task of governing them and developing their
state institutions to trustees among its member states, usually the main Allied powers.
The composition of the Council is outlined in Article 86, Chapter XIII, of the UN
Charter. It includes the five permanent members of the Security Council plus a
number of non-permanent members, trustee states and non trustee states, so that the
latter two are in numerical balance. The Trusteeship Council was given the task of
supervising the administration of 11 Trust Territories placed under the Trusteeship
System until they achieved self-determination. Major goals of the System were to
promote the advancement of the inhabitants of Trust Territories and their progressive
development towards self-government or independence. Unfortunately, the
preparation for sovereign statehood did not always prove to be adequate, as was also
the case with the powers‟ own colonies. The Council suspended operation on 1
November 1994, after the independence of Palau, the last remaining United Nations
trust territory, on 1 October 1994.

Not surprisingly, some fifty years after the dissolution of former European empires,
there is still a negative legacy to be felt in the international system, namely the failure

34
of many post-colonial quasi-states. This reality suggests that new forms of tutelage
need to be created in order to provide these states the required state-building
experience that they initially failed to obtain. The plight of their misgoverned people,
and the potential security threats such entities present to other members of the
international community emphasize this need. After the end of the Cold War, which
obscured this problem, there has emerged an increasing awareness that the problem of
post-colonial state strengthening or state building needs closer attention. However,
being in tension with orthodox principles of state sovereignty, the issue has been a
difficult one to tackle in international fora such as the UN, where state sovereignty is
paramount. Suggestions of compromising weak and failing state sovereignty find a
strong opposition, primarily from post-colonial state elites, their states now making up
an important proportion of the votes in the General Assembly, who greatly –and in
my view often unjustly- benefit from the negative sovereignty bestowed upon them.

Nonetheless, the question of reassessing sovereignty principles for weak, failing and
failed states does get discussed in academic circles. Steven Krasner provides a
comprehensive review of the issue. He considers that “conventional sovereignty has
failed, but the policy instruments currently available to repair these failures are
inadequate... many societies are troubled because they suffer under failed, weak, or
abusive national authority structures”16. Any solution, in his view, will need to
transcend the conventional rules of sovereignty requiring alternative institutional
arrangements, such as trusteeships and shared sovereignty to be legitimated, rather
than relying as at present, exclusively on short-term transitional administration and
foreign assistance to improve governance. He observes that state-building efforts are
almost always described in terms of empowering local authorities to assume the
responsibilities of conventional sovereignty, with the role of external actors
considered limited in time and scope, concluding that “even as the rules of
conventional sovereignty are violated, and it is evident that in many cases effective
autonomous national government is far in the future, the language of diplomacy, the
media, and the street envisions nothing other than a world of fully sovereign states” 17.

The East Timor experience with the UN so clearly illustrates this reality, as the
following chapters aim to show. Traditional views on sovereignty drove the UN to
engage only in a speedy transitional administration, aimed at finding a local power
elite to take over the responsibilities of conventional sovereignty, however ill-
prepared they were for the task, and seemingly oblivious of the fact that the
development of sufficient capacity is a long-term undertaking. Nonetheless, Timor
Leste is being treated as a fully sovereign state, much to the delight of its ruling elite.
Having rushed the territory to sovereign independence, international efforts to
develop governing capacity in Timor Leste now have to be indirect, relying on the
total dependence of the country on foreign aid as the sole, and not always effective,
leverage instrument over its authorities.

Krasner, and other writers whose work he cites, see a variety of possible solutions to
the problem presented by the current limitation of available options for governance
capacity development through foreign assistance or state-building transitional
16
„Troubled Societies, Outlaw States, And Gradations Of Sovereignty‟ (Stephen D. Krasner
Department of Political Science Stanford University July 20, 2002)
17
ibid.

35
administrations. For him, the menu of available options needs to be expanded in two
ways. First, some form of trusteeship or conservatorship needs to be legitimated, in
which international actors would assume control over local functions for an indefinite
period of time in the target country. Authority would be transferred to local citizens
only after new institutional arrangements were firmly in place. In some areas
authority would be shared between internal and external actors even after the
trusteeship ended. As Krasner point out, and the East Timor experience has clearly
shown to me, legitimating such an arrangement will not be easy, since local leaders
will cling fervently to conventional sovereignty principles. Governments in developed
states may oppose a formal arrangement that would make it more difficult for them to
resist committing their resources to countries in which they had little interest.
Second, domestic sovereignty in poorly governed states could be improved through
shared sovereignty contracts. These contracts would create joint authority structures
in specific issue areas. They would not involve a direct assault on sovereignty norms,
because they would be formally consistent with international legal sovereignty even
though they violate his non-interference sovereignty. These may be applied through
the UN system, or outside it, even if it is acknowledged that as things stand at present,
the chances of getting the UN General Assembly with its majority of newly sovereign
states to accept such developments is remote. It can be noted that informally, an
element of such a compromise of sovereignty already happened in Timor Leste,
where international advisers in the Ministry of Finance in practice have a degree of
executive authority as a result of donor demands. Openly formalizing this situation
would be so much more effective, were it not for the need to keep appearances of full
sovereignty.

Peter Lyons noted a decade ago in his article forecasting a revival of international
trusteeships to cope with the growing problem of failing states18, the use of the label
„trusteeship‟ for a the needed new system of tutelage may be problematic, as it is
indelibly connected in people‟s minds with the particular UN system specified in
Chapters XII and XIII of the UN Charter. Lyons suggests that while „guardianship‟
may be an appropriate name to refer to refer to the system, the undeniable fact is that
the best spirit of trusteeship needs revising and revitalising. Based on my experience
with East Timor, I agree. Looking at the present realities, I wonder if, for the people
of Timor Leste as well as for those of many other of the quasi-state members of the
contemporary system, as opposed to their governing elites, formal negative
sovereignty has been be the most advantageous model. Would a review of the basic
principles of the system, making some adaptations, away from the total formal
egalitarianism applying at present in favour of some forms of trusteeship,
guardianship, conservatorship or -whatever name is given to a form of reduced
sovereignty- not serve them better, at least for the time being?

In this context, the words privately uttered by one of the „icons‟ of the East Timorese
independence struggle to a foreign visitor in early 2004, when assessing the current
situation of Timor Leste, come to my mind. The notable personality wondered if
Timor Leste might after all not have been better off under a special autonomy
arrangements with Portugal, like New Caledonia is with France, instead of having its
present independence!19
18
Peter Lyons, „The Rise and Fall and Possible Revival of International Trusteeship‟ (Journal of
Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, V 13, Nº 1, March 1993, pp 96-110).
19
Personal communication, 7 February 2004.

36
 PART 1- The East Timor background
Chapter III : Portuguese Timor, failed decolonisation, Indonesian
Timor Timur
Decolonisation in Asia and Portuguese imperial collapse
In the first few years after World War II, after their European colonial masters had
been greatly weakened, a number of European dependencies in Asia successfully
asserted their sovereignty. Their membership in the UN strengthened the momentum
of the anti-European colonial drive of the new world body. The ensuing
decolonisation process took over fifty tears to complete, with East Timor being its
very belated last case. To understand the delayed independence of Timor Leste the
historical background needs to be examined. I will do so, aiming to show just how
rudimentary the process of bequeathing European state structures and governing
systems, which has characterised the process of European decolonisation in the case
of Portuguese Timor.

Of the European colonial powers present in Asia, only Portugal, who remained neutral
during World War II, was able to retain its tiny colonial possessions in South, South
East, and East Asia without local challenges in the immediate post war years. Under
the very conservative and authoritarian Estado Novo dictatorship, Portugal chose to
marginalise itself from the process of shaping the new world order, also refusing to
consider decolonisation of its possessions in Africa and Asia. The former „overseas
provinces‟ were economically important, and the latter were symbolically important
as remnants of a glorious past. As a result, growing international opposition to
Portugal‟s conservative and outdated colonial policies increasingly marginalised the
country until a revolutionary government change in 1974 brought about the
acceptance of decolonisation. The regime change resulted from the eventual
exhaustion of the dictatorship, after two decades of war in the African colonies
against local insurgents seeking an end to the colonial presence. In the little Asian
enclaves the colonial situation developed differently. In 1961 India evicted Portugal
from its possessions in Goa, Damão and Diu, and annexed them, with little opposition
from the local population and much international support for an act presented as a
liberation from colonial oppression. After the eviction from India, Portugal only
retained two possessions in Asia, the enclave of Macau in China, whose status as a
Chinese territory was never questioned, and the tiny, very poor, and extremely
backward colony in the eastern half of Timor island, an enclave in the Indonesian
archipelago. Needless to say no provisions to prepare local populations to assume the
responsibilities of self-rule or sovereign statehood were made during the dictatorship
years. On the contrary, any thoughts in this direction by the colonial subjects were
strongly resisted by the powerful security apparatus of the state. The result of this
lack of preparation for independent statehood has been a disastrous history for the
majority of the post-colonial states that eventually emerged from Portugal‟s African
possessions.

Portugal was always aware that it would have to relinquish Macao the day China
decided it wanted it returned. It was peacefully returned to Chinese administration in
late 1999, after the centuries long arrangement with Portugal had ceased to be of

37
economic interest to China. Its population was not consulted. Macao and the tiny
African island republics of Cabo Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe, whose
populations in both cases were not autochthonous but were comprised mostly of
Africans settled there by Portugal, are the only territories in which transition from
Portuguese colonial rule did not lead to internal war and state collapse. In the case of
East Timor, the beginning of anarchy and brutality that accompanied the rushed
Portuguese decolonisation was contained by the Indonesian invasion, leading to the
even more brutal and destructive neo-colonial occupation of the territory by its large
neighbour.

In retrospect, I cannot help but wonder what the impact on world order would have
been if the international community would have acknowledged that the entities
liberating themselves from the collapsing Portuguese empire in 1974/75 were not
ready to accede to sovereign statehood, and required a preliminary state-building
tutelary period, to be provided under international trusteeship. The millions of people
who have died or have seen their existences reduced to misery in Angola,
Mozambique, Guiné-Bissau over more than two decades and a half, would surely
have agreed that it could have been a better alternative. Members of the international
community such as the major powers, regional neighbours in Africa, the UN, and all
others who have had to bear the burden of the long wars that have followed the
accession to independence of these states would probably also agree that their
resources, both material and human, would have brought better returns if invested in a
preliminary tutelary capacity-building effort rather than in belated and usually
unsuccessful repeated attempts at peace-creation and peace-keeping. Similarly,
looking at the East Timor experience of the late1970s, the 1980s and 1990s and its
impact for its people, for Indonesia, for regional neighbours such as Australia and
New Zealand, for ASEAN, and the UN, I wonder if a cost-benefit analysis would not
show very clearly that a period of international tutelage at the time would not have
been less onerous and more rewarding than the path that was followed?

Timor history
Several phases are distinguishable in the history of the eastern part of the island of
Timor. With the exception of the last one, i.e. the UN interregnum, these have been
marked by violent transitions. In the last 50 years the territory‟s status has gone first
from being the marginal poor Portuguese Timor colony on the far fringe of a decaying
and outdated empire, next to becoming the Indonesian Timor Timur Province, after a
violent invasion in 1975 followed by a 24 year illegal occupation characterized by the
human rights violations committed by the occupying military. After the rejection by
78.5% of the population through a UN –sponsored consultation- of an offer of
autonomy within Indonesia, and a scorched earth response by the embarrassed
Indonesian military, a humanitarian international military intervention followed in
September 1999. In late October of that year, the UN Security Council gave an
unprecedented trusteeship mandate to the UN Department of Peace Keeping
Operations to govern the territory of East Timor and prepare it for independence. This
was done through the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and
lasted until 19 May 2002, when the sovereign state of Timor Leste came peacefully
into being as a UN creation. Timor Leste is the last of the European overseas colonial
dependencies to achieve independent statehood, not considering cases on the list of

38
UN non-self governing territories where the population has opted for other forms of
non-unequal constitutional relationship with a European power such as French
Polynesia, New Caledonia, Guadalupe, Martinique, Aruba, Moroni, Reunion, Guyane,
etc. Or where they have expressly stated their desire not to sever links, such as
Falklands, St Helena, Pitcairn and a few others. In this book I will always refer to the
territory as East Timor. I will use the terms Portuguese Timor, Timor Timur and
Timor Leste to refer to all aspects related to its governance in the years of Portuguese
colonialism, Indonesian occupation and formal sovereign statehood, respectively.

Portuguese Timor
Traditionally the autochthonous population of Timor island was divided into several
small and weak tribes, under the authoritarian and patriarchal rule of a hereditary
chief sometimes euphemistically called „King‟. The poor and harsh living conditions
did not allow the evolution of a high level of civilization, and the mountainous terrain
discouraged much communication and exchange between the different kingdoms. A
multiplicity of ethnicities and languages on the island gives testimony to the variety of
migrations that occurred over time in this region of transit between South East Asia
and Oceania. Warfare was an important activity among them20. Pelissier documents
the area‟s traditional hostility to any extraneous rule. It took 60 Portuguese and allied
expeditions to subdue local warriors. He also traces the endless wars that continuously
happened in eastern Timor among the various kingdoms. Portugal was also often an
aggressor or aggressed, but Portuguese presence as a threatening outsider did not
unite the various groups in a permanent common front. Alliances constantly shifted. If
today A and B joined in war against C, tomorrow it could well be B and C joining
against A, and the next day C and A against B, and so on over and over again in time.
This situation discourage the development of a sense of national unity, resulting in
regional divisions remaining to some extent to this day.

Timor island first attracted Portuguese, and soon afterwards, Dutch, attention for its
rich sandalwood forests in the 16th century. Progressively displaced from the western
half of Timor Island by the Dutch -Portugal‟s challenging rival imperial power- the
Portuguese administration moved to present day Dili in the 18 th century. In the early
20th century the boundary between both parts of the island was settled. It remained in
place when the Dutch East Indies became the sovereign Republic of Indonesia in
1949, with West Timor as a part of it. In the Eastern part of the island, despite formal
recognition as a Portuguese colony, Portuguese colonial presence was always
relatively limited. Besides the military and the Catholic Church, the settlement had
few Portuguese civilians, as the economic attractions of the place were comparatively
modest. By the mid 20th century only one third of the population were practicing
Catholics despite the Church‟s involvement in education and the provision of some
services, and its active proselytising. In the last few decades of the colonial presence
the Portuguese physical and cultural penetration of Timor increased yet government
provided services were limited and basic, and did not reach the majority of the
dispersed rural population. General education and literacy were very low, and the
Portuguese language was only spoken by a mostly mixed-race urban minority.

20
See Pelissier, Timor en Guerre : Le Crocodile et les Portugais (1847-1913) (Paris, Pelissier,
Montamets 78630, Orgeval, France, c 1996)

39
In 1930, a „Colonial Act‟ was published, proclaiming that “it was of the organic
essence of the Portuguese nation to possess and colonize overseas territories and to
civilize the indigenous populations residing in them”. If in the metropolis the
population was in practice excluded from democratic decision-making during the long
Estado Novo regime, and no true institutions for such were developed, the situation in
the colonies/overseas provinces was even more undemocratic. In neglected
Portuguese Timor in particular, rule was totally authoritarian. A Portuguese Governor
ruled by decree. No democratic elections for local authorities took place. The local
population was marginal to the governing process. Portugal‟s neutrality in World War
II protected it from Japan‟s anti-European imperial attacks. Unlike in neighbouring
Indonesia, Japan did not stimulate a local anti-European, anti-colonial reaction in
Portuguese Timor. Expressions of anti-colonialism in the colony were limited to one
major incident in 1959 in Viqueque.

Since Portugal did not join the United Nations until 1955, ten years after the body‟s
formation, it did not participate in the initial debates on the fate of European overseas
dependencies. It was also not too affected by the initial USA-promoted pressures for
the abolition of European colonial empires and the change of the international system
into an egalitarian one, since with the exacerbation of the US-Soviet rivalry in the late
40s, the need for the strategically located Portuguese Açores Airbases in the Atlantic
as a stop-over point for US aircraft, mellowed US opposition to Portugal‟s colonial
policy. Nonetheless, as the momentum of the anti-colonial movement grew in the
UN, Portugal was increasingly attacked for its conservatism with regards to the
decolonisation of its possessions in Africa. In the name of defending the principle of
self-determination of colonial subjects – which by now had become considered an
inalienable right of all non-European peoples subjected to European dominance-
several UN resolutions were passed by the UN turning Portugal increasingly into an
international pariah state.

In Portugal‟s prime African colonies of Angola and Mozambique, whose rich natural
resources were considered vital for Portugal‟s economic survival, and who had large
numbers of metropolitan settlers, and also in Guiné-Bissau, local insurgents started
anti-colonial wars from the mid 1950s onwards that were to be extremely costly and
impossible to win for Portugal. However, in the remote and backward Timor no such
developments took place, on account of the lack of nationalist consciousness and
unity of the very primitive local population; the rapidly crushed 1959 Viqueque
uprising against the colonial administration had been incited by refugees from
Indonesia fleeing political persecution there. A decade had to pass for any local
opposition to the colonial order to start emerging in East Timor. By the late 60s some
better educated, mostly racially mixed offsprings of political dissidents banished from
Portugal, started to express a desire for a change in the status quo. As a result, some of
these active youngsters, like future Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta, were briefly
banished to Mozambique.

Burdened by the costs of the wars in the economically important African colonies,
and uninterested in its economically unproductive small possession in Timor, which
was of little use other than being a place to banish political dissidents to, Portugal
tried to offload it to Indonesia. Contacts were initiated in the mid 1960s after the rise
to power of the right-wing Suharto regime in Indonesia. Catholics on Flores island,
formerly also a Portuguese possession lost to the Dutch in 1859, were keen to increase

40
the numbers of adherents to their faith in Indonesia, by absorbing their Portuguese
Timorese cousins. President Suharto, aware of the tenuous legitimacy of his
government, that was responsible for the massacre of half a million to over one
million people after coming to power in 1965, and concerned that the legitimacy of
Indonesia‟s incorporation of resource-rich and under populated West Papua may be
affected by such a move, declined interest in annexing Portuguese Timor to Indonesia.
With its Timor colony included in the UN list of non self-governing territories created
by the 1960 General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV), Portugal was under the
responsibility of preparing it for an eventual act of self-determination, whose
acceptable outcome could have been independence, free association or integration
with another state. This unwelcome development gave Portugal an impetus to attempt
to do something for the economic and social development of its poorest and most
backward territory.

With the colonial situation in Africa increasingly uncertain and settlers leaving the
colonies, Portugal changed its policy in Timor in the early 70s, aiming to make the
half-island more attractive for colonial settlement, hoping that some of its citizens
leaving the African colonies might settle there, rather than to prepare the territory for
eventual self-rule or independence. A few important public works were constructed.
These included a long landing strip in Baucau capable of large commercial jet aircraft
operations, spacious government offices in the capital Dili, a few hostels in the
districts to tap tourists from nearby Darwin in Australia, and other urban constructions
that much improved the quality of facilities in the little capital. Nonetheless, only a
handful of metropolitan settlers came, and a few of the troops married local women at
the end of their tour of duty and stayed behind, or took them back to Portugal. Little
was done for education of the bulk of the local population. However, several primary
schools were made available throughout the territory, and the quality of schooling
offered to the few that had access to them was good. Schools existed also for the
training of nurses and primary school teachers. By 1970 only a couple of high schools
existed, one run be the Catholic Church, another by the state. Higher education had to
be obtained in Portugal, Angola or Mozambique. Those with a religious vocation,
such as the country‟s future first President Xavier do Amaral, were sent to High
Seminaries in Macau. By early 1974, the country had only a couple of professionals
who had completed higher education, and a few dozen students undertaking studies in
Portugal. The local administration only had Timorese officials at the lower levels.
Higher personnel were all metropolitan. The Judiciary was totally Portuguese, save
for local low level clerks. The Church had some local priests, but no local Bishops or
administrators; the health services had only local paramedics. No political
representative institutions existed where locals could obtain experience in democratic
governance, since these also were also absent in Portugal.

Such was the situation in Portuguese Timor at the time I first visited it in August1973,
coming from Jakarta, where I had been residing for the last two years. As a young
man in his mid twenties, who had left his native South America, had extensive
travelling experience in the South Pacific and was grappling with the peculiarities of
life in Indonesia, a country I found most appealing for its natural beauty and its rich
local culture, I felt very well in Portuguese Timor. I had first heard about it five years
earlier in Sydney, Australia, from an adventurous South African friend who was
familiar with Mozambique and also longed to visit this Oceanic Portuguese colony.
Neither he nor myself had so far been able to get there. When I befriended the Consul

41
General of Portugal in Jakarta, Dr Lopes da Costa and his vivacious wife Maria
Cecilia, whose main function in Indonesia was to cultivate good relations with the
Suharto regime because of the Timor enclave Portugal possessed in the archipelago,
the colony again attracted my curiosity. Already, I had found the eastern part of the
Indonesian archipelago of interest, despite its greater poverty and underdevelopment
compared to the rest of the country, or -in the eyes of the Java-centered local elite- its
backwardness. For me, having been closely exposed to the South Pacific, the eastern
part of Indonesia with its predominantly Christian population and its closer cultural
proximity with the peoples of the South Pacific islands felt culturally closer. Also,
having a highly adventurous spirit at the time which drove me to places that were
remote, isolated, and not on well treaded travel routes, the lesser Sunda islands, to the
east of Bali, a place I frequently visited since I had a holiday home there, became
increasingly alluring as a new area to explore. I thus responded with great enthusiasm
when the Lopes da Costas suggested I should visit the Portuguese colony which, as
they said, was on the verge of becoming a major new tourist destination in the region
on account of Portugal‟s significant investments in infrastructure and their new policy
of fostering migration from the metropolis.

Very early on a morning in mid August 1973 I left Bali in the direction of Kupang,
the capital of the Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara Timur, NTT for short. The
feeling was one of adventure, for I was going in the opposite direction to my usual
travels out of Bali- to the east rather than to the west. Unlike the high frequency
routes served by international airlines carrying foreign tourists west, north or south of
Bali, this was a route infrequently served by small planes carrying almost exclusively
local passengers -mostly government officials, missionaries and some traders. Their
attire and their possessions reflected the material poverty of these islands. I was the
only Caucasian on board, a rare occurrence on these flights, and as such, an object of
attention by the other passengers as the plane proceeded over the extremely beautiful
chain of islands on its two and a half hour journey. With its dry climate, sparse
vegetation, extremely slow lifestyle –even compared to Bali-, obvious poverty and
isolation from contact with outsiders, its humble buildings and the lack of cleanliness
and maintenance of its roads and public places, Kupang seemed to belong to a
different world from western Indonesia. Hearing the profusion of church bells in the
morning, the impression of distance from Bali and Java became even stronger. It was
hard to believe being in the same country. It was also hard to believe being in the
same year, or even in the same decade. My strongest memory of the day I spent in
Kupang was both the interest my exotic presence produced among people unused to
seeing young Caucasians like myself, and their reaction when I explained that I was
on my way to Dili, in Portuguese Timor, on the other side of their island. For most, it
was a very alien place, which they had no concept of. In spite of being just 300
kilometres away, less than a day‟s surface journey in the dry months of the year when
the rains had not made the road impassable, the people I spoke to on my first visit to
Kupang did not relate to the Portuguese half at all. I could not help remembering the
„Iron Curtain‟ that at the time still divided Europe when thinking of the border that
divided the island between the Republic of Indonesia and the colony of Portuguese
Timor. Only the governor of NTT province, who I had the opportunity of spending
time with on my return from Dili, expressed a greater awareness of the neighbouring
territory, which he had once visited, and with which, he thought, closer citizen
contacts should be established. He was working on that, he said, fostering sports
visits. In true Indonesian nationalist fashion, showing his anti-European colonialist

42
feelings, he could hardly cover up his suspicion of and unease with the European
administration of the neighbouring colony.

My first contact with the Portuguese of Timor was at the small and run down Kupang
Airport. The airport had been an important stepping-stone for the commercial air
route between Europe and Australia until the outbreak of WWII. Now it only served
the few flights going to Bali and other NTT localities each week. A relatively recent
addition had been the occasional small planes of the local Portuguese Timor airline,
the Transportes Aéreos de Timor, with a carrying capacity of some 15 passengers,
hardly ever fully utilized. As far as the locals were concerned, the plane might have as
well come from another world. It appeared at the airport, discharged a few passengers,
took on a few, in both cases mostly westerners and local Chinese traders, and
disappeared again to the east. The company had no visible staff presence in Kupang,
nor did its passengers seem to have an impact on this isolated town. As I flew over the
rugged, beautiful, and now very dry terrain of the island during the hour-long journey
on a half-empty plane, I had a strong sense of adventure, a sense of undertaking a
journey far, far away, at least in time, if not in distance.

Dili, the picturesque little capital of Portuguese Timor immediately appealed to me. It
reminded me of Nouméa, the capital of the French colony of New Caledonia, which I
had visited on several occasions in the past. In both cases there was a latin European
colonial influence, as well as cultural elements from the Malay world, Melanesia, and
African colonies. While the New Caledonia population also had a Polynesian element
-immigrants from the French Pacific territories- in the case of Timor, there was a
noticeable Goanese Indian component. For me, Dili compared to Noumea as Portugal
did to France, that is it reflected the Portuguese metropolitan poverty as compared to
the French wealth. The setting, with its off-shore Atauro island, reminded me of
another one of my favourite Pacific spots, Papeete with the island of Moorea in Tahiti,
even if it did not match the latter‟s exuberance and unparalleled beauty. Yet, despite
its simplicity and poverty, Dili was spotlessly clean, well maintained, and orderly.
Coming from Indonesia, with its dirty and overcrowded cities, its decaying
government services, its generalized corruption, its intimidating military and civilian
authorities, and their lack of respect for the law, the Portuguese colony appeared most
attractive. I can not deny that as a Caucasian, often suspected, mistrusted and disliked
by the intensely nationalistic population in the early post-colonial years in Indonesia, I
also felt less foreign in a place where Europeans, whose language and culture were
not to different to mine, were in control.

For me, after living in Indonesia, the experience of visiting this colonial backwater,
this placid time capsule, in several ways reminiscent of Latin America, raised some
basic questions in my still very politically naïve mind. I had been educated to glorify
concepts of independence, of liberation from the colonial master, to venerate the
heroes of the 19th century independence struggles against Spain. In my years as a
student in Australia, where such sentiments were lacking, as the country had never
broken lose from the mother country but gained its independence gradually and
almost imperceptibly, I strongly felt the absence of invigorating independentist
feelings. My other travel experiences so far, besides Europe and Latin America, had
been to the US, where the culture of independence and „freedom‟ is extremely strong.
I had also been to South East Asian countries such as pragmatic Singapore, the
ambivalent Philippines, never colonized Thailand, and to Pacific Island territories.

43
The latter, with the exception of placid Western Samoa, which I visited in 1964, prior
to its third independence anniversary, were all European colonies or, like Papua and
New Guinea, Australian colonies or trusteeships. In none of them had I experienced
strong and generalized anti-colonial sentiments. Quite the opposite, where
decolonisation was proceeding, it seemed to be looked at with little interest or even
with regret by the people I had occasion to get in contact with. Indonesia had been a
different experience. The glory and virtues of independence and the evils of
colonialism in general, and the Dutch colonists, if not to say westerners in general,
were incessantly trumpeted, profoundly affecting the mindset of the people, fostering
a xenophobia I personally was often made to feel very strongly. The paradox was that
while the virtues of independence were so highly exalted, and the influence of
Europeans so strongly vituperated, Indonesia itself was regressing rather than
progressing in terms of its institutional development, democratic and good
governance practices, corruption, legality and the quality of life of the general
population. Even if it was totally politically incorrect to do so openly, some older
people would confide in me, once they felt sufficiently confident to be able to do so,
that their expectations of what independence would bring had not been met so far,
even more, some were bold enough to state that life was more secure, just, and orderly
under the Dutch. For me, these were startling revelations, which conflicted with my
automatic condemnation of colonialism and my glorification of independence. In
Indonesia, I did not wish to accept them, but contrasting the situation in that country
with the peace order and apparent contentment of the population in the small
Portuguese colony, I started to have some doubts about the infallibility of
independence.

The most salient impression I had of Portuguese Timor, was the way it was isolated.
Not only did time appear to have stood still a few decades earlier, but the sense of its
isolation from the surrounding region was striking. This is what the 19 th century
imperial world must have felt like I thought. Dependencies looked exclusively to the
metropolis, and had no linkages with their surrounds that belonged to other imperial
domains. In Portuguese Timor, despite the proximity of the Indonesian islands, so
clearly visible close by on the eastern and western horizons, there was a sense of total
isolation from the huge neighbouring republic. Nothing was known of it, except for
some stereotypes about corruption, violence, poverty and untidy crowded cities. The
general feeling was that it was very distant in many ways and best avoided, even if the
recently opened air route to Kupang prompted some of the more adventurous to travel
to Portugal or Macao via Bali, which offered cheaper airfares than the traditional
Australian gateway of Darwin. I was in a unique position in Dili. On one hand, as a
Latin American, I was culturally and linguistically quite close to the Portuguese, who
readily accepted me. My interest in the people of the region allowed me to relate to
some extent to the locals culturally assimilated to the Portuguese. The fact that I
resided in Jakarta, was well-connected there and spoke fluent Bahasa Indonesia,
earned me the acceptance of the Indonesian Consul, despite his quite obvious
prejudices against westerners. From the comments I heard from both sides, I was
struck by the level of suspicion existing between the Indonesian mission personnel
and the local authorities. I recall an Indonesian national day reception, on August 17 th,
to which I was invited. The guests were mostly Indonesians. The Portuguese
Governor accompanied by one of his staff being the only local authorities briefly
present, evidently having only come to satisfy the protocol requirements. The other
important impression from my ten days or so spent there at the time was the striking

44
gap in life style and education levels between the Portuguese, the assimilated mixed
race locals, and the autochthonous population. Not that the former lived lives of
affluence and luxury, or that they were highly sophisticated. Their lifestyles were very
simple and modest. It was rather that the native population was extremely basic and
poor, appearing far, far, removed from the world of the Portuguese and the
assimilated ones, living a very basic and static subsistence life that seemed not to have
changed with time on the fringes of the colonial society. Clearly, the concerns of the
modern world, and issues of self-determination and decolonisation, were totally
remote from these people, busy as they were, trying to subsist by their unchanged
traditional means in this poor environment. It seemed that the colonial order was
destined to last for a long time, at least as far as local challenges were concerned.
Being inexperienced and naïve, I omitted looking at the perilous situation of the
Estado Novo in Portugal itself.

Like elsewhere in South East Asia, a trading community of Chinese dominated the
economy of the colony. They bought the produce of the country, mainly coffee, and
exported it, in turn importing and distributing food and consumer goods. As a
community, they were isolated, and basically lived in social enclaves, even if some
miscegenation did take place. Looking at the stunningly beautiful textiles that the
people of Timor produce, and given that I was at the time involved in a very
successful development project in Indonesia that used local traditional textile
decorating skills to create a product aimed at luxury international markets, I felt that
something similar could be done with the textile skills of Timor. Improving traditional
production and design techniques to satisfy an international market could create
employment opportunities and contribute to economic development. Faced with the
difficulties of operating in the legally ambiguous Indonesian environment, I also
welcomed the possibility of branching out into what seemed a more stable and legally
secure environment. My first step was to seek permission from the local authorities to
set up such a textile production activity. In contrast to what I had become used to
experience in Indonesia, permission was immediately and unequivocally granted by
the Portuguese Governor. My next step was to purchase a property to set up a base.
My choice fell on a beautiful beginning-of- the-century colonial building, the oldest
private building in Dili. I finalized the acquisition of it in January1974, during my
second visit to East Timor, which proved also to be my last one to the territory during
colonial times. Again, in contrast to Jakarta, there were no legal problems, and as a
foreigner, I had no restrictions on owning property. My next thoughts went to the
possibility of investing in a hotel, encouraged by the locally much-publicized plans
announced by the Thai airline, which had played a pioneering role in opening Bali to
tourism, to start flying to Portuguese Timor.

But unexpectedly, at least for those of us so far away from Portugal, the Estado Novo
came to an abrupt end on 24 April 1974, when young left-leaning military officers
staged a coup d‟état in Lisbon with the aim of changing the government‟s ruinous and
fruitless African colonial policies. Reflecting the views of a majority of the country‟s
population, the officers wanted Portugal to stop resisting the reality of the times, and
de-colonize the territories that were demanding it, that is, the African colonies. The
previous colonial policy was swiftly changed, and eventually a decolonisation
timetable was also drawn up for the remote and half forgotten colony in Timor. With
the dictatorial authorities replaced by more democratic ones, space was created in
Portuguese Timor for an exchange of views on the future of the territory. The minute

45
local intelligentsia started to divide along two positions: one, represented by the
wealthier, mixed-race class, politically conservative and culturally closer to Portugal,
sought to retain constitutional links with the metropolis; the other, also led by mostly
mixed-race (but not primarily part-European) young men, influenced by the leftist
liberation wars in Africa and the previous underground political opposition to the
dictatorship in Portugal, exhibiting a stronger sympathy towards local Timorese
cultural values and identity, was in favour of speedy independence, along African
models. The first group gathered around the UDT party, and the second formed
ASDT, later renamed Fretilin. Fretilin would thus be perceived outside as a true
opponent of anti-European colonialism. UDT was not able to project that image and
consequently had little sympathy among the international supporters of European
decolonisation, yet did maintain some support in Portugal. The personalities in UDT
were furthermore not outstanding in terms of their vision for the future, their level of
education, or their political maturity. In contrast, ASDT/Fretilin had a few people of
greater quality who were to play an important role in the future of the land. Among
the main ones of these were Xavier do Amaral, who eventually became the first
President of the short-lived first Democratic Republic of Timor Leste (RDTL), the
first Resistance Commander and Second RDTL President, Nicolau Lobato -who died
in battle in 1978- and the future first and second RDTL Foreign Minister José Ramos-
Horta, who eventually became a world celebrity as well. But in 1974, given the
previous suppression of political activity and the exclusion of the local population
from the governing process, except at a very low traditional level, the young
politicians had no political experience, nor any role models to refer to other than
radical left-wing foreign anti-colonial and revolutionary leaders. In the absence of a
tradition of free expression of political views or of political activity, it was not long
before the two groups violently clashed. The consequences were disastrous, turning
the territory into an international issue of failed decolonisation for the next quarter of
a century.

Indonesia greeted the change of regime in Portugal and its decolonisation policy with
great concern. The rightist military rulers in Jakarta dreaded the demonstration effect
a new independent leftist and possibly democratic mini-state in its midst would have
on the eastern, predominantly Christian, ethnic groups, whose loyalty and
commitment to the Moslem and Javanese dominated Indonesian Unitary Republic had
always been questionable. Unable to come to an arrangement with Lisbon to prevent
the emergence of an independent East Timorese state that Jakarta could not control,
since Portugal was experiencing a very unstable succession of leftist democratic
governments, Indonesia took its own steps to thwart the emergence of an independent
micro-state in East Timor. The first step in this direction aimed to obtain Western
support against such a development by exploiting the Cold War conflict that was
dominant in the world at the time. This was achieved by portraying the East Timorese
independence advocates, and their Portuguese supporters, as pro-communist. The
claim that a new Cuba was in the making, with the support of Vietnam and China,
sufficed to get Australia and the US to work against the emergence of an independent
East Timor, in violation of the principle of self-determination, by then, in 1975, so
highly enshrined at the UN. The second step in the Indonesian strategy (Operasi
Komodo) was to exacerbate discord among the leading East Timorese political
groupings. UDT was co-opted, and encouraged to prevent the “communist” Fretilin
from gaining further popular support. The third measure was to promote the fiction
that a significant pro-Indonesian integration faction also existed among the East

46
Timorese, and to support the establishment of the pro-integration APODETI party.
The last step was covert military infiltration, leading to an open invasion.

In Jakarta, with its tightly controlled information media, the developments in

Portuguese Timor were reported in a highly slanted way. During the remainder of
1974 and throughout 1975, the Indonesian media was made to disseminate the image
of a continuously worsening situation in the Portuguese territory, allegedly brought
about by “communist” instigated subversion and violence, posing an increasing threat
to Indonesia‟s security. The orchestrated media campaign was closely in step with the
destabilizing actions of Operasi Komodo. During the early months of these
developments I was unable to visit Dili due to other priorities, and when I finally had
the time to do so, I was discouraged from doing it by the –unjustified as it eventually
became clear- image of chaos reigning in the territory. Furthermore, as a Jakarta
resident, I was advised against attracting the attention of the paranoid Indonesian
military by travelling to Dili, since they were closely monitoring developments in the
territory. As a result, I was unable to personally experience the last phase of the
history of the colony, relying for information of the developments taking place during
this intensely effervescent and eventually tragic period only on sparse
communications from people I knew there.

Failed decolonisation: end of Portuguese rule, stillborn first

Democratic Republic of Timor Leste
With Indonesian encouragement, UDT staged a coup on 11 August 1975, effectively
immobilizing the already ineffective Portuguese colonial administration, which fled to
the island of Atauro. This use of violence engendered a violent response with Fretilin
launching a counter-coup on the 20th of the same month. Big atrocities were
committed as a strategy of total elimination of all opponents was put in place. The
impotent Portuguese colonial authorities, prevented from intervening to restore order
by instructions from Lisbon, just stood by in Atauro island, while massacres took
place on the main island. Jose Ramos-Horta of Fretilin went twice to Atauro to ask the
Portuguese Governor to return to Dili and continue with the decolonization process.
The Governor refused, saying that the problem was military and not political.
Thousands fled the territory, partly to Australia as well as to Portugal, and partly to
West Timor. Aware of Indonesia‟s military infiltration and its intention to launch a
full-scale invasion, Portugal‟s impotence to protect the territory it had not properly
decolonised, and Australia‟s unwillingness to intervene and thwart the plans of
Indonesia -its feared big neighbour- the Fretilin leadership, showing their naïve
understanding of international politics, unilaterally declared the independence of the
first Democratic Republic of East Timor, or RDTL from its Portuguese name, on 28
November 1975. Their expectation was that, given the then current strong
international support for self-determination and independent statehood for colonial
European dependencies, the sovereignty of an independent East Timor would be
guaranteed by the international community. In other words it was assumed that by
obtaining negative sovereignty East Timor would be protected by the international
community like so many a new post colonial quasi-state. It wasn‟t, and it took most
of the surprised Fretilin leaders who managed to escape alive, some time to
understand why the East Timor decolonisation case was being treated differently, and
its sovereignty was not underwritten by the international community. The fact was
that the rules of the game were different when applied to the struggle against a non-

47
European imperial power like Indonesia. If it wanted its sovereignty recognized, the
RDTL was required to successfully defend it, that is, it had to prove a capability of
positive sovereignty. This it was unable to do, so its independence was suppressed for
over 26 years, until the international community changed its position and granted it
negative sovereignty in 2002.

With a captive refugee population under its control, and using coercive measures such
as theft of personal possessions and withholding food supplies, Indonesia extracted a
„Petition of Integration‟ from its captives, allegedly composed by the East Timorese
refugees and signed by their UDT and APODETI leaders at the border town of
Balibo, but in fact manufactured by Indonesian military intelligence operatives and
signed in Bali. With this, the way was clear to launch an apparently legitimate
intervention in East Timor. The invasion happened on 7 December 1975, the day
after President Suharto secured agreement from his guests in Jakarta US President
Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Of the leaders of the new
republic, whose life span had been a mere 9 days before being extinguished by
Indonesia, only three escaped alive, having sent on support-seeking missions overseas
a couple of days before the Indonesian invasion. One was Foreign Minister José
Ramos Horta, and the others, Minister of State for Political Affairs Mari Alkatiri and
Minister of Defence Rogerio Tiago Lobato. Horta would make history in coming
decades. Alkatiri, had to wait almost three decades to have an impact on history as the
first Prime Minister of the second Democratic Republic of Timor Leste, and Lobato,
whose life was almost devastated by several years spent in an Angolan jail for alleged
diamond smuggling, made his comeback as Interior Minister of Timor Leste in 2002.

Living in Indonesia, with its tight control on the flow of information, I started to
realize the value of a free media. The true magnitude of the Indonesian-created
tragedy unfolding in East Timor was simply not portrayed in the Indonesian media. It
was also an interesting way to see in practice how popular perceptions about an
important historic event are shaped by information disseminated through the media.
Contrasting the Indonesian public‟s perception of the problem in East Timor with the
perception of the pubic outside the country, in neighbouring Australia for example,
was a very disturbing experience. The Indonesian perception blamed Portuguese
colonialism and communist subversion for a conflict which, the valiant Indonesian
military was fortunately able to solve by assisting the Timorese after their request for
help. Indonesia had thus liberated them from centuries of vicious colonialist
oppression, reuniting them with their brothers and sisters of the greater Indonesian
family. I, personally could not quite accept that version, which conflicted with my
own experience, and the sparse information I had occasionally received from Dili
until November 1975, complemented by the infrequent reports in the international
media, for which the issue was not one of major importance. But, I must confess, the
constant exposure to the Indonesian version in Jakarta did influence me to some
extent. I was therefore quite astonished when I visited Australia in early 1976 and was
exposed to the intense public outrage against Indonesia for what had taken place in
East Timor over the last few months. A little familiarization with the local media
reports in Australia, bringing first hand accounts by fleeing eye witnesses of the
horrors of the Indonesian military‟s actions until the full-scale invasion on 7
December, sufficed to make me realize just how grossly distorted the picture we were
provided in Jakarta was, and how inaccurate our perceptions of the problem were. It
was a good lesson on how people‟s perceptions are shaped and manipulated by the

48
information media, affecting whole societies, especially where there is no freedom of
information. The realisation about the extent of the East Timor tragedy prompted me
to take a closer look at the situation, and led me to try to use my resources in Jakarta
to attempt to directly pry into the post-invasion situation in the troubled territory,
especially now that it had been hermetically closed to any information flows to or
from the outside world by the occupying authorities. I kept contact with some of the
Timorese in Jakarta, including some of the collaborators with Indonesia, Church
personnel and a few of those who managed to bribe their way out of Timor and were
waiting in the capital for the lengthy procedure to get out of Indonesia. The lack of
power or influence of those Timorese that the Indonesians were showing off as
allegedly being in positions of authority was grotesque. Governors and Vice
Governors could give me no concrete answer about the status of my property. All they
did was to parrot Indonesian propaganda slogans, becoming visibly uncomfortable
when questions beyond the trivial were asked. Thinking that pursuing my planned
textile project could be a useful undertaking for the war-torn economy of the territory,
I tried to obtain permits to do so. It soon became obvious that it would be hopeless.
No one among the civilians had any authority to make decisions, and the military
were not interested in any economic activities other than those carried out by the
civilian protégées of the Generals in partnership with the latter. The right to exploit
Timor was a privilege of the conquering military leaders.

Timor Timur
Indonesia‟s violent invasion of East Timor has been widely documented, as have the
multiple and recurrent serious human rights violations that took place during the
almost quarter of a century of its occupation of the territory. I do not need to dwell on
the subject here. I will instead focus on my personal experiences in connection with
this event while I lived in Indonesia, as well as my progressively increasing support
for the international dimension of the resistance, after I left Jakarta. I will also not
give much attention in this book to the internal efforts in East Timor against
Indonesia, because my focus is primarily on the international aspect of the struggle
against Indonesia, which in my assessment was the most decisive factor in the
achievement of success. The fact that I ended up playing a not insignificant role in
these international efforts brings me closer to this aspect of the struggle, even if my
involvement did allow me contact and information transfer with some of the
protagonists of the internal resistance over a long period of time as well. During those
years of isolation of East Timor from the outside world we received information about
what was happening in the territory from contacts we had there. However, while the
general trends and many incidents were clear, the veracity of some of the details was
hard to verify due to the obstacles to the flow of information in place. There seems,
however, to have existed a tendency then, as it often does now, to misrepresent some
events.

My induction
Since I owned a property in East Timor, had liked the place, and had known a number
of people there, about whose fate I was concerned, I maintained a special interest to
find out what little information was available about the developments in Timor Timur
during the first phase of the annexation. As Honorary Consul of my country in
Jakarta, I had good access to the diplomatic circuits, and through to my business links,
I had a good social access to the ruling elite. But little information was available.
ABRI kept its secrets very tightly. Only through the prominent East Timorese

49
collaborators with Indonesia, who I made a point of befriending, could the barest
impression be gained, contrary to public official statements, that the resistance was
not totally crushed and that there was hardship being experienced as a result of the
military actions. Nonetheless these pro-Indonesia East Timorese did their best to play
this reality down, attempting to further ingratiate themselves with their new masters.
From the typically evasive replies I received about my property rights in Dili, I soon
realized that, as had been the case with Dutch assets in Indonesia, a foreigner‟s
belongings in the new Timor Timur province, however legal the acquisition may have
been at the time, would become most uncertain. The multiple examples of such
illegally occupied, and de facto expropriated, properties in Indonesia, particularly the
elegant colonial buildings which seemed to have been the favourites of the Indonesian
military to take over, did not augur well for my being able to retain my Dili house. As
it happened, no clear resolution of property rights for cases such as mine in Timor
Timur was ever forthcoming during the 24 years of Indonesian occupation. In my
case, I protected the house by first letting the Catholic Bishop, whose residence was
next to it, use it to house Cape Verdian refugees awaiting their exit permits to Africa,
a process which took years. Later on, it became the headquarters of the International
Red Cross until its destruction together with the Bishop‟s house in the aftermath of
the UN-held referendum in September 1999. As it soon became obvious that my
planned textile project could not go ahead under the existing conditions, I decided to
set it up, at least initially, in neighbouring NTT province whose textile traditions were
also outstanding. This proved to be a useful move, because it allowed me access to
NTT during following years, which had been closed to foreigners as a means to
contain the outward flow of information about the protracted Timor Timur war.

Throughout this difficult period the few Catholic Church personnel from East Timor
that were able to travel to Jakarta were also valuable sources of information. Some
Spanish speaking religious sisters, in the intimacy created by our shared language,
confided in me about the extent of the atrocities taking place in the territory awakened
a sense of indignation and compassion in me. As time progressed, and the confidential
reports of human rights violations by visiting Church members intensified, at the
same time that official sources denied any wrong doings and claimed that the situation
was rapidly improving, a claim increasingly echoed by Jakarta based diplomats and
their governments, my indignation with the situation and such hypocrisy increased as
did my compassion for the people of East Timor. I started to provide assistance, both
financially and by passing on information about human rights violations to the
outside. The time I devoted to the NTT project, and the frequency of my trips there
increased. In Kupang I became good friends with the new NTT Governor Col. Dr
Aloysius Ben M‟Boi and his wife Dr Nafsiah, both very decent and committed
people, who genuinely tried to foster the development of their province. Having been
one of the promoters of the peaceful integration of Portuguese Timor into Indonesia a
decade earlier, the Governor had a close interest in the territory. His disagreement
with the violent and oppressive methods of his military colleagues in Timor Timur
was very thinly disguised. His home in Kupang, where he even sheltered some East
Timorese victims of the war, was indeed a very interesting listening post to what was
happening on the other side of the island. No wonder ABRI wanted to keep
foreigners out of West Timor! As a publicly known friend of the Governor and his
wife, as someone developing a project that promised some benefits for the depressed
local economy, or at least for themselves as some government officials thought, and
someone who had been seen in photographs with President Suharto and his wife, I

50
was very welcome in NTT. On the few occasions that military personnel tried to
prevent me from travelling to Kupang, my local friends intervened and removed the
obstacles. I travelled form Jakarta to NTT more than a dozen times between 1976 and
1980.

My involvement with the issue also had an important and unforeseen additional
consequence for me. In 1978, a Goanese Priest working in East Timor introduced me
to María do Céu, a 21 year old African-Timorese girl of who clearly reflected the
trauma produced by the violence she had lived through in recent years. She was one
of the members of a group of three young East Timorese students, the first sent on
Indonesian scholarships to study in Jakarta. I was particularly impressed by her
exceptional intelligence and education. It was only later that I discovered the reason
why she stood out so much among her peers. Her father had been an independence
activist in Portuguese Africa, banished to Portuguese Timor by the Estado Novo. He
was a man of letters, of high intellectual achievements, and personal courage, who
had worked as a journalist for French-speaking media. His opposition to Portuguese
colonialism in Africa earned him banishment to Atauro Island, the isolated spot off
Timor, from where he was forbidden to travel to the mainland by government
transport facilities, let alone to leave the colony. I could hardly imagine a more
effective means of isolating a troublesome political opponent! But this outstanding
man found ways to circumvent the ban to leave Atauro. After all, the decree only
referred to the use of “government vessels” saying nothing about him using his own.
As a result, the enterprising and soon fairly prosperous Don Mário Lopes da Silva, as
he was called, frequently travelled to Dili on the flimsy boats he had constructed for
himself, to be a thorn in the flesh of the local colonial authorities, whom he
vociferously criticised, exposing their corruption, incompetence and paternalism.

He lavished attentions on his daughter, and passed on his wide knowledge and in
particular, his political acumen to her. No wonder she stood out among the rest of her
peers whose family background only reflected the poor backward and isolated local
milieu of Portuguese Timor. Feeling attracted to her, and in particular, conscious of
the tragedy she had lived through, and the need to provide her opportunities for
personal growth and development, so her gifts could blossom, I decided to help her. I
soon realised that the best way to do so would be by marrying her. She seemed a very
suitable candidate for me, still single at the time. Soon afterwards, I proposed to her.
Not being ready for it, the proposal confused her. Our worlds were different, we
moved in different social milieux in Jakarta, I was 10 years her senior, and she had
just come out of a very traumatic upheaval in her life. I understood, but committed
myself to wait for her until she would be ready to make such and important decision.

The hermetic closure of Timor Timur endured for as long as the Indonesian army
needed to keep away witnesses that could attest to the horrendous repression and
persecutions it conducted in its attempt to crush the people‟s resistance. With the truth
covered up, the Indonesian government, aided by East Timorese collaborators, mostly
members of the former UDT and Apodeti groups, tried to promote an international
image of peace, development and enthusiastic acceptance of the new situation by the
local population. The main objective was the elimination of The Question of East
Timor from the agenda of the UN General Assembly and bodies such as the
Decolonisation Committee, where despite a lack of commitment to really do
something effective against Indonesia‟s occupation, the matter was still considered to

51
require examination, for reasons of formality and appearance. For 13 years the
province was cut off from the outside world, since both Indonesian outsiders as well
as locals required military permission to enter or leave Timor Timur. For foreigners,
unless in the service of the Indonesian state in a strategic function or as diplomatic
visitors that were expected to foster the publicity aims of the occupier, access was
well-nigh impossible. Thanks to my good connections in Jakarta, the fact that I had
raised no suspicion of being against the occupation, plus the credentials gained
through my textile development work in NTT province, I was able to obtain a three-
months permit to visit in late 1979. Notwithstanding the process involved many
tedious confidence-building meetings with military officials, culminating in the
payment of the unavoidable bribes, before the piece of paper that would allow the
national airline to sell a ticket to me could eventually be issued. One of the items on
my agenda was to personally meet my future father in law, and to ask for his daughter
in marriage. It was an impressive meeting, even if the circumstances did show
evidence of the suffering and dislocation he and the people of the territory had
experienced during those past 5 years of occupation. The reality of Dili was in fact
shocking. No family had been spared disruption and bereavement. Poverty was
generalised and extreme under conditions of widespread economic destruction. The
military was oppressive, arbitrary and corrupt. There was no semblance of any effort
at reconstruction of governing institutions, physical or economic reconstruction. Any
illusions I may have had of starting my delayed textile project were shelved, despite
the obvious great benefit it would have provided. I would have just fallen prey to the
corruption and extortion of the military. The hypocrisy of the members of the
international community, who were willing to promote the Indonesian propaganda
that the local people were happy with the economic development provided by
Indonesia, after centuries of Portuguese colonial neglect and exploitation, became
even more difficult for me to take after having seen the stark reality of Timor Timur.
It made me increase my resolve to assist to reverse this injustice, and especially after
my marriage with Céu, we intensified our activities of providing information on the
Timor Timur situation to the outside world. In those days of no email, messages went
either by fax or had to be carried out in person. Working partly in Singapore and in
Jakarta, I regularly travelled between both cities, carrying documentation to send out
through the well-functioning postal services of the highly civilised Island state. To
this day when I travel in the region I can recall the feeling of anxiety that
accompanied every departure from Jakarta, in case an inspection would reveal the
materials I was carrying, and the feeling of elation when the aircraft was finally in the
air.

The wait for María do Céu turned out to last five years. She had to leave Jakarta and
return to her island to take care of her ailing father. Soon afterwards, the Indonesian
military began dumping in Atauro hundreds, eventually a few thousand, villagers
from the mainland, suspected of sympathising with the Timorese resistance.
Boatloads of men, women and children were transported across, with virtually no
facilities being built to house them, or supplies provided to feed them. It was Céu‟s
family, the wealthiest on the island, which had to provide shelter and food for the
growing number of people that arrived. Soon she was totally absorbed with the duties
of caring for the welfare of these miserable people, as no outside aid workers were
allowed to work on the island by ABRI. Only a medical doctor of the International
Red Cross was allowed one day visits from time to time, and the Catholic Church
eventually was permitted to send food relief. Céu was put in charge of administering

52
it. Clearly, I could not expect her to leave for Jakarta to marry me abandoning those
who needed her so much. So I waited, having also begun thinking of leaving
Indonesia for good. First I went to Chile for an extended stay of several months.
Having promised to marry her, and realising the disappointment she would feel if I
did not keep my commitment, and also that it would be most unlikely for her to be
able without assistance to leave the poor environment in which she was trapped,
which I could only provide if I was nearby, I turned down an offer for a position in
Rio de Janeiro and returned to work in Singapore and Jakarta. Many months later I
heard that Céu‟s father had passed away, and coincidentally at the same time the
prisoner camps were being closed down and their inmates removed to the mainland. I
managed to get a message to her to join me in Jakarta, ticket included.

Resourceful and ingenious as she was, she managed to obtain an exit permit to travel,
and we met in Jakarta, agreeing to marry. For an East Timorese girl getting properly
married required parental approval and an important public Church ceremony. Céu
would need to return to Dili and inform her mother of these plans and seek the
mother‟s blessing for these plans. The problem was that there existed a great risk that
if her plans to marry a foreigner in Jakarta would reach the ears of the Indonesian
military occupying authorities in Timor Timur, they could block her departure from
the territory. So, we secretly married in a civil ceremony in Jakarta before her return
to Dili, so that in case there were any impediments to her subsequent departure from
Timor Timur, I could protest in Jakarta, since she was already legally my spouse. But
she was able to leave Dili again, even if many questions were asked why she was
travelling so much, but as was usual with the rather gullible ABRI personnel, it was
not too difficult for a fast-witted East Timorese to find suitable answers to satisfy the
questioners. We married in Church in Jakarta in March 1983, in a ceremony that
some, like the Vatican Pro-Nuncio, found politically difficult to show their support
for! We remained in Jakarta, continuing with our work of getting information about
the Timor Timur situation out to our foreign contacts, until the birth of our first
daughter, María Angelica in 1984.

The years of isolation

By mid 1976 Indonesia had completed the charade of legitimising its invasion. First it
pretended to hold a form of popular pronouncement in favour of integration with
Indonesia by a fictitious local assembly of appointed East Timorese. Then the
Indonesian parliament agreed to receive a Petition of Integration from so-called
members of this assembly, proceeding to declare Timor Timur its 27th province on 17
July 1976. Opposition to Indonesia‟s brutal treatment of the occupied population was
evident since day one of the invasion. The civilians that could flee to the mountains
with the armed forces of Timor Leste did so. Many of the remaining ones paid with
their lives at the hands of the soldiers, who saw the entire population as an enemy that
had to be exterminated. “A new field must be cleared of snakes, old and young”…
once an Indonesian soldier commented to me, revealing that the Indonesian troops
had been indoctrinated into considering the whole population as a dangerous,
„communist‟ enemy that needed to be eradicated. Under a Fretilin leadership, the
civilian population organized itself in the mountains and managed to hold out for
months. However, the difficulties of life under such conditions forced surrenders,
which by 1978-79 were massive. The treatment received by the returnees from the
Indonesians was atrocious, and large numbers died. Infighting among the resistance
also proved costly in terms of human lives. Horrendous crimes and human rights

53
violations took place among the East Timorese. Little documentation of this tragedy is
available, even if accusations about it surfaced form time to time among East
Timorese diáspora members.

During the years 1976-78 the strong resistance by East Timorese guerillas against the
military might of Indonesia continued. Initially the armed resistance had been carried
out under the name of the Fretilin party. Then, in 1989, to appeal to all sectors of the
population, they were renamed Forças Armadas de Libertação Nacional de Timor
Leste (Falintil) or National Liberation Armed Forces of East Timor, by their
Commander Xanana Gusmão. Initially the armed resistance had some well-trained
personnel who had served under the Portuguese military. Having taken over the
Portuguese arsenal, they were also reasonably well equipped. The initial expectation
of some Indonesian military leaders that the territory would be taken in one day
(“breakfast in Dili, lunch in Baucau and dinner in Los Palos”) did not quite
materialize. The Falintil resistance did engage a significant Indonesian military effort
for several years, with troop numbers exceeding 35,000 at times. US and other foreign
equipment and expert support were also provided to Jakarta. But the conditions of the
war being so unequal did put time –even if it took long- in Indonesia‟s favour. The
East Timorese were totally isolated, had no reinforcements other than those from their
own militarily untrained population, had no outside supplies other than the small
amounts of money provided by supporters from overseas, used partly to buy arms and
ammunitions from corrupt Indonesian troops. A major turning point in the war came
with the death of the first Resistance Commander, Nicolau Lobato, at an ambush by
Indonesian troops in December 1978. Contrary to Indonesian expectations, this did
not break the armed resistance; it grew stronger under the new leader Commander
Xanana Gusmão who was in turn captured at a clandestine hideout in Dili in
November 1992. Yet despite the difficulties faced by Falintil, the high motivation of
the resistance, fighting to save their lives and country, and the low motivation of the
demoralized invaders -hated by the population- and who in many cases did not
understand the reason for this war, enabled the resistance never to be fully crushed,
even if it did fragment. Remnants of various fragments remained active until the time
Indonesia withdrew in 1999. By then they were greatly weakened and almost
inoperative, even if they remained strongly politicised. It can therefore be said that
the East Timorese did try, to the end, to defend their sovereignty. In terms of the
terminology used earlier, there was an attempt to show positive sovereignty, even if,
pitted against the formidable opponent and lacking international support, they were
unable to assert it through military victory.

To the chagrin of the Indonesian authorities, news of the appalling reality on the
ground did filter to the outside world despite the sealing off of the province. The
personnel of the Catholic Church, the only East Timorese institution that survived the
occupation almost intact, did transmit news of the ongoing suffering of the people to
the outside world, as well as the calamitous health and food situation, the corruption
and oppression of the Indonesian civilian authorities, the brutality of the military, the
lack of respect for law and the wide ranging corruption that characterized Timor
Timur. The battered East Timorese resistance also did its best to feed important
information during the 1980s to a world that did not wish to know. Few visits to
Timor Timur by international observers in the late 1970s and 1980s can be mentioned.
A few official propaganda events took place in the first few years of occupation.
Visitors were not allowed to see anything other than officially arranged exhibitions

54
showing how “happily the East Timorese were enjoying the development brought by
Indonesia after being liberated from Portuguese colonialism”. One visit of
importance worth mentioning was the much-publicized Australian parliamentary
delegation in mid -1983. It claimed to have been extensive and comprehensive.
Nonetheless, it never made contact with the East Timorese Resistance, despite a life-
risking effort by some Falintil members to convey an invitation by Falintil
Commander Xanana Gusmão for talks. The official conclusion from the mission -
except for one dissenting report- was that all was well in Timor Timur. The fact that
the Catholic Bishop had only a few months earlier published a letter in a major
Australian newspaper denouncing the cruelty of the Indonesian military, the massacre
of over 500 people by ABRI and the fact that due to bad management thousands of
people were dying of hunger, was ignored. A report followed, stating that half of East
Timor's population faced serious food shortages. The letter shocked the Australian
public, prompting its Prime Minister to deny the veracity of the reports, after
“inspecting the true reality”. Australia was in fact preparing the way to recognize the
annexation of East Timor, as a first step in getting access to the offshore oil and gas
resources in the Timor Sea.

During the remainder of the decade, the situation in Timor Timur continued
unchanged. Increasingly impatient at its inability to crush Falintil, the Indonesian
military stepped up its retaliation against the civilian population. The Catholic
Church, now headed by a new Apostolic Administrator directly responsible to the
Pope in view of the legally undefined status of the territory, the young Timorese
Bishop Carlos Filipe Belo, increasingly criticized the military brutality. By February
1989 Bishop Belo was writing to the UN Secretary General to intervene, since the
East Timorese “were dying as a nation and as a people”. The criticism produced
indignation and threats from the military, who, nonetheless had to carefully take into
account the strong support the people expressed for the Church and their Bishop. This
forced ABRI to limit the strength of their response against him. By this time over
70% of the East Timorese population had joined the Church. The reasons were
several, and not always determined by a true doctrinal belief or faith. Under
Indonesian law every citizen was required to register as a member of one of five
officially recognised faiths, one of which was Catholicism. A person not declaring
allegiance to one of the recognised faiths was exposed to the danger of being
officially considered a „communist‟, which was tantamount to being an enemy that
had to be eliminated. Also the Church was a relatively strong institution able to
extend protection and provide welfare assistance, and Catholic rituals are very
attractive and not incompatible with traditional East Timorese practices. Since the
Indonesian occupiers were mostly Moslems, and East Timorese joining the Catholic
Church was also making a statement of opposition to the occupation. To what extent
the adhesion to the Church actually implied an understanding or practice of Catholic
precepts is a different question. The conduct of many of these Catholics in their
private lives or in the main public events in following years would lead one to
question the depth of this religious affiliation. But, the numbers of its followers did
give the Church a measure of power vis à vis the Indonesian military.

The opening
By late 1989 Indonesia believed it had finally asserted its control over the East
Timorese. The former Governor of Timor Timur Mario Carrascalão personally said to
me in Dili in August 2003 that if a referendum on staying with Indonesia had been

55
held in 1989 or 1990, Indonesia would have won. Feeling confident about its success
in Timor Timur at the time, Jakarta was willing to heed the advice of its Governor to
allow the main barriers to the flow of people to and from the province to be removed
in October 1989. Being no longer hermetically isolated, traffic of people and of news
to the outside world became easier. This led to events that profoundly changed the
situation, leading to the eventual end of Indonesian rule a decade later.

The first important visitor was Pope John Paul II, who took a very ambiguous position
regarding East Timorese self-determination. His first act upon arriving in Dili in late
1989 proved very disappointing. Coming from Indonesia, he avoided kissing the
ground on arrival in Dili as the Timorese hoped he would, to signal the non-
recognition of East Timor as a legitimate part of Indonesia. It was the much-travelled
Pontiff‟s entrenched custom to kiss the ground every time he first arrived in a new
country. His gesture in Dili seemed to indicate that he did not consider himself in a
different state to Indonesia. Young, Indonesian-educated East Timorese, encouraged
by Xanana Gusmão, used the occasion of the visit to express their opposition to the
occupation, staging a daring demonstration witnessed by the Pope. As they habitually
did, the Indonesian military brutally repressed it, except that this time it happened in
full view of the international media covering the event. Journalists were even able to
capture on film the Indonesian Armed Forces Commander giving orders to his
personnel to attack the demonstrators. The coverage did have some international
media impact, despite being officially hushed up. The brief reports of the witnessed
violence alerted those interested abroad about the troubled Timor Timur reality under
an apparently calm surface. It only served to instigate a stronger desire into the East
Timorese youth to expose to the insensitive and non-caring world the extent of the
plight suffered by their people. A second international visit soon afterwards that gave
an opportunity for protests was that of US Ambassador John Monjo in January 1990,
which my family and I happened to personally witness since we were holidaying in
Dili, from neighbouring Darwin in Australia to where we had recently moved, making
use of the recent opening of Timor Timur. The peaceful demonstration by some 100
brave students in front of Monjo‟s Hotel Turismo was violently broken up by army
and police in full riot protection gear. We saw two badly beaten boys, apparently
lifeless, being thrown into a military truck. The International Red Cross Head
Quarters, located in my property next door were invaded by troops in pursuit of
demonstrators seeking to escape military brutality, in breach of the ICRC‟s
inviolability. The US Ambassador “saw nothing, reported nothing”. No apologies
were given to the ICRC. Affidavits by eyewitnesses deposed a few days later in
Darwin, were given no credence. The Indonesian Consul General in that city, a
position always held by intelligence officers rather than diplomats, did his best to
discredit the witnesses, in which the sycophantic local authorities assisted him. The
situation in Timor Timur “was normal, and the local people were very happy with the
development brought by Indonesia after centuries of Portuguese neglect” was the
official line. For us the incident was yet another confirmation of the grim reality in
Timor Timur. For my youngest daughter, two-year old Grace Mary, the event left a
traumatic legacy that expressed itself in a deep aversion to East Timor in future years.
Our stay was long enough to confirm to us the terrible damage that had been inflicted
on the local people by the occupier in the last 15 years, and that there had been no
improvement towards better relations and understanding between the oppressor and
the oppressed since my last visit a decade earlier. The people were traumatized, no
family seemed to have been spared losing members to violence. Poverty had

56
increased, what little economic activity existed was in the hands of Chinese in
collusion with the Indonesian military, most educated people had either died or had
left, the quality of government services continued to deteriorate, and in particular,
education standards were very poor. The local population was clearly marginalized
from government and professional activities. Most alarming for the future prospects
of this society, a general decay of standards of legality and of decent behaviour was
prevalent. Fear and hopelessness were almost universal among the Timorese people.
Our obligations to family and to our contacts fulfilled, I was keen to leave the
wretched place as soon as possible.

The event that opened the eyes of those in the world who cared to know about the real
situation in East Timor was the massacre at Santa Cruz Cemetery, Dili, on 12
November 1991. It happened in the wake of the cancellation of a Portuguese
parliamentary mission to Timor Timur. The mission‟s unpublicised aim was to secure
a favourable report on the conditions in the territory, in order to get the Portuguese
Parliament to remove a Constitutional Transitional Provision that committed Portugal
to continue promoting the right of self-determination and independence of the people
of East Timor. A positive report would clear the way for Portugal to accept the
integration of the territory into Indonesia, and honourably close the book on the issue
of its former Timor colony. Indonesia was understandably very cooperative, but
panicked at the inclusion of a journalist who knew the territory well and was a
staunch opponent of the occupation. The resulting impasse led to the cancellation of
the visit. The fact was deeply regretted by the active East Timorese youth, under the
guidance of Xanana Gusmão, who had expected it to provide an opportunity to gain
the attention of the world and expose the terrible conditions that the people had to
endure. The funeral procession on 12 November of a youth murdered by the
Indonesian military provided an occasion for a protest against the brutality of the
occupation. The military response to this act of defiance was the massacre in cold
blood of some 570 youths trapped inside the Santa Cruz cemetery. Indonesian denials
that anything had taken place, successful so many times in the case of other massacres
in isolated locations in the past, did not work this time. There happened to be a few
foreign media people visiting Dili at the time, who had initially come to cover the
Portuguese visit. The most important documentation of the tragedy was recorded on
video by a courageous foreign cameraman, known by his professional name of Max
Stahl, who risked his life to capture the brutality on tape. As a seasoned war
journalist, the intrepid and quick-thinking young European was able to fool
Indonesian soldiers and keep not only his life but also the tape. Eluding the tight
controls of the Indonesian authorities and the collusion of other government
personnel, the tapes were smuggled out of Dili by the daring Dutch female journalist
Saskia Kouwenberg, who cut her finger, smeared the blood on her underwear, and
placed the tape inside it. The future history of East Timor was critically influenced by
the fact that the Indonesian inspector who made her undress did not insist to check
below her bloodstained underpants. It was the chilling pictures of the massacre
contained in these tapes, showing among others a young man, his profusely bleeding
stomach ripped open by bullets and a bayonet, making what appeared to be his last
prayer, for which he used the Portuguese language, that changed the course of the
history of East Timor. As was to be expected from the media, the images had widest
showing, finally drawing the attention of the world to the tragedy suffered by the
people of East Timor. In Portugal, the images kindled deep popular emotions, making
the Portuguese suddenly aware of “their far away suffering cousins who spoke their

57
language and with whom they had a 400-year close historical bond”. The wave of
popular emotion was so strong that the government rapidly changed the previous
policy of indifference regarding East Timor and its hopes that the issue would be soon
forgotten, and instead became a strong champion of the East Timorese people‟s right
of self-determination. While the policy of other governments towards the issue was
not significantly altered, the most important consequence of Max Stahl‟s
documentation of the East Timor situation was the response of international civil
society. The video also had an impact on better-informed people in Indonesia, where
there was virtually no truthful reporting on the situation in Timor Timur. The
emphatic denials by the country‟s Foreign Minister and other government authorities
that anything had happened in Dili, contrasted sharply with the international media
reports, and stimulated an interest to find out more among Indonesians. Those who
could get access abroad to the images were keen to get them home, as one further
example of the lies of their discredited government.

As I describe in the next chapter, the indignation many compassionate people in the
world felt about the clearly unjust issue of East Timor, led to the emergence from this
point on of a strong international support network demanding self-determination for
the territory. This broad based network of human rights and justice defenders was
more effective than the previous East Timor supporter network, which comprised
mainly people on the far-left, whose support for the cause was primarily ideological,
in the context of the Cold War, which had recently ended with the collapse of the
Soviet Union. Mario Carrascalão also confirmed to me that the Santa Cruz massacre
was the turning point for Indonesia: from then on, civilian rejection of the occupation
inside East Timor increased. For me the massacre was also a turning point. Our direct
involvement with Max Stahl, who we had assisted to prepare his historic mission in
November 1991, for which he left for from our Darwin house, with Saskia and with
photographer Stephen Cox, who returned to us in Darwin from the massacre, shocked
and shaken, brought the tragedy even closer. I decided to henceforth devote myself to
work full-time to the liberation of East Timor, dropping my other activities. I offered
my cooperation to the most dedicated and credible of the East Timorese campaigning
abroad, José Ramos Horta. The offer was accepted, and our spacious Darwin house
became the base of the international advocacy work of the CNRM East Timorese
Resistance organization, with me the Director-General of International Relations,
coordinating the increasing activities.

From 1992 onwards, as the strength of the exhausted Falintil continued to decline,
non-military opposition activities to Indonesian rule in Timor Timur increased. The
flooding of the Province by poor Indonesians from other islands in search of a better
living, made possible by the removal of travel restrictions, had a strong effect on the
growing dissatisfaction of the local population which saw itself being further
marginalized from all aspects of life in Jakarta‟s new colony. With their limited skills,
their lack of economic power, the suspicion with which the Indonesian authorities
treated them, their markedly different culture, and the racist contempt that the
newcomers showed to them because of their generally darker skin colour and the
negroid traits many possessed, the East Timorese were becoming a marginalized
people in their own land. As a response to growing opposition, the pattern of
intimidation, arrests, and torture of local civilians by the Indonesian military
continued. Armed contacts with the resistance were minimal, but corrupt Indonesian
soldiers continued supplying Falintil with arms. The Catholic Church in East Timor

58
continued to denounce ABRI human rights violations, while President Suharto
maintained his total intransigence with regards to contemplating alternative solutions
for the political future of the territory. Proposals of greater autonomy were flatly
refused. In Jakarta no one dared to further insist on this matter.

But Suharto‟s hold on power was not eternal. The Asian economic crisis of late 1997
which deeply affected the Indonesian economy finished to erode his legitimacy,
already much weakened in recent years due to the unbridled corruption of his family
members. With development, the main legitimating factor of his 32-year rule no
longer applicable, his removal from power by his fellow military colleagues took
place in May 1998. His Vice President and close confidant Habibie succeeded him in
accordance with the Constitution. During two decades President Suharto had
steadfastly refused to consider any act of self-determination for the people of East
Timor, be it genuine or manipulated21. The new President had a different approach to
the East Timor problem. First, unlike Suharto he did not have to defend a failed policy
of which he had been a co-creator. He also was very pragmatic and better versed to
understand Western thinking than his former mentor. Habibie was fully conscious of
the enormous cost in image, good will and lost opportunities that the obstinate refusal
to allow for East Timorese self-determination brought to Indonesia internationally.
The years-long international civil society campaign critical of Indonesia had greatly
damaged the country‟s standing in a way it could ill-afford at a time of economic
crisis. Habibie‟s first attempt at finding a solution to the onerous problem was to
announce in June 1998, a month after taking office, that he was prepared to consider a
wide ranging autonomy for East Timor with Indonesia only retaining control of
external defence, foreign affairs, and fiscal and monetary policy. Habibie wanted to
promote one kind of provincial autonomy for all provinces in Indonesia including
Timor Timur, without distinction. Yet, the pre-condition for granting the autonomy
was acceptance of integration by the East Timorese. In fact, as former Timor Timur
Governor and member of the Supreme Advisory Board (DPA), Mario Carrascalão
commented to me personally in Dili in August 2003, the „special‟ autonomy proposal
for East Timor was merely a ruse by Habibie meant for international consumption.
But the Habibie offer, was not acceptable to a majority of East Timorese, as an
Australian canvassing of their views, carried out in the context of an Australian East
Timor policy review, found out. The review found that the clear majority of the
respondents were in favour of a transitional autonomy, followed by a referendum after
a period of time that varied from 3 to 20 years. The UN had suggested autonomy with
international supervision for 5 to 7 years 22.

Australia‟s new policy reflected this finding. It favoured East Timorese autonomy
within Indonesia, and recognized the East Timorese insistence on an act of self-
determination. Consistent with this, Prime Minister Howard wrote a letter to President
Habibie on 19 December 1998 suggesting an interim political compromise approach

21
The self-determination referendum conducted by the UN in West New Guinea in 1969, which
Indonesia shamelessly manipulated to secure its preferred outcome with little UN opposition, must
nonetheless have made Suharto realise how threatening to Indonesia‟s imperial objectives such
international exercises could be. Having barely managed to succeed in 1969, he probably felt that a
repeat in East Timor would be too dangerous.
22
D. Greenelees & R Garran, East Timor ( Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2001), cited in Ian Martin, Self-
Determination in East Timor, The United Nations, the Ballot and International Intervention, (New
York, International Peace Academy, Occasional paper, 2001), p23/24

59
that would defer the question of the final status of the Territory until much later, as
the Matignon Accords of New Caledonia had done in the French Pacific colony. The
letter was not well received because it compared the East Timor situation with the
French colonial presence in New Caledonia, but had a strong impact on Habibie,
prompting him to instruct his cabinet to consider a new option, namely total
separation of East Timor from Indonesia. His advisor on Foreign Affairs (and de-facto
Foreign Minister), Dewi Fortuna Anwar, recalls that Habibie said “if the East
Timorese, after twenty-five years of being treated as being a full part of Indonesia,
still feel hat they cannot be fully integrated into Indonesia [it would be] democratic
and just that we separate in peace” 23. The unspeakable, which had been on so many
minds for so long, had finally been said. On 27 January 1999 the Indonesian
Government publicly announced its position that the East Timorese would be offered
autonomy, but if they rejected it, the President would recommend to the People‟s
Consultative Assembly –the highest organ in the country- to revoke the 1976 law
integrating the territory into the Republic. In his 2003 conversation with me cited
above, Mario Carrascalão, who had been requested to produce the Timor Timur part
of a report on autonomy in Indonesia in general, claims to have given copy of his
report directly to Habibie, who, Carrascalão says, was shocked by its contents and
concluded that the situation was so hopeless that Indonesia should drop the territory.
He added that Habibie felt blocked by Timor Timur, especially when foreign donors
kept asking about the situation of human rights in the province. The Habibie „take it
or leave it‟ offer for East Timorese autonomy within Indonesia shocked conservatives
in its government, especially most of the military. A campaign to make him desist was
started. The TNI and pro-occupation sectors used pro Indonesian East Timorese to
argue against Habibie‟s position, hoping to change his view. But Indonesian public
opinion was also weary of the damage of continuing to keep Timor Timur. Local
human rights advocacy groups, such as Solidamor and others, had succeeded in
making some members of the Indonesian public aware that the situation in the
province was, unlike previous government propaganda, not favourable. Carrascalão
recalled a TV panel discussion in April 1999, in which some 65% members of the
public phoned it to state their preference for Indonesia to let Timor Timur go. The
TNI‟s most direct response, feeling insecure about the future and the degree to which
their new President could be trusted, intensified their efforts of setting up a militia
force of East Timorese. Its aim was to ensure -through the use of coercion- that a
future referendum turned out in favour of Indonesia.

On the other hand, international community members, both from governments as well
as civil society, congratulated President Habibie for his vision and statesmanship.
Receiving international approval was of immediate urgency for Habibie on account of
the economic support it could bring to Indonesia‟s embattled economy. In addition,
the significant political achievement that would be ascribed to Habibie if he could
successfully resolve the so far intractable East Timor issue, would strengthen the
legitimacy of this never elected President, and help his prospects of victory in the
forthcoming presidential elections, scheduled to be held in late August by the new
MPR to be elected by the people in June 1999. From then on events started moving
quickly in the direction of holding a referendum in East Timor. Indonesia and
Portugal again took up diplomatic contact through the establishment of „interest

23
Speaking on the Australian Broadcasting Commission in February 2000, cited in Martin, Self-
Determination…, p 21

60
sections‟ staffed by their own diplomats in friendly embassies in their respective
capitals, the Netherlands Embassy in Jakarta and the Thai Embassy in Lisbon. Full
diplomatic relations, with resident embassies, soon followed. Imprisoned East
Timorese Resistance leader Xanana Gusmão was transferred from prison to house
arrest in Jakarta, where he could be in regular contact with UN and other foreign
diplomats active in the search for a solution to the East Timor problem. By March, at
a meeting between the Foreign Ministers of Indonesia and Portugal with the UN
Secretary-General, to the latter‟s great surprise Indonesia readily agreed to a UN-
administered direct „popular consultation‟ to be held in Timor Timur to ascertain the
degree of acceptance of President Habibie‟s autonomy proposal. The word
„referendum‟, implying a self-determination act, which Indonesia maintained had
already taken place in 1976, was still unacceptable to Jakarta. The „consultation‟
would have to take place before the new MPR convened to elect the succeeding
Indonesian President. At a historic meeting in New York on May 5, 1999, the two
Foreign Ministers signed an agreement for a vote on Indonesia‟s autonomy proposal
to be implemented by the UN. The same day, Secretary-General Annan presented the
agreement to the UN Security Council.

Because the urgency Indonesia now had, details on the implementation of the
consultation by a United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) were agreed
upon quickly, even if the UN had to accept one major concession, relating to security,
in spite of strong international misgivings. Indonesia insisted that TNI and Indonesian
Police would maintain security, without outside military or police being admitted.
After much effort by the UN to get a minimal international security presence
accepted, some Military Liaison Officers and International Police Advisers were also
allowed. Indonesia‟s intransigence on the admittance of foreign military and police
personnel with active security duties was soon seen to be based on Habibie‟s political
impossibility to force his military to accept such an imposition without causing a
major backlash against himself. Nonetheless, as would soon be obvious, the TNI did
its best to undermine the commitment given by Jakarta that a neutral and coercion-
free atmosphere, allowing the voters to genuinely express their preferences, would be
maintained. To no one‟s real surprise, such an atmosphere did not exist.

At ETISC in Darwin, the NGO which we had founded after the Nobel Peace Prize
was granted, and through which we were providing support to the international
campaign against the East Timor occupation, monitoring developments in the
territory, as well as providing some material assistance to the resistance, we had
begun to receive indication that training of paramilitaries was taking place in West
Timor close to the border with Timor Timur as of late 1998. We alerted key
governments to this, but little credence was given to our reports. By March 1999 the
existence of brutal and unruly TNI-supported East Timorese militia was a well-known
reality. By April, a massacre of civilians in Liquiça town, a few kilometres to the west
of Dili, had not only demonstrated the militia‟s murderous nature, but also the fact
that they enjoyed the protection of the authorities, which allowed them to commit
their crimes with impunity. The militias, whose number kept on growing during the
months up to August 1999 while their violent behaviour increased, were intended as
an instrument to terrorize the population into voting for Indonesia and were yet
another indication of the Indonesian ongoing attempt to divide and subjugate the
people of East Timor. Defeated and feeling outraged by the defiance of the East
Timorese, after the consultation turned out against Indonesia, it was clear for the TNI

61
and Police that they would have to leave East Timor. So, they used the militias to
plunder the goods of the civilian population, and to destroy the country‟s
infrastructure through a scorched earth campaign. The resulting humanitarian disaster
spurned key international community members such as the US and Australia to
arrange for the INTERFET multinational military intervention that ended the
Indonesian occupation of East Timor and the creation of Timor Timur.

62
 Chapter IV: Response to Indonesia’s East Timor occupation

Abroad the East Timor issue went through two distinct phases during the 24 years of
Indonesian occupation. They were roughly coterminous with the cold war and its
aftermath. In the first two thirds of the time, the invasion and illegal occupation of the
territory was of little interest to the international community, other than an initial
condemnation, basically so as to project a semblance of respect for the rules of the
UN against aggression and in respect of self-determination. There was little sincerity
or political will in this support. East Timor was poor, small, and devoid of any
strategic or military interest for the Western powers. Indonesia, in contrast, was big,
potentially disruptive in regional and world affairs, as it had more than shown during
the Sukarno era, extremely rich in natural resources, promising highly profitable
opportunities for foreign investors, and was very large in size and population.
Suharto had been, furthermore, extremely skilled at capturing western support through
his proclaimed “anti-Communism”. What ongoing international support there was
for the rights of the East Timorese people came from the left. Initially a few
Communist states supported the RDTL, in the hope that a sympathetic new state
would come to join the international community. But a realistic assessment soon
showed the extreme weakness of the East Timorese and the improbability of their
victory over their strong and large foe. The support of the Soviet Union and China
soon evaporated. The ineffective solidarity of the new post-colonial African
lusophone states continued, at least formally, for a longer time. What kept the issue
from disappearing from the international agenda altogether, was the continued
activism of a few left-oriented groups in Western democratic states, who maintained
their commitment for reasons of ideological principle. The East Timorese in exile,
with the exception of one individual, did little to further the cause. After leaving
Indonesia, and initially attempting to work with the East Timorese diáspora, and
quickly realizing how untrustworthy and ineffective their leaders were, my wife and myself
limited our support to the processing of human rights violations information obtained
from the interior, assisting some of the foreign activists whose confidence we knew
we did not succeed in earning. After the end of the Cold War following the Santa
Cruz massacre publicity in 1991, the issue attracted the attention of international civil
society human rights activists who were able to make a successful impact in following
years. Working in this environment of honest and committed people was rewarding.
My wife and myself were able to make a significant contribution to the development
of an international supporters network and to its, eventually successful, activities.

The international community

Following the 7 December 1975 East Timor invasion by Indonesia, the UN Security
Council adopted Resolution 384 (1975) on 22 December, condemning the aggression
in violation of the UN Charter, and Resolution 386 (1976) demanding Indonesia to
withdraw. Jakarta obstructed the few efforts by the UN Secretary-General to send
envoys to the territory who could assert the wishes of the population and report on the
situation. On a few glittering Jakarta social occasions, such as the opening by the then
Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik of an exhibition of paintings by a prominent
local portraitist, and several days later, at another cultural event also attended by
many of the resident diplomats, I saw UN envoy Winspeare Guicciardi, so effectively

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guarded that it was impossible in practice to approach him and talk to him. His most
attentive hosts were forcing him to „enjoy‟ a Jakarta holiday. They would take care of
all his needs, except the key one of providing the necessary air transport for him to get
to Dili. On the third occasion I saw him he looked very tense, making me conclude
that it must have been on account of his frustration with his extended stay in the
capital. I again found it impossible to start a conversation with him. Without any
alternative form of access to the territory, other than possibly through Australia,
which had no interest in assisting opponents of Indonesia, independent contact
between East Timor and the outside world was impossible, and he soon gave up
trying to get there.

A weaker UN resolution followed in April 1976, which was also unheeded. The
Security Council, divided by the Cold War, was ineffective to resolve on the matter.
Critical resolutions demanding a restoration of the status quo ante followed at the
General Assembly for several years, which Indonesia also simply ignored. As time
passed, these resolutions became weaker and weaker until in 1982 through Resolution
32/30 the General Assembly mandated the UN Secretary-General to begin a
diplomatic effort to find a comprehensive solution to the problem. Little happened
during the tenure of Secretary Generals Kurt Waldheim, Javier Perez de Cuellar or
Boutros-Boutros Ghali. The evident lack of political will of the international
community to defend this case of impeded self-determination encouraged Indonesia‟s
obstinacy. Even if it was a case of obstructed decolonisation by a former European
colonial power, in this unique case the impediment was not by the old colonial power,
but by a new aggressor, who itself was a European post-colonial state24. The strong
commitment of the new UN members to uphold self-determination, by this time
practically equated with a right to independence, did not extend to non-European
impeders like Indonesia. Also, the Western democracies, who had supported the
independence of European colonies and dependent territories, supporting the
application of the principle of self-determination to them, were not keen on putting
lucrative economic relationships with the then highly promising Indonesia at risk.
Taking a principled stance to protect the people of a poor, seemingly unviable,
extremely underdeveloped small territory, whose infant governing elite was totally
unknown in the world, aside from the newly independent but chaotic former
Portuguese countries in Africa, did not make good economic sense. The first state to
unequivocally show its pragmatic policy position, was Australia, who several years
later agreed to recognize de jure the annexation of East Timor into Indonesia, in order
to be able to negotiate with the latter a partitioning of rich off-shore hydrocarbon
resources in the Timor Sea.

During the latter 1970s, the East Timor case was of modest interest to China, Vietnam
and the leftist governments of Mozambique, Angola and Guiné-Bissau. The left in
democratic countries such as Australia, the UK, Portugal and a few others advocated
in favour of the right to self-determination of the East Timorese. The few overseas
contacts of those Fretilin leaders that had been able to avoid the Indonesian invasion
by being abroad were mostly part of the lusophone political far left. This came from
the days in which the Portuguese far left underground opposition to the Estado Novo

24
Only the cases of former Spanish Western Sahara, occupied by Morocco and Mauritania, and to a
lesser extent the case of Eritrea, annexed by Ethiopia, are similar. Only Eritrea was able to gain
independence for reasons that had more to do with Cold-War politics than with respect for self-
determination per se.

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cultivated contacts with the East Timorese and other Portuguese colonial subjects in
order to encourage their revolt against the colonial order. Only Horta was able to
develop a significant wider network of contacts. The initial support of far left
international networks for the East Timor cause only served to distance other, more
mainstream, potential supporters. It reinforced the Indonesian claims that it had
“prevented the emergence of another Cuba on its doorstep”, securing the tacit support
of the USA and the West for the occupation. Similarly, the Catholic Church, who was
well informed of the real situation on the ground in the territory through its personnel
in Timor, was keen to see the integration process advance rapidly. This was so, partly
to avoid conflict with Indonesia, where Catholics in the most populous Muslim
country in the world, who make up some 3% of the population, i.e. close to 6 million,
some 7 to 8 times the total population of East Timor, had a disproportionately
important position both economically and professionally. Nonetheless, their position
was generally weak politically, and could have easily been affected by a conflict with
the Vatican over the small, poor and insignificant East Timorese nation. The fact that
the East Timorese resistance had been branded pro-communist was a further factor in
the Vatican‟s lack of support for East Timorese self-determination. I still vividly
remember a dinner at the Vatican Embassy in Jakarta in 1976, where the conversation
at the table was monopolized by a Catholic Indonesian politician from NTT province,
telling the ambassadors present about the Vietnamese and Cuban military assistance
to Fretilin which ABRI had intercepted. The distinguished politician‟s facts, like
many other statements I have heard him make in following years, proved eventually
to be totally false. The account of this subversive communist assistance would,
however, have been included in the reports of the diners to their respective Foreign
Ministries, strengthening the unfavourable perception about East Timor that had been
created.

The 1980s
As the decade of the 1980s advanced, the East Timor issue seemed increasingly
destined to oblivion. Interest and awareness about it diminished at the international
level, and information received from inside became less and less frequent. The UN
General Assembly session of 1982 was the last time that the „question of East Timor‟
was discussed by that body, after the progressive weakening of the eight resolutions
demanding the withdrawal of Indonesia‟s presence in the territory, which the GA had
passed as a yearly ritual. In the 1970s and 1980s Indonesia was successfully
positioning itself internationally as a stable and as a highly attractive foreign
investment destination, which created the illusion that it would become democratic
and developed. Indonesia‟s strong diplomacy could easily conquer those countries
expecting to economically benefit from its developing market numbering over 200
million people. These countries preferred taking a pragmatic rather than principled
position on East Timor. Support for East Timor had been dropping from year to year,
and the resolutions adopted were increasingly weaker. The General Assembly‟s last
resolution gave the UN Secretariat a mandate to mediate to find a solution. Jakarta
insisted that the people of East Timor had already had their self-determination by
choosing to integrate with Indonesia, so any residual problems were merely of a
political and economic nature between both states. The East Timorese were therefore
denied a self-determination participation in the matter. For the East Timorese
resistance, this presented a serious problem, as the mechanisms of the international
community did not allow for inclusion of peoples not constituted into states. Only

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European colonial dependencies were acknowledged. It thus became imperative to
work through non-government organizations, primarily those denouncing human
rights violations. To strengthen their advocacy, it was necessary to mobilize
international civil society, including academics, commentators and other high-profile
personalities. Work with the information media became essential. But, time was
running against the small, weak, and not very cohesive people of East Timor.
Indonesia had no interest in the UN Secretary-General achieving progress, and
economically weak Portugal had more urgent priorities to attend to. Secretary-General
Waldheim showed very little interest in the issue, and his successor, Perez de Cuellar,
could also not achieve much, despite his personal sympathies for Portugal and the
East Timorese. The first tripartite talks between Indonesia and Portugal with the UN
Secretary–General took place in 1984 in New York, leading to minimal results. The
next meeting was in Rome and the third again in New York not until September 1993.
A total of some dozen meetings took place until the final meeting in New York on
May 5, 1999, which formalized the agreement for a UN-led referendum to assess the
response of the people of East Timor to the offer of a special status within Indonesia
made to them by Suharto‟s successor, President Habibie.

From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, the flow of information from East Timor to the
outside world progressively diminished, but never fully dried up. The tight watch by
ABRI was in fact very inefficient despite its brutality. Military personnel were poorly
trained, undisciplined, lax, not very motivated unless they could extract personal gain,
and therefore very susceptible to being corrupted. Money, which the Resistance was
also very short of, became an important weapon. Yet, despite their poor skills, the
East Timorese clandestine elements were able to breach the wall of silence imposed
by the Indonesians and trick the ABRI guards often in incredibly hilarious ways. In
mid 1970s a radio transmitter had been the only instrument of communication
between the Resistance and the outside world. Its limited range barely allowed it to
reach foreign supporters in Darwin, Australia, some 600 kilometres away. Through it
news about military operations and atrocities were conveyed. By the late 70s this vital
facility had been lost due to an internal discord among Resistance members. Until
early 1985 no communications with the outside world existed at all, other than the
few letters that Catholic priests, in defiance of Vatican policy, and departing refugees
brought out of Timor.

In mid-1984, upon request of a Fretilin leader abroad, I brought a well-disguised radio

transmitter into Indonesia. This was something illegal and highly dangerous at the
time. By some strange coincidence which I will never be able to explain, other than as
Divine intervention, the unfriendly customs inspectors at the Jakarta airport for once
decided to thoroughly check my luggage, showing a special interest in the “stereo
amplifier” inside which the transmitter had been hidden. The man carrying out the
search stopped his inspection the moment he began to touch it, in response to a signal
from his colleagues that sunset, marking the end of the fasting day during the Moslem
Holy Month of Rhamadan, had just taken place. The official abruptly stopped the
inspection, not even showing interest in the several dozen Sydney oysters in dry ice,
which I had stored in the radio case pretending it to be a freezer pack. The molluscs
could have made an appetizing fast-breaker! So, I was waved through the customs
inspection during which I had reached the point of hardly being able to continue
disguising my anguish. The consequences of being caught with a forbidden
transmitter, purposely hidden inside a harmless-looking electronic device, would have

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been hard to imagine. By January 1985 the radio started functioning in the
mountains, and its messages were received in Darwin once again. Despite the poor
quality of the transmission and of the reports themselves, the picture the information
painted greatly contrasted with the lies spread about the situation by the Indonesian
military. The situation of the people was very precarious. Normal village life was
impeded by constant military security operations against the elusive resistance, and
human rights violations, including rapes of women and girls, plunder of possessions,
and large-scale massacres of non-submissive villagers were common. So was
starvation, as people could not farm in peace. Health was affected by forced
relocations of villagers for the purpose of surveillance and control, from malaria free
highlands to insalubrious lowlands. The information flow lasted for a couple of years,
and we made transcripts of the tapes to submit to international human rights NGOs
such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others. Unfortunately, the
breakage of just a small plastic button on the radio, which no one in the mountains
could fix, and which no one there asked any one outside to replace, eventually ended
the information flow. Once the removal of barriers to travel in and out of Timor
Timur followed in 1989, information began to be carried out by travellers. This made
communications significantly easier.

The 1990s
The 1990s were the most active decade for the international action for East Timor,
achieving success with the withdrawal of Indonesia in October 1999. As mentioned
earlier, the downturn for Jakarta started in late 1989 with the opening of Timor Timur
to travel. The few prominent international visitors, and the media accompanying
them, could get a feeling of the reality through the demonstrations staged by
courageous youths. The military, paying great attention to promoting a false
appearance of peace and contentment of the population, went to great extremes of
intimidation and manipulation of the same. Any threats that the true reality would be
manifested to the outside world were cause for great panic and brutal repression.

As already noted, the major turning point in the struggle to have the world notice the
plight of the East Timorese was the 12 of November 1991 Santa Cruz massacre,
which gave the international public the first televised images of the existing
repression and brutality in Timor Timur. The wave of outrage that the images
produced world-wide brought about a determined response from international civil
society. Government responses were generally muted, and the UN Human Rights
Commission in its first session after the tragedy, in March 1992, only came up with a
very weak Chairman‟s Statement agreed upon by Indonesia. A year later, in March
1993, the response was stronger, in the form of a resolution critical of Indonesia. We
liked to think that it was the result of mounting activist pressure, however, the primary
factor seems to have actually been the lack of instructions that the Indonesian
delegation in Geneva received on how to conduct its response to the Commission‟s
debates, since an administration readjustment was taking place in Jakarta after the re
election of sole candidate Suharto to the Presidency for the 6th time. Because of this,
the Foreign Ministry had effectively been leaderless for a few days, at the same time
of the Human Rights Commission‟s Geneva meeting.

It was clear from the beginning that a military victory of the East Timorese resistance
against the vastly superior Indonesian military capacity would be an impossibility

67
unless an important power did come to the assistance of the Timorese. This was not
expected and did not happen. The successful achievement of the East Timorese
objective of expelling the occupier was a political victory of a very special kind,
which to most observers had seemed unachievable, with few considering the cause
other than lost. The eventual victory was a fortuitous one that resulted from the 1997
economic crisis of Eastern Asia that deeply affected the shaky Indonesian economy,
and the consequent loss of power of President Suharto in May 1998. His basis of
legitimacy, with which he could deflect criticism for the extreme human rights
violations and corruption of his regime, was „development‟. The economic crisis
stopped many economic development projects, and showed that the great sacrifices
and suffering of the Indonesian people for the previous 30 years had been mostly in
vain, despite their high cost. The Western powers that had supported him became
impatient with the boundless corruption and lack of democracy of the Suharto regime,
and eventually were also unwilling to support his contentious and increasingly
embarrassing East Timor policy.

But the key factor of the defeat of Indonesia in East Timor was not diplomatic
pressure either from its key partners or through the UN. Indonesia ultimately
succumbed to the damaging effects of a new form of pressure, which could only be
successfully exerted in the globalised environment of the end of the 20 th century,
namely a widespread rebuke by international public opinion. This, global public
opinion, welded together by highly efficient communications facilities like the
internet, is increasingly being called the “second superpower” by some. In this sense
lies the uniqueness of the East Timor liberation. It is an outstanding achievement that
a small, militarily, economically, and politically insignificant entity, with a small,
unsophisticated, uneducated, and divided population, whose low key resistance was
no real challenge to a seemingly large and powerful opponent, was ultimately able to
enjoy freedom. As mentioned before, unlike so many of the new post-colonial Third
World states in Africa, Asia and Oceania, East Timor was not granted negative
sovereignty by the international community. It had little support from the UN, the
self-determination champion, as its case was not against a situation of constitutional
dependence vis-à-vis a European power. The victory of East Timor was the result of
the productive cooperation between an outstanding East Timorese activist and
diplomat, Jose Ramos-Horta and a well-organised international network of public
opinion shapers, who mutually complemented one another during eight years of
intense lobbying against Indonesia‟s illegal occupation. Important adjuncts in the
campaign were the local disruptive actions by East Timor and Indonesia-based East
Timorese youth, which proved very costly in terms of human suffering. Besides its
symbolic impact of keeping the image of armed opposition to an invader alive, the
nuisance effect of the remnants of the armed resistance must also be added as a factor
here. The results of all this opposition were eventually sufficiently damaging to
Indonesia, so that ultimately the cost of adhering to the stubborn Suharto policy of no
compromise on self-determination proved too high, so Habibie, relented and allowed
the UN to conduct the 30 August 1999 self-determination consultation. Thus ended a
conflict that cost some 200 to 300,000 East Timorese lives, an estimated 50,000
Indonesian military casualties, and a few billion dollars which could have been put to
better use by the two poor countries. There is no need to elaborate on the high cost to
East Timor of the loss due to the war of its already scant human resources.

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The 1990s were also a time of increased opposition to Indonesia‟s rule in East Timor
from within Indonesia. The pro-democracy movement in Indonesia gradually grew
and became increasingly stronger during this period. This suited us, as in the pro-
democracy, and thus anti-ABRI movement in Indonesia, we were to find good allies.
For them, aiming to reveal the extent of ABRI‟s violation of human rights and denial
of freedom in their country, so as to discredit the oppressive institution, the exposure
of the brutalities of the military in Timur Timor was a useful tool. A good working
alliance between the Indonesian pro-democracy movement and ourselves soon
developed. It was one of my roles to foster this cooperation, for which my good
knowledge of Indonesia and its people proved very useful. I frequently visited the
archipelago from our nearby base in Darwin in those years, making new friends
among the courageous and inspiring, pro-democratic Indonesian youth.

The Timorese diáspora

Fretilin „External Delegation‟
At its peak, in the late 1990s, the East Timorese diáspora amounted to some 15,000 to
18,000 people. Over two thirds of them resided in Australia, with some 2,000 living
in Portugal. The remainder was primarily in Mozambique, and small numbers were
scattered all over the world. The first group of refugees fled the Fretilin counter-coup
of September 1975 through Darwin, settling in Australia. Immediately after the
Indonesian invasion, refugees travelled through Indonesia mostly to Portugal. In that
far away country they found very difficult conditions, since the poor country was
being flooded with returned settlers from the lost African colonial possessions.
Therefore most Timorese refugees chose to settle in Australia, availing themselves of
the generous settler incentives provided by the Australian government. The flow of
East Timorese out of their country continued for over 20 years. At first it consisted
primarily of people of mixed Portuguese –Timorese ancestry (mostly identifying with
the UDT political group) and members of the local Chinese community. The latter
had been economically significant, but save a few exceptions, were not politically
active. Those who could not leave through officially organized programs, such as the
one conducted by the International Committee of the Red Cross among others,
obtained permits to depart by paying bribes to Indonesian officials using well-
established clandestine smuggling rings. In the years up to my departure from
Indonesia in I frequently came across such people. They had to wait for months in
Jakarta, living under hardship and uncertainty, never knowing when they would be
able to get out. The Indonesian middlemen had refined clever techniques for
extracting as much money as possible from them, in addition to the initially agreed
upon exorbitant price. As the date for the departure came closer, new “unforeseen”
obstacles tended to arise. To be resolved, invariably additional payments were needed.
Once the victims were truly unable to pay more, and genuinely seemed forced to
abandon their plan to escape, the exit was possible, usually at very short notice -a
matter of hours- after the many, many, months of waiting. I intervened in some of
these cases to help, and found out that the exit could be arranged speedily, at a
fraction of the originally demanded cost, if one had the knowledge of how the system
worked and could cut out the middlemen. The plight of these poor and helpless
victims in a heartless, rapacious, oppressive and corrupt society as Indonesia was at
the time, was shocking to me. The people from Portuguese Timor had never
experienced something of the sort in the past and were thoroughly traumatized by
their experiences with their “liberators from colonial oppression”. In later years, after

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the restrictions on travel from East Timor were lifted, more indigenous -generally
Fretilin supporting- people also began to leave the province. In the 1990s, several
young Indonesian-educated people used dramatic methods to go abroad, such as
seeking political asylum in foreign embassies in Jakarta. One group of 18 people was
able to flee successfully to Darwin on a boat. Others defected while visiting foreign
countries as members of Indonesian national delegations to sports competitions or
other types of official activities.

Rhetoric aside, the East Timorese diáspora was characterized by a lack of unity and a
limited engagement by its members in effective pro-liberation campaigns for their
homeland. Those who identified with UDT and those who identified with Fretilin held
such strong grievances against one another that they did not act in a united way, at
least not until the mid 1990s. The East Timorese Chinese community preferred to stay
away from both, even if no hostility or grievance to either of them was overtly
expressed. When pressed by the others, or more precisely by the Fretilin sympathizers
who generally tended to be not wealthy, and, in countries like Australia, lived to a
large extent from government social security supports, the Chinese Timorese who in
many cases rapidly came to wealth again, provided token donations of money. One
fact that struck me deeply, after arriving in Darwin in the late 1980s expecting to find
a strong and active diáspora community, were the comments of some social workers
dealing with migrant communities who said that they made very sure that they
approached each group separately when needing to convey information on relevant
local government programs. They had to be treated as though they came from
different countries, even more, if they were made to feel that they were not treated as
distinct communities, they would be suspicious and not develop a close rapport with
the social workers. I found the differences among the activities of the three diáspora
communities in Darwin in the 1990s very revealing, even if at the time the
significance of it for the future of Timor Leste escaped me. I will look at one very
telling example that illustrates existing differences in skills and organisation capacity
among these groups, namely their community organisation and management skills. As
is the case among most of the numerous Portuguese migrant communities in the
world, the establishment of a social club is an important priority. Such clubs tend to
become the centres of community life, and for a majority of the immigrants, are their
main venue of social activity. These clubs tend to have good restaurants where
members frequently have meals, function rooms for social events, sports and leisure
activities, language and culture classes for the young, and often provide a variety of
forms of other types of support to the members. In line with this useful tradition, four
clubs emerged among the Timorese in Darwin: the NT Timorese Chinese Association,
the Timorese Hakka Chinese association, a Portuguese and Timorese Social Club, and
the Lafaek Timorese association. The former two are supported by the wealthy and
influential Darwin Timorese Chinese community. Of the two latter ones, the
Portuguese and Timorese club‟s membership included both Portuguese from Portugal
as well as ethnic Portuguese that had relocated from East Timor after the Indonesian
invasion, plus the mostly UDT-affiliated diáspora East Timorese assimilated into
Portuguese culture. Lafaek comprised the more autochthonous, Fretilin-supporting
diáspora members. The relationship among these clubs, especially the latter two, was
not amiable. The first three were actively operating and still registered with the
Northern Territory government in 2003, providing social activities, support services,
cultural activities and language classes. They had their own premises, of which the
spacious, well-appointed, building constructed by the Portuguese and Timorese Social

70
Club members over the years, represents a capital asset worth well over a million
dollars or even two. The Lafaek association, who were provided a building free of all
costs by the Darwin city council in the 1970s or 80s, simply disappeared in late 1998.
They left behind a debt of some $4,000 for monthly water and electricity charges
accrued over several years, which they had been required to pay as of the mid 1990s
after the Australian Defence Forces acquired the building. The new owner decided not
to further pursue the collection of the debt in the end. My own recollection of Lafaek
was through the Tetum language courses which our young daughters briefly attended
in the mid 1990s. For several years Lafaek was receiving donations from Japanese
supporters who feeling guilty about the damage done to Timor by their country during
WWII, tried to make some reparation in this way. The yearly grants were meant to
fund cultural activities, and in particular, the preservation of the language among the
diáspora youth. The main organizer of this financial support travelled once a year to
Darwin to inspect the progress of the school, producing a report for the donors -
complete with attractive photographs of happy learning children- which they received
with great satisfaction. The problem was that it was all fake. There was no teaching,
and prior to the philanthropist‟s yearly visits, the children of those in charge of the
association were assembled and photographed as though they were attending lessons.
It was extraordinary that the ruse worked for several years, while the money meant to
fund the educational and cultural preservation activities was spent on partying.
Eventually, with the support of some Australian teachers, an attempt to start properly
run Tetum courses was made. We enrolled our daughters in them, only to pull them
out a few month later, given the frequent cancellation of the lessons with no advance
notice, and the time they were made to waste in an environment where there was
drinking and gambling taking place close by. The advising Australian teachers also
soon pulled out dissatisfied with the laxity and lack of discipline, soon after which the
lessons ceased.

Speaking of fraud, and the irresistible attraction larger sums of money seemed to have
on certain individuals, despite the damage they would be doing to the liberation cause
if they misappropriated it, I cannot forget the bitter disappointment we had with the
estranged wife, living in exile in Australia, of a highly respected resistance leader, at
that time in jail in Indonesia. In order to give our group a „better standing‟ by showing
an association to the said leader, we were told by another Timorese leader to include
the former wife among the co-signatories of an account in which we deposited a fund
of close to $100,000 donated to the resistance by a Portuguese Labour Union. For our
finances this was a huge amount of money that in fact helped to sustain our activities
until the Nobel Peace Prize three years later. The woman agreed to lend her name and
become one of the joint co-signatories to the account. To our shock she surreptitiously
withdrew the money into an account of her own only a short time later. Not being
very adept, she retained the money in the same bank, so that when we complained to
the bank about the fraud that had taken place and the negligence shown by it in
accepting a transfer request signed by only one signatory, the bank realised its mistake
and simply froze her new account. It was only after we threatened her with legal
action for fraud, that she did she return the funds to the original account. We were
stunned by this lack of honesty and lack of consideration for the struggle. Clearly, for
her the personal enjoyment obtained from the use of scarce funds that could otherwise
have signified the difference between the life and death of endangered freedom
fighters, or could assist the liberation of a nation, was more important. Such lack of
civic maturity, encountered more than once, was for me incomprehensible and

71
eventually made me wonder how people with such a mentality would perform the day
they had to run a country of their own.

It can be said without exaggeration that the majority of the diáspora East Timorese
exhibited a lack of true commitment to the liberation of their country in the 1970s and
1980s. Only in the 1990s, after local human rights activists together with opponents of
the Indonesian regime had paved the way, and made strong efforts firstly to bring the
communities together and secondly to get them to take active part in the protest
actions, did some limited cooperation from the East Timorese diáspora in Australia
and Portugal become possible. In Mozambique, where there was no sizeable local
activist advocacy for the East Timor cause, except some Portuguese academics at the
University, the impact of the local Timorese diáspora on public opinion was minimal.
By the 1990s the resident East Timorese in Mozambique were not able to prevent
Indonesia establishing diplomatic relations at resident Ambassador level with the host
government. Their efforts to impact on public opinion in the only democracy close by,
in South Africa, were also minimal, as acknowledged personally in mid 1999 by the
Director of the South African Institute of International Affairs, even if President
Mandela, sensitive to the issue, showed his concern and did play an active role in
seeking a just resolution to the East Timor problem. In following years, after some
contact with other liberation movements, I realised how much the East Timorese
reality contrasted to other such cases, such as the strongly disciplined Tibetan
diáspora‟s commitment to the mammoth task of liberating their country, for example.

The „Fretilin External Delegation‟ functioned in Maputo and Lisbon. An Ambassador

of the Democratic Republic of East Timor was recognized by Angola as well. Little
documentary evidence exists of the work of this Delegation to foster the end of
Indonesian occupation of East Timor. As mentioned earlier, they did, however,
maintain contacts with leftist groups in various countries during the 1970s and 1980s
that opposed the Indonesian occupation of their homeland. Stories of infighting, and
misuse of funds donated for the work of the Delegation by well-meaning
philanthropists do exist. The Delegation Head had no qualms in using such funds to
buy an apartment that he simply turned into his personal property, nor did he later
show any misgivings to turn a Portuguese wine exporting business, developed by
Japanese supporters with the aim of generating funds for the resistance, into a
personal business that made him wealthy. No effective disciplinary action was taken
against him. For me, this reflected alarmingly on the prevalent attitudes of the group
towards public property and the common good, and on their eventual conduct once
they would be in power. Another alarming event, not only from a practical point of
view, but for its implications on justice and respect for legality and human rights was
the detention and mistreatment of Ramos-Horta at the Maputo headquarters in 1978.

José Ramos-Horta
The Fretilin Foreign Minister, who would soon dissociate himself from his former
colleagues, was the only one that worked effectively and ceaselessly for decades to
free East Timor. Horta was the only one among his peers who has consistently shown
a loyalty to the whole East Timor nation. It can be stated without exaggeration that the
loyalty of the other East Timorese leaders, tended generally to be to their particular
group, rather than to the nation as a whole. Not only did Horta demonstrate enormous
stamina and dedication, but also an outstanding intellectual sharpness. He was the
only one that was able to rise above the small world of East Timor, and make good

72
use of life in the diáspora to educate himself, and transcend the limitations of his
original environment. He learned to master the English language with excellence,
learned to understand the dominant culture in the world, became skilled at diplomacy,
and acquired an enormous circle of important and powerful friends and acquaintances
all over the world. He succeeded to obtain relevant academic degrees, and through his
writing and speaking skills became a media personality. Horta was able to see very
soon that the identification of his colleagues with the friends of the Soviet block, and
their incapacity to rise above the small leftist lusophone world in which they felt
comfortable, would not serve their cause best. His performance and progress,
however, soon caused the jealousy of his less gifted comrades, to the point that they
attempted to destroy him. One instance of this negative behaviour was his 1978
arbitrary detention in Maputo, where he was subjected to physical mistreatment with
the intention to kill him. Besides its illegality and lack of justification, the detention
prevented him from arguing the East Timor case at the UN General Assembly that
year. The consequence was a much weaker resolution against Indonesia than the
previous year. From then on, resolutions became progressively weaker and weaker
every year. So, Horta broke with Fretilin, continuing his international diplomatic
battle for East Timor on his own. Given the ineffectiveness and irrelevance of his
former partners, the break had no negative effect on the struggle. If anything, it was
positive, allowing him more flexibility and distancing him from the wrong side in the
Cold War.

Politically sensitive and highly intelligent, Horta developed a good understanding of

the international system of the time. He realized that self-determination arguments
against a non-European state would have little political support from the majority of
post-colonial third world states that drove the UN decolonisation agenda. The former
colonial powers also had little interest in upholding the rights of the weak and
irrelevant ex-Portuguese colony. Portugal itself was impotent and not too motivated to
pursue the matter too far. His colleagues remained locked into their position of
advocating for the withdrawal of the occupier and the restoration of the Democratic
Republic of Timor Leste, in which they, as a political elite, felt they would have status
and a leading role under the practice of international legal sovereignty. Horta, and
later also Xanana Gusmão, felt that abandoning the almost fictitious Republic, whose
brief existence had only been recognized by a handful of mostly Socialist states,
would be more productive for the liberation of the people. Instead, he argued that the
decolonisation from Portugal had been interrupted by the neighbor‟s aggression, and
that therefore the right of self-determination of the East Timorese people had been
violated. While using self-determination as far as it was politically feasible, he also
put an emphasis on human rights and humanitarian assistance, which were the only
ground for international intervention that carried some weight at the time. As the
opportunities for debating the East Timor question became increasingly scarce, first at
the Security Council and then at the General Assembly, Horta shifted the focus to
include the Geneva based UN Commission on Human Rights.

His realization of the power of the media in the contemporary world, and the
importance of civil society were also outstanding. As a former journalist, Horta
developed great skill at handling the media. He devoted tireless attention to creating
good media relations, being always available, no matter how inconvenient the time or
how tired he was, to give interviews, presenting in a manner that facilitated the task of
the journalists. He left no opportunity go by to issue media statements and comments

73
or to write personal opinion pieces, which as the volume of the required output
increased, needed in fact to be ghost written by others, including myself, but issued
under his imprimatur. The enormous effort invested paid dividends, and José Ramos-
Horta did become a much sought-after worldwide media celebrity with whom
journalists could feel confident of a productive result and who facilitated their
professional work. The benefits of this situation for publicizing the East Timor cause
were huge. Similarly, Horta understood the growing role of international civil society,
and cultivated close relations with its prime exponents. He accepted invitations to
speak at public gatherings, was always available to attend meetings, discussions and
panels anywhere in the world. His public-speaking skills, broad knowledge, command
of several main languages and predominantly genial disposition in public, made him a
highly sought after speaker, eventually making him become a world celebrity.

Horta‟s guiding principle had been that it was necessary to be visible at all times to
prevent the East Timor issue to be forgotten by an indifferent world. This he did, to
the best of his ability, with outstanding results. Despite having virtually no financial
means at his disposal, he managed to get himself invited in one way or another to
every event or gathering anywhere in the world that could be turned into a potential
forum for advocacy for East Timor. He also tirelessly attempted to establish contact
with officials in governments or opposition groups in countries of key importance.
Most requests for official contacts were refused until the early 1990s. His
perseverance and stamina seemed boundless, surpassing that of most of his
colleagues, including myself, I must admit. His resistance to the stress of such intense
travel, especially when undertaken at the lowest-cost basis, was unique. One day he
would appear in public in Sydney, the next in London, the following day in
Washington, then in Tokyo, in Lisbon, and so on, year after year. His less gifted and
less productive colleagues, like his Indonesian adversaries, would criticize him for
living the „high life‟ and invent stories about misappropriation of funds and reckless
wastage of resources. Undeterred by the slander, he continued his one-man diplomatic
pilgrimage through the world, gaining a large variety of friends and supporters for the
East Timor cause, and taken as a model, creating and reinforcing a positive picture
about the country and its capability to assert its positive- sovereignty. His skill to
create and promote a favourable picture throughout the world about the organizational
competence of the internal resistance and the dedication and relevance of the External
Delegation were remarkable. He created and presented a model that the world could
believe in, and many of those appalled by the humanitarian tragedy taking place in
Timor Timur did believe it, interceding in its favour and thus giving it a sense of
reality that grew over time until in the end, the independent Timor Leste became real
on 20 May 2002. At no stage during so many years of pressure, loneliness,
disappointment, adversity and hardship did Horta lose his self control and attack or
denounce his fellow countrymen, both inside or out, for their many limitations,
indolence and inappropriate actions, that were so detrimental to the cause they
claimed to be committed to. Instead, he praised them in public for their supposed
commitment and contributions, reinforcing the myth about the strength of the
Resistance. There is no doubt for me that in the absence of Horta‟s key contribution,
the East Timor issue would have dropped off the international agenda only a few
years after the invasion, and Timor Leste would have never come into existence.

The years of working with him as an advisor/personal assistant/organisational backup

all rolled into one were, indeed, very intense and fascinating. Horta‟s wide

74
knowledge, his superb memory powers, his sharp analysis capacity, and above all his
highly creative thinking made working with him very stimulating. A little more
frustrating was to attempt to implement many of the ideas that so creatively flowed
from his mind at such a high speed that their consistency with regards one another
sometimes suffered, and so often a new project was proposed before the time needed
to complete the implementation of the previous one had been allowed. To try to
reconcile this fertile stream of ideas and initiatives, and to turn them into concrete
actions, whenever that was possible, was among my main tasks.

It will, no doubt, be thought that my praise of Horta is unbalanced and biased. As a

human being he must, after all, have his weaknesses. Indeed, he has them and they
were quite visible. But they were outside the domain of his professional activity as an
activist-diplomat for the liberation of East Timor, and as such, are irrelevant to this
book which focuses on his work for East Timor. I therefore feel confident to say that
he was the right man in the right place for his job during the liberation struggle, and
that without him East Timor would not have been freed from Indonesian occupation.
Not having been as closely involved with him in the following stages of the process of
state-building of Timor Leste, I don‟t feel qualified to evaluate his subsequent
effectiveness.

CNRM
Given the need to have a „liberation movement‟ that appeared cohesive, and in view
of the ineffective and also divisive nature of the partisan Fretilin, Horta envisioned the
creation of a National Council of Maubere Resistance (CNRM) that would appear as
the leading organization of the East Timorese resistance, and as such the legitimate
contact point with the self-determination promoters in the UN and other international
bodies. Its creation was announced in 1987, with the Falintil Commander Xanana
Gusmão being made its president by default, given his charismatic personality, his
high skill to be conciliatory and to endear himself to most people, and the fact that he
was Falintil Commander. In traditional East Timorese culture, reflecting its strong
preoccupation with warfare, a successful warrior commanded a very high influence.
Also, Xanana Gusmão was resident inside the territory rather than in exile, and, very
importantly, he was not visibly of mixed Timorese-European race. The people of the
small and isolated East Timor, where historically great divisions between
communities have existed, based on language differences, terrain features, and lack of
communication facilities; exhibit a clear sense of xenophobia. This was also one
factor exacerbating the Fretilin-UDT cleavage. Fretilin presented an anti-Portuguese
pro-indigenous face, while UDT‟s constituency was primarily made up of people
who felt they had a close affinity to Portugal, mostly through a degree of racially
mixed ancestry. This intolerance of „outsiders‟ has also been a problem for
outstanding national figures such as José Ramos Horta, whose mixed Portuguese-
Timorese racial background prevented him from being genuinely accepted as a
popular leader at the time, despite his outstanding contributions of greater impact than
anyone else‟s. His strategy to overcome this limitation was to promote popularly
acceptable figure, such as Xanana Gusmão, to whom he always demonstrated great
loyalty, and to stay in the background in dealings with more traditional and less
enlightened East Timorese. Mari Alkatiri, who is of part Arab ancestry has had to face
a similar problem. In response, he promoted the malleable Lu‟ Olo to become Fretilin
Party President, while staying in the background with effective power as Party
Secretary. As an aside, let me mention the results of a popularity survey of Timor

75
Leste Leaders carried out well after independence, in late 2003, by the International
Republican Institute IRI are interesting. President Xanana Gusmão scored in excess of
90%, Ramos Horta 84%, Defence Force Chief Brigadier General Taur Matan Ruak
70%, Former Timor Timur Governor Mario Carrascalão 68% and Prime Minister
Marí Alkatiri last with 48%. Could it be signalling a change in attitudes?

CNRM was supposed to group the armed resistance (Falintil), a Clandestine Civilian
Resistance and the External Resistance operating internationally. It never proved
possible to get the term CNRM consistently accepted by the wider public inside East
Timor. The label Falintil was stronger, given the greater inclination for warfare. Also,
the so-called Council was never really properly set up, nor did it have periodic
meetings nor did it adopt policy decisions. There was no clear structure defined, there
were no definitions of functions or responsibilities spelled out, nor were there meeting
and internal information communications procedures defined. But, it was a necessary
and useful symbol, which allowed us to fit into expected international moulds as a
representative national liberation movement. I say „us‟, for during almost 5 years I
used the designation „Director General of International Relations of CNRM‟, assisting
Horta‟s international work and coordinating the work of a team of young East
Timorese representatives in various countries. Most of them had acquired an
Indonesian education and fled Timor Timur because of persecutions after their
heightened activism against Indonesian occupation in the early 90s. A few had also
fled Portuguese Timor due to the violence in 1975.

The experience of trying to build a well-functioning and well-coordinated team with

this group made me realize just how far these young people would need to be trained
in order to function in a modern organization, given their very poor preparation under
Indonesia, and the lack of experience in positions of responsibility under Portugal. It
is also then that I first noticed the culture clash between traditional East Timorese
forms of organisation and the modern Western inspired forms under which we were
supposed to function. Unfortunately what would be perfectly functional in a
traditional stable society was not adequate in the contemporary context.

Furthermore, without little CNRM financial support, since we such limited funds,
they had to find ways of surviving as best as they could in the various foreign
countries they were living in. Some were helped by local Timor supporters to obtain
study scholarships and got degrees, in some cases from top tertiary institutions. Others
lived very frugally and engaged in whatever activity they could. Others had family
obligations and had to work- usually in low paying jobs due to their lack of formal
professional qualifications. Even if most of them initially could not be depended
upon to any significant degree to develop strategies for the advocacy campaign or
take executive responsibility for implementing it, they were necessary supports for the
international campaigners for East Timor self-determination, and gave the
international movement a legitimate appearance. But once these young exiles had
adjusted to the extremely different conditions in their new host countries, overcome
the trauma of being in exile far away from their attractive country, overcome the big
cultural differences they faced, and acquired new skills and knowledge, the situation
changed. But for this to be possible a long time was required. Several of these
erstwhile representatives have subsequently become prominent members of the
diplomatic corps of Timor Leste, moving with relative ease on the international stage.
The conclusion for me, already at that time, was that while the East Timorese –like

76
any other people- would be able to develop the skills necessary to manage a modern
state, the process would require a long period of nurturing, especially considering the
very low skill base, and the different cultural traditions from which they set out.

But despite our limited human and material resources, and thanks primarily to the
invaluable support of committed non-Timorese activists who took up the cause of
East Timor as part of their noble engagement to work for a more just world, we were
able to make an impact world-wide. Our role was primarily to provide information
and statements from authentic East Timorese sources to our non-Timorese supporters
which would add legitimacy to their awareness-raising and advocacy work. Given
the security cordon isolating East Timor and its people, this was not an easy task,
involving arranging travels of our personnel and other couriers, arranging for
journalists to covertly visit and meet key resistance people, arranging for ways to get
video or audio recordings, finding potential supporters in Indonesia to assist with such
activities, and so on. We also had to find ways to get resistance people into safety
from persecution by the Indonesian military. For this purpose, we organised a
number of asylum seeking actions by highly endangered East Timorese youths, being
chased by the military as a sequel to the Santa Cruz massacre, even after a few years
had passed. In 1993, with the back up support of local friends in Finland and Sweden,
who took care that the media and human rights defenders in their countries were kept
appraised of developments as they evolved, we tried the Jakarta embassies of these
two countries as our first attempts. Our Jakarta associates coached the endangered
seven youths on how to get to enter the embassies, and what to do once inside, what
their rights were, what pressures and what tricks to expect being subjected to so as to
make them desist to seek asylum and leave the embassies. Unfortunately in these
early cases the experience proved overwhelming for the young people involved, given
their lack of familiarity with the for them too complex environment, so they
eventually succumbed and agreed to „voluntarily‟ leave the embassies, much to the
relief of the diplomats whose greatest fear was to upset the economically promising
Indonesia of Suharto. As was to be expected, and despite „assurances‟ to the contrary
given to the intending asylum-seekers so as to induce them to leave the embassy
territories, they were victimised by the Indonesian authorities in subsequent months.
The members of the first group eventually left six months later to Portugal after
Indonesia was forced by the negative publicity of the case to grant the ICRC‟s safe
conduct request for them. The first experiment was useful for our cause because it
generated significant media publicity in the affected countries, internationally, and
even in Indonesia to some extent. This helped to raise further awareness about the
plight of the people of East Timor under the occupation. The experience also helped
to set the stage for further such attempts, which began taking place with growing
frequency over coming months and years. During the five years to 1998, over 200
East Timorese people left Indonesia through foreign embassies 25. Their departures
were arranged on humanitarian grounds by the ICRC, which was diplomatically more
palatable that political asylum. They went to Portugal who automatically accepted
them as its citizens. The peak drama was reached in November 1994, when 29 East
Timorese youths wee able to enter the US Embassy compound in Jakarta at the time
of the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Council (APEC) heads of
government in that city. US president Clinton was also in attendance. The media

25
A list of asylum attempts is on www.asia-pacific-
action.org/southeastasia/indonesia/publications/doss3/history.htm

77
impact throughout the whole world was huge. No only did the raised media exposure
assist our work of international awareness-raising about the plight of East Timor and
the seeking of support to end the occupation, but it also provided us with a growing
number of politically active East Timorese people resident in Europe who could
contribute to the campaign. Several did so, showing sufficient commitment and
willingness to expand their skills in this type of activity.

One of our important activities at the time was the promotion of a CNRM-proposed
peace plan to end the conflict with Indonesia. The plan was designed by Horta and
endorsed by Xanana Gusmão. All other CNRM members were said to have agreed.
We disseminated it through media world-wide, explained it to legislators and civil
society members so they could lobby those who were involved in foreign policy
formulation in their respective countries and gain support for it, and we made direct
visits and representations to many foreign ministries and diplomats of many countries.
The reception was at best polite, but disinterested.

The plan considered three phases:

“Phase One (one to two years): Indonesia-Portugal talks under the auspices of the
UN Secretary General, with East Timorese participation, to achieve an end to armed
activities in East Timor; release of political prisoners; reduction of Indonesian
military personnel; removal of armaments; expansion of International Committee of
the Red Cross activities; reduction of Indonesian civil servants; population census;
access by UN Specialised Agencies for restoration and protection of the environment,
resettlement, district development, women and children care and public health and
immunisation; restoration of all basic human rights, removal of restrictions on
Portuguese and Tetum languages; setting up of an independent Human Rights
Commission; appointment of a UN Secretary General Resident Representative in East
Timor.
Phase Two -autonomy- (five years): A transition stage of autonomy in which East
Timorese would govern themselves democratically through their own local
institutions. This would require: Democratic election of a local Assembly with a five-
year mandate under UN supervision and assistance. Only East Timorese may vote and
be elected; election of an East Timorese Governor for a five-year term by the
Assembly; Assembly powers would include, among others, legislation concerning
international trade relations, investment, property, and immigration; withdrawal of all
Indonesian troops and further reduction in Indonesian civil servants; a UN-organised
territorial police force, placed under the command of the Governor, the territory is to
have no army. Phase two may be extended up to an additional five years by mutual
consent between Indonesia and the East Timorese population expressing its views
through a referendum.
Phase Three -self-determination-: Preparation for a self-determination referendum,
to be held within one year of the commencement of this phase, whereby the
population may choose between free association or integration into Indonesia, or
independence”26.
As can be seen, the East Timorese leadership at the time allowed two years of
preparation, up to 10 years of autonomous transition under Indonesia followed by a
possible further year until a possible independence: a total of up to13 years from the
date of reaching agreement to end the conflict until independence. We all felt that

26
CNRM document on www.uc.pt/timor/cnrm.htm

78
such a time was necessary to undertake the state-building process required prior to
East Timor being able to become independent, and this was before the massive
destruction and dislocation of 1999. Instead, as it turned out, the eventual
independence preparation cum humanitarian emergency response cum reconstruction
took a mere 30 months.

Our other main activities at CNRM at the time involved developing links with the
Indonesian pro-democracy movement, and assisting them to develop their
international connections. The series of conferences organised by Professor Barbedo
de Magalhães under the name of Jornadas de Timor, which I refer to below, were
very useful in this regard, allowing courageous Indonesian friends such as Bonar
Tigor Naipospos, Jenny Rosa Damayantui and their colleagues to appear at gatherings
seen as inimical by the Suharto regime. The poorly-disguised presence of Indonesian
or pro-Indonesian East Timorese spies at these gatherings ensured that ABRI knew
who was there and what they said.

Fund-raising for our poorly financed liberation movement turned out to be a very
time-consuming activity for me. It was a difficult task. Mainstream donors, usually
government backed, were not willing to fund a resistance movement against a state,
however oppressive it may be, and however illegal its occupying presence in East
Timor may have been. Only human rights organisations, Church aid agencies, and as
a result of the Santa Cruz massacre, Portuguese NGOs and Catholic Church aid
agencies in other countries such as Germany, Austria, and Scandinavia, were willing
to give minor donations for human rights protection, in many cases with reservations,
since they considered ours a lost cause. But our perseverance and scrupulous
accountability did inspire confidence, and slowly the funding became more sustained,
if always relatively modest.
CNRM, supposedly the umbrella organization of all the various East Timorese groups
was never able to genuinely incorporate those who identified with UDT, despite the
strenuous efforts of Horta, the appeals of Gusmão, and the recommendations of
international supporters to that effect. This serious example of lack of pragmatism and
divisiveness had its base in the letter „M‟ of the acronym, standing for Maubere,
originally a derogatory term used by the Portuguese and mestiços to designate the
uneducated autochthonous population, which Fretilin elevated in 1975 to designate
these people, the Fretilin partisans, giving it an aura of pride. This alienated the UDT
leadership abroad, who refused to unequivocally proclaim their adhesion to CNRM,
creating a situation detrimental to the image of a united and all encompassing pro-
independence movement that Horta and Gusmão were trying to project. This evident
division was useful to Indonesia and its supporters, who wasted no opportunity to
exploit it to de-legitimise the East Timorese pro self-determination movement.

With this background, CNRM unfortunately was not an environment very conducive
to success in its international advocacy work. The jealousies, squabbles, pettiness,
unreliability, and lack of commitment of many of our fellow workers, made me feel
increasingly frustrated. I started to look for other vehicles to carry out our struggle for
the liberation of East Timor. Furthermore, it became increasingly obvious that in
order to function in the contemporary world, it was necessary to have a juridical
personality. A resistance movement, not being a state agency, lacks this in a system
only acknowledging state actors. The only alternative was to become a non-profit
organization, an NGO, incorporated under the laws of a not too inhospitable country,

79
provided our objectives were in line with the stipulations of such a law. After some
research into the matter, the solution was found to be to incorporate an East Timor
International Support Centre (ETISC) as a non-profit corporation in Australia. To
pursue this plan, I resigned form CNRM to set up ETISC in late 1996.

CNRT
An entity by the name of CNRT (National Council of Timorese Resistance) replaced
CNRM once the UDT leaders became more amenable to work with Fretilin, after
several years of effort. One of the self-styled UDT leaders was eventually weakened
by discontent inside his group because of his authoritarian, non-consultative and non-
participatory attitudes, which led to the withdrawal of supporters and calls for a „party
congress‟ that was held of sorts in December 1997. It was criticized for the lack of
openness in its organization and deliberations. Only after this gathering showed his
diminishing support did the leader show willingness to express a commitment to an
all-encompassing umbrella organization. The accommodating Xanana Gusmão
changed the name of the to all effects inactive CNRM to CNRT, and a „national
congress‟ was organized in Peniche, Portugal, in April 1998. Funding was made
available by Portugal, now that UDT would be included. Delegates came from the
diáspora in Portugal and Australia, as well as from inside East Timor, since the
economically weakened Indonesia had relaxed its controls. The gathering of East
Timorese from inside and outside, with different levels of exposure to the modern
world led to contradictions. As was natural, principles applying to traditional forms of
organization featured strongly, and led to dissatisfaction on the part of those who had
a greater exposure to modern practices. As a result, the selection of delegates was
bitterly criticized because of lack of procedures to ensure true representation.
Similarly, the deliberation, decision-making, and voting procedures were denounced
as insufficiently democratic, lacking candour and transparency. Unfortunately the
design of the CNRT organization also suffered from shortcomings if looked at from a
modern functional perspective. Much attention was given to devising pompous
sounding titles, and the creation of enough of them to co-opt all the vociferous East
Timorese pro-independence activists. Little or nothing existed in terms of substantive
constitutional documents, definitions of functions, work procedures, information and
reporting mechanisms, or work programs and their implementation. But the congress
and its outcome gave a good appearance of a united movement, above factionalism,
representative of the people of East Timor who rejected Indonesian occupation and
strove for national liberation. In this sense it was very useful. Its flawed organization
in a modern sense, and its consequent operational deficiency were not immediately
visible in 1998 and early 1999, since the ongoing East Timorese diplomatic work was
effectively still being done by Ramos-Horta and East Timor supporters, and the armed
and civilian resistance inside East Timor was being conducted respectively by local
entities that had proven their survival capacity.

CNRT was also a very useful device for the August 1999 consultation on the status of
the territory. It provided a rallying point for the anti-integration forces, fostering unity
and cooperation among them. Anti-integrationists set up facilities throughout the
territory, wherever security conditions allowed it, and distributed UN information on
the consultation, its procedures, and campaigned for this option. Following the
shrewd advice of CNRT President Xanana Gusmão, the UN chose the CNRT flag as
the symbol for the anti-autonomy vote on the consultation ballot paper, i.e. for the

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pro-independence vote. Soon, CNRT and independence were synonymous in the
popular mind. This allowed CNRT to claim after the vote that it had legitimacy as the
leading representative of the people, since the majority “had voted for it”. As will be
mentioned below, during the subsequent phase of UN transitional administration after
the withdrawal of Indonesia from East Timor, CNRT was briefly treated by the
peacekeepers as one of the local factions to be kept at bay under an initial policy of
equidistance from all „conflicting‟ parties. This soon changed so that, based on the
claim that it “had won the election”, the UN decided to treat CNRT leaders as their
chief interlocutors choosing CNRT as their local counterpart, considering it as the
legitimate representative of the local people. Because of the acute need under UN
paradigms for the existence of an organization such as CNRT, which could be
considered to democratically represent the people and be a legitimate counterpart of
the UN administration as well as the local focal point of many outside entities willing
to assist East Timor‟s reconstruction, much wishful thinking was exhibited towards
this entity and it was given tasks which it could not possibly fulfil properly 27, at least
not in the context in which the contemporary external world functioned. The fact that
CNRT was so deficiently organized and lacking in skills, and thus unable to deliver
on its commitments, started to become evident very soon. Unfortunately these
shortcomings were never candidly acknowledged neither by CNRT nor by the UN,
and so the acute need for a capacity-building and training activity for the organization,
in order to bring it to the standards of a modern democratic and accountable political
entity, which the international community wanted it to be, was not emphasized.
Instead the fiction of it being a representative local counterpart to the UN
administration was maintained. In retrospect, it is also not difficult to see that a group
set up for the purposes of resistance against an occupier could hardly be expected to
transform itself into a partner in governance without undergoing a significant capacity
building experience and possibly also a political adjustment. In fact, as soon as CNRT
deviated from its original purpose, it started to disintegrate.

The gap between vision and reality in CNRT was especially regrettable because the
principles and policies its leadership articulated for the new phase of the country were
mostly sound and commendable. However, little could be translated into practice,
because of the absence of organizational capacity of its personnel, stemming from
their lack of preparation and experience in modern democratic government. But,
perhaps the strongest impediment to the effectiveness of CNRT was a lack of genuine
commitment to the concept of a supra-partisan inclusive and pluralist organization,
engaged in the cause of reconstruction of the country, by those leaders of the
traditional parties who were anxious to place themselves and their respective groups
in power. This, as was mentioned earlier, is an indication of the lack of loyalty of such
groups to the East Timor nation as a whole, as opposed to their own factions. The
construction of a stable state does require a broader loyalty, which in many cases can
only be developed over sufficient time, as the tragedies in many post-colonial quasi-
states, particularly in Africa, have shown.

During 2000 CNRT maintained the illusion of being the representative of a united
people, and seemed to be even contemplating to become a political grouping in its
own right, and compete for office in the eventual elections. But the August 2000
27
See for example, Pat Walsh, „From Opposition to Proposition: The National Council of Timorese
Resistance in Transition‟ ACFOA document, 8 November 1999. Available on
www.tip.net.au/~wioldwood/CNRTPat.htm .

81
National Congress held by CNRT evidenced its underlying fragility. Fretilin wanted
one of the Vice Presidencies of CNRT (the other being held by Independent Horta). In
order to satisfy them, Xanana Gusmão urged Mario Carrascalão not to stand. Yet
delegates nominated him and a majority of delegates voted for him. Unable to
manipulate the outcome of the CNRT election so as to get the positions their leaders
coveted, the two main parties, Fretilin and UDT withdrew from CNRT. From then on
Xanana Gusmão‟s discourse changed and his references to the return to party politics
as a natural development became more frequent. By June 2001, betraying concern
about the possibility of violent conflict to follow, Xanana Gusmão dissolved CNRT.
Its role was henceforth “taken over by the on-going political process” as he put it28.

So, while CNRM and its successor CNRT had been useful symbols to portray the East
Timorese opposition to Indonesian occupation as being akin to a conventional pro-
independence movement, and therefore these entities were functional for the
international pro-self determination campaign, once the invader had been removed,
CNRT became dysfunctional to the process of building a stable modern democratic
state in East Timor. It conveyed an illusory and misleading appearance of
organizational maturity in a modern sense of the East Timorese pro-independence
population This illusion may have been a factor accounting for the insufficient
international tutelage and preparation of the country for independent democratic
statehood that followed.

The international solidarity network for East Timor

It was the cooperation of José Ramos-Horta and the network of international
supporters of the East Timor cause, which sprang up in the early 1990s as a result of
indignation towards the Santa Cruz massacre images, which laid the deciding
foundation for the liberation of East Timor. The development of this network is a
good example of the growing power in international politics of the non-government
sector, and of the process of globalisation. The movement was truly global, and
therein laid its strength. It was a campaign that had to operate on very low funds. The
advent of email and the internet made it possible for it to do so. Would these highly
effective, globally reaching and very low-cost communications facilities have been
unavailable, the international East Timor campaign would not have been able to
emerge as it did.

The first East Timor support group that had a strong impact emerged in 1992. It was
the US-based East Timor Action Network (ETAN), a creation of several US pacifists,
who were members of the New York-based War Resisters League. Highly committed
ETAN founders like Charlie Scheiner and John Miller had a decisive contribution to
make to the growth of ETAN into an effective national organization with chapters all
across the US. Their main activity was to sensitise and pressure the US Congress
people on the East Timor issue. They succeeded and gained the respect of a number of
key Senators and Representatives who defended the East Timor cause for the
remainder of the decade of the 90‟s. The ultimate result of their action was to
convince US President Clinton to support an Australian-led humanitarian military
intervention in East Timor in September 1999. ETAN also cultivated close relations

28
„Address By Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão On The Occasion Of The Ceremony To Mark The
Dissolution Of The CNRT/National Congress‟, www.pcug.org.au/~wildwood/01junxanana.htm

82
with the US media, whom they tried to interest in the issue with as much success as
the circumstances allowed.

In Australia there were also a number of East Timor support groups, who agitated
strongly for respect of the East Timorese right of self-determination, opposed the
massive human rights violations perpetrated by the Indonesian military, and above all,
opposed the policies of appeasement of the Indonesian military regime which
successive Australian governments espoused, be they right or left wing.
Unfortunately, the various Australian groups were never able to coalesce into one
compact body, carrying out a united strategy of support. Other Australian community
groups also took a great interest in the issue. These ranged from returned
servicemen‟s organizations, who remembered the big suffering of the East Timorese
people as a result of their support of Australia‟s war efforts against Japan in WWII, to
human rights organizations, aid NGOs, parliamentarian groups, academics,
professional associations, trade unions, churches and media. The latter were driven to
an important extent by the indignation felt against the cold-blooded murder of six
journalists working for the Australian media by Indonesian troops at the time of the
1975 invasion of East Timor, and the collusion of the Australian government with the
Indonesians to prevent the true facts of the matter surfacing. Among the individuals
promoting the cause in Australia the highly committed and intelligent late Dr Andrew
McNaughtan, and the tenacious and generous Robert Wesley-Smith stand out, who
also provided invaluable support to the activities of ETISC in Darwin. The result of
the work of all these dedicated people was that the East Timor cause had a very high
profile in Australia and had to be taken into account by political leaders. The massive
demonstrations in all Australian states in 1999 –the biggest since the Vietnam War
days- that mobilised a broad section of the community, even school children, proved
just how important the issue was for the Australian public. This was a significant
consideration made by Australia‟s conservative Prime Minister Howard when
deciding that the time had finally come for an international, Australian-led order-
keeping intervention in East Timor in the aftermath of the post-consultation
Indonesian-military sponsored violence and destruction.

Other democratic countries in the region also saw the emergence of East Timor
support groups that attempted to influence government policy towards the issue. New
Zealand had an active group that was able to have an impact in parliament. Japan had
dedicated activists who also primarily lobbied their parliament with remarkable
perseverance for many years. In the Philippines a grass-roots organization emerged,
which was able to cleverly turn an Indonesian-imposed Philippine government ban on
an East Timor conference into a high profile civil liberties issue, attracting a high
level of public awareness for the until then little known East Timor plight.
Subsequently, they were able to promote public support of the issue for several years.
In other Asian and Pacific countries such as Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand,
and even Fiji and Sri Lanka, human rights advocacy NGOs and Churches also took up
the East Timor issue and attempted to bring the matter to the attention of the wider
public. Even in Indonesia in the latter years of the Suharto regime, a number of
advocacy groups defending the right of self-determination of the East Timorese
people emerged. Their agenda was mostly to reign in the political power of the
military and to prevent the human rights violation excesses carried out with impunity
by the armed forces. Other aims were humanitarian in support of victims of
oppression. As the regime became weaker, these groups became bolder, and their

83
criticism was noticed by President Habibie, influencing his policy of accepting a
referendum in East Timor.

But the strongest solidarity with the people of East Timor was expressed in Europe. In
Portugal in the 70s and 80s public awareness was limited and supporters were mainly
left-wing NGOs. Yet, the number of support groups proliferated as East Timor
became a cause célébre after the pictures of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre were seen.
With wide ranging public opinion support for the East Timorese, successive
Portuguese governments could not but take an active role on the matter of defending
East Timorese self-determination through existing human rights and UN mechanisms.
The accession of Portugal to EU membership on 1 January 1986 gave it a useful new
leverage. The UK civil society played a key role as well. Tapol, the human rights
campaigning organization led by UK-based Suharto regime victims, notably Carmel
Budiardjo and her Netherlands-based colleague Liem Soei Liong took up the East
Timor issue with great vigour in the 1990s, realizing that it was the Achilles heel of
their foe. Across the sea, in Ireland, the plight of the Timorese also struck a chord, and
historic parallels between the Irish as victims of foreign oppression and the East
Timorese were quickly drawn. In this sense the outstanding campaign work of a
remarkable Dublin bus driver (later, Doctor of Law) Tom Hyland is almost legendary.
Moved by the Max Stahl images of Santa Cruz, Hyland decided to devote himself to
raising Irish support for the people of East Timor. This he did so outstandingly during
following years until 1999, that the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign became
one of the high profile advocacy NGOs in the country, enabling both the public and
government members to be well informed and supportive. As a result, Ireland was the
only Western state, besides Portugal, to openly and unequivocally support the East
Timor cause in international fora, a contribution that was of decisive value. For his
services Hyland was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize in 1996, was given a
„People of the Year‟ award in 1999, a „Lord Mayor of Dublin‟ award in 2000, and
received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws in 2003. East Timor support groups also
emerged in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian
countries, Spain and Switzerland. In some cases they were offshoots of anti-Suharto
campaigners, both local and Indonesians in exile, in others they were linked to local
human rights organizations, both secular and Church based. Some were able to
influence government diplomatic and aid policy in support of the self-determination
right of the East Timorese, and others, such as in France, had to face a very
impervious policy environment so that despite hard work, their tangible results were
limited. Tenacious activists like Bruno Kahn persevered nonetheless. But, as a group,
acting throughout the European Union member states, they did collectively have an
impact, at least on the consciences of policy makers, so that once the Suharto and
Habibie regimes lost their legitimacy as a result of economic difficulties, a change of
position regarding East Timor could follow relatively soon.

Among the instruments utilized to influence public opinion and parliamentarians in

various countries about East Timor were demonstrations, dissemination of
information on Indonesian human rights violations, close relations with the media,
and very importantly, conferences –mostly academic- on East Timor that brought
together international East Timor activists, media professionals, prominent political
supporters, and academics, as well as Indonesian pro-democracy advocates who
opposed the Suharto regime. Through their participation in these gatherings the
Indonesians could learn about the East Timor issue, become committed to the struggle

84
for its freedom, and develop support networks internationally to advance their own
objectives. The credit for promoting this important and useful work goes to
Portuguese academic, Dr Antonio Barbedo de Magalhães of Oporto University.
Despite being a very well respected metallurgical engineer, he devoted countless
effort to stage a series of international conferences both in Portugal, the Americas,
Australia and Asia on the East Timor issue. We at ETISC in Australia assisted him in
their organisation. In the end it was the sustained advocacy and lobbying activity of
these groups, in tandem with Ramos-Horta, during the best part of the decade of the
1990s that decided the fate of East Timor. The most determining effect of the lobby
work on state policy was felt in the US and in Australia. In the US, members of
Congress were aware of the issue and many supported it as a result of these lobby
efforts, in many cases doing so to please their constituents of Portuguese ethnicity. In
Australia, both sides of politics and the wide public were aware of the issue and held
positions on it. When in September 1999 the Indonesian military launched its
outrageous violence through East Timorese militias after losing the referendum, those
in power in the US and Australia realized that the only politically wise position to
take was to condemn Indonesia and press for international intervention. The
consistent lobbying of the World Bank by Horta and ETAN‟s Lynn Fredrickson in the
US also paid off: the Bank‟s Australian President Wolfensohn, in a rare taking of
position on a political issue, also added decisive pressure on Indonesia to accept
intervention. The campaigns in other democratic countries also were of help by
reinforcing the general anti-Indonesian and pro-East Timor climate of opinion at the
time.

My own activities as the Executive Director of ETISC followed on from the previous
work we had been doing through CNRM, except that now we had a fairly well-
functioning group, mostly made up of professional people with a good level of skills,
commitment, and discipline. With better funding available, and greater credibility, our
activities intensified. In addition to information dissemination, assisting with the flow
of information and people in and out of East Timor, and the organisation of discussion
fora such as conferences, we also stepped up our support for the Indonesian pro-
democracy movement, even funding some of their actions. Realising the need to
prepare East Timorese to acquire the skills in order to be able to function in the wider
world, both for the liberation of the country as well as afterwards, we also stared to
invest in capacity building. We brought people for East Timor to Darwin for
induction, letting them work as interns and also employed diáspora East Timorese to
work side by side with non-Timorese personnel. I then realised just how big was the
skill gap that would need to be filled for people facing a new environment that put
new demands on them they had never before experienced, and that the process of
adaptation to our ways would require much time. It was also evident that given the
necessary time and proper nurturing, the East Timorese could perform on a par with
everyone else. It was however, important not to place people in positions of a level for
which they were not prepared, as the resulting unsatisfactory atmosphere and lack of
productivity would be frustrating to everyone and lead to failure to accomplish
objectives. My experiences in CNRM as compared to ETISC made the point very
clearly for me. Little did I think at the time, that the whole state-building experience
under UNTAET after liberation would indicate the same, but on a magnified scale. To
refer to Cooper‟s model, what was involved was the accelerated propelling of people
in a pre-modern situation to a status that required them to acquire skills to enable
them to adequately function in different environment. As has been so often the case

85
with the post-colonial legacy, it was a recipe for chaos. Without me being aware of it
at the time, the experience under CRNM as compared to ETISC had provided an
empirical lesson. But we did realise the need for intense capacity building, so we
started to think about establishing an associated NGO whose focus should be
development aid and capacity building. This led to the founding of Timor Aid.

Nobel Peace Prize

Another important milestone in the struggle for the liberation of East Timor is the
award of the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1996 to two East Timorese leaders, Bishop
Carlos Ximenes Belo, Head of the Catholic Church in East Timor, together with José
Ramos-Horta. For me, actively involved, together with Norwegian supporters, in the
process of seeking this distinction for the East Timor cause, the success in obtaining it
was a major morale boost as well as a result of great practical utility for our struggle.

Horta has been the recipient of a number of human rights prizes, such as the Rafto
Human Rights Memorial Award in 1993, the Gleitzman Foundation award in 1995,
and the UNPO Award in 1996. The Norwegian Thorolf Rafto Foundation award was
of particular consequence. It is a prestigious prize considered the “Human Rights
Nobel Prize”. It is often awarded to distinguished human rights workers when it can
assist in the promotion of a liberation or self-determination cause. In some cases it has
also been a precursor to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to its recipients. In the
case of East Timor, this also happened. The award of the Rafto Prize helped us to gain
the support of members of the Rafto Foundation, who firstly suggested to me that we
should attempt to seek the Nobel Peace Prize, initially for Bishop Belo, as the head of
an organisation seeking the end of conflict, that is the East Timorese Catholic Church.
They organised a meeting for us in 1994 in their hometown, Bergen, to develop a
strategy for this purpose. Through their valuable support with advice and
introductions to key members of the Nobel Committee, we lobbied for the Nobel
Prize, providing information regularly on the developments of the struggle in East
Timor to those who elected the prize winner. I travelled regularly to Oslo during that
time for this purpose, being helped by the members of a committed group of
Norwegian supporters of the East Timor cause, which, surprisingly, had been started
by a Greek citizen, the active human rights campaigner Yannis Tavridis. While we
failed in our first attempt to get the prize for Bishop Belo in 1995, on the next attempt
in 1996, when supportive Icelandic parliamentarians also included Ramos-Horta
together with the Bishop as dual candidates, our work paid off and success was
achieved.

The prestigious Nobel Peace award, awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee
with the express intention to raise the international profile of the East Timorese cause,
had an enormous impact in conferring legitimacy to the struggle. Where previously,
few others besides the sympathetically minded were willing to receive Ramos-Horta
and members of his team, such as myself, following the award we were widely
received by government officials, conservative academics, business leaders and other
prominent people and institutions. Horta was very skilled at drawing the maximum
benefit from the publicity obtained and was able very quickly to acquire international
celebrity status. No request for a public appearance was ever too much, no request for
a media interview was turned down, no invitation was declined. The result was an
intense travel and public engagements regime that would have rapidly destroyed

86
someone with lesser stamina. Being a celebrity also attracted a wide range of
powerful supporters who would normally not have been interested in such an obscure
issue as East Timor, but who were attracted to the celebrity and thus willing to assist
his cause. The skill with which he enlisted the support of such people, and knew how
to reward them in the way they desired, was outstanding. For those of us carrying out
the international campaign, this new situation facilitated our work enormously. Not
only did interest in the issue significantly increase and doors opened, but fund raising
for our work –previously an almost impossible undertaking- also became easier.
Clearly, we were in an ascendant phase in our struggle, in preparation of the decisive
development one year later: the Asian economic downturn of 1997, which eventually
produced the Indonesian economic crisis of 1998 that led to the demise of Suharto.

87
Chapter V: International intervention: self-determination
consultation, destruction, international peacekeeping force

During the Suharto years there had been no progress on the East Timor issue, the
political will of the international community to force Indonesia to change its policy
was simply lacking. Suharto himself, stubbornly clung to the status quo, convinced
that with time the East Timorese would be weakened and decimated to the point of
giving up their resistance. He was almost correct. Would it not have been for the
stamina of Horta and the commitment of our international supporters, so significantly
strengthened by the Nobel Peace Prize award, the resistance would have faded away
in a few years. The armed resistance had reached the point of being a mere token. A
couple of hundred people at most, with little organised leadership, few supplies, and
even less of a strategy, maintained a semblance of armed resistance in the territory.
Overseas, the continuing scandals surrounding Indonesia regarding this and other
human rights issues strengthened the disapproval of the Suharto regime among
legislators and others who had influence on their countries‟ foreign policy. The
economic downturn of 1997 and the unbearable corruption and nepotism conditions in
Indonesia also eroded the support of those who had tolerated the Suharto policies for
the sake of the profits they expected to make by keeping up a semblance of close
relations with his regime. By 1998, the international context was becoming more and
more adverse for the Indonesian regime, and domestically opposition also grew.

After the removal of Suharto in May 1998 the change came very quickly for us. We
were very unprepared for it. We had managed to sensitise international public opinion
to the terrible injustice suffered by the East Timorese, and had many sympathisers at
many levels in a variety of important countries in the world, in international
organisations, in the media, among academics and other influential sectors. Most were
anxiously waiting for a breakthrough. But in terms of organisation that could provide
the foundations for future governance, we had nothing other than some cosmetic
fictions. Having emerged from years of Portuguese colonial domination which did
not attempt to bequeath a modern European state system to the people except,
perhaps, during its last few months, but in any case made ineffective by the existing
chaos, and after the destructive almost quarter century of Indonesian occupation, East
Timor was not even on the threshold of a pre-modern state, in Cooper‟s terms. A few
young people were starting to get some education and experience in areas that could
prepare them for future positions leadership, but it was only early beginnings. Horta
did continue his personal development in statesmanship. But as to the rest, there was
nothing. Despite some somewhat effective efforts to create appearances to the
contrary, there was no human or institutional base on which to base the development
of a democratic and functional political system. As will be seen in the next chapter,
this led to fundamental misperceptions by the international community, in its
eagerness to offload the country from its state building tutelage, to its own people,
whatever their level of readiness to run a European-inspired modern state may have
been.

88
Developments at the UN in the late 90s
During most of the 1980s the East Timor issue was stagnant at the United Nations.
Following the UN General Assembly Resolution of 1982 entrusting the Secretary
General to negotiate a solution of the “Indonesia-Portugal dispute” over the territory
(no reference to the East Timorese people, which Indonesia steadfastly refused to
acknowledge as parties to the settlement), Indonesia played for time. The meetings
between the Foreign Ministers of Portugal and Indonesia were mere formalities that
produced virtually no results while Suharto was in power, and were deliberate spaced
by Indonesia to gain time in the hope that eventually the Portuguese would loose
interest and the East Timorese resistance would give up. Among the few outcomes
was a series of four UN organized All Inclusive East Timorese Dialogue (AIETD)
meetings that brought East Timorese working for Indonesia together with active
opponents of the occupation from the diáspora. These meetings were held in camera
in June 1995, March 1996, October 1997 and October 1998 in Austria, with some
thirty participants. Ostensibly they participants were expected to suggest solutions to
the conflict, but in effect the aim of Indonesia was to get its clients to convince (by
whatever means, including material inducements) their fellows abroad to give up the
struggle. This did not happen, and despite the tight Indonesian control of „their‟
Timorese, some of them did denounce the oppression they were under, to the
embarrassment of their guardians.

But a significant breakthrough was possible after the demise of Suharto. The change
of leadership in Indonesia led to a change in policy regarding the search for a solution
to the situation in East Timor. Suharto‟s successor and protégé Habibie, being more
internationally exposed than his parochial mentor (Habibie even held German
citizenship, something illegal in Indonesia!), could clearly see the damage to
Indonesia‟s international standing produced by the endless negative publicity on
Timor Timur and Suharto‟s refusal to at least pay lip service to the right of self-
determination of the people of East Timor. Habibie had had ample opportunity to
experience the unpleasant effect of international activist opposition to Indonesia‟s
occupation of the territory. The embarrassment of attacks on him and the then
President Suharto during a state visit to Germany in April 1996 by protesters could
not have been easy to forget. Being very pragmatic, Habibie realized that Indonesia -
the illusion regarding its promising economic future shattered by the 1998 financial
crisis- could ill-afford the burden of Timor Timur under its economic conditions at the
time. Also, Habibie was not tied to Indonesia‟s generals, who derived huge personal
financial gains from the ongoing war in Timor Timur. Habibie did accept the view
that an internationally supervised self-determination act –which he obviously
expected to be in Indonesia‟s favour-, would legitimise Indonesia‟s annexation of
Timor Timur and remove the matter once and for all from the UN agenda. So, he
decided to run the risk, allowing for UN involvement.

As a result, on 5 May 1999, the Indonesia-Portuguese discussions produced an accord

to allow the UN to hold a „public consultation‟ in East Timor to determine whether
the people wished to remain as an autonomous part of Indonesia, or whether they
rejected this option. As was seen above the answer given by the people on 30 August
1999, despite the strong coercion and intimidation by the Indonesian military, was a
strong rejection of autonomy under Indonesia.

89
The new Habibie policy opened the way for international intervention in East Timor
and the eventual end of the Indonesian occupation, which was followed by UN
Tutelage and the emergence of the independent Democratic Republic of Timor Leste.
Four distinct stages of such international involvement in East Timor through the UN
are distinguishable: UNAMET (from June to October 1999), INTERFET (September
1999 to February 2000), and UNTAET (October 1999 to 19 May 2002), followed by
UNMISET (20 May 2002- to 19 May 2004), subsequently extended by an initial six
month with an additional further six month option, supporting the new Timor Leste
state.

UNAMET- UN Assistance Mission in East Timor and the Popular

Consultation
The New York Agreement of 5 May 1999 mandated the UN to hold a direct ballot to
determine whether the East Timorese would accept an autonomous status within
Indonesia. The Agreement also mentioned that in case of rejection of the autonomy
option, the UN would take responsibility for the non-self governing territory and
prepare it for independence. Habibie‟s confidence that the Consultation would once
and for all legitimise the integration of Timor Timur into Indonesia, removing at last
this damaging issue to the country‟s international standing, was not shared by the
Army. TNI was concerned that the outcome might not be favourable, and, following
its usual practices, engaged in intimidation and violence to ensure that the
consultation‟s outcome proved pro-autonomy. Given the Army‟s better knowledge of
conditions on the ground due to its direct involvement, and the notorious lack of
veritable reporting by distant officials to the central authorities in Jakarta, for which
Indonesia is well known (asal Bapak senang29), different perceptions between the
President and the military, such as these, were commonplace.

The framework for the „Special Autonomous Region of East Timor (SARET)‟ was
based on an initial UN proposal, modified by inputs from the Indonesian and
Portuguese governments. Jakarta was particularly concerned with the impact it would
have on other provinces also desirous of autonomy, and Lisbon felt it had no further
say in the matter once the East Timorese were offered the option of rejecting
autonomy within Indonesia in favour of independence. The SARET document was
approved by Jakarta in April 1999, stipulating Indonesian responsibility for foreign
affairs, defence, currency and finance. Other areas of responsibility would be dealt
with locally in East Timor. Looking at Indonesia‟s obsession with centralism, its
opposition to regional autonomy, and its consistency in not fulfilling its commitments,
it was hard for us to believe that the SARET framework would have been actually
respected if the autonomy option had won. Mario Carrascalão implied this in our
conversation in Dili in August 2003 which I have repeatedly referred to above, when
saying that Habibie was merely concerned with presenting an option acceptable to the
international community, but in fact did not envisage autonomy for East Timor
different to that of other Indonesian provinces.

29
Asal Bapak senang roughly translatable as “as long as the master is happy” is a very prevalent
Javanese attitude of only reporting news that are likely to please those in higher positions. The central
government authorities of Indonesia were often very misinformed of the reality in Timor Timur, as
well as in many other areas, especially outlying ones, because of the so prevalent untruthful reporting
practices.

90
Once the May 5 agreement had been reached, the UN moved with unusual speed.
Preparations for a mission organized by the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) of
the UN Secretariat started in May, with the appointment of Ian Martin as Special
Representative of the Secretary-General, in charge of the mission, on the 21st of that
month (ironically, on the first anniversary of Habibie‟s assumption of the Indonesian
Presidency). Martin arrived in Dili on 1 June, even before the Mission had been
formally approved. This only happened on 11 June 1999 when the Security Council
passed Resolution 1246 creating the „United Nations Mission in East Timor
(UNAMET)‟. Its mandate was to conduct a consultation among the people of East
Timor by asking whether the voters accepted or rejected the proposition that Timor
Timur remained in Indonesia as a special autonomous region. Strong international
support for the Consultation and the willingness of key countries to donate the
necessary funds, allowed a quick implementation. These countries were primarily
Australia, the US, Japan, Portugal as well as the EU, who donated some USD 50
million out of the total USD 80 million spent on UNTAET, thus avoiding the need for
the lengthy assessed contributions process to be first completed. UNAMET staff
started arriving in Dili in June coming via Darwin where the Australian Electoral
Commission provided them with some training on election procedures. They
consisted of over 1000 people comprising 17 UN political staff, a number of UN
support staff, 270 unarmed Civpol, and 500 UN Volunteers. Local East Timorese staff
numbers went from an initial 600 to 4000 in the days of the vote. At a later stage
Indonesia grudgingly accepted an initial presence of 50 military observers, which
were not to be designated as such but were called Military Liaison Officers.

The Mission personnel were to explain the nature of the exercise to the largely
illiterate population, register it, and on the agreed upon date (first August 8, then
August 22 and eventually August 30) conduct the vote. The police personnel had no
powers. They were there merely to advise the Indonesian authorities as to how to
guarantee security while remaining impartial. It quickly became obvious that their
prospects of ensuring Indonesian neutrality were nil. Yet, this was considered to the
best outcome that could have been achieved under the circumstances. Indonesia had
clearly only agreed to the Consultation under the illusion that they would be able to
manipulate it to ensure that the result would be in their favour. This required being in
control of the military and police, to be able to exert the necessary pressure unfettered
from outside interference.

Predictably, Indonesia‟s undertakings of May 5 to guarantee an atmosphere of

freedom of expression and absence of intimidation for the Consultation were broken
as soon as they were made. Acts of violence against those known to favour rejection
of the autonomy option were constant. Thousands of people were displaced by such
violence, and several were killed. Large amounts of development funds, even World
Bank provided funds, were illegally deviated to fund the local militia force created by
TNI to intimidate the population into voting in favour of integration. Mark Davis
reported on how Indonesian Government ministers used some USD 10 million of
World Bank aid money earmarked for welfare and development to fund the militia
campaign of terror in East Timor in 1999. The World Bank said it had not found
evidence of this, but would investigate further30. As we learned from personal
conversations in Darwin in later, during the months of July and August UNAMET

30
SBS Television [Australia] "Dateline" investigative report Wednesday February 16, 2000 8.30 pm

91
staff received messages from the TNI and militia leaders through the local people,
almost on a daily basis, warning them of the destruction that would take place if the
Consultation result turned out against Indonesia. The UN observed these
developments with increasing alarm, and on several occasions had to face the
agonizing decision of whether to cancel the consultation, given that the agreed upon
minimal security conditions were far from present, or to press on with this unique
opportunity to give the people of East Timor their much awaited act of self-
determination. The UN and the countries supporting the Consultation were very
conscious of the fact that if the window of opportunity that had been opened was
closed, it might never reopen again.

So, UNAMET did press on and despite the campaigns of slander by the pro-
autonomists who feared a negative outcome and accused it of malpractice, the UN‟s
competence and proven experience regarding elections was once again evident, even
if this time it was not just monitoring the ballot but actually conducting it. Factors
that ensured that the vote went ahead despite the obstruction by the TNI and its clients
were the commitment of key states, the availability of adequate funding and the will
of Indonesia to proceed with the exercise (albeit, with one it could manipulate). But,
as Ian Martin wrote, “the factor that would determine the success of the popular
consultation...[was]…the determination of the people of East Timor to have their say
regarding their future and their courage in defying violence to do so”31. Indeed, even
if substantially illiterate, the people knew very well that this was their one and only
opportunity to rid themselves of their oppressors. What the people did misperceive in
their eagerness for freedom was, however, the fact that the UN presence could give
them no international guarantees of security against reprisals by their Indonesian
tormenters and their militia clients.

The presence of the close to 1000 UNAMET personnel in Timor Timur, originating in
a large number of countries, was an enormous novelty for the people of one of the
most isolated places on earth during the last quarter of a century while under
Indonesian occupation. No foreigners other than state guests had been initially
allowed in at all, and later, only small numbers of travellers –whose movements were
usually tightly monitored by military intelligence agents- had visited the territory.
Now the people could see the variety of nationalities deployed by UNAMET to
enable them to exercise the right of self-determination that they had heard so much
about and had longed for so long to enjoy. The assembly of foreigners, with their back
up equipment and operating modes, so far advanced from what the Indonesians
possessed, also showed the conservative and rather static local people that there was a
far more advanced world outside from which they were cut off. UNAMET was a
foretaste in miniature of what the future would bring to the East Timorese. It was
greeted positively on one hand with anticipation of a deliverance from Indonesian
oppression, but on the other with the apprehension with which an inert society greets
change. As will be seen in the next section, this ambivalence was a decisive factor
influencing how events turned out during the UN transitional administration that
followed.

While UNAMET carried out its work for the Consultation, 600 kilometers away in
Darwin and nearby military bases, the Australian Armed Forces were preparing for an

31
Ian Martin, Self-Determination… p 53

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eventual turbulent future in the contested territory to the north. Troops were added to
the numbers regularly stationed in Darwin, significantly increasing their numbers air
transport and Air Force strike capacity was increased, Navy reinforcements were
brought in, and the military personnel was prepared for contact with both the
Indonesian military and the East Timorese people. Training even included survival
lessons in the local Tetum language, and basic elements of East Timorese culture and
etiquette, which ETISC staff contributed to provide. Australia was clearly not willing
to be caught unprepared again as it had been 25 years earlier.

Witnessed by over 2000 observers from both governments and non-government

organizations, from overseas as well as Indonesia, the vote took place in a very tense
atmosphere on 30 August 1999. ETISC had contributed to the work of organizing an
observer mission numbering close to 100 East Timor activists from all over the world,
under the aegis of the International Federation for East Timor (IFFET). Of our own
staff, the indomitable Dr McNaughtan and our courageous administrator Jude
Conway made the journey from Darwin to East Timor to report on the current
situation, and also to provide support to our Timor Aid personnel in Dili, who were
assisting the victimized pro-independence people. After a few weeks, our visiting
Australian personnel were arrested by Indonesian police for their too close
involvement with the people and deported, a couple of days ahead of the vote. Having
to intercede on their behalf by telephone with the new Australian Consulate in Dili,
and getting little assistance, I had a direct taste of just how cautious, if not
unenthusiastic, the newly established Australian Consular authorities were when it
came to protect the situation of their own citizens being harassed by the Indonesian
authorities. Andrew and Jude had done nothing illegal, nor anything that contravened
the terms of the agreement for the Consultation. On the contrary, they were trying to
contribute to making the vote proceed under the required conditions of freedom from
pressure and intimidation. Nonetheless, they were detained and rapidly expelled to
Kupang.

A large contingent of over 600 accredited media personnel from all over the world
was also present at this time in East Timor, adding to the international profile of the
event, which became a top story on the day world-wide. Almost the totality of the
close to 500,000 people that had registered participated, despite the great physical
difficulties and security threats they had to overcome. Witnesses gave many accounts
of the moving sight of frail old or disabled people who walked long distances from
their isolated mountain dwellings to be at the polling booths, some arriving even
before the sun had risen. These monitors also confirmed that the poll had been
conducted without any irregularities. The four days between the vote and the
announcement of results were very tense. The large voter turnout made it clear to the
pro-autonomy side that they had failed to manipulate the outcome, and faced defeat.
Their first response was to attempt to isolate the territory by threatening the many
foreign witnesses still present, including UNAMET personnel, into leaving Timor
Timur. Many of the visitors did speed up their departure, cancelling plans to be
present for the announcement of the result on 4 September. For the over two decades
of Indonesian occupation, the ability of the Indonesian government and TNI to
exclude uncooperative foreigners, and the resulting lack of international witnesses in
the territory, had been a major factor enabling the military to surreptitiously commit
most of its brutal acts against the local population.

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The announcement of the result of the Consultation, made simultaneously by the UN
Secretary-General in New York and Ian Martin in Dili, stated that an overwhelming
78.5% of voters had rejected the Indonesian autonomy offer. The Jakarta authorities
were stunned by this result, which allowed no claim that the voting outcome was
ambiguous. On that day the militias in collusion with the TNI unleashed a fury of
destruction on the territory that was to last for two weeks until stopped by outside
military forces. During this time around 1/3 of its population, that is some 250,000
people were forced to relocate to West Timor to be used, as in 1975, as hostages by
Indonesia. Most of the physical infrastructure was destroyed, and Dili was in ruins.
TNI and the militias also attacked the UNAMET as well as the ICRC, the two
international presences in the province other than the recently established Australian
Consulate. Most UNAMET personnel, including many of the greatly endangered
locals, as well as the ICRC staff, were progressively evacuated to Darwin between 6
and 11 September as the security situation for them worsened. Even the Australian
Consulate had to be fully evacuated by 8 September. A number of UNAMET
personnel, led by the mission‟s courageous head, SRSG Ian Martin, tried to hold on to
the end, in order to protect the lives of their local staff who would have been killed if
abandoned, and aware of the fact that if the UNAMET left Indonesia could shut the
door on East Timor again, not allowing a return of the UN and isolating the territory
from the outside world. Only after an international military intervention had become
a certainty, by 11 September, did Ian Martin and the remaining UNAMET personnel,
including the endangered local staff, leave for Darwin. Only twelve of the Mission‟s
Military Liaison Officers remained behind, sheltered in the premises of the now
abandoned Australian Consulate. The destruction of Dili included the Bishop‟s
residence in Dili, and the neighbouring ICRC headquarters, my property. It also
included the destruction and ransacking of the Timor Aid office in Dili, whose staff
with the exception of a brave old guard, had to flee for their lives. Most equipment,
and stocks of food aid in the building were looted. Similarly, the ICRC headquarters
were destroyed, files burned, and equipment removed. The huge smouldering pile of
debris we encountered when we were able to get to Dili later that month gave
testimony to the violence that took place. I have kept the forcibly opened safe deposit
box of the ICRC which we found abandoned in the garden, emptied of all its valuable
contents, as a memento of the barbaric violation of even the most basic of
international norms, condoned –no- sponsored, by the Indonesian military.

The TNI could not have chosen a worse moment to display its true disposition
towards the people of East Timor. A UN conducted act of self-determination was an
event that did appeal to the world, attracting strong attention. Many governments
who, in varying degrees, had been past accomplices of Indonesia abetting it in its
efforts to annihilate the East Timorese people, saw an opportunity to clean their
record by showing their support of the self-determination act. This applied strongest
to Australia, whose government had the greatest weight on its conscience. Many of
the foreign Consultation observers had witnessed the beginning of the destruction
campaign that followed the announcement of its outcome before having to be
evacuated, so they had a special interest in the story. From neighbouring Darwin and
elsewhere in the world, international media personnel that had their assignments
interrupted continued to closely monitor developments and report accordingly. Our
ETISC offices in Darwin were hosts to large numbers of such people who used our
facilities day and night to send their reports. Most valuable of all, were the dispatches
sent to us from the territory by our loyal long-term friend the brave journalist Max

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Stahl, who had taken the dangerous decision to join the fleeing population, seeking
refuge in the mountains in Dare, above Dili. For the second time in eight years he had
placed himself on the front line at a key moment in the history of East Timor. The
IFFET observers, who had been evacuated to Darwin mostly in a state of shock, also
remained in the city, reporting to their various countries of origin, and using their
links to lobby their governments to agree to an international peace restoring
intervention in East Timor. Events had unfolded so rapidly, that many required time
to adjust to the new circumstances. They were uncertain as to staying in Darwin, in
the hope to be able to return to East Timor in the near future, or to return to their
respective countries. We and many Darwin people and institutions were generous in
providing accommodation and food to these people. In addition, ETISC and Timor
Aid also provided office facilities to them. As the days passed and the situation started
to become clearer, some returned home, and others started to get involved in the
preparation for a humanitarian aid effort that was rapidly taking shape in Darwin with
the arrival –seemingly out of the blue- of swarms of international emergency aid
personnel. Several remained with us, and became part of the Timor Aid emergency
aid effort for East Timor.

With all this activity East Timor rapidly became one of the major international topics
of attention in September 1999. In this context, the years of support seeking and
lobbying of parliamentarians, governments and civil societies in key centres of the
world, was immensely useful and was paying dividends. An international outcry
against the Indonesian military-sponsored violence, their disregard for the outcome of
a legitimate popular choice exercise, and the attacks on a UN Mission was audible
very quickly. It was possible to mobilize the international public so that dramatic
protest actions took place in many parts of the world, demanding an international
response to end the violence in East Timor. With such strong public opinion outrage,
key international community members such as Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, The
United Kingdom, USA, Japan, the EU and others, moved swiftly to urge Indonesia to
bring the violence under control. Realizing that this would not happen, they began
pressing Habibie to accept international military intervention, which was, of course,
initially rejected. Urged by influential political and other figures supportive of East
Timorese self-determination in their respective countries, US President Clinton,
Australian Prime Minister Howard and the UK, among others, took steps to pressure
Habibie to change his mind. An APEC Foreign Minister‟s meeting on 9 September,
coincidentally being held in Auckland in New Zealand, expressed widespread concern
at the East Timor situation. The important APEC Heads of Government annual
meeting, which immediately followed, decided to discuss the issue, and the World
Bank and IMF reminded Indonesia that donors could not disburse further funds to the
country unless it upheld commitments it had given regarding the security of the East
Timor ballot. This put the disbursement of an urgently needed US$ 500 million loan
at risk32. Reflecting the strong pro-East Timor lobby in the US, despite the reluctance
of the US to involve itself in military intervention in countries of marginal interest to
it President Clinton said publicly on 9 September, on his departure for Auckland, that
if Indonesia was not capable to control the violence, it must invite the international
community to assist it to restore security. On 11 September the Security Council held
an open meeting, in which more than fifty delegations spoke, and a majority of the

32
Letter of Wolfensohn to Habibie, cited in James Dunn, East Timor: a rough passage to independence
(Sydney, Longueville Books, 2003, info@longevillebooks.au), p. 359.

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members expressed their strong view that Indonesia must accept international offers
of a security force to help contain the violence in East Timor. Interestingly, and not
surprisingly, the few SC members who also belonged to the Non Aligned Movement
were more concerned about not setting precedents for intervention, than about the
violence in East Timor or the lack of respect for its people‟s right of self-
determination.

On 12 September, the end finally came. Habibie announced to the world that he was
„inviting‟ the UN to assist TNI to restore peace and security in East Timor, with no
conditions. Indonesia had capitulated. Its stubborn and so very costly quarter-century
long defiance of the norms of the international community had finally been brought to
an end. The diplomatic events of the second week of September which led to
Indonesia‟s „invitation‟ of a multinational force to „assist‟ TNI to restore peace in
Timor Timur represented the culmination of a self-determination struggle that had
lasted almost twenty-four years. Despite the appearance of „consent‟, aimed at
allowing Indonesia not to lose face – a most important factor in the search for a
solution, particularly with Indonesia- the sending of a multinational force was in fact
technically an international intervention, that is an “enforced action in the internal
affairs of a state without the consent of all major parties, and particularly that of the
governing power” 33. From the perspective of Indonesia and its supporters who had
accepted Timur Timor as part of the Indonesian state, it was an intervention in that
country‟s internal affairs. From the perspective of those who had struggled for respect
of the East Timorese right of self-determination, it represented the successful
culmination of their years of effort, since the intervention‟s aim was not merely to
restore peace, but also to force Indonesia to respect the outcome of the August 30
Consultation and withdraw from East Timor. For me, closely acquainted with
Indonesia for almost three decades and with East Timor for only a couple of years less
than that, the New York agreement of May 5 and the UNAMET Consultation, in
which I also voted, were only steps in a process whose outcome I anticipated to be
most uncertain. Or to put it otherwise, I had doubts as to whether the people of Timur
Timor would really be allowed to express their preference freely, and if they did, I
never trusted that Indonesia would respect an outcome it considered unfavourable. I
was also quite ambivalent as to whether the international community would really
muster the will to force Jakarta to respect the outcome of the true choice of the East
Timorese people.

Thus, the September 12 announcement by Habibie, seemed at first incredible. After

overcoming the surprise, I realized that the desired outcome of our cause, an end to
Indonesia‟s occupation of East Timor, in whose success almost no one but a handful
of activists had believed, was finally being attained. It took some minutes to realize
and acknowledge the fact that we had finally won the seemingly unwinnable contest
that had dominated our lives so intensely for those many years. A feeling of relief
from a great burden briefly followed. And then, there was the sense of anger at the
years of unnecessary suffering, loss of life, and wastage of resources resulting from
the arbitrary policies of the undemocratic rulers of Indonesia, and their opportunistic
international backers. The tragic East Timor experience had been such a clear
example of the shortcomings of the international community. If only it could have

33
Michael G. Smith & Moreen Dee, Peacekeeping in East Timor: the path to independence, (Boulder,
Co, Lynne Riener Publishers, www.riener.com, 2003), p. 17

96
acted in a more principled way, and possessed some mechanisms to speedily enforce
corrective action against those of its members violating its basic principles, so much
anguish could have been avoided. Would a lesson be learned from this experience, I
wondered?

September 1999 proved to be the month of greatest intensity I had ever experienced in
my life. For many in the Timor Sea region, it was also a month of extraordinary
activity. The normally quite parochial city of Darwin was teeming with visitors:
military personnel, UN people, aid organization staff, large numbers of evacuees from
East Timor, media people from all over the world were converging there. In addition
to the support provided by ETISC to the latter and the dissemination of information
on the situation in East Timor to lobby for an international humanitarian intervention,
we started to prepare for our next big task: humanitarian aid provision through Timor
Aid. With our existing aid partners in Australia, and entering into associations with
several of the foreign recently appeared emergency aid NGOs that were looking for a
suitable local associate, we mounted a large aid operation which ended up being
worth in excess of one million dollars. It involved the chartering of a ship from the
local shipping company, to be loaded with supplies of food, shelter material and
vehicles. Since only one vessel was available we had to take the risk and commit
ourselves to hiring it before others took it, even if at the time no certainty existed that
an international military intervention would take place in East Timor and access
would be possible for the ship to dock in Dili. The other main problem was that food
stocks available from distributors in Darwin were insufficient to fill the ship. They
had to be ordered from the larger southern Australian cities, requiring up to 10 days of
transport by road to reach Darwin. We took the risks, hired the ship and ordered the
food and equipment supplies, and thus were able to land the first non-government
relief ship in Dili in late September, once the port had been controlled by the
INTERFET intervention forces. The change of circumstances we all experienced in
the short time span of a few days was remarkable. Less than a month before East
Timor had still been isolated, its population subjected to the destructive violence of
the TNI and its client militias, intent on subverting the UN‟s efforts to hold a genuine
consultation. Based outside the territory, with limited direct access to it, our role in
East Timor had mainly been one of assisting a two-way information flow with the
outside world, training people, providing finances and material supports. Now, we
were becoming directly involved in operations, as we prepared for the access barriers
to East Timor to drop.

On Wednesday September 22, two days after the international peacekeepers arrived in
East Timor, a day-long reconnaissance flight for humanitarian aid personnel from
Darwin to Dili was organized by the UN. Timor Aid sent a representative, and later
that evening we were briefed by her on the picture of desolation she encountered. A
chapter in East Timorese history, as well as in ours had ended, and a new one had
begun, almost with no transition time between them. Adjusting to such rapid change
was not easy. But this was not a time for too much reflection. Timor Timur had come
to a violent end. Most of the people had been displaced, its physical facilities had
been razed to the ground, and its state institutions had collapsed as a result of actions
that have been classified as a crime against humanity. A new chapter had begun
which required swift responses. On one level these responses involved international
peace enforcement and peace- keeping operations, and on another, there was an
urgent need to provide humanitarian assistance to the population. With East Timor

97
now being considered as an important trouble spot in the world, and with its very high
standing in terms of international media and government attention, it also became a
focus for the attention of multilateral relief agencies and international non-
government aid organisations. A new phase was thus beginning in our work. The
need for political advocacy was now ending, but an urgent need for humanitarian aid
action had become necessary. And after that? A whole new and most uncertain phase
would begin- the definition of the future East Timor. Seeing the vast assembly of
international personnel in Darwin, where they were waiting for the moment they
could accede to the convulsed territory, the feeling that we would have little or no
influence in that process soon arose in me. Who were the winners in the events that
were unfolding? Clearly the people of East Timor were the main beneficiaries, even if
the road ahead would still be a very arduous one. The day was still far away, and as
events subsequently have been showing, much further away than our expectations at
the time, until it‟s martyred people could finally enjoy a life of dignity, prosperity and
happiness. But, at least they would be freed from the hopelessness of an oppressive
occupation of genocidal extent.

Another beneficiary could have been the international community and the norms and
legal rules that govern it. By finally showing its resolve to intervene in the scandalous
situation created by Indonesia over more than two decades, and in particular in the
last days, a number of basic norms and principles could be upheld. The intervention
could be considered in support of the principle of self-determination, of respect for the
United Nations as a supra-national body, of respect for human rights and of the basic
humanitarian conditions of their populations that state authorities are obliged to
protect. In short, the intervention represented an application of the Responsibility to
Protect, as defined by the International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty, and as such a weakening of unconditional non-interference sovereignty.
So, the intervention in East Timor could be interpreted from various angles, and from
each one it represented a positive –if tardy- response. Reflecting on it later, I could
only hope that the East Timor experience would provide a positive precedent to
strengthen the legitimacy of intervention by multilateral entities of the international
community in similar cases, that is the Right of Humanitarian Intervention as yet
another step in the development of global governance and the weakening of the
increasingly dysfunctional unbridled state sovereignty.

Who were the actors in the drama that had unfolded? Two. Firstly the obstinate East
Timorese armed resistance and their supporting members of the civilian population,
carrying out a 24 year-long, ultimately unwinnable, resistance to the mighty
Indonesian occupier. Secondly, the very skilled and successful international struggle
for self-determination, conducted by the East Timorese Horta and the network of
academics, parliamentarians, journalists, artists, human rights activists and others who
comprised the international East Timor campaign. It was Horta who convincingly
kept alive the fiction that the East Timorese resistance was a well-constituted pro-
independence movement, and as such that the struggle fitted into moulds the world
could understand. When necessary, he could also shift the focus to another area for
which there also exists recognized protection mechanisms that could be invoked,
namely human rights. Thus, despite a general lack of awareness of this fact, it was on
the international political arena that the main struggle took place, and victory was
eventually achieved. Unfortunately, this was not an arena where most other East
Timorese had developed much competence or effectiveness. The role of the handful

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of younger East Timorese who were actively involved in the international struggle
had been mostly as adjuncts of the international supporters legitimate the latter‟s
advocacy on behalf of the East Timorese people. It was this effective international
lobby against Indonesia‟s occupation that brought President Habibie to despair, at a
time of great financial difficulty for the country, prompting him to make his greatest
mistake: to reverse the Suharto policy of steadfastly rejecting a genuine self-
determination referendum in East Timor. The other main set of actors, whose role was
in reality one of support to the main international political struggle, was the armed
resistance in East Timor and their civilian acolytes. By surviving as they did, they
allowed the image of a national resistance war to be maintained. This was used by the
Indonesian military for their own benefit and that of its high officers, and also allowed
the East Timorese international struggle to present itself according to the accepted
model of a complete pro-independence movement. Furthermore, by inciting TNI to
maintain a climate of violence in the territory, it led the military to finally make its
greatest mistake: the revengeful destruction of the territory after the negative outcome
of the Consultation. It was this mistake, made possible by the loss of Suharto‟s highly
effective grip over the various institutions of the country that provided the proverbial
„last straw‟ that galvanized the key international community member states‟ resolve to
intervene34.

International intervention and INTERFET

. The UN Security Council responded quickly to the invitation issued by President
Habibie to provide international military “assistance” to help TNI cope with the total
breakdown of law and order in Timor Timur. Through Resolution 1264 of 15
September under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, it ordered a peace enforcement force
to be sent to East Timor. The mandate was strong, allowing the peace enforcers to use
all necessary and legitimate force, including deadly force. It had three tasks: (a)
restore peace and security in East Timor, (b) protect and support UNAMET in
carrying out its tasks and, (c) within its capabilities, to facilitate humanitarian
assistance operations. This mandate was one of the strongest ever given by the
Security Council, exceeding even the preceding mandate for the NATO-led
international force in Kosovo in June that year 35. An urgent deployment was required,
so the INTERFET force as it was called, became a „coalition of the willing‟ with
Australia in command and a Thai deputy Commander. It lasted for five months to
February 2000. Australia provided almost half of the troops, most of which had been
assembled in the Northern Territory already. Some New Zealand troops, a Gurkha
company from Brunei, a Canadian company and US logistic support and intelligence
completed the core of INTERFET. These were all members of military institutions
that had a tradition of working closely together. It was a quick interim measure, to be

34
Suharto developed an elaborate state apparatus…primarily oriented toward the provision of
stability… Yet Suharto's regime has outlasted Suharto himself…without him, the apparatus was still
able to function - but the crucial difference was a lack of coordination. From having been under his
tight yoke, some state agencies in the post-Suharto era were able to become, in effect, freelance
players, serving only their own institutional interests. One example is the military.
USINDO Open Forum "Reformasi's 5th Anniversary: A Retrospective and Prognosis” Kevin
O'Rourke, Author of "Reformasi: The Struggle for Power in Post-Suharto Indonesia” June 18, 2003
Washington D.C.
35
Michael G. Smith & Moreen Dee, Peacekeeping… , p. 45

99
eventually followed by a more conventional UN Peace Keeping Force (PKF)
assembled by the UN Department of Peace Keeping Operations and under UN
Command. The first INTERFET troops landed in Dili on 20 September. By the end
of September they numbered 4,000 and at the peak there were some 11,000 troops
present representing 22 countries, i.e. Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Fiji,
France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mozambique, New
Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, United
Kingdom; a truly world-wide effort for a small place whose conflict had been
obstinately ignored for decades by the international community.

The picture facing the arriving troops and the humanitarian aid agencies that followed
suit a few days later was devastating. I myself arrived a week after INTERFET,
following the arrival of our Timor Aid ship carrying emergency aid. More than half
the buildings in Dili were destroyed, and all services and institutions in the city were
non-existent. Most of the people had fled. East Timor was a land without governance,
without an economy, no basic services, no food, no law and almost no visible
inhabitants. None of the institutions set up for the Indonesian Timor Timur province
had survived, and most of the alleged development, which Suharto had attempted to
use to legitimise it‟s occupation had been destroyed. It was the task of the INTERFET
and of the swarms of international humanitarian aid NGOs to create the most
elementary conditions to ensure the continuation of life. The remnants of UNAMET
assisted in the restoration of basic services. Essential UNAMET members soon
returned from Darwin and took over the task of providing basic governance in the
territory with the support of INTERFET. They worked together with UN
humanitarian entities such as OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs), WFP (World Food Program), UNICEF (UN Children‟s Fund), UNHCR (UN
High Commission for Refugees) and others. Neither UNAMET nor INTERFET,
however, had been designed to carry out the duties of an administration. They had
their own procedures that they were bent on following. It became soon clear to us that
they would set the course of future developments, and that we would have little to say
about it, other than providing supports in the carrying out of their plan..

The feeling of being in such an unnatural environment as the semi destroyed Dili,
with no real government, no basic human activities and, not even any local people,
was very eerie. Yet, I felt safer then, under the protection of a disciplined and
civilized international military force, than I had felt on the few occasions I was able to
visit during the time of Indonesian occupation and the arbitrary lawless behaviour of
their undisciplined and hostile military. Within two weeks, people started returning
from their hiding places in the mountains, and life started to acquire an air of
normality. Small traders, selling a few local fruit and vegetables appeared, trade in
goods brought from Darwin commenced, and even a humble local restaurant opened.
The currencies of both Indonesia and Australia circulated. Health services as well as
food relief distribution were provided by NGOs, including our own. No schooling was
available for the children, and most people had no employment or income. Many
busied themselves cleaning up or repairing their homes inasmuch as this was possible.
As the days passed, East Timor saw itself swamped with outsiders. A most diverse
assortment of people came to work in the aid effort. They had a variety of
backgrounds and of motives for being there. Some were looking at the possibilities to
make money. These included a number of Darwin entrepreneurs who in the past had
shown little sensitivity to the tragedy unfolding in the neighbouring territory, nor any

100
readiness to be involved in assistance for its people, descended like birds of prey onto
Dili, setting up what proved to be highly lucrative businesses which allowed them to
repatriate handsome profits from East Timor in future years, at least during the years
of international presence in the country. Others came from further afield, being
familiar with the profitable opportunities that Unite Nations Peacekeeping mission
offered to entrepreneurs caring for the service needs of the well-paid UN personnel.
These businesspeople mostly left for the next UN hot-spot a few years later with
handsome, generally untaxed, profits in their pockets. The scarcity of sufficient local
skilled personnel and the large staffing needs Timor Aid that needed immediate filling
meant that we had to hire many of the outsiders who were looking for employment. In
many cases, it proved to be a cause for great difficulties later on, already complicating
an otherwise sufficiently complex situation. While there were some outstanding
people among this assortment of workers, very many were just unsuitable to work in a
difficult setting like the emergency aid effort in East Timor was at the time. In
hindsight I realized what a mistake I had made, given my inexperience in such
situations, to attempt building a well functioning team with such an extremely
heterogeneous assortment of members.

By the time UNAMET ended and its successor UNTAET took over in late October
1999, life under these strange conditions of no visible governance other than a
military presence had become almost natural. It could have well been that because the
people of East Timor were in a state of shock and had been conditioned for so long to
obey a highly oppressive and arbitrary authority, having little or no say in their
governance and usually had even their most basic needs unsatisfied, they did not
notice that there was in fact no governing authority. Also, during Indonesian times the
pervasive presence of the military in all activities, as though they were the
government, must have made the situation under the UNAMET/INTERFET authority
seem less abnormal to local eyes than it was in reality. During those weeks of
anarchy, paradoxically, life seemed orderly. There appeared to have been no major
crime incidents, nor disturbances, not evident conflicts or demands. People‟s
preoccupations centred on securing their basic survival needs, and their attitudes
appeared extremely humble and supplicant.

INTERFET‟s performance is evaluated as having been excellent. No battle fatalities

and only two non-battle fatalities occurred during its five months duration. Its
Commander, General Cosgrove managed to keep good relations with the Indonesian
military, present in East Timor until November 1, despite the clear hostility with
which the latter viewed the foreign force. Analysts like Smith say that the speed and
success of INTERFET‟s tactical operations was due to the availability of the
INTERFET Trust Fund, to which Japan made the major contribution, pledging USD
100 million and the “capable air and maritime assets that were deployed quickly to
East Timor”36. The total financial cost of INTERFET for Australia alone, which
provided over 50% of the personnel, was of the order of $740 million. I would thus
estimate the total cost of the operation to have been somewhere between $1 and $1.5
billion. Smith considers that further factors that contributed to the speedy restoration
of security in East Timor were (a) the exemplary behaviour of Falintil, who agreed
not to fight the militias and remain cantoned as they had agreed to do during the
Consultation; and (b) the ease of separation and disarmament of combatants. I am no

36
ibid. p. 47

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military analyst and cannot provide an assessment. However, some obvious comments
can be made. Firstly that the militias, being a creation of the TNI, were powerless
after their mentors withdrew. So the militias quickly fled to West Timor as well. The
exhausted 1,500 to 2,000 Falintil were most ready to accept the foreign intervention
that removed their Indonesian foes, and had little capacity or reason to start hostilities
at the time. Being cantoned and protected by the international force was the best
option at the time. That disarmament was easy is also not surprising. Falintil had very
few arms, and these were only light weapons and grenades. Likewise, the militias had
never been provided heavy weapons by their TNI mentors. Landmines were never
used in East Timor by TNI, and Falintil never had access to weapons other than those
they could buy from corrupt TNI members in the past. So, the military situation in
East Timor was really quite unlike many other international peace enforcement
operations. Once the foreign TNI had been removed, there were no local opposing
combatants to separate and disarm. The removal of the TNI had not been the result of
a military operation, but a diplomatic one, whose success had been secured on 12
September with President Habibie‟s capitulation to international pressure. It seems to
me that commentators examining this peacekeeping intervention often overlook these
basic realities of the East Timor situation when evaluating it.

The magnitude of the INTERFET (and subsequently, the UNTAET PKF) troop
deployment in East Timor therefore needs to be questioned. Was the expense
necessary? I would argue it was not. A far more modest force, primarily concerned
with border control to prevent the infiltration of militias from West Timor, would
have been sufficient, together with a strong international police. Where an
international military force could have been well used was in protecting the 250,000
or so displaced people who were in camps in West Timor from exploitation by TNI
and militias, and ensure their return to East Timor. This was a major problem that
continued over the following years and attracted much attention and concern by the
UN and its relevant agencies. Rather than referring to these civilians as „refugees‟ as
they were officially called, I consider it more appropriate to call them „hostages‟, as
most of them were victims of forced relocation by withdrawing militias and their TNI
mentors, and were prevented from returning to East Timor for the next two years or
so. However, an action inside Indonesian territory would have been impossible under
existing conditions. In East Timor, the presence of a benign and non-predatory armed
force was very necessary to restore the confidence of the traumatized and displaced
civilian population, so that they would dare to resume normal life. But for this
purpose a strong police force would have been sufficient. Even more, the unsettling
effect on the population of the movements of large numbers of active troops and their
heavy equipment, as was seen for many months, would have been lessened. Even I,
not previously traumatised by experiences of life under military occupation or war,
felt disturbed by the regular patrols with heavy military vehicles circulating through
Dili every few hours during those months. Significant amounts of money could have
been saved by deploying a more modest force, more in balance with existing realities.
That money could have instead been allocated to more constructive, longer-term state-
building activities in East Timor.

Admittedly the INTERFET exercise did help the participants and the UN gain
experience in cooperative multinational peace enforcement operations, and prepare
the way for future operations of such kind in the region and in the wider world.
However, it would not be just to think that the people of East Timor should be

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considered the sole beneficiaries of the amounts spent by the international community
on this intervention. As had been the case under Indonesia, East Timor proved once
again a useful military training ground for outsiders. Of course, the preceding
consideration does not take into account what the outcome would have been if
principled action had been taken by the international community in the 1970s to force
Indonesia to respect the right of self-determination of the people of East Timor and
end its occupation. Not only would the expenses of the 1999 and subsequent years
have been saved, but the enormous 24 year long cost in human suffering, deaths
destruction, and stagnation of the people of East Timor could have been avoided, not
to speak of the high military expenditures as well as military casualties on the part of
Indonesia, plus the years of acrimonious discussions in international fora.

INTERFET gave Australia a lead role in the East Timor liberation. This was ironical
considering that its successive governments had been the staunchest supporters of the
Indonesian occupation, stopping at nothing to promote the fiction that the East
Timorese people had accepted integration into Indonesia. The motive was clear,
fearing the chaos such a pre-modern entity was likely to bring to the region if
independent, Australia preferred that the burden of regional hegemonic order-keeping
be borne by Indonesia rather than by itself. That a proper international order-keeping
effort in 1975 through a suitably equipped UN would have been less burdensome for
all concerned in the long run, was unfortunately not recognised at the time.

In the little moments I had free to reflect on what was happening at the time, I recall
that my strongest feelings were of concern with the way the East Timor situation,
which I thought we knew so well, was being fitted into existing moulds. The
international community was taking over. The present humanitarian catastrophe was
rapidly being inserted into the framework familiar to the international community of a
post-colonial independence situation. Clearly, our years of activism for the right of
self-determination of the East Timorese people, to free them from the Indonesian neo-
colonial presence, and our campaigning for the protection of their human rights, that
had been so harshly violated by the genocidal occupation, had created an international
perception of a liberation movement of a traditional type. The reality, however, was
that the East Timor situation was quite unique. The society was fragmented, except
for the unity of a large part of it against Indonesia, a sense of nationhood was still
very rudimentary, and most important of all, there was little cohesive organization and
leadership available. Save for a few individuals there had been little effective and
consistent commitment to the struggle against the Indonesian occupation. Instead,
there was a traumatized population whose values, especially its civic ones, had been
severely damaged by a long destructive occupation following a most rudimentary
colonial presence that had done virtually nothing to prepare the country to take its
place as a viable member of the international system of sovereign states. The state-
building task of laying the foundations for East Timor to become a successful
independent state would be a lengthy one, requiring sustained international support
and tutelage for a long time. Would the international community realize the true
situation and would the needed support be forthcoming? Or would the pattern that had
taken place in so many cases of speedy decolonisation be also experienced in East
Timor, namely that the so-called independence was a mere formality, by means of
which a privileged sector of the population, those better able to interact and
communicate with the outside world, would become a ruling elite, benefiting from

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their country‟s new international legal sovereignty that protected their status, to the
detriment of their people? Being naïve and optimistic, I still had illusions that the
vision of a viable and just state which we had worked for during the past years would
still somehow become a reality in East Timor, even if deep down, I started to harbour
increasing doubts about it, the more I became exposed to the way the international
institutions approached the situation and the people of East Timor.

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 PART 2- STATE BUILDING and OUTCOMES
Chapter VI: UN state-building administration- UNTAET

The United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) was to do

–in a record time- what both, Portuguese and Indonesian colonialism had not done,
i.e. to bequeath modern European-style state structures and institutions to the territory,
so it could join the international community as an independent state. UNTAET was a
mission of great consequence, both for East Timor as well as for the UN. It was also a
mission of great expense. The total cost to the UN for the 30 months of UNTAET
operations lies somewhere around US$ 1.8 billion, excluding another US$ 1 billion or
so in aid, and exclusive of the US$ 1 to 1.5 billion cost for INTERFET. Of the total
amount spent by the UN some 45% were for military personnel costs, 30-35% for
civilian personnel costs, and the rest mostly for operations. For the largest UN
contributor, the United States, normally assessed at between 25 and 30% of the cost of
any peacekeeping operation, the payment for UNTAET was some US$ 465 million.
All of the previous excludes aid provision, both humanitarian, reconstruction and
developmental. In comparative terms, UNTAET costs amounted to around 30% of the
total UN peacekeeping operations expenses for the 14 missions operated worldwide in
2000, and 23% for the15 missions active in 2001. It is one more example of how the
small and in most senses insignificant territory of East Timor has been internationally
important.

In this chapter I will focus only on one aspect of UNTAET, namely, its competence to
lay the foundations of a viable democracy in the new state it was mandated to
develop. I will not look at the performance of UNTAET in a broader sense. That has
been done by a number of studies, the most comprehensive of them being the
February 20003 King‟s College Report37.

I hope that this discussion of the East Timor case will help stimulate thought about an
expanding UN tutelary role in failed states with the aim to foster just and democratic
governance, by working from the ground up. Such a process would be a lengthier -but
ultimately a more effective- approach than the one used in East Timor. I am
convinced that it would also be more cost-effective in terms of expenses over time,
removing the need for repeat peacekeeping interventions after the initial ones have
failed to ensure truly sustainable peace as has been seen in Congo, Haiti, and Liberia,
to name but a few. I strongly believe that international intervention and tutelage is
necessary for those failing or failed pre-modern state entities that have prematurely
become independent, or quasi-states, as a result of uncritical acceptance of the self-
determination principle. Such intervention cannot be carried out by individual
countries, else it could amount to a new type of colonisation. A specialized organ of
the international community must undertake it. On first sight such an organ could be a
revived Trusteeship Council, suitably endowed for arranging tutelage of failing or
failed states and strengthening their capacity to become viable and democratic. Such a
type of arrangement would have been what East Timor required in 1999.

37
A King‟s College, Review of Peace Operations: A case for Change, The East Timor Report.
February 2003. Available on http;//ipi.sspp.kcl.ac.uk/rep006

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Unfortunately, such an arrangement lacked legitimacy, and the UN was not equipped
for it at the time.

I see the East Timor experience as presenting the clearest example for the need of a re
examination of past approaches and practices in this respect. The conditions there
were suitable for the successful nurturing of a future viable and democratic state: the
country was small in size and population, there was no internal conflict, the UN had
complete sovereignty over the territory with no challengers, and a receptive
population had, in the beginning, been clamouring for outside assistance.
Unfortunately, post-independence developments in Timor Leste are increasingly
proving that the UN state-building of that country was not successful, despite rhetoric
to the contrary.

East Timor: a special situation

In my view, the international community failed to adequate understand the singular
nature of the East Timor case, or purposely decided to ignore it, and this led to a
number of basic misjudgements that compromised the success of the tutelage it
undertook. In addition, the UN was not properly equipped to handle such a case of
state-building.

In recent years international peace enforcing and peace keeping interventions on

humanitarian grounds have become more frequent. The Security Council has
mandated such actions in a number of failing states in Africa and has endorsed
interventions in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. These have always been
considered as a response to a temporary breakdown of order in a state. The
understanding being that the intervention would „restore normal conditions‟, which
are assumed to be the pursuit of a peaceful and democratic life. Because this is in
tension with the basic principle of state sovereignty, and for financial reasons, such
actions are kept of as short duration as possible. In fact, after its unhappy experience
in Somalia in 1993 the United States has shown a strong aversion to these
undertakings, unless it has a direct interest in the country in question. Yet, as a rule,
short-term interventions are not likely to be successful in laying the foundations for a
lasting peace and democratic life, unless they are able to address the root causes of the
problems that created the need for them in the first place. These are generally deep-
seated political problems, which are not solved by a short-term effort. I feel that the
brief UN interregnum in East Timor proves this point, as the following pages will
show.

The East Timor situation was not a classical case of armed liberation struggle against
a colonial master. It was also not like the typical cases of a post-colonial state
collapsing due to factional violence. The humanitarian problem of East Timor was
the consequence of the massive violence unleashed by a retreating occupier, who had
inhibited a decolonisation process during 24 years, and was finally forced by
diplomatic means to respect the people‟s right of self-determination and withdraw.
There had been no parallel with this situation in decolonisation history. France‟s
destruction of Algeria upon decolonisation, or the diplomatic pressure on South
Africa to relinquish Namibia, may show some similarities. But Algeria was a strong
aspirant to independence, that had been able to militarily wear down France‟s will to
stay on, and South Africa left Namibia without destroying everything it had built

106
there. East Timor, in contrast, had been extremely weak at the time of its abrupt
decolonisation from Portugal, unviable as an independent state unless provided
significant state-building tutelage. To make matters worse, it was annexed by an
oppressive and poorly governed state, bent on destroying the East Timorese people as
a nation rather than on genuinely fostering their social and political development. Yet,
the uniqueness of the situation faced by UNTAET and its broader significance seems
to have been lost on the UN. Here it was being called to complete a task, previously
undertaken –to a greater or lesser extent- by the colonial powers: the building of
ostensibly modern state structures that would allow the dependencies to join the
international system as sovereign states. From the account I have provided in the first
part of this book it follows that in the East Timor case the UN was dealing with one of
the least prepared entities, whose colonial mentor has demonstrated one of the poorest
records in the preparation of its colonies for successful independence, as the post-
colonial tragedies in Angola, Mozambique, Guiné-Bissau and lately even São Tomé
and Principe, have shown. Only one out of the six 20th century Portuguese colonies,
the small and unique Cabo Verde, has developed into a successful democratic state.
Additionally, in the case of East Timor, the harmful lengthy interregnum by
Indonesia, itself a weak post-colonial state, followed by massive destruction upon its
departure, had taken place. Yet, for the Security Council, the UN involvement in East
Timor was viewed as a primarily security-oriented and short-term matter. As usual,
its members, particularly the US, exhibited a strong reluctance to engage in longer-
term state-building activity. From a peace enforcement or peace-keeping perspective,
this was fine in the immediate sense. But what about the longer term prospects? Could
such a short-term mission succeed to create the foundations for a truly democratic and
stable state that would in future be able to adequately contribute to the security
requirements of the region and the globe? This would have been an extraordinary
achievement!

The UNTAET mandate

After the Indonesian People‟s Consultative Assembly (MPR) decision on 19 October
1999 to repeal the 1976 decision incorporating Timor Timur as the 27th province of
Indonesia, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1272 on 25 October 1999
creating UNTAET. Its mandate had the following elements: to provide security and
maintain law and order throughout the territory of East Timor; to establish and
effective administration; to assist in the development of civil and social services; to
ensure the coordination and delivery of humanitarian assistance, rehabilitation and
development assistance; to support capacity-building for self government; and, to
assist in the establishment of conditions for sustainable development. The Resolution
also outlines the structure of UNTAET as follows: a governance and public
administration component, including an international police element with a strength
of up to 1,640 officers; a humanitarian assistance and emergency rehabilitation
component; a military component, with a strength of up to 8,950 troops and up to 200
military observers. The objectives of UNTAET, as outlined in the report of the UN
secretary-General to the General Assembly on 4 October 1999, were “Assisting and
protecting East Timorese displaced or otherwise affected by the conflict, assisting in
the development of a constitution, strengthening civil society, and promoting
economic and social development”. The Secretary-General‟s report envisaged the
transition to independence for East Timor to take 2 to 3 years and stated that

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UNTAET would operate under the authority of the Security Council, vested in the
Secretary-General, and exercised by his Special Representative. A mechanism for
consultations with Portugal would be established, and, as necessary, consultations
with Indonesia would take place, the report added.

A unique mission: sovereignty and state-building

UNTAET was the most important of the three missions the UN operated in East
Timor, having a critical impact on the country‟s future. It was different to traditional
UN peacekeeping missions, for three reasons. First, because the UN had assumed
tutelage over the territory- a trusteeship- on behalf of Portugal, Indonesia and the
wider international community, even if this had been nowhere articulated. UNTAET
was “endowed with overall responsibility for the administration of East Timor and
[…] empowered to exercise all legislative and executive authority, including the
administration of justice” 38. It was also empowered to enter into international
agreements on behalf of the territory. In other words, the UN held sovereignty over
East Timor with UNTAET being the highest authority in the territory, on the basis of
the consent given in May 1999 by Portugal and Indonesia, reiterated in a meeting of
both countries‟ Foreign Ministers with the UN Secretary general on 28 September.
With Portugal having been the de jure but not de facto authority for the last decades,
and Indonesia the de facto but not de jure authority during that time, and with the
local people having no international standing -despite the Fretilin claim that there
existed a recognized first RDTL, the one they unilaterally proclaimed in 1975, this
seemed a logical solution. A resumption of Portuguese de facto authority would have
been both politically and practically impossible, and recognition of the East Timorese
Resistance as legitimate leaders at this stage would have antagonized Indonesia,
which most Security Council members did not wish to do. East Timor could thus be
considered a „waif of decolonisation‟ placed in the care of the international
community until its „coming of age‟, that is, it being capable of independent
statehood. Given the ambiguity to define this capability, there was therefore no set
time limit on the UN-held sovereignty, even if it was tacitly considered to be
temporary. Having full sovereignty and administrative authority with no pre-
established time limitation over a territory was a novelty for the UN. In Namibia there
had been a situation of UN sovereignty when trusteeship passed from South Africa to
the UN, as an interim step to independence. But it was very brief, and the South
African-created administration was still operative, and used by the UN until it
transferred sovereignty to the Republic of Namibia. In Kosovo –whose UNMIK
mission of early 1999 became the closest model for UNTAET- the mission had
governing authority, but for the time being the status of the territory remained as part
of Serbia in the Yugoslav Federation.

Second, UNTAET was unique because its mandate was not only peace enforcement
or peace-maintenance between conflicting factions, but in effect it was both a peace
keeping and a civil administrative mission, whose ultimate objective was the creation
of the institutions for a successful independent state. The third distinguishing factor
for UNTAET, in my view, was the fact that the East Timor National Resistance
lacked the coherence that characterized those prominent anti-colonial movements
considered naturally representative of their people. Despite the efforts of their leaders

38
UN Security Council Resolution 1272, point 1.

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to portray it otherwise, and the often-heroic performance of the resisting population,
the East Timor armed resistance did not defeat the occupier and was an almost
depleted force in the end. Indonesia had to leave as a result of a complex international
diplomatic and political campaign, in which the military resistance activity was a
mere token component. Therefore, unlike in decolonisation cases where the resistance
movements generally became the legitimate and uncontested recipients of
sovereignty, the East Timor Resistance was not the obvious recipient of sovereignty.
This situation confused UNTAET, and led to a fatal mistake. It initially acted as
though East Timor was a blank slate, a terra nullius. After being challenged by
aspiring Timorese leaders, who because of their past years of struggle against the
Indonesian occupation were naturally inclined to resistance and opposition to
authority, UNTAET readily capitulated and prematurely shared power with them,
before a sufficiently mature political and administrative infrastructure had been
constructed, thus failing to satisfy one of the main objectives of its mandate. The
application by the UN of its standard approaches, that is, the granting of negative
sovereignty, to use Jackson‟s terminology, compounded by the fact that the state-
building process it undertook was too hurried, led to the birth three years later of a
Democratic Republic of Timor Leste of questionable viability and capacity to truly
provide its people the democratic and just life conditions that were hoped for.

Genesis of the mission

In this unique case of taking over a mentor-less and non-sovereign territory, the UN
attempted to integrate a peace-keeping operation with a state-building one, in line
with the recommendations of the Brahimi Report on Reform of Peace Keeping
Operations, and consistent with its bias in favour of short term intervention 39.
Reflecting UN practice, UNTAET‟s emphasis was on peace keeping and
reconstruction, with less emphasis regarding the preparation for independent
statehood. Rather than splitting the mission into an initial peace keeping and
humanitarian operation, under the Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO)
and with strong OCHA participation, to be followed by the required well-planned,
long term, state-building one, preferably under the Department of Political Affairs –or
by a suitably endowed agency, such as for example a revived Trusteeship Council-
only one mission, UNTAET, was created for the 30 month period during which the
UN held sovereignty over East Timor. Admittedly, UNTAET tried to modify its
emphasis half way during the time of its existence, but the political damage that was
done by initially neglecting the state-building dimension could not be corrected to the
necessary extent. That peacekeeping cum governance missions, such as UNTAET,
should be separated not integrated, was clearly stated by analyst Astri Suhrke as early
as in 2001, when she closely looked at the first two years of the UNTAET
experience40.

The genesis of the crucial problem encountered by UNTAET lies in the fact that the
implementation of its mandate, after bitter interdepartmental struggles, was assigned
to the UN Secretariat‟s DPKO rather than to the DPA, who had been strongly vying
for it. DPKO won in the end, partly because DPA‟s UNAMET had been considered to

39
LakhdarBrahmini, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, A55/305-S/20000/809
40
Astri Shuhrke, „Peace Keepers as Nation Builders: Dilemmas of the UN in East Timor‟, International
Peacekeeping, Vol 8 No 4 (2001).

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have ended disastrously, and because in September 1999 restoration of security was
seen as paramount, together with post-disaster humanitarian assistance. This decision
had far reaching consequences for the future of East Timor. As can be seen from the
wording of the structure of the mission, its objectives, as well as from the excessively
large military contingent that was authorized, the dominant Security Council concerns
at the time related to security and the consequences of the TNI-instigated violence
that had been experienced post Consultation. My views on this are shared by
journalist James Traub. Writing in 2000, a few months after the deployment of PKF,
he notes that the “8,5000 well-armed soldiers in East Timor [have] very little to do…[
the head of the force]…seemed to have an alarming amount of time on his hands, and
the atmosphere in his office was downright torpid” 41. The need for long-term state-
building was not stressed by the Security Council. This reflected both a lack of real
concern for the future development of the territory, and an uncritical acceptance of the
image East Timor had been able to present during the years of independence struggle,
which made it appear more developed than was the case in reality. The fact of just
how precarious the existing foundations were in reality, especially after the total
destruction of the territory by the withdrawing TNI and its militias, was insufficiently
acknowledged. The lack of concern of the Security Council with the deeper causes of
conflict and actions on how to overcome them, rather than merely reacting to existing
conflict situations with an emphasis on pacifying them, became evident once again in
this case. Whether such an approach is really conducive to long-term peace and
stability, or whether it is only a temporary palliative, and thus a waste of effort and
money, remains to be seen. East Timor will make a good case in point. My conclusion
is that, if the fetish of sovereignty for post-colonial quasi-states is done away with by
a more responsible international community, the fact that many of these states as yet
do not qualify for full sovereign treatment is acknowledged, and the responsibility for
international tutelage to complete the so far insufficient state building process is
accepted, the conditions could be set for appropriate action to be undertaken. This
would benefit both the international community as well as the people in those states,
who currently suffer under gross mis-governance.

UNTAET as a DPKO mission initially followed standard peace-keeping operations

procedures and principles, that is short term, rapid deployment, predominantly
military character, no local participation, and no local capacity building. For example,
despite its being modelled on UMNIK, UNTAET ended up with three pillars, lacking
the most crucial independent pillar of institution building or reconstruction, which in
fact should have been the strongest component. Besides DPKO having little
experience with governance or governance capacity-building, and the short-term
military operations‟ nature of its missions, an additional problem faced by UNTAET
arose from the fact that funding for DPKO missions comes from non-voluntary
member-assessed contributions, thus opening such missions to member pressure for a
speedy end. Despite the investment of huge funds for short-term peace keeping in the
East Timor operation by the international community through assessed (i.e.
obligatory) contributions by UN member states, the necessarily long-term funding
commitment for proper (and cost-effective) state-building was lacking. The fact that
UNTAET, active in such a tiny and in general insignificant country was, at its peak,
absorbing more than 20% of the DPKO worldwide operations budget was an
important consideration for the main donors to press for its speedy termination. If we

41
James Traub, „Inventing East Timor‟, Foreign Affairs, V 79, i4, p 74,5.

110
take the total UNAET cost at US$ 3 billion, and the country‟s population, the average
cost of UNTAET per capita would have been US$4,000. Almost 10 times the yearly
average per capita GDP of the East Timorese! Clearly this was not the most efficient
arrangement for state-building, and as such was unsustainable. But, are the East
Timorese to blame? Living through the intense initial weeks in Dili witnessing the
huge and disconcerting military activity as well as the expensive and obviously
wasteful build up of UNTAET, I felt disturbed. Knowing the previous simplicity and
austere poverty of the place and its people, I could not feel at ease with the huge
expenditure the massive international presence signified. Not being a direct
beneficiary of the activity, neither as a member of the mission nor as someone aiming
to profit from it by providing goods or services to its members, my vision about the
obvious fact that something was greatly out of balance here was not tainted. But,
there was such a strong sense of drama and momentum about the events that were
unfolding, that there was little receptivity to listen to such concerns and misgivings. I
kept them to myself, as we concentrated on our humanitarian aid work, in the non-
government sector.

Usually DPKO missions need also to be rapidly implemented, and UNTAET was no
exception. It was put together extremely quickly. It has been estimated that to
properly prepare for a mission of the complexity of UNTAET, a minimum of six
months planning would have been required 42. The UN keeps a central data-base of
civilian non-permanent personnel available for mission duty. Despite the large
number of such personnel that had to be recruited from all over the world, the
deployment of many of these with UNTAET could already start within one month. No
wonder that the quality of the recruits turned out to be uneven. DPKO missions
usually do not involve locals, and keep strict neutrality between conflicting sides.
UNTAET followed this approach. It also treated East Timor as a total disaster area, or
terra nullius, in relation to procurement of personnel and material resources. Every
administrative and other skilled human resource, as well as all materials, were brought
in from outside. During the emergency humanitarian phase such an approach, in the
absence of suitably skilled local personnel, and given the near total obliteration of the
physical and economic infrastructure of the country could have been acceptable as a
short-term situation when there was an urgent need to deliver aid and ensure security
very quickly, but not in the long term.

But in addition to early mistakes regarding the nature of the mission, there was also a
misinterpretation of the current reality in East Timor, initially by the mission‟s
planners and subsequently by UNTAET itself. As mentioned, the destruction of East
Timor was almost total, and the territory lacked the most basic necessities. As a
visitor put it, it lacked “not just doctors, dentists, accountants, lawyers and police, but
also tables, chairs, pots and pans…It would not be far from the truth to say that East
Timor has no economy” 43. This matches the observations of those of us who lived
there as of September 1999. But an important aspect, which is not commonly
mentioned, was the total lack of functioning social organizations and governance
institutions. It is no exaggeration to say that the only relatively organized institution
that survived after September 1999 was the Catholic Church. Other minority

42
Shuhrke, „Peace Keepers…‟
43
Traub, Inventing East Timor…. P1

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Churches had their organization almost extinguished. All the other social
“organisations” were basically labels for groupings lacking a proper structure. This
applies from the CNRT to virtually all other associations, even if some were able to
show skill at presenting a semblance of organizational development and coherence to
the outside world. The Portuguese expression pra o inglês ver (for the Englishman to
see) comes to mind in this context. It refers to creating appearances to impress a
critical, more powerful, foreigner whose approval is sought. It was often used by
Bishop Belo, referring to the many instances in East Timor where claims were made,
or appearances created to impress outsiders about things that did not exist in the way
their were being portrayed. CNRT did very well at this, even if in reality, its capacity
to deliver was minimal. As an example, we could look at Pat Walsh‟s reports on the
CNRT Consultation in Darwin, 16-21 October 1999 to restructure CNRT “to meet the
new situation arising out of the destruction of East Timor, introduction of INTERFET
and the withdrawal of Indonesia… and play a new role. This involves moving from
opposition to proposition and the facilitation of transition to self-government and
independence” 44. I observed the Consultation, and must agree that the results looked
good…. on paper. Little was subsequently followed up and implemented. It is my
opinion that such pretence was misleading and damaging, as it led to a misevaluation
of the true local reality. For the purpose of state-building it would have been more
constructive to start from the base point that there was no properly representative,
organized, and functioning local body that could legitimately act as an interlocutor of
the transitional authorities. Given such a reality, it would have been more effective for
the tutelary agency to support the efforts of the East Timorese to create such a body
and to assist them to organize it and manage it according to sound principles, rather
than playing a futile game of promoting appearances. This support would have
required capacity building in a number of areas and would have been the starting
point for the creation of a sustainable democratic system. It would have also required
awareness that despite the lacking institutions, there existed traditional paradigms of
political legitimacy that needed to be respected and used as a building base in the
construction of the new Western liberal-style democratic state that UNTAET aimed to
establish, as indicated by political anthropologist Tanja Hohe45. Instead, a series of
misperceptions and misunderstandings occurred, firstly leading to the exclusion of the
local population from participation in government, understandably causing great
resentment, and later, as a hurried reaction, the incorporation of an unprepared group
of people, hailing from a dysfunctional organization unable to deliver its share, as
UNTAET‟s trusted and exclusive local partner.

The initial phase: late 1999 to mid 2000

Operation wise, during the initial phase that can be considered to extend from late
1999 till mid 2000, UNTAET was primarily preoccupied with two main activities,
firstly with itself, namely, the setting up of the mission, a not inconsiderable task
given the total destruction of infrastructure, the lack of local human resources, or to
use Traub‟s words, above, the lack of doctors, dentists …. pots and pans, i.e. of
everything. The Mission‟s large size, furthermore, required much attention to be
devoted to its setting up- almost an end in itself! The lack of local discretionary

44
http://www.pcug.org.au/~wildwood/CNRTPat.htm
45
Tanja Hohe, „The clash of paradigms: international administration and local political legitimacy in
East Timor‟, Contemporary South East Asia, Dec 2002, v24, i3, p 569

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authority made the task even harder. Large logistical costs were incurred in setting up
mission facilities up to international standards. These facilities contrasted sharply with
the destroyed infrastructure -with which the locals, including ourselves, had to live,
and also strongly contrasted with anything the local people had ever seen thus far. The
difficulties in the recruitment process of international staff resulted in a large rotation
of personnel. People arrived from the four corners of the earth to a remote country
they had previously never heard of, whose history they did not know, to difficult
living conditions, in a mission that was still disorganised and confusing, often on
short-term contracts of 3 or 6 months. What outputs they could have produced in such
a short period and under those circumstances is anyone‟s guess. The airline
companies must no doubt have been among the major beneficiaries of this costly
movement of personnel- Darwin, the nearest international air gateway, was booming.
For those of us working in local NGOs the constant requests of information on the
local situation by a stream of new UN staff arrivals, seemingly without access to their
institution‟s information on the country, or to its collective memory, if it had any, was
also quite burdensome. In any case, the atmosphere created by the establishment of
the mission was one of intense activity, of a level never before seen in this lethargic
territory.

As a DPKO peace-keeping and humanitarian mission, UNTAET had to serve the

security and emergency aid needs of its clients, that is, the people of East Timor. This
was the Mission‟s other main preoccupation in those months. Responsibility for
humanitarian assistance and rehabilitation moved from OCHA to the UNTAET
Humanitarian Assistance and Emergency Rehabilitation Pillar in late 1999, and for
security as of February 2000, when INTERFET handed over to the UNTAET PKF.
But in addition to the above activities, UNTAET was unique, being the government
on behalf of the UN as the sovereign of East Timor. The process of setting up this
government through the Governance and Public Administration pillar advanced
slowly, given the urgent security restoration and humanitarian aid provision priorities
in the early months. It also proved to be a more difficult affair, hampered by the
recruitment difficulties and the lack of DPKO expertise in this area. Initially the
foreign administrative personnel attempted to set up the embryos of the most urgently
required institutions of the state using UN supplied models, considering that there was
nothing local available to be incorporated, not even people. In this phase East
Timorese were completely excluded from administrative positions, except lower
ranking support ones such as interpreters, drivers and security guards. Foreign
personnel were brought in even for many of these lower positions. I remember seeing
even African and Latin American construction labourers at work in the initial
refurbishing of office buildings. It would have been interesting to compare their cost
with that of regionally recruited workers!

Little was done to properly acquaint the foreign personnel with the country‟s turbulent
history and unique background. The initial UNTAET approach, despite its benign
nature in the sense of not seeking to exploit the territory, resembled the direct rule of
European colonialism in the non-European world. It was also not too dissimilar to
Indonesian policy in East Timor, where East Timorese were very rarely given
positions of importance. But to be fair, it needs to be admitted that skilled local
personnel were almost non-existent as a result of the lack of capacity-building and
exclusion from government practiced by Indonesia for so many years. Furthermore,
the occupation had also eliminated the best of the local people. Besides, because of

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the poor Indonesian example, and reflecting entrenched traditions, the local work
ethic was extremely basic. There were several additional factors that made
communications between the new rulers and the people difficult. The first was
linguistic. The UN staff spoke mostly English, in a variety of versions reflecting their
assorted origins. Some recruits to this officially English-speaking UN mission had
been accepted for their Portuguese language skills on the assumption that East Timor
was basically a Portuguese-speaking land. It wasn‟t, and those Timorese who would
have been most likely to be employed, i.e. the younger ones with some education,
spoke Bahasa Indonesia, a language initially not significantly considered by central
recruiting in New York in the selection of international personnel. But, a most
important impediment to productive interaction of the locals with the mission was the
fact that the East Timorese were a deeply traumatized people in need of healing after
the tragic experiences lived in the last decades, particularly during 1999. Little was
done at official level to take this problem into account, even if the provision of torture
and trauma recovery programs were a priority for some of the international aid and
reconstruction NGOs that were flooding into the territory at this time. Day to day life
in Timor Timor had been strongly shaped by the violence, indiscipline, and arbitrary
behaviour vis-à-vis the rule of law displayed by the Indonesian military in its dealing
with the people. This had particularly affected the youth that had been raised in this
unhealthy environment, and had no other references to compare with, and who
therefore often responded with violence as a normal state of affairs. An East
Timorese sociologist characterized some of the distinguishing features of his people
and their society, which the occupation and the resistance had legated, as follows:

Strongly opinionated, impulsive antagonis[tic] vis-à-vis authoritative rule

and…[toward]…foreigners, high rate of post-traumatic disorder syndrome,
poor notion of citizenship and the good citizen, powerful historical reference
and dominant political culture of resistance and occupation, lack of plurality
of perspectives and critical analyses, severe practices of corruption and
nepotism, dependency syndrome, emerging potential conflicting ideas of
political identity and having a high illiteracy rate46.

Little attention was given to this reality, and UNTAET proceeded with its hasty
setting up of imported state institutions, seemingly oblivious to the obvious ills of the
local society. I have often wondered what the results of a less technical and more
humane approach would have been. For one, a more tactful and skilled approach to
some of the emerging leaders and the peculiar egotism they increasingly exhibited
would have been of much help. I am sure that the strident demands for access to
power and premature ending of the UN tutelage uttered by some of them, could have
been neutralized if a formula had been sought that enabled them to get the prestige
that their egos so impatiently demanded. But, more basically, if a sense of inclusion
and ownership would have been fostered from the beginning by involving the people
to a greater extent in the design of the Mission, much hostility would have been
avoided. It should have not been forgotten that these were people that had been
struggling for almost 25 years against an usurping outside power that had excluded
them from having a say their country‟s governance.

46
João Boavida, in an internal report of the Civil Society Organizations, Sector Activities and External
Liaison section of UNTAET, prepared in July 2001.

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Whatever the background, the initial UN approach of exclusion of the local
population, both from decision-making in government policy as well as from the
administration, did serious damage to this ill-defined international effort aimed at
bringing relief and reconstruction to a destroyed country, and building -starting from
first principles- a well-functioning modern state. Not only did the exclusion of the
locals lay the seeds for their disenchantment, but also the authoritarian nature of
UNTAET has been criticized. Given that all judicial, administrative and legislative
powers of the mission were vested in its Head, the Transitional Administrator and
SRSG, his authority has been compared to that of a colonial viceroy or governor, or to
a “pre-constitutional monarch in a sovereign kingdom” 47, a comparison implicitly
reflecting the lack of legitimacy accorded to this type of intervention. However, it
must be noted that this viceroy was only a bureaucratic head. Paradoxically, there was
no real governance or policy-making in the normal sense of a political executive in a
nation-state. Policy-making was primarily related to the UN establishment and came
mostly from New York. Government policy-making regarding local issues tended to
happen by default, with inputs from the appointed local advisory councils. If an
explicit articulation of the tutelary nature of the UN rule as a necessary and legitimate
phase would have been clearly made, authority for policy-making could have been
more clearly defined, and criticism of the authoritative nature of the arrangement
could have been dampened. Another inconsistency of the arrangements at the time
was the fact that no real „state budget‟ for governance programs existed. The defined
budget was only to pay for the expenses of the UN bureaucracy. Program expenses
were funded from specific donor commitments. An approach closer to common
governance practice would have been more helpful.

Since the setting up of the administration was perceived to be advancing too slowly,
the initial mission philosophy of first carrying out Timorisation from the
administrative level up, proceeding to participation in the higher political level later,
as independence approached, showed little in the way of results to the population
anxiously in search of employment in these early months. Looking at it in retrospect,
it is obvious that such a strategy had close similarities with traditional colonial
approaches. Yet, given the lack of democratic traditions and the lack of experience in
self-government in East Timor, and the need to prepare the population in this regard,
if basic conditions for a democratic future were to be created, such a policy is
understandable and justifiable in my view, provided it is carried out adequately. To
avoid the new polity to be hijacked by more powerful minorities to the detriment of
the majority, and to set up a well- functioning administration that is respectful of the
rule of law and not rife with nepotism and corruption, people must be empowered
through training and assisted in setting up their governing institutions and processes.
But, for this to be credible and effective, the mentor must be efficient and also trusted.
By failing to respond quickly to the pressing needs of the unemployed and anxious
people, especially those potentially suited for recruitment into the administration,
UNTAET lost credibility, and gave strength to those interested in hijacking the
process to establish themselves in power. If the UN is in future to take over tutelage
of failed states in order to construct democratic societies, this experience should be
clearly remembered.

47
Former UNTAET District Administration Head, and student of UN Peace Keeping Missions Jarat
Chopra, „The UN‟s Kingdom in East Timor‟ Survival, vol 42, no. 3, Autumn 2000, pp. 27-39, p 29

115
Despite the criticism levelled at UNTAET, its exclusion of East Timorese in this
phase was not total. To liaise with the local population, the SRGS appointed a
National Consultative Council (NCC) on 11 December 1999. It had 15 members, of
which 7 represented the CNRT, 1 was from the Church, 3 from political groups
outside the CNRT, and 4 were international staff. Several initially considered
positions, representing other groups of the local society, could not be filled for lack of
candidates. CNRT President Xanana Gusmão was included, but several other
prominent CNRT members refused to participate on the grounds that it did not satisfy
their aspirations for participation. One such member is quoted by the Kings College
Study to have said “We had pretty much run the country and were now supposed to be
subordinate to a few international bureaucrats with executive authority. It was not
inclusive and not realistic”48. The statement illustrates prevailing personal agendas
and attitudes as early as November 1999. What exactly was meant by: „having run the
country‟ and what qualifications and proven skills they would have for it was not
clear. It was also not clear why these people should have been selected for the NCC.
Several of them had just returned form the diáspora, yet they were selected in
preference to others who had lived and worked in the country throughout the
occupation, either as part of the Timor Timur bureaucracy, albeit in low ranks, and/or
in the civilian clandestine part of the Resistance. Many of the latter had recently
played an important role in support of UNAMET organising and encouraging the
population to vote as they thought appropriate in the face of TNI and militia
intimidation. Now they were effectively being sidelined.

The bias towards CNRT and its Portuguese-speaking leadership demonstrated by the
UN SRSG, the Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello, who –initially, at least- appeared to
show considerable empathy towards CNRT President Xanana Gusmão and seemed to
follow his advice closely, led to a dependence on the CNRT group and the exclusion
of others. This strongly shaped the future of the country. In the view of some, this was
a mistake that opened the way for a minority to eventually consolidate itself in power,
and also resulted in bringing a politicised leadership to the top of the subsequently
created defence forces of the new state, casting doubts about their professional
neutrality in case of a political crisis. In this respect Reese makes the bold statement
that “UNTAET‟s early decision to choose independence leader Gusmão and his
clique as their prime interlocutors with East Timorese society, especially as it dealt
with FALINTIL was an early and fundamental mistake”49. The legitimacy issues
regarding CNRT, namely a leadership mostly by previous generation Portuguese-
speaking expatriates, out of touch with the younger Indonesian-speaking majority, and
a lack of grass-roots organization and legitimacy, are taken up in detail in a very
comprehensive study on the shortcomings of UNTAET by J. Beauvais 50.

This period of transition, attempting to simultaneously be a peace-keeping phase, a

post-disaster humanitarian assistance and reconstruction phase, as well as having to
deal with emerging political competitions was indeed very challenging for the
UNTAET personnel. Considering that with the exception of his previous post of
briefly heading the UN mission in Kosovo, UNTAET Head Vieira de Mello‟s mission
experience had been primarily in the field of refugees and humanitarian assistance in

48
„A Review of peace Operations‟, paragraph 297
49
Reese, E., „UNDER PRESSURE.‟, p 36.
50
Beauvais, Joel C. (2001), „Benevolent Despotism: a Critique of U.N. State-Building in East Timor‟,
In New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, 33, pp. 1101-1178, p 1123.

116
post-conflict situations, I wonder about the extent of his grasp of the very special
situation confronting him in East Timor. His high command of his native language,
Portuguese as well as of several other European languages may not have been enough
to really communicate with the people and realise that a whole political system
needed to be built up from grass roots up, rather than relying on a self-styled local
leadership claiming to represent the people. UNTAET had, indeed to many functions
to perform, under pressure of time, of lack of familiarity and rapport with the local
people, and with little in the way of precedents to draw upon in the area of state-
building tutelage for the territory over which it held sovereignty. In the high-pressure
East Timor setting, UNTAET was really providing the UN a strong potential learning
experience. The fist few months of the mission were extremely intense times.

For us at Timor Aid, contributing to the reconstruction effort from a position on the
fringes of the mission, these were also very intense times. We were running a multi-
million dollar emergency aid and reconstruction effort with the assistance of foreign
partners and employing a motley crew hailing from many lands representing a variety
of cultural backgrounds, while at the same time trying to develop our own
organisation, which had mushroomed to a not insignificant size, with some 400
people on its payroll, almost overnight after the collapse of Timor Timur a few
months before. Simultaneously, as an organisation that saw itself as local, or at least
as returning from the diáspora, we were under great pressure to maximise the use of
local personnel and minimise the employ of foreigners. How to do that in the virtual
absence of skilled local candidates? Among the insufficiently skilled local applicants
that flooded us with job applications, we could not even find enough people that
possessed work habits that were up to minimally acceptable standards, not to speak of
their emotional state after the upheavals they had lived through in recent years, or the
poor legacy regarding work ethics left by the occupation. To get our modest
organisation performing acceptably was a huge, often seemingly impossible,
challenge despite the enormous dedication we applied, due to our high level of
commitment to the country for whose liberation we had worked for so long. Our own
experience helped me to feel some understanding for the difficulties faced by
UNTAET. Having more time available in order to build our organisations at more
effective speed, more in line with the limitations and difficulties existing in East
Timor, would have benefited all of us, UNTAET included. For me, in any case, the
period from the latter part of 1999 to the end of 2000 was the most challenging and
intense I had ever experienced. Collapsing the process of building a modern state
starting from the barest of pre-modern conditions into a few months is simply not
feasible, as it is illusory to attempt to succeed to build a well-performing organisation,
such as our NGO, in a short time in the absence of a pool of available skilled and
properly performing human resources. I think both we at Timor Aid and those
involved in UNTAET eventually learned that lesson.

New tensions
Despite its benevolence as a colonialist –albeit a not very competent one- and the fact
that it had brought the end of the hated Indonesian presence as well as peace and
emergency relief, the UN became very quickly disliked in East Timor. The pressures
and criticisms, mostly from those aspiring to become a political elite, started early in
2000 as soon as their most urgent humanitarian needs had been satisfied. This
situation did not allow the development of a close partnership to lay the foundations

117
of a modern and well functioning state, as should have existed between the
international community and the East Timorese people. Leaders like Xanana Gusmão,
rather than seen working in close partnership with SRSG Vieira de Mello, helping
him to reach the understanding of the people, were soon seen to take an adversarial
position, stridently criticizing him and UNTAET. The country‟s future was damaged
by this situation, in my view.

The isolated rural population continued its subsistence life as usual, trying to survive,
and having few if any expectations of participation in government processes. For the
urban minorities, especially those with some education, the situation was different
however, even if in this regard it needs to be kept in mind that East Timor has the
highest illiteracy rate in Asia, reaching over 52% for those above 15 years of age on
average according to the World Bank in 2001. People like the East Timorese, who had
had a bitter experience with foreign rulers, particularly their last ones, could not
readily perceive the fact that the UNTAET „colonialism‟ was intended to be benign.
The more ambitious and better- educated resented their exclusion from a UN
administration that looked no different to previous occupiers, except for the
multinational, multiracial, and multilingual composition of the new masters, their
complex administrative procedures, and, looking at the profusion of equipment
arriving, their seemingly great wealth. The „masters‟ very high incomes were also a
source of deep resentment. Not only was there a very high gap between the incomes
of the local people and those of the foreign workers in general but in the case of UN
personnel, the fact that their salary scales are based on the highest levels among
member states further increased the gap. Clearly an ordinary US or European level
salary would appear as a major fortune to an East Timorese, whose per capita income
is among the lowest in Asia. Lack of understanding on how the international job
market works, lack of awareness about the basis behind the UN‟s peculiar salary
system, and lack of exposure to internationally expected standards of competence and
performance, made the mostly destitute urban East Timorese feel unjustly
discriminated against, and deeply resentful of the arriving foreigners and their
conspicuous wealth. I am not a social anthropologist or sociologist, so I cannot
scientifically analyse a cultural characteristic which I feel I have observed during my
contact with several peoples of the region around East Timor, which might be relevant
to studying the strong aversion rapidly developed against the foreigners who came to
the country. I am referring to the very discouraging levelling pressure applied in such
societies towards those who prove to be outstanding. The common response to such
cases seems to be strong feelings of jealousy, aimed at bringing such people down,
unless they also manage to become very powerful and are able to command
submission, in which case they tend to be obeyed in a subservient manner. I wonder if
this propensity to jealousy or envy did not also contribute to negatively shape the
attitudes of the local people to the foreign workers. Whatever the root causes, strong
feelings of xenophobia started to be felt in the territory very soon after the direst
humanitarian emergency aid needs were overcome.

These feelings did soon strain relations between local people and the by now
unprecedentedly large expatriate community present on the island. This affected
cooperation in the reconstruction efforts and made it difficult to maintain discipline in
organisations. A rebuke by an expatriate of a local person for indiscipline or other
unacceptable behaviour at the work place could easily take on xenophobic
dimensions, as I also was to soon experience. Existing power imbalances generally

118
prevented the opposite from happening, however, that is an expatriate being
admonished by a local on account of his/her performance, even if there were often
enough grounds for that too. This further exacerbated the sense of injustice and
inequality tending to lead to xenophobic responses. A great sensitivity to the
behaviour of the foreigners seen as patronizing developed very quickly. I remember
the constant comments I heard from local people showing mistrust of the malai, the
Tetum language word for foreigner that can carry a negative, even pejorative,
meaning. It is readily used to emphasize distance between members of the local
population and the –frequently suspect- outsider. To a people whose contact with
persons from the outside world had been very limited and in most cases very bitter,
with the possible exception of their relations with Catholic missionaries even if this
also was by no means always the case, it seemed incomprehensible that foreigners
could have positive intentions towards the locals. Even the most selfless volunteer
humanitarian aid workers, were commonly suspected of being there to somehow
profit from the East Timorese. This cynicism towards outsiders, which seems to be an
entrenched characteristic of these basic and poor people struggling in a harsh
environment, and which the generally rapacious conduct of the last masters, the
Indonesians, only served to strengthen, was very destructive of good relations and
cooperation with UNTAET and other foreign personnel.

As Chief Executive Officer of Timor Aid, officially a local NGO which nonetheless
was often perceived as foreign, due to its links with the outside world and its mixed
staff composition, I witnessed many very dispiriting incidents in this regard, and even
personally became a target of the growing anti-foreign bias. My most bitter
experience was a scathing article published in a local magazine, which alleged
embezzlement by Timor Aid of funds given by a European government for a project
for training in fishing boat building. The article portrayed me as avoiding requests for
interviews with the journalists investigating the accusation made to them by the local
manager of the project, the implication was that I evidently had something to hide. No
reference was made to the fact that the journalists came to my house late on a Sunday
night, after I had retired to bed, and that they were subsequently given an appointment
for a meeting in my office on a working day, which due to some confusion on their
part, they did not keep. The fact that the local staff member had reacted so spitefully
because of his anger at being disciplined for misuse of project resources for his
private profit-making purposes was also not considered. As it happened, he was
detained by the police a few month later during the following stage of the project,
after Timor Aid‟s involvement in it had ceased, as the result of a Fisheries
Department complaint that he had misappropriated project equipment belonging to the
government. Neither the European donor nor the local fisheries authorities had any
complaints about Timor Aid‟s fulfilment of the terms of the grant, as they explicitly
stated. But as far as the local publication was concerned the culprits were the
foreigners at Timor Aid, me in particular, present in East Timor to rob the poor local
people. Our requests to the magazine to retract the charges contained in the article,
and to provide a more balanced account remained unheeded. Given the non-
performance of the judiciary, taking corrective legal action was not an option for us.
The result of the incident, particularly in the gossip and rumour prone small Dili
community, was for a while very damaging for me personally as well as for Timor
Aid, until eventually the true situation became evident. In my own case, a potentially
damaging legacy has remained, as my inability to defend myself may not be
understandable those unfamiliar with the inoperative East Timorese judiciary. The

119
experience was, however, very useful for me. It made me realise the great risk that a
foreigner attempting to hold an executive position in the new East Timor could
encounter. I could have done what many people in my position tend to do, ostensibly
take on an „advisory‟ position, and run the organization indirectly. Having
experienced the frustration of similar situations in Indonesia in the past, I was not
attracted to the idea and thus resigned as Chief Executive, in favour of a local person.
I was then asked by the organization to remain as President of its Board.

Some seasoned UN mission personnel mentioned in private to me that unlike other

missions in which they had served, in East Timor there was a generally peaceful
atmosphere with no conflict between warring factions, and as such, security seemed to
be good for foreign personnel. Here they risked, at most, having their laptop computer
stolen from their car or a ladies‟ handbag being snatched away from her, but there was
no fear of being attacked or killed by the local people. Nonetheless, these UNTAET
officials felt that this mission was the most difficult they had experienced in terms of
building a rapport with the local people. The UN personnel felt that the local people
tended to exhibit a strong sense of mistrust, of lack of acceptance, of envy, and a lack
of forthrightness in their relations with them.

Unfortunately, not enough attention seems to have been given by UNTAET to the
important matter of building understanding and trust between its people and the
locals. For a long-term state-building enterprise to succeed, such a good rapport
would have been essential. Neither UNTAET nor other foreign personnel were
sufficiently briefed regarding the background to the local sensitivities and attitudes.
Nothing was done in terms of candid public relations among the local population, the
majority of which had such a low level of education, to help them better understand
the reason and purpose of the presence of the highly impacting assortment of malais
that they perceived to be coming in droves to re-colonize the country. Their large
numbers, the ethnic variety, their self-assuredness and the enormous wealth they
seemed to possess were very frightening, and stressed their distance from the local
population, already naturally prone to keeping itself apart from foreigners, as the East
Timorese sociologist cited above had observed. For me, the paradox between the local
need and dependency on the outside intervention and provision of aid, and the
mistrust and rejection of the presence of the personnel to carry it out was very
troubling. Under the existing conditions, with no efforts made to bridge the gulf, it
was difficult to see how a constructive partnership between the East Timorese people
and the international community, represented by UNTAET plus a large number of aid
NGOs, could be ensured. Unfortunately, both the leadership of UNTAET, as well as
those considered East Timorese leaders, failed to act to correct the situation. The
growing chorus of strident denunciation of UNTAET and the international presence,
led by CNRT President Xanana Gusmão and also on occasion by its Vice President,
Horta, followed by prominent figures from Fretilin and UDT, returning from the
diáspora and in need to earn popular good will, only exacerbated the situation.

On their part, some internationals sought to justify their exclusive approaches with
negative arguments about the locals and their lack competence for inclusion into the
governance process. By February 2000 the atmosphere in Dili was one of resentment,
prejudice and lack of sympathy between the clearly defined two communities
coexisting there. Many locals came to see the UN personnel as foreign exploiters
benefiting from funds given by the international community to the East Timorese

120
people, while the foreign personnel tended to have a very low opinion of the locals.
This was not too publicly stated by either side, but was the conclusion I could draw
from my interaction with both sides. As someone close to the locals, having a
multicultural and multilingual background, I could communicate quite candidly with
both, understanding what was really felt as opposed to what was pretended. The
simplistic conclusion of many of the locals tended to be that the foreigners were
unnecessary, and it was best to remove them and benefit directly of the international
funds given for the reconstruction of the country. Many of the foreign personnel,
prejudices aside, had also a strong incentive not to speed up local participation and
thus do themselves out of a job, even though readiness to be replaced should have
been the attitude of members of a transitional administration. The high levels of UN
salaries means that there can be an enormous difference between what a person would
earn in many of the poorer UN members states –if indeed they get employment at all-
and what they can earn if they are lucky to obtain a UN mission-based contract. A
few mission contracts may be all that is needed to secure the person‟s financial needs
for the rest of their lives. Even UN Volunteer appointments are financially attractive
for citizens of many countries. Furthermore, many of those who were so readily
available to join UNTAET at short notice had in fact been unemployed at the time.
So, in many cases, rather than fostering a quick takeover of positions by local people,
a frequent attitude was to delay local takeover as much as possible, in the hope of
prolonging a person‟s employment in UNTAET. Future UN tutelage of failed states
undertakings would need to also develop means of protecting themselves from these,
seemingly universal, human dispositions in order to dispel parallels between UN
tutelage and self-seeking traditional colonialism. A careful preparation of the
international personnel to properly understand the local population would also be
necessary- clearly not something that a quick deployment mission can do, but
certainly something that a longer term mission should attempt to achieve.

UNTAET had been expected at first to be a quick-response peace-keeping operation,

and later on to become a state-building one. Rather than changing the mission‟s
design and personnel, a mere change of policy and of approach was expected to
achieve this. After the initial phase of exclusion of the locals, a phase of incorporation
followed. To compensate for the initially generated ill-will, the next phase went to the
opposite extreme, incorporating people that were in general insufficiently prepared for
it, and giving them a status that, in the majority of cases, exceeded their current
capacity. That a gradual approach to capacity building and handing over of
responsibility would have been more successful could be clearly seen in the context of
our own aid organization, Timor Aid. If in 1999 local employees were bewildered and
in need of constant direction, a few years later, after sufficient orientation and
training, they had become quite able to successfully take over managerial functions of
increasing complexity, to their own satisfaction and that of the organization. In
contrast, people speedily propelled to positions they were not yet equipped for, tended
to be unable to satisfy the needs of the organization, to everyone‟s –including their
own- chagrin. Promoting people ahead of their time and above their ability is clearly
not a helpful policy. The problem was further exacerbated by the conditions of
trauma suffered by the East Timorese population. The dis-empowering and de-
motivating effects of trauma on individuals and groups are well known. The
population of East Timor was collectively traumatized. Only after a healing process
could they be expected to respond with the necessary trust, enthusiasm and
confidence to the new tasks they were being called upon to perform. In Timor Aid, we

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saw that very clearly, and it was generally acknowledged by the personnel: at a
Strategic Planning exercise in October 2003 facilitated by the internationally active
Institute of Cultural Affairs, the Timor Aid staff candidly acknowledged that one of
the main obstacles blocking them from taking on executive responsibility and control
of their professional lives was the legacy of trauma, which robbed them of self-
confidence and motivation, exerting a paralysing effect on them. They furthermore
identified this to be a national problem in need of attention, before much progress
could be evidenced in the domain of governance.

There also were other tensions developing at this time in a different domain.
Australia‟s high profile in post-Indonesia East Timor did increasingly injure
Portuguese sensitivities. Portuguese public opinion, after all, saw their country as
having come to the rescue of East Timor during so many years, since the publication
of the Santa Cruz massacre images through which Portuguese audiences were
reminded of the existence of the people of East Timor, those antipodean „cousins‟
who prayed in Portuguese, and even used the language in their dying moments! For
the Portuguese their country‟s magnificent pioneering 16th century contributions to
European expansion in the world are still very much present in their minds,
contrasting so harshly with the country‟s lack of significance in the contemporary
world. Rescuing East Timor had thus a very strongly invigorating effect on
Portuguese self-confidence, further reinforced by their media over several years. It led
to significant amounts of diplomatic support for self-determination at first, and
material support for East Timor after the end of the occupation, which was quite a
burden for the relatively poor Portugal. The down side of this infatuation was that
many Portuguese found it very hard to accept the reality that the bulk of the East
Timorese, outside of a small aspiring political elite, did not feel any special affinity
with them. They had hardly been touched by Portuguese culture during colonial times.
For many, especially the young East Timorese, the Portuguese were just one of the
many malais which could be potentially useful as providers of aid, even if, some
family links or other practical remnants of the colonial presence did linger on. I could
not help but feel sympathy for the disappointment of many well-meaning Portuguese,
who had hoped to establish a close rapport with the Timorese „cousins‟ and find a
Portuguese cultural legacy in East Timor, attesting to their country‟s past grandeur.
Instead, they discovered that they were not treated much different to any of the other
malais by the local majority, with he exception of the diáspora returnees vying for
political power, nor was there much of a Lusitanian cultural legacy either. Faced with
this realization many Portuguese reacted in an obstinate way. I can remember so many
instances when I saw Portuguese personnel frustrated at the inability of Timorese to
speak the language, strongly insisting in using it, despite the fact that there was no
communication taking place. Looking for other alternatives, such as communicating
in the rudimentary English both sides could have successfully used was rejected.
Learning Tetum, was generally also resisted. I recall comments at Timor Aid in 2001
where Tetum language courses for foreigners were offered, that there were virtually
no Portuguese students. The Portuguese native speakers that did make an effort to
learn the local language were African and Brazilian. They did not have the historical
burden and disillusion to carry as the Portuguese did.

The feeling of cultural displacement that the East Timor reality produced for the
Portuguese led to a language-based rivalry with the international presence, especially

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with regards to Australia. It also extended to a suspicion of UNTAET‟s non-
Portuguese speaking personnel in general -its vast majority. It ultimately contributed
to exacerbate the tensions between the aspiring East Timorese ruling elite and
UNTAET, who also preferred to have a greater number of Portuguese speaking
personnel in the mission, whatever their other qualifications, as they could establish a
better rapport with them. Many of the Australians, on the other had, who, in most
cases, were not the most seasoned in cross-cultural communication, were irritated by
the attempted reintroduction of the Portuguese language. After all, as they saw it,
English was so much more “useful” being widely spoken in the world. Why couldn‟t
the East Timorese people simply learn English instead of complicating life with the
Portuguese language? It would make everything so much easier- for the Australians
that is! Even more, why could East Timor not just become a cultural extension of
Australia? It would have been so convenient!…

Poor communications, the sense of rivalry and the great gap existing between an
Iberic culture like the Portuguese and the distinctive version of the English culture of
the Australians, was unfortunately not very conducive to forging the close cooperative
relationship among both these developed states which could have helped the state-
building process of East Timor so much, becoming a strong adjunct to UNTAET, or
even some sort of a substitute for it. Being culturally and linguistically in the middle
of both groups, I could easily see what was happening. I could also understand the
Portuguese difficulty in relating to the –for a Latin European rather quaint- Australian
manners, but, despite the abrasions they often produced, I did not lose sight of the fact
that Australian values and culture in the field of governance had been able to create a
successful, fairly just and well-governed society which could be good model for East
Timor. Both cultures would have much to contribute to the process of modernising
East Timor, in partnership with the local people and their own culture. Unfortunately,
it was not to be.

Timorisation: the emergence of a local elite

The dissatisfaction that soon emerged with UNTAET did not escape the attention of
the more prominent politically active East Timorese returning from the diáspora, who
saw in it an opportunity to politically exploit. In most cases, during their decades of
exile, these people had not achieved positions of much significance in their countries
of residence. They speedily returned to East Timor in the early months of UNTAET,
seeking new opportunities for themselves. With the exception of Horta –who was a
respected international celebrity with many professional options at his disposal- and
Xanana Gusmão, who had been in jail in Jakarta, the returning Fretilin and UDT
politicians had few professional achievements to leave behind. They did, however,
generally have a very high opinion of their capacities and of the entitlements their
self-styled leadership activities had earned them. They were very displeased at the
exclusive nature of the UNTAET government they encountered upon reaching Dili.
Their need for employment and income was pressing, and the UN system offered no
opportunities, neither in this mission nor elsewhere, for people with their limited
professional achievements. As an obvious result, and consistent with their decades-
long militancy, they began to exhibit a vociferously hostile position towards
UNTAET, and, following their instincts as politicians, quickly sought to capitalize on
the popular discontent towards the new authority developing in East Timor. Other
East Timorese from the diáspora, albeit small in numbers, with more tangible

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achievements and professional credentials, took longer to return, needing to first free
themselves from existing obligations in their places of residence. They generally came
because of a strong feeling for their homeland and their families, and a true desire to
contribute to its reconstruction. Based on their professional and linguistic skills, and
their greater level of exposure to the contemporary world, most of returnees in this
category sought work in the buoyant job market for people like them among
UNTAET, UN agencies, or the many foreign aid NGOs or some of the foreign-owned
commercial enterprises springing up in supporting activities for the aid sector. They
did readily find employment, and were thus co-opted into the system, gradually taking
on important roles and making effective contributions.

But, for the bulk of the population, both those that had not left, and those returning
from Indonesia, the slow pace of reconstruction of the economy and consequently of
job creation, and their exclusion from satisfactory employment with the dominant
foreign organizations (including, in their view, the UNTAET government) the
situation was very frustrating. Their low skill levels made their integration difficult.
Their grievances were amplified by the politically active, mostly from inside. The
latter, not used to express opposition openly in a free society, but adept at surviving in
a clandestine way under oppression, found in the politically active arrivals from
outside useful mouthpieces to vent their grievances with the authorities. Both groups,
despite other differences separating them, quickly joined forces. With this
cooperation, the diáspora returnees were able to present to the eyes of the UN
authorities a constituency. This allowed them to quickly acquire legitimacy as leaders
in the eyes of the transitional administration. Being more exposed to the outside
world and capable to communicate in the languages known to the international
personnel, they quickly appeared as the local political „counterparts‟ that the UN was
so keenly looking for to fit its existing operational models. Little attention was given
to establishing just how representative these people were and what their contribution
to state-building could really be. They were positioned to become the future ruling
elite, which they soon did become. Better educated, younger people that had endured
the Indonesian occupation for years, received an education under Indonesia, and thus
had the base conditions for further development and grooming to eventually become
the leading stratum, were not sufficiently assertive, did not have a varnish of
experience in the outside world, and did not master the languages in which the
international staff found communications easy. They were put aside in favour of the
politically active diáspora returnees. The beginnings of a new social class
differentiation, based on overseas versus Indonesian experience and language
knowledge started to emerge.

The biggest paradox about the situation was that the formally absolute ruler,
UNTAET, was also a very diffident one, who appeared not to feel very secure about
the legitimacy of its mandate, and therefore readily and uncritically yielded to the
local challengers that emerged. As seen above, UNTAET was authoritarian because
of the almost total powers concentrated in the Transitional Administrator who had full
executive and legislative authority. No local grass roots decision-making mechanisms
initially existed 51, nor was there any provision for local inputs into policy making
other than the NCC. Because the lack of clear acknowledgement of the trusteeship

51
The failed World Bank CEP project being an attempt in this direction. See Beauvais, „Benevolent
Despotism…‟, p 1126.

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nature of UNTAET, despite their aloofness from the locals and the patronizing
attitudes for which they were –rightly or wrongly- criticized, its staff felt quite
insecure, as an unwanted foreign interventionist presence in a sovereign land, and so
tended to quickly yield to local political pressures once these emerged. Suhrke, who
considers that it would have been logical to have legally anchored the mission in the
UN Charter‟s provision for trusteeships, supports my point, adding that while this
could have been a political liability, since trusteeship is associated with colonialism
after WWI and South Africa‟s illegal control over Namibia after WWII, it would have
pre-empted critics that questioned the legitimacy of the unprecedented UN authority
in ET52. My view is that a clear acknowledgement of UNTAET as an instrument of
legitimate UN tutelage over the territory, and an improved conception of this
government, giving it better skills to accomplish its tasks, would have greatly helped
the mission to succeed in laying the foundations for a well-constructed and
democratic state in East Timor. With the UN acting as a catalyst and mentor, a
process of empowerment of grass roots could have been undertaken, that gave proper
attention to civic education, to the instilment of democratic values into a society
where such a tradition was absent, and to the nurturing of truly representative and
democratic political institutions. Impatient and vociferous aspiring political elites
whose agenda is a quick capture of the state‟s power levers, as seen in so many
faltering post-colonial weak states, could have been contained. Yet UNTAET very
quickly began to yield to such disruptive challengers.

The middle phase: mid 2000 to August 2001

By mid 2000, hardly half a year after the beginning of UNTAET, the euphoria of the
post-referendum days had given way to disillusionment and, as SRSG Vieira de Mello
observed, a sense had developed among the population that UNTAET was on a
separate path from the local people. I would add, based on my impressions, that the
sense of disappointment was reciprocal. Not only were the local people disillusioned
with UNTAET, but the international personnel, not few of whom had come with high
expectations about being able to make a valuable professional contribution, were also
showing signs of disenchantment with the conditions in the country and the way they
were perceived by the local population. Those of better professional standing, mostly
permanent UN employees with good credentials, started to look for new appointments
in other missions and left early. Those with weaker capacity and thus lesser mobility
had to stay on longer53. The active Dili rumour mill had it that even Vieira de Mello
tried to leave, applying for the top position of the UNHCR. Instead, he was ordered by
Secretary-General Annan to stay put until the end of the Mission.

Once the resentment had created a palpable adversarial atmosphere between the
foreign authorities and the locals, changes were quickly introduced towards enabling
greater East Timorese participation, marking the beginnings of a middle phase in the
brief history of UNTAET. In April 2000, De Mello announced plans to appoint
Timorese deputies in central departments and district offices. The process took longer
than expected, because of the difficulty of finding suitably qualified local candidates,
as well as the opposition of some among the foreign incumbents who were reluctant
to accelerate the end of their jobs. The rising pressure by East Timorese politicians

52
Suhrke, op. cit Models & Planners.
53
King‟s College Review of Peace Operations, paragraph 176.

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for access to power through inclusion in the UNTAET political processes led the
SRSG to announce in late May 2000 a proposal to set up a transitional arrangement
based on a principle of co-government between UNTAET and the East Timorese.
This was a fundamental reversal of the previous philosophy of starting timorisation
from the bottom up. A nine-seat cabinet, made up of both East Timorese and
internationals would be established, with UNTAET retaining authority over foreign
affairs, defence, law and order, and justice. In the event, the First Transitional Cabinet
had eight seats, with internationals holding the portfolios of Police and Emergency
Services, Justice, Political Constitutional and Electoral Affairs, and Finance, Defence
being the domain of the PKF, reporting directly to the SRSG. The remaining
departments would be headed by East Timorese, appointed by the SRSG, representing
“the broadest spectrum of East Timorese political life, taking into account the
dominant role of the CNRT” 54. They had executive powers and were answerable to
the Transitional Administrator.

Who were appointed to these top positions? Unfortunately, the UN yielded to the
most vociferous and ambitious East Timorese politicians from the diáspora, regardless
of their track records. Local appointees to the First Transitional Cabinet, which
commenced functioning in 18 July 2000 as Ministers were: Mari Alkatiri, Economic
Affairs (Fretilin leader from exile); Joao Carrascalão, Infrastructure (UDT President,
from exile); Anna Pessoa, Internal Administration (Fretilin, from exile); Father
Filomeno Jacob S.J., Social Affairs (Fretilin-sympathizing Catholic Church nominee,
had only left the country for lengthy study periods abroad). With the exception of
Filomeno Jacob, a conflictive individual in the Catholic Church, all of these were
drawn from the older, exiled Portuguese-speaking elite of the past. Jose Ramos-Horta,
took over Foreign Affairs at a later stage, being the only one with a proven capacity in
the field of activity he was being appointed to, professional integrity, and an evident
commitment to a democratic future for the country. Little can be said in this regard
about the remainder, who however, in common with Horta, had a lack of governing
experience and tended to show an impetuous approach towards the state-building
transition that was not very helpful. To complete the changes that mark the beginning
of this second phase of UNTAET with its accelerated timorisation, the National
Consultative Council was replaced by an expanded National Council, made up solely
of Timorese. It was inaugurated on 23 October 2000 with Xanana Gusmão as its
Speaker, having 33 members appointed by the Transitional Administrator after
consultation with relevant local organisations. Seven members were from political
parties in CNRT, 3 from political parties outside CNRT. Each of the following groups
were represented by one member respectively: Catholic Church, Protestant Church,
Moslem Community, Women‟s Organizations, Students and Youth groups, NGO
Forum, Professionals, Farming, Business, Labour, and one for each of the 13
Districts.

In addition to the inclusion of Timorese in the political process, a major change was
also introduced to the process of timorisation of the administration. Trying to keep up
with such rapid changes in the government‟s organisation structure was very
confusing. It confused some of the Mission personnel and those of us dealing with it.
For the common people, would they have had a closer involvement with their
governing authorities, this would certainly have also been the case, yet they were so

54
Ibid, paragraph 298

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far removed, that it had little effect. An East Timorese Transitional Administration
(ETTA) was set up in July 2000, to take over the main administrative function from
the GPA pillar of UNTAET. Timorese public servants were recruited to work side by
side with internationals, which they were expected to eventually replace. The
arrangement served to keep appearances, but the vast differences between locals and
internationals hampered the smooth cooperative and productive mentoring
arrangement that had been hoped for. On one hand, the local skill standards, work
habits, and sense of commitment were in general extremely low. Cultural differences
between the locals, with their history of past isolation, and the UN staff drawn from
all over the world, were too vast. Salary differences were gigantic. On the other hand,
not all of the UN personnel, despite their comparatively enormous salaries, had the
right skills, attitudes, motivation, or commitment to their jobs. In other words, the
hastily recruited UNTAET personnel were indeed a mixed group as far as competence
and productivity were concerned. The observation is not only mine, but has also been
made by many of those writing about UNTAET55. Smith summarizing the experience
says that “the Transition from GPA to ETTA ….did not come without tensions” 56
adding that some East Timorese heads of departments felt under resourced with the
staff and facilities they had been provided, and some of the UN staff resented taking
instructions from non-UN supervisors. I saw many instances of this hasty mentoring
arrangement, and had to listen to the complaints from both sides, some of which were
quite grotesque, but there would be little point to repeat them here. The point is that,
as should have been obvious since the beginning, considering the underdevelopment
of the territory and its poverty and tragic history, great differences separating both
groups existed, which were often compounded by a lack of trust and good will. If
more time had been devoted on preliminary steps to bridge the large gaps separating
the international and local staff along a variety of dimensions, and once that was
achieved, if the mentoring process would have been conducted with less haste, and
with less preoccupation with appearances and more with substance, things would have
been different. Nonetheless, by the third quarter of 2000 timorisation of the
administration was progressing and power –sharing was taking place. But was it
democratic? Was it based on professional competence? Unfortunately it was not. It
was basically aimed at satisfying the politicians seeking to become the new East
Timor ruling elite. Rather than utilizing the opportunity to benefit from the generous
and benevolent tutelage of the international community and build the capacity for
self-governance of the precarious new state over the required number of years, in their
lack of humility and pragmatism, and betraying their naïvete with matters of state,
they started pressing for the ousting of the „new colonialist‟ and for a quick
independence.

As for the middle and upper administrative positions, only those people endorsed by
CNRT, that is those with close ties to its leaders, got the jobs. The new Ministers
decided on handsome salaries for themselves. Initially their salary levels had been set
at USD 1,000 per month. After Alkatiri, Carrascalão and Pessoa went on strike
demanding an increase, they received some US$ 2,500 per month- about 8 times what
the highest echelon in ETTA would receive. The Ministers spent much effort on
maximizing the benefits of their new status, travelled the world, and made sure that a
large distance between themselves and the common people was created and respected.

55
See for example Beauvais C., „Benevolent Despotism….‟, p 1140
56
M. Smith, „Peacekeeping in East Timor…‟ p 65

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A new, self-serving, privileged class, typical of many a post-colonial state, was
rapidly in the making, auguring poorly for the future prospects of democracy and
economic justice for the people. Some woefully inadequate and unjust administrative
appointments were made. A number of appointments of unskilled, unmotivated and
unqualified personnel were just tokens that satisfied both sides. UNTAET kept the
appearance of timorisation up, while its own personnel, now increasingly positioned
formally first as deputies, and later as „advisors‟, would continue business as usual.
For many of the new local appointees, what really mattered was form not substance,
and they willingly let the foreigners do the work, while they themselves concentrated
their attention on enjoying the benefits of their newly acquired status, including the
newly refurbished air-conditioned offices and use of the big cars previously only
available to the UN personnel. In my view what began to emerge in East Timor in this
phase is natural if left unchecked. Politics is about competition of interests. However,
the main failure of democracy in post-colonial societies has been due to the fact that
certain groups, often on the basis of the advantages or resources of power they
acquired as a result of the colonial experience or by being victorious against the
colonist, have been able to impose themselves over other groups. Such states have
become undemocratic because of an excessively poor distribution of power, and the
absence of effective constitutional, legal, or other societal mechanisms to control such
power imbalances. In the extreme, such developments have led to the mergence of
shadow states within the state, as a step toward its eventual failure. It is illusory to
expect that dis-empowered people will be able to create the institutions that will
ensure an equitable power distribution in their society by being able to carry out the
checks and balances required by a genuinely functioning democracy. In the West it
took centuries to achieve the minimum necessary equity of power distribution to
enable democracy to function. In colonial territories, Western intervention upset local
institutions thus fostering imbalances, which in the post-colonial states grew to
extremes, exacerbated by the international support enjoyed by the sectors that link
these societies to the outside world. Failure of states where imbalances are excessive
is usually associated with violence and humanitarian catastrophe, which are also
threats to international peace. This is where international intervention for peace
enforcement, peace-keeping, and peace maintenance - the important additional stage
identified by Chopra- comes in. The latter two stages require the presence of an
arbiter and a catalyst. This should have been the role of the UN in East Timor, and
this is where it failed. For expediency it allowed the speedy emergence of a political
elite of dubious democratic credentials, and in line with its over-emphasis on self-
determination and sovereign independence the UN compromised the future prospects
of democracy in East Timor.

The favoured group was very quick to attempt to consolidate its power. Firstly, it
pushed for Portuguese to be adopted as the country‟s official language. The
arguments were that this would give East Timor a linkage to the Portuguese-speaking
world, making it unique in the region, and thus potentially giving it an intermediary
linkage role in future between such countries and the South East Asian region. This is
plausible, except that generally the Portuguese-speaking world is not the strongest
economically or politically. In fact, with the exception of Brazil and Portugal, the
remainder is very weak. As a result of adopting this language policy much support
from Portugal was expected, yet what aid eventually materialized was comparable in
size to that of other donors, given Portugal‟s limited means. What the aspiring ruling
group was attempting to do in reality was to maximize its own advantage. They

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lacked knowledge of the Indonesian language, and by introducing a linguistic barrier
they could exclude the non-Portuguese speaking Indonesian-educated youth from
access to the top. The second move was to revive old political groupings that had lost
relevance as a result of the Indonesian occupation as well as on account of the
inspirational poverty of their leadership in exile, but which had survived because of
the attachment of the population to symbols and memories of the past. The next
objective was to get UNTAET to leave as soon as possible, and until that happened, to
strengthen the influence of the Portuguese-speaking, as opposed to English-speaking,
personnel in it. Once there was timorisation, paradoxically, instead of concentrating
themselves on pressuring for greater resources and a longer-term international
commitment to underwrite the essential, necessarily lengthy, institution and capacity
building process, the new local new political elite proceeded to pressure for a speedy
international withdrawal and independence, claiming that the current arrangements
were mere tokens that still left real power in the hands of the Transitional
Administrator. Rather than concentrating on the development of the country, the
leaders minds were focussed on devising the timetable that would accelerate this
transition to independence 57. It is worthwhile to note that while the UN had no clear
definition of actual length of the mission, other than that it would take some „two to
three years‟, ending with independence, the East Timorese timetable had been less
clear. The original CNRM Peace Plan, drafted over a dozen years earlier, considered
up to two periods of five years of transitional autonomy under Indonesian rule. In
1999 the thinking was still that at least five years of autonomy would be needed.
Clearly this would have been a minimum. By the end of 2000/ early 2001, as result of
the incitements by their leaders, the call by East Timorese for quick completion of
UNTAET‟s tasks in preparation of independence and their withdrawal was
widespread, and the negative feelings against the international personnel kept on
intensifying. The emerging local political elite felt increasingly secure in their
position and was eager for more power and resources, which they felt would continue
being made available by the international community, claiming even to the ignorant
people that independence was necessary because the international donors would be
willing to give more aid to an independent country rather than to a UN-administered
territory. Xanana Gusmão‟s puzzling New Year‟s message at the end of 2000 shows a
very unsympathetic feeling towards the international staff and their supposed motives.
At the same time, it warns against the ambitions of politicians to “affirm or re-affirm
their position in society”, and their “ill-feelings against CNRT”, which still has to
work ahead “to lead our people to defend their right to live in peace and in harmony
and avoid a repetition of the past experience of political violence” 58. In response to
these attitudes, the international side began to look at justifications for a speedy
withdrawal.

Why this haste for independence, considering that East Timor was obviously
incapable of governing itself, had virtually no economy other than that built around
the presence of the foreign personnel, was totally dependent on international aid, was
unable to defend itself, i.e. was not capable of exhibiting a positive sovereignty? Was
it the poor performance of UNTAET? Was it the effect of the disturbing and
unsettling presence in the territory of such a noticeable multinational, multicultural,
multiracial foreign contingent? Was it the reluctance of the local people to be drawn

57
A Review of Peace Keeping Operations, par. 299.
58
See www.pcug.org.au/~wildwood/JanNewYear.htm

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into the demands of the bewildering modern world represented by these foreigners?
Or was it the greed for power and control of resources of a nascent political elite? My
observations lead me to conclude that it was all of the above plus an unrealistic and
naïve vision of the meaning of independence and a lack of awareness of the
difficulties involved in successfully retaining sovereign statehood. Independence not
only required the completion of a political calendar, that is: elections for a Constituent
Assembly, the writing and acceptance of a Constitution, elections and installation of a
legislature, a properly functioning judiciary, and an administration capable of
delivering necessary services, functioning efficiently and free of corruption. A
sustainable independence also required a capability to ensure security, both internal
and external and, crucially important, an economy capable of financing the needs of
the state and ensuring the livelihood of the people. None of this obtained at the time.
What had been developed was rather sketchy, and as seen, not very competent and
still in need of outside support.

But not everyone among the East Timorese was in favour of a quick and premature
independence once the minimal political formalities had been accomplished. The
leaders of the Catholic Church, Bishop‟s Belo and Nascimento were also against such
a hasty development. They could see that the preparation process still needed to go
much further. Several others, ranging from people with better educational
backgrounds to the merchants making good business out of the UNTAET presence
were against it as well. Unfortunately, with no tradition of free expression of opinion,
it was not possible to generate a public debate on this crucially important matter, even
if in private many agreed on the folly of a premature independence. People that held
views different to the ones held by those considered to be the leaders, by now almost
unanimous in their pressures for quick independence were afraid to speak up. As a
result, the UN heard only one position: that the people of East Timor were demanding
its speedy departure. As a UN Official mentioned to me “it was music to the ears of
those in charge of finances in New York”, who had been pressing for a quick end of
the very expensive mission which member states were, understandably, increasingly
reluctant to pay. Faced with this reality, a small group of concerned people, which
included myself, proposed a compromise solution, namely that the UN retained
sovereignty for another few years, while devolving power to a local government that
could fully run the country‟s affairs. In case of a crisis, or of matters not heading into
the right direction, the sovereign would be easily able to intervene to dismiss a
government, dissolve parliament, and call for new elections and take other corrective
measures. A copy of the document is in Appendix 1, below. Unfortunately the
suggestion fell on deaf ears in both Dili and New York, suggesting that few, if any,
had a real awareness of the sovereign role that the UN was in fact playing in East
Timor, as distinct from the usual situation of being merely a barely tolerated
intervening agent in a sovereign country, and more fundamentally, suggesting that the
international community was not prepared to make the longer term commitment to
ensure the success of the East Timor transition. It was easier to opt out quickly, while
the Mission appeared successful, leaving the blame for an eventual failure to the East
Timorese. Later I heard that a highly placed UN officer, who had been in charge of
drawing up plans for the successor mission to UNTAET, which would support the
independent state, mockingly commented to co-workers that he considered our
proposal the work of lunatics! I wonder how the proposal will be assessed in future,
when looking back at the results achieved by the policy the UN followed in East
Timor.

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It was ironic that after timorisation commenced, the entity that was supposedly
representative of the East Timorese and, as such, claimed the right to be the UN‟s
interlocutor, the CNRT, began to disintegrate. Its semblance of cohesion could only
really be sustained while confronting Indonesia, and later, confronting the supposed
exclusive UNTAET „occupier‟. In his report to the Security Council on UNTAET
delivered on 29 September 2000, Vieira de Mello points out that in the CNRT
Congress of August 2000, which “focussed on the future vision of the national unity
body, its relationship with its composite political parties, and a range of national
policy issues in the economic, social, security and political spheres, it also emerged,
and had since developed, that there was a friction between the Fretilin and UDT
leaders and the CNRT leadership…[leading to the emergence of new political parties
and] an intensification of political activity and discord among East Timorese political
leaders” 59. Devoting much of the fist part of his speech to raising alarm at a security
danger outside the domain of UNTAET‟s mandate, namely in West Timor,
predictably the SRSG heaps much praise on his mission‟s achievements in
administering East Timor “in a strengthened partnership with the East Timorese
leading to what you [the Security Council] asked us to achieve, namely capacity for
self-governance, [yet] there are growing serious concerns regarding the security
situation, particularly in West Timor ”. He states that in East Timor there are 80 to
150 armed militia in up to ten groups. It is worth remembering that these were being
matched by some 9,000 foreign troops costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per
day!

According to Vieira de Mello, the commencement of party politics proper and the
break up of the CNRT could now be foreseen. In my view, while well-functioning
party politics are essential for the proper performance of a democratic system, several
pre-conditions need first to be met. At the very least a sufficient level of public
understanding of the basics of the system must exist, and a proper regulatory
framework must be in place. Secondly, a minimum of party organizational and
management skills must be present. Otherwise, as is so often the case, the so-called
democratic contest can be meaningless, and merely serves to legitimise in the eyes of
the international community the quest for office of a powerful group. None of these
conditions were present in East Timor, despite the rhetoric that claimed it to be
otherwise. The shallow commitment for the construction of a solid system of
governance of the power-hungry leaders of the two main components of the CNRT
was soon evident. The CNRT push for timorisation had enabled the key leaders of its
member groupings to gain legitimacy and prominent positions in the new Cabinet and
National Council. No longer needing the mantle of the organization, their respective
groupings left it, destroying the prospects of building up an effective democratic
political system. Xanana Gusmão‟s New Year‟s message in December betrays his
disappointment with the situation, which he sees as having been destructive of the
CNRT and of his own efforts in favour of national unity and pluralist democracy. By
March Xanana was already announcing an early dissolution of the CNRT, justifying it
as a natural step, given an alleged development of party-politics, saying: “at this
moment the UN has tried to lay a strong democratic base in society and political
parties have been formed in preparation for the independence process” 60. On 9 June

59
Available on www.etan.org/et2000c/october/1-8/01demel.htm.
60
Suara Timor Lorosae, 19 March 2001, Xanana Gusmão: CNRT To be Officially Dissolved in June,

131
2001, he presided over a dissolution ceremony of the CNRT at the Dili Stadium,
pronouncing a speech that betrayed a “legitimate apprehension with regards to a
possible resurgence of violence, provoked by the political parties” 61. As Suhrke
observes, the political fragmentation increased as the August 30, 2001 Constitutional
Assembly elections approached, making it more difficult for UNTAET to manage
timorisation62.

By this time, many of the UNTAET personnel that had held hopes of being able to
participate in the building of a model democracy in the seemingly ideal conditions of
East Timor had had their hopes crushed, and with this, their commitment and
enthusiasm for the Mission waned. Yet appearances had to be kept up, and much
energy was devoted to portraying a positive picture, while the new political elite
became increasingly difficult to deal with. Some called the latter‟s attitude arrogant. I
preferred to consider it an indication of their insecurity, and of the difficulty of instant
adaptability of long-term resistance fighters –be it armed or diplomatic ones- to the
demands of governance and administration. In this context, the remarks of a senior
official at the Norwegian Foreign Ministry came to my mind, which, when told by
myself that we were recycling the personnel of our advocacy NGO, ETISC, into the
aid NGO, Timor Aid, replied that from his long experience he had concluded that
resistance fighters never make successful development workers. I had to personally
admit this also applied in our case, when the emergency aid phase of Timor Aid ended
and a long-term development aid phase begun: I resigned as Chief Executive. What
about the suitability of long-term resistance fighters as statesmen, I wondered? The
early phases of political life of many a post-colonial state born out of a violent
struggle provide useful case studies. The insecurity of the new local high office
holders manifested itself as a lack of satisfaction with the positions they had been
given, and in their making of increasing demands for themselves rather than a
showing a disposition to seek to maximize the benefits that could still be obtained
from an international support for the future of the country. However, with the dream
fading, international enthusiasm for East Timor also started to wane. Some of the
foreign stakeholders accepted the reality quicker, others having invested so much in
the dream, were reluctant to acknowledge the reality which was painful and
represented a huge loss of opportunities for all.

But, eventually, the reality had to be accepted. The more pragmatic internationals
started to look for a way out that would leave the UN‟s name high and exonerate it
from the missed opportunity and the possible future failure of their ward. An exit
strategy was quickly defined. A few formal steps would have to be fulfilled before the
country could be proclaimed independent. The responsibility for success after
independence would lie with the East Timorese, despite their obviously insufficient
preparation, and the UN could keep up the appearance -so much needed by the
Department of Peace Keeping Operations- of the success of the East Timor
intervention. For me this was not only an irresponsible stance, but also an unjust one.
In a tutelary situation, the warden has the responsibility to ensure that the wards are
properly equipped for their adult life ahead. In this case, in my view it is not the East
Timorese who should bear the blame for a mishandled tutelary process that failed to

61
CNRT Presidency, Address by Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão on the Occasion of the Ceremony to Mark
the Dissolution of the CNRT/National Congress, available on
www.pcug.org.au/~wildwood/01junxanana.htm
62
Suhrke, ‟Peace Keepers as Nation Builders…‟

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accomplish its objective of properly preparing the country for independent statehood.
In my view, the responsibility primarily lies with the warden.

The final phase: September 2001 to May 2002

The promulgation in March 2001 of its Regulation 2001/2 „On the Election of a
Constituent Assembly to Prepare a Constitution for an Independent and Democratic
East Timor‟ marks the beginning of UNTAET‟s last phase, which extended until
Timor Leste‟s independence on 20 May 2002. Civic democratic formalities featured
importantly in this phase. Other activities included improvements to governance
institutions and other state-building undertakings such as the creation among others of
an East Timor Defence Force; Central Civil Registry; Commission on Reception,
Truth, and Reconciliation; Police Service; Prisons Service; Legal Aid Service. In this
section I will only look at those aspects that had the biggest impact on the building of
a stable liberal democracy, the professed objective of UNTAET that has generally
been the objective for UN interventions in post conflict situations since the end of the
Cold War.

Elections
The peaceful holding of elections, in which a majority of the population could „freely‟
choose a set of „genuinely representative‟ leaders to govern them, has been taken to
indicate the success of a UN Peacekeeping intervention. Two major –„successful‟-
elections took place in East Timor. First the election of a Constituent Assembly on 30
August 2001, and second, a Presidential election on 14 April 2002. Given the
primacy and sacrosanctity of international legal sovereignty, once such elections have
been held and the new „democratically‟ elected governing authorities „representative‟
of the sovereign people are in place, the exit time for the UN intervention is
considered to have arrived. Elections have become the standard exit-strategy63. Yet,
in practice the often-flawed assumptions regarding the genuine representativity of the
elected have resulted in the failure of the interventions to ensure lasting peace or good
governance, leading, in several cases, to an eventual return of conflict. On a number
of occasions further interventions have been required, such as for example in Liberia
1993-1997 and again in 2003, Haiti 1993-2000 and again in 2004. To me this suggests
that there is more to the building of a stable and well-governed state than the
formality of holding elections, however „successful‟ their execution may be.

In East Timor the UN approach was no different. Having decided to rapidly terminate
the UNTAET mission, the exit strategy required the holding of elections that would
enable the population to freely choose among a number of competing parties in a
liberal democratic sense. Little attention was paid, however, to traditional values and
ideas of leadership, with the result that the much-touted „free and fair‟ elections were
very alien to the majority of the population. The Constituent Assembly Election
Regulation set the election of its members, by universal adult suffrage and secret
ballot for 30 August 2001, exactly two years after the Consultation that rejected
Indonesian rule. Eighty-eight members were to be elected. Thirteen would represent
each of the administrative districts of the country, and 75 would be elected on the
basis of a single nationwide constituency. The Assembly‟s stated objective was to

63
Hohe, „Totem Polls: Indigenous Concepts and „Free and Fair‟ Elections in East Timor‟, International
Peacekeeping, Vol. 9, No.4, Winter 2002, pp. 69-88, p 70.

133
prepare a Constitution for an independent and democratic East Timor. Following a
precedent set in Portugal after the 1974 revolution, it would “become the legislature
of an independent East Timor, if so provided in the Constitution” 64. This wording
was decided by the National Council‟s Political Affairs Committee, dominated by
members of the PSD party, and endorsed by Xanana Gusmão, aimed at seeking
protection against a total Fretilin dominance of the legislature, in case a second
election would be held. Since it would have been most unlikely that the elected
would have voted themselves out of a nice job in a country characterized by huge
unemployment, the outcome was most foreseeable and created an important future
legitimacy problem. Furthermore, a parliament with 88 members is a too large and
costly institution for such a small and poor country. The Regulation also established
an Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to oversee the election process. Political
Parties would register with the IEC pursuant to this regulation. Other than requiring
the signature of 500 eligible voters, the conditions for registration of a group as a
political party were mere formalities. Conditions for eligibility to vote were also very
simple, and corresponded to the criteria for eligibility to participate in the 1999
Consultation: age above 17 years, born in East Timor or if born outside, having at
least one parent born in the country, or spouses of the above. Candidates included
everyone eligible to vote with the proviso that candidates for representatives of a
district, had to be permanent residents in that district. As part of the election process,
a register of voters had to be prepared, a civic education campaign was carried out,
and parties were formed and were given opportunity to campaign.

Rule by legitimate authorities, is one major condition for sustained political stability
in a society. In the Western liberal democratic model guiding UNTAET, these
authorities had to be chosen through free and fair elections. The extensive UN
peacekeeping operations electoral experience in post-conflict situations enabled
seemingly good results to be achieved in East Timor. The first requirement of the
election process was the registration of voters. No civil registry existed, only the
UNAMET voter registry was available. Some five hundred IEC staff –mostly
international UN Volunteers (UNVs), experienced in other UN-led elections in the
world, conducted the process in some 350 registration sites in the country; this was in
itself not an easy achievement given the poor communications and rudimentary
transport infrastructure as well as the country‟s difficult topology. Of the 793,000
people registered between March and June 2001, 425,000 were eligible to vote, and
almost all of them did so. Technically the process was a success, as was widely
acknowledged by outside observers and the media. As a voter, I can also attest to the
excellent technical conduct of the exercise.

However, form apart, the big question that remains is how many of the people of the
country really understood what they were voting for, that is, what substantive success
did the election really represent? How many of the people of which so many were
illiterate and used to a life of oppression under foreign rulers, particularly under
Indonesia in whose system the rule of law meant so little, understood what a
Constitution was about, let alone a Constituent Assembly? My personal observation
from interacting with the population was that not very many, outside the better-
educated urban people, understood what they were doing. For all of us, myself
included, it was the first time to choose a body responsible for writing a constitution.

64
Regulation 2001/2. para 2.6

134
A survey organized by the Asia Foundation in early 2001 found that “only 5% of the
eligible voters correctly stated that the election [was] for a Constituent Assembly.
61% think that the […] election is for the presidency”65. That is, a significant number
thought, in a typically traditional patrimonial way, that they were formalizing the
election of Xanana Gusmão as their legitimate leader. In May a representative of the
Asia Foundation expressed her alarm at these results, asking how the election could
be fully democratic under such conditions. UNTAET disputed this finding 66and
CNRT President Xanana Gusmão didn‟t believe the data67. A few months later, when
arguing for a new Legislative Assembly election, Bishop Belo confirmed that the
voters had not understood what they were opting for at the time of the Constituent
Assembly election68.

Tanja Hohe, looking in depth at traditional Timorese concepts and practices in

leadership selection and legitimation, concludes that the so-called „free and fair‟
elections were really

…a ‘totem’ poll, in which voters expressed their honour and respect

towards their history and cultural values. The Constitutional Assembly
hence reflected the will of a small elite, the diáspora and overseas-
educated individuals who knew how to exploit local beliefs69.

It cannot be denied that UNTAET did pay attention to the need for civic education of
the population. In 2000 it began preparations for a campaign that was to cost some 7.5
million US dollars. The plan was to fly in several hundred UNVs from the four
corners of the world, to present to the population standard UN-designed material
about representative democracy. More than 90% of the costs of the project were
intended for foreign personnel and their travel requirements. The small balance was to
be spent on local support activities. Not surprisingly, Timorese civil society activists,
who by this time had already developed the feeling of being locked out from
contribution to the state-building process by the UNTAET policy of dealing with the
exclusive CNRT leadership as the representatives of the local people, vehemently
opposed this plan. The NGO members saw civic education as one of the few
remaining areas of importance in which they could, and deserved, to have a key role.
Understandably, they wanted to take part in the process of building the state for
whose liberation many had risked their lives, sacrificed the completion of their
education, and exposed themselves to hardship for so many years. In late 2000 I
attended a briefing session where the UNTAET official in charge of the project tried,
in a rather clumsy way, to sell the plan to a gathering of NGO people. The meeting
ended in an embarrassing confrontation, and the first formulation of the project failed.
Attempting to envisage how the project might have functioned was indeed a very
intriguing exercise. My mental picture was one of several hundred jet-lagged young
people, hailing from a variety of countries ranging from Albania to Iceland, or
Mexico to Zimbabwe, descending like a swarm on the territory, about whose people

65
Asia Foundation, East Timor National survey of Vote Knowledge, March 2001,
http://www.asiafoundation.org/pdf/easttimorvotered.pdf
66
ibid. , The UNTAET Head of the Civic Education Section considered it obsolete, since the situation
had already changed as a result of the start of civic education since the survey date.
67
http://etan.org,et2001b,may/20-26/24ethead.htm
68
Joyo News, January 31, 2001. www.etan.org/et2002a/january/27-31/31etcons.htm
69
Hohe, „Totem Polls….‟p 83

135
they knew little, to preach to illiterate villagers in remote mountain communities -
using their English language materials- about the virtues of the political philosophy of
Plato, Locke or Adams. No doubt that it would have been a very interesting and
rewarding experience -for the UNVs!

The first attempt at civic education having failed, a second attempt was undertaken
several months later, after the loss of much valuable time. It was less expensive, had
greater local inputs, but started very late, in May 2001, some three months before the
election. This civic education program was basically an exercise in training on
electoral procedures, i.e. the mechanics of the ballot, which was the aspect that
absorbed most of the attention of its personnel. It still did not provide the population a
clear understanding of the true purpose of the election. The haste of the process was a
further factor preventing the population to properly understand its purpose, as several
critics expressed70. The fact that the election was conducted on party lines, akin to a
conventional legislative election added further confusion. Rather than electing well-
respected representatives of proven competence from various sectors of society to
work on the document, the election was party-based with up to 16 parties competing
(independents were also allowed to stand for the 13 district seats). But who were
these parties? Several of them were just names for recently set up small groupings of
people, and had none of the attributes of a conventional political party as normally
understood in democracies. Others capitalized on the names of political groupings that
had a prominent role in the past but were inoperative during the occupation years.
Arranging for expert assistance for capacity building to some of these so-called
parties, I had a first hand experience of how utterly remote the conventional concept
of a political party and its organisation was to their members.

An East Timorese sociologist constructed a useful analytical framework for the

election71. He notes that this Constituent Assembly election held under conditions of
peace was very different to typical UN held elections in post civil-war situations that
serve to strengthen peace agreements between conflicting parties. He recalled that
three main approaches to voting behaviour are generally identified, i.e. rational, where
the voter chooses the party on the basis of its policies and programs; sociological,
where the choice is made as a result of identification with the group resulting from
social, economic or political cleavages he or she belongs to; and party-identification,
which is chosen as a result of a long-term loyalty based on emotional ties because of
historical, family, and factional reasons. In the latter case, the system and structure of
a „radical‟ party enjoying mass support -such as Fretilin in the East Timor case- tend
to persist for a long time to safeguard this support. The corollary is that the supporters
are likely to be conservative and conventional, meeting political change with great
difficulty, and are not easily swayed by parties with better policies. In order to make a
prediction of the election outcomes, his analysis considered three variables: age,
social class, and rural versus urban residence. He divided the East Timorese electorate
into those under 35 and those over 35 years of age, i.e. a pre-invasion generation and
a post-invasion generation group. The former would be expected to vote mainly for
the historical parties, and the latter for more recent parties formed on the basis of
social cleavages. Rather than being defined in terms of wealth and property, social

70
see „NGO Forum writes Security Council on Rushed Constitutional Process‟,
www.etan.org/news/2001a/03ngoconst.htm
71
To my knowledge the document was not published. Its author, João Boavida, was an Oxford post-
graduate sociology degree holding UN official at the time, involved in the election process.

136
class in East Timor at the time is seen as being a function of language proficiency
with respect to combinations of the four languages in use. English or Portuguese as
well as Tetum speakers are more likely to vote for the historical parties (Fretilin,
Apodeti, Kota, PTT), and Bahasa Indonesia as well as Tetum speakers for the newer
parties (PD, PDC, PARENTIL, etc). On the rural versus urban cleavage the author
said that because of better access to communications and public information, urban
voters are thought to fear less the possibility of consequences of a vote against
Fretilin, are more open to voting for any party, while rural voters, lacking access to
public information, would give Fretilin their vote, out of a fear of violence if this
party lost.

The fact that the East Timorese people looked at party politics with great suspicion
was very visible and is understandable given the country‟s history. Adversarial party
politics were non-existent in the past. Plurality of views was always very strongly
discouraged, first by traditional rulers, then by the Portuguese dictatorial rule, and
finally under Indonesia‟s dictatorship. The trauma of the 1999 post-UNAMET
Consultation violence was also very recent in people‟s minds. The violence and
destruction that resulted from a previous ballot choice, also arranged by the UN was
still freshly imprinted in the minds of the cowed population. Even Xanana Gusmão
showed great apprehension about the potential for violence that multi-party
competition could engender, as revealed by his feverish attempts to hold CNRT
together in 2000 and his warning statements after he had to accept its dissolution
during 2001. The concern with electoral violence, and the corollary of equating
multi-party competition with destructive conflict were felt increasingly strongly as the
election approached, prompting 14 out of the 16 political parties and main political
leaders to sign a National Unity Pact witnessed by the two Bishops of the Catholic
Church on 8 July 2001, in which these party leaders committed themselves to adhere
to non-violence throughout the electoral period and to respect the electoral outcome.
The text of the document betrays a strong preoccupation with violence, intolerance,
lack of mutual respect and political party supporters physical and verbal aggression of
rivals, as well as disrespect of multi- party democracy. Given the history, and the
increasingly boastful Fretilin attitude, claiming that they would win in excess of two
thirds of the vote, the fears were understandable. Concern with possible violence and
retaliation if Fretilin did not win was indeed a factor influencing voter choice in this
emotionally-as opposed to rationally- driven election.

For me, used to the more rational electoral processes, the most striking characteristic
of the election campaign, for which UNTAET made available good public
communications facilities such as print, radio and TV to candidates, far better than
anything previously seen in East Timor, was the poverty in terms of policy proposals
of the candidates. It is no exaggeration to say that nothing of a conceptual nature was
proposed. Buzz words such as democracy, prosperity, people‟s welfare, development
and so on were parroted ad nauseam, as were the alleged virtues of the better-known
leaders of the parties. The other main recollection I have of the campaign period was
the boisterous and intimidating aspect of the Fretilin rallies and their caravans through
Dili. I could well imagine how threatened a humble person could feel to be considered
not being a supporter, or worse, being a rival, of the party. But we were all so deeply
immersed in the intensity of the campaign, that we overlooked the fact, which only hit
me later, that the competing party rhetoric being propagated was in fact out of place
for a Constituent Assembly campaign, where candidates should have promoted their

137
proposed principles and concepts for the future constitution, rather than their
intentions and claims about their achievements if they were elected to the country‟s
governance process. If the election was party-based, then the campaign should have
focused on the various constitutional proposals of the respective parties. It did not. In
addition to not addressing the task, the quality of the statements made on the
communications media were often very poor. The extreme case was probably the
allegation by a candidate of a so-called Partido Popular de Timor (PPT), that he was
a relative of Prince Charles of England and a major shareholder of the World Bank.
He claimed in his campaign that this would allow him to provide huge funds to East
Timor once he was elected. Not only was the person not disqualified by the IEC, but
ended up being elected to the Constituent Assembly, subsequently becoming a
member of the Legislative Assembly of Timor Leste!

Well before election day, and consistent with Boavida‟s framework presented above,
there was already a generalized feeling that Fretilin would win, for a number of
reasons, including fear. But, perhaps the most valid insight provided to me about the
electoral result of this party was given by a long-term resistance leader, closely
involved with national security. In his view, people voted for Fretilin to release a
long-term pent up resentment against the suffering they endured under Indonesian
occupation. Indonesians called all opponents to their occupation Fretilin, a term
which became heavily derogatory and exposed the accused to victimization and even
death. Now, by openly calling him or herself a Fretilin partisan and joining the rallies
in its support, a person could derive a deep satisfaction that compensated for the past
suffering. Using the label was a liberating assertion of freedom, which may have had
little to do with the party itself, but which the Fretilin leadership was clever to use for
their own political advantage. In this context I remembered the skill of the Fretilin
leadership to capture the resentment of the oppressed and marginalised for their own
political advantage which was evidenced in 1975 when they elevated the previously
derogatory word Maubere into a term that expressed the pride of the oppressed
seeking liberation, to designate their own party followers.

As expected, Fretilin won the election, with a majority of 43 seats in the national
election, (57.3% of the vote) and 12 of the 13 district seats, giving it a total of 55 seats
out of 88. The closest rivals, new parties appealing to the younger and better-
educated Bahasa Indonesia or Portuguese-speaking groups, obtained seven and six
seats respectively. The election had a very high 91.3 percent turnout, which I feel
could not have been unrelated to the fact that in Indonesian times, voting in the
Suharto mock elections was mandatory and non-participation could result in
punishment. For Hohe, the Fretilin victory was the result of the group‟s manipulation
of indigenous values, symbols and the history of the resistance fight 72. Many,
including myself, would agree with this assessment. While such a pragmatic approach
to winning a political competition is in itself not abnormal, its negative effect on the
future political stability of the country should have been a concern to the UN mentors,
committed, as they allegedly were, to build a viable democracy in East Timor.
Instead, the UN was not sparing in its praise of the result of the election. Since, with
the exception of minor glitches, all technical stages, from voter registration and party
registration to the actual ballot went well, with no incidents reported, as was
acknowledged by outside monitors, the media and, of course, the UN information

72
Hohe, „Totem Polls…‟ p. 69

138
organs, the election was trumpeted as a major success. The UN claimed that the
success of the electoral process was an indication that a sustainable democracy had
been established in East Timor. The following citations from one of its publications
says it eloquently enough:

East Timor’s peaceful transition to independence has been an

impressive success story for the United Nations…. Constituent Assembly
elections had entered the ranks of a global showcase for democracy,
…hailed by the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as … a ‘glowing
example to the world community’…

Sergio Vieira de Mello summed up what the Timorese had achieved …’

‘the Timorese …have made this through their behaviour and their
example a most compelling and historical electoral process, one of
which many democratic countries can be jealous’ 73.

So, the way was now open for independence. But did this „glowing example to the
world community‟, as Secretary-General Kofi Annan called it, really lay the
foundations for a sustainable democracy in East Timor? The process, peaceful and
technically well organized as it may have been, failed to answer the fundamental
question as to the real meaning of this ballot. The insufficient civic education
provided to a population that had never before experienced a political system ensuring
justice, rule of law and democratic life, was, despite superficial appearances to the
contrary, unable to lay the foundations for the profound cultural changes that were
required. Starting from the precarious base existing in East Timor, how could a
sufficiently mature democratic political culture have been developed in just a few
months? How satisfactory was the electoral outcome given the confusion, lack of
information and even fear that characterized the process? Given this reality, how
legitimate were the results obtained? I will not attempt to answer these questions
myself. An observation of the political life of Timor Leste in the first few years after
independence should be able to provide these answers. For Tanja Hohe, the election
result confirmed that the majority of the population still adhered to local ideas of
leadership rather than to modern concepts of elections, reminding us that this is not
necessarily the best way to elect the most capable leaders. Subsequent developments
seem to be confirming this. It can only be hoped at this stage that her concluding
remark, that the “conditions have been laid, therefore, for the stark alternatives of
either one-party state or violent political competition”74 will not be validated by future
events, even if, as I write these lines indications seem to point increasingly in that
direction. The East Timor example does however support Hohe‟s comments that the
focus of the international community in post conflict interventions has to shift from
merely staging ostensibly „free and fair‟ elections to long-term assistance in nation
building with full attention to paradigmatic differences between liberal-style
democracy and local concepts. I would add that in order to achieve a successful
syncretism, which ensures the establishment of a genuine and legitimately accepted
liberal democratic system as the outcome of a state-building international
intervention, this requires longer-term tutelage. For this, in turn, an acceptance in such

73
„Independence for East Timor: A smooth and Representative Election Process, UN Chronicle,
v28,n4, December 2001, Department of Public Information.
74
Hohe, „Totem Polls….‟, p 85

139
cases of the need to put international legal sovereignty into abeyance in certain cases
is required.

The Constituent Assembly was inaugurated on 15 September 2001. Its national

members were chosen from the lists of the various parties, in proportion to their
respective election results, other than the 13 District Representatives who had been
directly elected. Unfortunately the level of education or experience with legislative or
government affairs of the majority was very, very low. From my personal observation
of a number of them over many years, I also question whether they had the stature
necessary to hold such important positions, especially at such a decisive stage in the
history of the young country. Nonetheless, the Assembly was expected to complete its
task in 90 in days. On 20 September a new fully Timorese „Second Transitional
Government‟ was appointed by the SRSG, to whom it was ultimately responsible.
The 21 Ministers, Vice Ministers, and Secretaries of State were chosen primarily in
proportion to the electoral results of the major parties, in addition to some individuals
being included on the basis of considerations regarding technical expertise. Regional
representation, age and gender were other factors that influenced the choices. Fretilin
members were dominant, with the Party‟s Secretary, Mari Alkatiri becoming Chief
Minister. Independent José Ramos-Horta became Senior Minister for Foreign Affairs.
The somewhat mercurial Xanana Gusmão chose to stay out and become a private
person at this time.

After attending to initial housekeeping needs, the Constituent Assembly cum

Legislature was ready for business in mid October. One of its first acts, on October
22, was to set the date for independence for 20 May 2002. The reason for the choice
of the date being that it was the anniversary of the foundation in 1974 of Portuguese
Timor‟s first political party, ASDT, which later became Fretilin. No prior progress
assessment of the UNTAET state institution-building process was deemed necessary,
nor did the Assembly see any need for prior consultation with the UN on the drawing
up of a well planned exit-strategy before deciding on this important date. Confident
that it had effectively sold the image of a successful operation in East Timor, the UN
was delighted at the opportunity to justify its speedy departure, being readily handed
to it by its impatient immature wards. By 31 October, nine days after the
Constitutional Assembly‟s decision had been signed, the UN Security Council
endorsed the proposal for East Timorese independence advanced by what was now
considered de facto a sovereign body legitimated by the will of the people as
expressed through the August 30 elections. As Vieira de Mello put it, UNTAET had
become no more than a support mission to an East Timorese government taking all
administrative decisions75. The point was clearly made by the then Political Affairs
Head of UNTAET, Colin Stewart, replying to questions on the independence day
decision at an NGO-organised seminar on the transformation of the Constituent
Assembly into a Legislative Assembly, when he said:

But please the decision of 20th of May was not in any way chosen by UNTAET, it
was chosen by the Constituent Assembly. We are following recommendations of the
Constituent Assembly. UNTAET is here to implement the will of the East Timorese
people. There is no point for UNTAET to be in East Timor, if the result is not what
people wanted. But until August 30, 2001, there was no elected government. We did
what we could…. UNTAET’s plans are based entirely on the recommendations of

75
Statement to the Security Council meeting 4403 & 4404 31 October 2001, SC/7192

140
 the East Timorese bodies and now we implement it... UNTAET only follows the
instructions that it got…76.

Clearly, traditional UN thinking regarding self-determination and sovereignty, which

makes it so extremely diffident with regards to intervention, needs reappraisal when it
comes to the case of weak or insufficiently developed state formations in need of
tutelage.

Other state-building activities

UNTAET rushed efforts to build a public administration also continued during this
time. The UN Secretary-General‟s report to the Security Council for the period 25
July to 15 October 2001 recognizes that “the establishment of an effective,
functioning government administration …is crucial to fostering a stable and secure
social, economic and political environment” 77. As an indication of the great advances
made in the past two years to build a civil service and its institutions from the ground
up, Annan reports that by mid September 2001 some 9,500 East Timorese civil
servants, about 90% of the targeted 10,500 had been recruited. Many of these had
received a variety of training courses by the Civil Service Academy, he added. Yet,
the Secretary-General failed to mention the limited impact the rushed training had on
the often bewildered and traumatized, poorly educated personnel, who remained
woefully ill-prepared to competently handle the new positions they were being
catapulted into assuming. He did, however, acknowledge that much still needed to be
done to transform the bureaucracy into a viable, sustainable national administration
run by East Timorese civil servants, with strong policy, regulatory and operational
frameworks. Did the Secretary-General expect that this would be achievable in the
few months remaining before the transfer of sovereignty? Many of the international
personnel in the Mission did not believe this would be possible. I heard many
complaints about the low skill levels, poor work ethics, and lack of commitment of
most of the local staff, starting with those at the highest levels and proceeding all the
way down. Friends in the Public Service Commission complained about the difficulty
of ensuring merit-based rather than nepotistic recruitment. Others complained about
the lack of commitment of the newly appointed officials, their strong preoccupation
with the status symbols and privileges associated with their new positions, especially
with the plentiful overseas travel opportunities that were being made available for
exposure and training purposes, which more often than not the beneficiaries took to be
just junkets to be enjoyed. Others still, felt that the new local officials took on
patronizing and arrogant airs towards the internationals, but relied on them to do the
actual work, while the locals were busy enjoying their new status. But, was all this
surprising, given the country‟s past history, its present situation, and the almost
indecent haste with which the UN was trying to disengage itself? The discrepancy
between the responsibility originally taken on by the international community to
mentor the emerging new state, and its hurried abdication from what could only be
properly accomplished over a longer time frame, was starting to be felt.

Progress on the other basically important pillar for a successful democracy, the
judiciary, was also well behind schedule. The task was daunting. On one hand there

76
The Transformation of Constituent Assembly into Legislative Assembly: Do we need a new
election? „Proceedings of December 2001 Monthly Seminar in Public Policy Issues‟,
www.tip.net.au/~wildwood/o1dectrans.htm
77
S/2001/983 see www.un.org

141
was the legacy of Portuguese and Indonesian laws to deal with, and on the other, there
was the almost total absence of properly qualified legal personnel. The poorly
educated young graduates of Indonesian institutions generally only had a command –
and in most cases a not a very good one at that- of Bahasa Indonesia, while their
foreign mentors spoke Portuguese or English. Legal documents could be in any of
these languages, and the majority of the clients, in turn, were only able to speak
Tetum. The difficulties facing the judiciary were openly acknowledged by Annan in
his report to the Security Council on 17 April 2002 78. I will not devote attention to
this aspect of state-building here, other than to say that at the time of writing, over two
years after independence, the Timor Leste Judiciary was functioning very poorly, to
the point of being considered almost inoperative by many observers.

Meanwhile, progress continued on the establishment of the 1500-strong East

Timorese Defence Force, made up of a light-infantry Army and a small Naval
component, supported by a further 1500 reservists, as determined in the UNTAET
regulations to set up a Defence Force79. Also the process of creating an East Timor
Police Force, begun early in 2000 with the creation of a Police Academy, continued
with full attention, so as to achieve the targeted 2,830 members. Difficulties in
changing the culture of use of violence, inherited from Indonesia‟s Police, plagued the
service well into independence. Yet, an aspect of great future importance for the
sustainability of democracy in the country, which was not developed at all under
UNTAET, was the creation of a civilian oversight capacity of the Military and Police.
Neither was a civilian-led Ministry of Defence established 80. Despite initial
suggestions that this would be done after independence, nothing further had been
done by the beginning of 2004. In his paper reviewing three decades of defence force
development in Timor Leste, Edward Reese also points out that the UNTAET
regulations governing the F-FDTL which called for civilian oversight and
management of the Defence Force are not in line with he country‟s Constitution,
causing much confusion as to the ultimate command and control of the FDTL, and
that because of the importance of such civilian control of the military for a stable
democracy, this was a special caveat for the provision of international support to the
F-FDTL81.

The last stage

In the last couple of months of 2001 UNTAET was busy downsizing, in response to
cost-cutting pressures primarily from the US and France, as well as the demands for a
speedy independence by the new local political and administrative elite the UN itself
had created. It was also planning for a successor mission to assist the independent
country. At the same time the Constituent Assembly worked on the fulfilment of its
mandate. In late October 2001 it held three weeks of public hearings, and in
December its plenary began to debate a draft Constitution, basically constructed from
a Fretilin developed draft a few years earlier in Mozambique, most of whose articles
were passed with little discussion by the loyal Fretilin majority in the Assembly. The

78
Report S/2002/432, §18, available on www.un.org
79
UNTAET/REG/2001/1 (Appendix I) of 31 January 2001 „On the Establishment of a Defence Force
for East Timor‟ and UNTAET/REG/2001/9 (Appendix II) of 19 June 2001 „On Amendments to
UNAET Regulation 2000/1.
80
A Review of Peace Keeping Operations: A Case for Change, Synthesis Report, §116, King‟s
College, Londonhttp://ipi.sspp.kcl.ac.uk/rep002/index.html
81
E. Reese, Under Pressure…, pp 7 & 12.

142
proposed Constitution proposed a unitary democratic state with a semi-
parliamentarian system modelled on the Portuguese system. The President‟s powers
were limited, and the Executive or Ministerial Council was to be headed by a Prime
Minister appointed by the President from a proposal by the dominant party or
coalition in Parliament. The President has limited veto powers over legislation and
heads the Defence Forces. With the exception of this last aspect, the Constitution
seemed tailor-made to suit the Fretilin power-holder and incumbent Chief Minister,
Mari Alkatiri, who had to accept that the military, with its strong loyalty to its former
Commander Xanana Gusmão, would never have accepted submission to Alkatiri the,
to them, virtually unknown former exile. The Constitution writing process, tied to a
tight schedule, was clearly too rushed to be understandable to the population at large.
As such, the popular level of ownership of the document is very tenuous, a fact that
will make itself felt if a major internal conflict emerges, the peaceful resolution of
which the document, as is the function of a proper Constitution, is not likely to be able
to assist. Examples of such situations in post-colonial quasi-states possessing hastily
manufactured Constitutional documents, as a necessary trapping for statehood,
abound.

Predictably, by the end of January, the Constituent Assembly had voted itself into
becoming the country‟s first Legislature after independence- the vote was 72 in favour
(55 of which were the votes of all the Fretilin members), 14 against, one abstention
and one absentee The initial 88 members would be retained, and subsequent
Legislative assemblies would have between 52 and 65 seats. The decision, supported
by Fretilin, happy with its dominance of the Assembly and concerned about loosing
its majority in a new election, had been opposed by most of the other parties, as well
as by prominent members of civil society, including Xanana Gusmão and Bishop
Belo, since the majority of the voters had not understood what they had voted for in
August. Many others also questioned the decision, casting a serious shadow on the
legitimacy of the new country‟s Parliament. By the 22 of March the process had
ended with the signing by all the members of the Constitutional Assembly of the text
of the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Timor Leste, as the new state was to
be called, in memory of the Fretilin-proclaimed and short lived 1975 republic. The
last remaining formality to enable the UN to cast the fledgling nation adrift into the
rough seas of independent statehood was the election of a President. This took place,
on 14 April 2002, as had been determined the previous November by the Constituent
Assembly. With the exception of the fact that Xanana Gusmão waited for the last day
of the deadline to register his candidature, everything ran according to script. Two
candidates competed, Francisco Xavier do Amaral, the President of the 1975
unilaterally proclaimed republic, nominated by 2 parties, and Xanana Gusmão,
nominated by nine parties. Voter turnout was high at 85 % of registered voters.
Xanana Gusmão obtained 82.7% and Amaral 17.3% of the valid votes. The UN again
showed its technical competence in election organization. Election observers only
asked themselves if enough skills had been transferred to East Timorese to ensure that
this fundamental aspect of democratic life could also be handled satisfactorily in
future, and stressed the need for a local Electoral Commission to be soon
established82.

82
IFET Report on the Presidential Election, 16 April 2003. www.iidnet.org/adv/timor/ifet-report-pres-
election.htm

143
In the latter part of April 2002 the sense of euphoria was as big among some locals in
East Timor as was the apprehension that invaded others. In a report on the new state,
released just before independence, the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP) ranked Timor Leste the poorest country in Asia in financial and human
development terms, and among the poorest 20 countries in the world, with an annual
per capita income of USD 47883. As the report indicates, more than 40% of East
Timor‟s 825,000 people lived on less than 55 USD cents a day, unemployment was
estimated to be between 50%-65% in rural areas and as high as 80% in urban centres.
In almost all measurable areas of development, East Timor was seen to lag far behind
its neighbours. Illiteracy was 60%, infant mortality rate in the first five years exceeds
10% and average life expectancy was only 57 years. Despite its predominantly
agricultural population, the country imported rice and other staples and was almost
totally dependent on foreign aid. Exports were negligible. In the last couple of years
the only significant economic activity took place in Dili, and was centred on the
presence of the international personnel. This was now ending as well.

But higher ranking UN personnel were happy for having been able to bring the
peculiar Mission in East Timor to an apparently successful end, and were anxious to
get out as soon as possible before the general perception about the success of
UNTAET that they had managed to promote was tainted. After independence,
anything that went wrong in East Timor, could legitimately be blamed on the East
Timorese, and not on the „successful‟ UN. Other UN personnel, on the ground, were
either concerned with what a future verdict would be, knowing very well that a rushed
and mostly cosmetic job of democratic and viable state-building had been done.
Others were feeling the pain of departing a troubled place that had endeared itself to
them, or feeling the worry of ending an assignment and facing the uncertainty of
having yet no new employment. Others still, were either busy with the logistics of the
downsizing -a particularly huge task in this big mission. A final group was frantically
attempting to cope with the enormous logistic demands of organizing the big
celebration to mark the birth of the first state of the new millennium -the premature
baby for which their institution had been in one sense a parent, and in another, its
midwife.

Need for ongoing support: UNMISET

That the job of building a viable democratically governed state as mandated to
UNTAET was not quite accomplished in the short period allowed was clear in the
minds of the international community. It was, however, not strong enough to prevent
the transfer of sovereignty, premature as it may be, to the new East Timorese
leadership. In his reports to the UN Security Council on the last months of
UNTAET84, Secretary-General Annan stressed the need to maintain an international
engagement in East Timor after independence. In his January 2002 report he states
that in the three months since his last report

…important political advances were made, and steady gains achieved, in

the complex task of establishing a public administration in East Timor.

83
UNDP, East Timor: the Way Ahead, National Human Development Report, 13 May 2002.
www.undp-easttimor.org
84
„Report of the Secretary –General on the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor‟
(S/2002/80 of 17 January 2002) and (S/2002/432 of 17 April 2002).

144
 The security environment has continued to improve, and policies are being
implemented that favour economic and social development… [adding
that] the comparative fragility of the political foundations of this new
country, its very limited pool of professional and administrative expertise,
lack of strong independent security mechanisms and nascent state of
economic development... [required ongoing assistance from the
international community to] ensure stability and realize the potential for
progress that had been generated over the past two years85.

Repeating the theme in his final report, the Secretary-General said the partnership
between the East Timorese people and the UN had led to a de novo administration
being established in the record time of 30 months in the territory, an achievement
which few would have thought possible, which has provided peace, fundamental
government structures and would shortly lead to the independence the East Timorese
had struggled over for so many years 86. But, the Secretary-General warned that all of
those achievements would be at risk if not reinforced through a continued
international presence, since a number of critical elements of the State would remain
fragile at independence. Among specific points mentioned is that planning and
budgeting for the establishment of a Ministry of Defence was under way. The
Ministry would provide defence policy advice and the essential civilian oversight
required for the long-term management of the Defence Force. Yet, twenty-five
months after independence, no action had been taken to materialize this important
element of a democratic state. To conclude Kofi Annan said

…while the responsibility to establish and maintain a viable State in

East Timor clearly belongs to its people and its leaders, assistance from
the international community will remain essential for continued stability
and the development of the country for some time87.

I keep on wondering if a simpler and more effective solution would not have been to
withhold sovereignty and prolong the international tutelage, while granting East
Timor full self-governance for as long as necessary. Unfortunately, our current
paradigm does not allow it.

I therefore could only regret the Secretary-General‟s words which to me indicated that
the international community was abrogating its primary responsibility to firstly ensure
that the foundations for a viable state were properly laid, and that it had facilitated the
emergence of truly representative and capable leaders, freely chosen by a sufficiently
discerning population, before the fledgling state was thrown into the harsh arena of
the sovereign state system to swim or drown. The words may have been appropriate
in New York, but how did they relate to the reality on the ground in East Timor? In
my view the Secretary-General, conscious of the fact that the tutelary job to prepare
East Timor for a viable existence as a democratic state was far from complete, and
that as such the forthcoming independence was grossly premature, was hedging his
institution from future blame, if the UNTAET results proved a failure. Clearly the
blame could not be laid on the Secretariat personnel, who were only carrying out the
policy of the organization‟s members, in particular of those in the Security Council,
85
„Report of …‟ S/2002/80 p 1
86
„Report of ….‟ S/2002/432, p 15.
87
Ibid, p 16.

145
which in turn were reflective of current international views and practices, that urged a
speedy termination of UNTAET. A paradigm shift regarding conceptions of
sovereignty and views on international responsibility for weak and failing states is
necessary.

As a way out, to provide the still needed assistance to the fledgling nation, a United
Nations Support Mission in East Timor (UNMISET) was established by Security
Council Resolution 1410 (2002) of 17 May 2002 for an initial period of one year. On
19 May 2003, by its resolution 1480 the SC extended the mandate by another year
until 20 May 2004, which was followed with yet another extension.

The UNMISET mandate stipulates that the Mission is: to provide assistance to the
core administrative structures critical to the viability and political stability of East
Timor (sic); to provide interim law enforcement and public security and to assist in
the development of a new law enforcement agency in East Timor, the East Timor
Police Force (ETPS); and to contribute to the maintenance of the external and internal
security of East Timor. The Council requested UNMISET to give full effect to three
of the programs of the Mandate Implementation Plan set out in the Secretary-
General‟s report to the Security Council of 17 April 2002, namely: Stability,
Democracy and Justice; Public Security and Law Enforcement; and External Security
and Border Control. The budget for the first year of UNMISET operations, which
included up to 5000 troops, 1250 civilian police and 100 international personnel to fill
core functions in the Timor Leste administration (mainly in Finance), as well as
personnel for the administration of the mission itself, was of the order of US$ 316
million for the year 1 July 2002 to 1 July 2003. For the second year, the approved
budget for the period 01 July 2003 to 30 June 2004 was US$193.34 million, which
more than 2.5 times the total state budget of Timor Leste of some US$70 million for
2003-4. It was initially envisaged that at the beginning of this period the numbers of
operative mission personnel, i.e. military, police and administrators with the Timor
Leste Government, would comprise around half of the levels they had in the previous
phase. They would gradually reduce to zero by the end of the mandate in 2004. The
idea was that UNMISET would facilitate a smooth transition of the United Nations
role towards traditional development assistance, in coordination with the wider UN
system, bilateral donors, civil society and the national development plan of the East
Timor government itself. Given the high importance of development aid provision
through UN agencies in this phase, the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP) was given a higher profile than before, illustrated by the fact that the UNDP
Resident Representative was appointed Deputy Special representative of the UN
Secretary General in Timor Leste. UNDP was entrusted to also find bilateral donor
funding for an additional 200 technical support positions for the Timor Leste
administration- an undertaking that proved increasingly difficult, on account of the
dwindling donor interest in East Timor. By the end of this mission in May 2004, it
had to be acknowledged that the situation still demanded a further UN supporting
presence in the new state. The SC approved a further half-year extension. It would be
an even smaller mission, whose operative personnel would be purely advisory. It
could optionally be extended for a final six months. I wonder what an honest appraisal
of the viability of Timor Leste as well-governed independent state would indicate if
such an exercise were held at the end of the extension phases of the UN support
mission.

146
End and beginning
In the view of the Security Council, all the necessary steps to grant East Timor its
negative sovereignty could thus be said to have been taken. With no need to wait any
further, at 23.59 hours on that beautifully crisp dry-season night of 19 May, UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in the presence of the widest assortment of dignitaries
from all over the world Dili had ever hosted, and in full view of the global public
through their TV screens, could proclaim the termination of UNTAET and the birth of
the world‟s newest quasi-state, Timor Leste, on 20 May 2002 at 00.00 hours.

With his embrace of President Xanana Gusmão, Secretary-General Annan effectively

cut the umbilical chord that linked this waif of decolonisation to its surrogate parent,
the UN, casting it adrift into the turbulent waters of the contemporary international
system, forcing it, in the name of self-determination, to learn to swim or to perish.
Would the infant, equipped with the raft of international legal sovereignty and
assisted by a dwindling number of foreign instructors be able to master the art of
swimming independently in these harsh and tempestuous waters? On that beautiful
night, not everyone was sure of the answer. The ceremonies were aimed to stir the
emotions of anyone harbouring misgivings about the future, stimulating them instead
to feel elated by yet another „triumph‟ of the noble values of self-determination and
democracy, as exemplified by the birth of the Democratic Republic of Timor Leste.

147
Chapter VII: Timor Leste- an early assessment

As I sit in my house in Dili in early 2004 looking at the deep-blue sea towards Atauro
and the Indonesian islands nearby, close to two years after the grande finale staged by
the UN to mark its transfer of sovereignty over East Timor, it occurs to me that the by
now dilapidated UN Volunteers Park in front of the house provides a good image of
the developments in Timor Leste during these months. The hastily made bricks have
crumbled, the plants have either been eaten by the ravenous goats and pigs that freely
roam the city‟s streets or have died for lack of watering, and the makeshift benches
built to seat the dignitaries who attended the independence celebrations have long
since collapsed. The remaining benches are used by scores of unemployed poor
youths who idle their time away, vainly hoping for a better future. Refuse, mainly the
cans or wrappers of the widely consumed foreign-made soft-drink and beer or junk-
food that the country can ill-afford to import, litters the long-gone flowerbeds. The
park was hastily built from flimsy materials as an initiative of departing international
personnel wishing to leave behind a memento of their passage through East Timor.
But the project didn‟t pay much attention to developing a local commitment or the
ongoing maintenance capacity required for its future sustainability. A couple of days
before Independence Day, an African UNV and good friend of mine, who had been
responsible for the park‟s construction, shared his concern with me about its future.
His departure had been advanced before he could get a grant application signed by his
successor, the new East Timorese officer in charge, to the embassy of a foreign
government that had given its verbal agreement to my friend that they would fund the
maintenance expenses for the park. The UNV was worried that no one would follow
through to bring the application process to completion, thus loosing the grant,
resulting in no park-maintenance taking place in future. His concerns proved justified.

Reminiscent of Oscar Wilde‟s portrait of Dorian Grey, the park seemed to me to be

mirroring the progressive decay of the country‟s flimsy governance apparatus and its
alien procedures, so hastily introduced by foreigners and so prematurely handed over
to an unmotivated, inexperienced, and confused group which was, as could be
expected, unable to properly manage it. But, like Dorian Grey, there were strong
efforts made to keep up a virtuous public façade…

Timor Leste, early 2004

It is not my aim here to study the twenty months of the Timor Leste government in
detail. A few impressions, as could be gathered by any outside observer, would
suffice to show that all was not well in the new RDTL. The report presented by the
World Bank at the country‟s donor meeting (TLDPM) held in Dili in early December
2003, despite its sanitized language, gives an indication of this. The background paper
states that since the previous donors‟ meeting six months earlier, Timor-Leste had
seen

…steady increases in health indicators, completed a National

Education Congress, adopted a draft law on commercial societies,
prepared a draft policy and law on private investment, witnessed the

148
 creation of a land and property registry as well as a cadastre registry,
finalized the recruitment of a management contractor for the Power
Authority, implemented a highly successful livestock vaccination
campaign, completed the registration process for veterans and ex-
combatants, committed itself to the Extractive Industries Transparency
Initiative, and organized a Conference on Transparency and
Accountability in Public Administration,…[adding]…the Government
has identified several worrying trends in public expenditure
management which include rapid increases in certain overhead costs,
continued low cost recovery in the power sector, and a lack of
compliance with expenditure procedures, against which, the report
adds, corrective measures have been taken 88.

Noting the anticipated USD 126 million income shortfall with regards to previous
revenue estimates, due to technical problems encountered with the start-up of the
main oil and gas project, the report observed that the economy was estimated to have
declined by 3% in 2003 with per capita income falling to just US$ 410, as a result of
the downsizing of the foreign presence and a decrease in the pace of reconstruction
activities. Unemployment was said to be at least 20% in urban areas, being
particularly high among 15-24 year olds, and 43% for Dili and Baucau, according to
UNMISET Head, Kamalesh Sharma. The end or downsizing of UNMISET in May
2004 was expected to increase the recession for at least another year. Other sources
have set unemployment figures at varying levels, up to as high as 80%. World bank
Vice-President Mr Jamil Kassum, added at the TLDPM that Timor Leste was facing
“clear challenges, including declining growth, high unemployment, and a substantial
gap in financing for the Government budget, CFET”89. Interestingly, in the same
bulletin, the Director for the Asia Pacific Department of the Asian Development
Bank, Robert Siy is reported to have said that the Government had in the last six
months taken positive steps that have created good conditions for the private sector.
In contrast, the US Ambassador is reported to have encouraged the Government to
cooperate with the private sector so the latter could be more active. He also said that
it was not enough to just talk about banishing corruption, but that it was important to
„loose the mentality‟ of corruption, suggesting that this was already prevalent. In his
intervention at the TLDM, Australia‟s Justice Minister is reported to have asked the
UN to extend its presence in East Timor, “to prevent the fledgling nation to become a
haven for criminals and terrorists, including Australian criminals on the run” 90.
Questioning the effectiveness of the UN sate-building exercise in East Timor, where –
unlike in other intervention cases- there was a welcoming population and only a short
conflict, Financial Times writer, Shawn Donann, says “the country offers a daunting
perspective on the task the international community faces in a place such as Iraq” 91.
Donnan recalls the Dili riots that took place a year earlier, cites results of a poll
released in November 2003 by the US International Republican Institute that stated

88
See World Bank, „Background Paper for the Timor-Leste and Development Partners Meeting
(TLDPM)‟, Dili, 3-5 December 2003 and Trust Fund for East Timor (TFET), „Report of the Trustee
and Proposed Work Program for January-June 2004.
89
Suara Timor Lorosae, as reported in Timor-Leste Local Media Monitoring, December 4, 2003,
www.etan.org/et2003/december/01-6/05localm.htm
90
ibid.
91
Shawn Donnan, „Complications follow the painful birth of East Timor‟, Financial Times, 4
December 2003

149
that only 42% of Timor Leste respondents felt that they were now better of than
before independence, and concludes that East Timor suffers from the fragility of key
institutions as its police and its courts –where a shortage of qualified judges and an
immense backlog of case, causing pre-trial detentions of up to two years.
Being more direct, it is not an exaggeration to say that in most, if not all, areas of
public administration a casual observer could easily conclude that very slow progress
had been achieved and little further institutional development had taken place since
the end of UNTAET; on the contrary standards of administration and service had
dropped alarmingly at all levels. A minor, almost trivial, yet indicative example of the
slow administrative response to change is given by the fact that for the first six
months of independence the simple rubber entry stamps for arriving and departing
passengers‟ passports still marked them with „UNTAET‟ rather than „Timor Leste‟.
Considering the high importance supposedly given to independence, it seemed
surprising to me that such a symbolic and highly visible indication of the country‟s
new status as is an entry stamp for travelers should have taken so long to be updated.
Still on the topic of impressions provided to travelers using the country‟s main
gateway, I can add that the security-screening machine for departing passengers‟
luggage at the airport broke down in late 2002. Over a year later it was still there, not
repaired, and the checks were still being manually. Like these small examples there
are so many others showing lack of initiative, lack of care, and of responsibility by the
new authorities toward their duties and to the obligations stemming from new status
of the country. It is as though there still is no realization that independence entails
above all a responsibility for the proper management of the affairs of the national
community.

As a casual observer, and a periodic resident of the country, I could see myself how in
a variety of areas, the administrative procedures legated by UNTAET, or those that
UNMISET advisors attempted to introduce, were being progressively disregarded and
not replaced by others. The administrative machinery was functioning at an
increasingly slow pace due to the fact that its unprepared personnel was overwhelmed
by demands that exceeded their limited administrative skills and decision-making
capacity. In most cases, their response was inaction, or, in some cases–if the right
inducement was provided- a short-circuiting of the procedures took place, so that their
original purpose was defeated, making administration a mere formality. Such
developments could be seen at all levels, from the highest, in relation to major policy
decisions, to the lowest, such as the registration of a motor vehicle. A returnee from
the diáspora, increasingly disappointed with the state of affairs in the country, who
was now managing the logistics of a local non-profit organization told me in February
2004, that a motor vehicle registration that could be done in an hour under the
UNTAET administration now took several days, requiring repeated visits involving
long waits in crowded and disorderly waiting rooms, lengthy searches for documents
that could not be located by the officials, and inevitably a request for a „tip‟ in order to
speed the process up. If the tip is sufficiently large, the whole process could be turned
into a formality, involving no inspection at all. Fore me, sadly, this was all déjà vu -in
Indonesia.

Technically ill-prepared -and in most cases inappropriately chosen- government

ministers have shown little leadership to an increasingly frustrated population. The
majority party, keen to ensconce itself in power as the new elite of the country, had
few members that could properly perform at the positions they were preferentially

150
given, non-party members, among the minute pool of professionally qualified people
existing in the country, having been sidelined. The odd members of the Executive that
showed effectiveness in leading their departments were invariably technical, rather
than political, appointees. An increasingly patrimonial and authoritarian governing
mode is emerging where ultimately decision-making is centralized in the hands of a
Prime Minister who feels he can not delegate to ministers in whose competence he
can not trust. Despite his apparent good intentions he is, however, overwhelmed and
not always qualified to make the required decisions himself. The result is an
exceedingly slow process, which more often than not produces no responses at all -as
many others and I have personally experienced in relation to important initiatives-
leading us to eventually give up pursuing them. This stifling of initiatives is the
opposite of what the country needs. What would be required to satisfy the demands of
the people for jobs and a better livelihood is an environment that encourages and
supports creativity and initiative, not the opposite.

The difficulties with governance are widespread and affect all areas, including the
extremely slow legislature, which is producing the urgently required laws to fill the
existing legal vacuum at a snail‟s pace. By December 2003, only 10 laws had been
promulgated by the National Parliament of Timor Leste, in addition to the 9 laws
promulgated in 2002. Not only is the legitimacy of the members, never elected to the
legislature but to the Constitutional Assembly a recurring issue, but also their lack of
experience and education hinders their performance. Practical problems such as the
use of the Portuguese language, which few master, and the limited resources for
research are other hindrances. As the East Timorese academic Dr Lucas da Costa
complained “the debate is in Portuguese but not everyone understands
Portuguese…so the result is every law passes” 92. The statement is not entirely
accurate, because much of the debates are in the still-developing Tetum language,
which most members master, but it does illustrate the existing communication
problems, which affect not only Parliament, but all sectors of government.
Absenteeism and apathy are on the increase in Parliament. There also seems to be
little awareness among the legislators that they are elected to serve their constituents,
with whom they are rarely in contact. The slow pace of the legislative process results
in crucially important laws to still be lacking, such as a commercial code and a
foreign investment law, with a consequent negative impact on foreign investment and
economic development. Many members consider their role in the National Parliament
of Timor Leste as being merely to provide a rubber stamp of approval for government
decisions.

But language problems do not only affect the legislature, nor the judiciary. In all areas
of public administration the fact that the Portuguese official language needs to be
used, which few fully master, with virtually none of the younger and middle-aged
Indonesian-educated officials having ever studied it, is a major hurdle. Not only do
administrators encounter difficulties due to their lack of technical knowledge and lack
of experience, but they are also unable to produce official documents because of their
limited knowledge of Portuguese. The effect of all of this on the administrative
process needs little description. The extraordinary incidents that have resulted from
this artificially created situation would be material for an amusing book, were the
consequences not to damaging for the fledgling nation.

92
Donnan, „Complications….‟

151
Another area, in which no executive or legislative developments have been noted so
far, is the creation of institutions of civilian control of the defence force and police,
which as the King‟s College review of peace operations mentioned, was an important
omission by UNTAET. The analyst Reese reminds us that a state‟s defence force, a
potentially crucial strategic asset vital for maintaining the state‟s integrity, can also
present a dangerous strategic liability, being able to undermine and overthrow civilian
control of the state… It is therefore crucial to bring the military under civilian control
as early as possible. Yet, as he observes, by January 2004 that civilian oversight did
not yet exist in Timor Leste. There was no Defence Ministry, and no plans were
evident to create one. Neither the Parliament nor the President (as Commander of the
F-FDTL) nor the Prime Minister (to whom the Police is ultimately responsible, via the
Interior Minister) had shown any urgency to establish and develop the governance
structures that are necessary to oversee a properly functioning, apolitical and
democratic security sector. Reese concludes that the risk exists for state disintegration
due to divisions among the old resistance and veterans groups, which could be
supported by the F-FDTL and PNTL, adding “these risk to the state is highlighted by
the fact that there are no effective civilian governance structures in place to bind
security institutions to both the government and the community” 93. Fortunately, the
East Timorese Defence Force and its Commanders have so far shown impeccable
discipline and great restraint with regards to political matters. But, should the
developing dissatisfaction with the government and the ruling party grow, and the
mood change, what mechanisms are there to constrain a possible interventionist
appetite by the armed forces?

The functioning of the judiciary is also very precarious. On one hand there is a lack of
properly trained legal personnel, and on another, there is a lack of support staff and
material resources in the court system to enable it to function properly. Language is a
further major problem. The official languages are Portuguese and Tetum. Old laws are
in Bahasa Indonesia and Portuguese, and new legislation is in Portuguese. Also here
few of the personnel have sufficient grasp of the latter language. Properly qualified
professional interpreters and translators are almost inexistent. The effects on the
society of an almost inoperative judiciary are very negative, and have political, social
and economic consequences. There are many cases of past serious crimes that need to
be dealt adequately to ensure proper justice as part of a process of reconciliation to
heal the lingering wounds of the past. Despite UNMISET support in this area, there is
no way that the existing human resources, which include foreign judges, will be able
to finish even a majority of the cases on their long list before the official end of their
assignments. In other instances of a civil nature, the lack of expertise of the half-
baked local judges has resulted in very few satisfactorily resolved cases. To
compound matters, a culture of corruption and other bad habits, inherited from the
Indonesian past, is noticeable. I have personally come across instances of protracted
property litigations that have remained unresolved despite the clarity of the case. The
Australian Financial Review on June 23, 2003 mentioned the case of a large and
bona-fide Australian construction company, JJ McDonald & Sons, which formed East
Timor Constructions by associating with a local citizen in East Timor in 2000,
investing Australian $3 million. The protracted legal case, which followed a dispute
among the partners, was, in the words of one of the members of the foreign partners‟

93
Reese, „Under Pressure…‟, p 5.

152
legal team, Barrister Tim Lindsey, director of the Asian law Center in Melbourne,
“the most outrageous case I have ever been involved in…[the judges] are trying to
find their way beyond their competency…they have no grasp of procedure or how the
system should work”94. The article refers at length to the vicissitudes of the
defendants‟ dealing with the Dili Court, illustrating the lack of professionalism by the
judges. Some of the incidents described indicate that in addition to professional
incompetence, other factors such as bribery and xenophobia, so evident in Indonesian
courts, were also at play, compounding the operational difficulties presented by the
lack of adequate resources, both human and material, in the courts. In addition,
Lindsay refers to attempts at bribery of his local counsel by the opponent, who offered
a percentage of the winnings and a trip to the USA to him. The article also quotes a
response by President Xanana Gusmão to fast-mounting concern about the country‟s
legal system, when he said at the swearing in of the first President of the Court of
Appeal –which as the article notes, cannot hear cases as it has no judges- “I call upon
the officers of justice to strip themselves of all kinds of xenophobia. The development
of our country will depend, essentially, on a policy of openness to foreign investment
and on the application of a justice system that is honest, impartial and professional” 95.
By early August, the court had made a judgement against the Australian party,
ordering it to pay US$ 1.5 million compensation to the local party, or have its assets
immediately seized, despite the fact that six previous appeals about the court‟s
conduct of the case were still pending 96. Shortly thereafter, also in August 2003, the
overseas media also gave prominence to the case of Australian ANZ Bank manager
Kirk McNamara who was made to face court in Dili on criminal charges that he had
stolen doors from the house he rented from the Prime Minister‟s brother, which had
been attacked in the December 4, 2003 riots that shook Dili. The judge accused
McNamara of having stolen the window frames and confiscated his passport. A
higher court reversed the judgment, but the damage to the image of the country, so
desperately in need of some foreign investment, could not be so easily reversed97.

A year later, instead of improving, the situation had further deteriorated according to
Australian businessmen in Timor Leste. One case that made headlines in Australia
was the detention of the head of a respectable Darwin civil engineering company as a
result of an allegation by his former local partners that he had cheated them. They
prevented him from leaving the country by involving a group of ruffians who forced
the airport tower to deny take-off clearance to the commercial flight the man had
already boarded having followed standard departure procedures. The incident, and the
sequence that ensued until he was finally released and allowed to leave the country,
made it quite clear just how tenuous the respect for legal procedures in Timor Leste is
at this stage. The businessman stated upon his return to Darwin that his company is
withdrawing from Timor Leste after 5 years of working there, on account of the
downturn of activities following the UN withdrawal, and the increasing difficulty of
doing business due to growing corruption at the lower levels as well as the poor
functioning of courts of justice to settle disputes98.

94
Rowan Callick, „Bright Dawn, Dark Days in East Timor‟, Australian Financial Review, June 23,
2003.
95
Ibid, p 1.
96
Rowan Callick, „Dili trial leaves bad taste‟, Australian Financial Review, August 8, 2003.
97
See Judicial System Monitoring Programme news, www.jsmp.minihub.org/5_8_3.htm, and The Age,
Melbourne, August 6, www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/05/1060064181809.html
98
http://abc.net.au/nt/news/200406/s1131970.htm , June 15, 2004 reporting the case of Jim Hendrie.

153
In addition to the bad image created by such incidents, the negative impact on the
inflow of foreign investment of the fact that almost two years after independence
there was still no commercial code and no corporate or foreign investment legislation
in place needs no comment. The result has been a dearth of the so badly needed bona
fide foreign investment in the country‟s economy. Of several private investments
sized in excess of a few hundred thousand dollars that were planned in 2001 and
2002, none have materialized. In addition to legal uncertainty, the protracted process
of obtaining government permits, which never reaches a conclusive end, have
deterred the original enthusiasm of a few pioneering entrepreneurs. I have witnessed
from very close distance several such cases, which evolved in an atmosphere closely
reminiscent of the haunting tale of a man and his endless struggle against an
inscrutable authority to gain admittance to a castle in Franz Kafka's The Castle.
Months, and months, and months of waiting, visits to Dili, brief and inconclusive
meetings with government officials after hours spent in their waiting rooms,
appointments frequently cancelled or postponed at the last minute with no prior
notice, contradictory information and instructions etc, etc., show that the officials do
not have the required experience or technical knowledge, and that they are lost in their
positions in a system that they do not understand, let alone control. To compound the
problem, because of their insecurity and their cultural proclivity to keeping
appearances and „saving face‟, the difficulties are not acknowledged, and much effort
is spent on covering the disorientation up. Distant, evasive, and pompous behaviour,
and a proclivity to escape on the travel opportunities that are offered by outside
donors with the intent of providing training and exposure, are common responses of
the new administrators to avoid taking responsibility and covering up their lack of
competence to carry out their functions.

Instances of corruption in the use of public resources, as alluded to by the US

Ambassador quoted above, have also alarmed foreign donors, who continue to be the
main source of state funding. But, as many private people have mentioned to me,
corruption is clearly noticeable at all levels from customs officials, the judiciary, and
the administration to the police and so on. A different situation could have hardly
been expected, given the weakness of the state control machinery, and the negative
legacy of the Indonesian culture of corruption. Indonesia, after all, is consistently
ranked among the most corrupt public administrations in the world in the annual
reports of Transparency International. I wonder how Timor Leste, once it gets
included in the ranking, will fare in relation to its former mentor. Smuggling of
goods, mainly across the border with Indonesia, under the cooperative eye of customs
officials in collusion with foreign merchants, is costing the state important sums of
money in lost import duties. While this happens, in contrast, customs officials often
insist on duties to be paid for humanitarian aid goods sent by foreign supporters, thus
discouraging these from providing the much-needed assistance to the people of this
poor country. Instances of pilferage are common.

Another very important indication of the weak state capacity to exercise what Krasner
has called interdependence sovereignty, i.e. “the capacity to control movements of
people, capital, goods, ideas or disease vectors across their borders” is given by the
significant immigration movement, which is evident to the naked eye. Since
independence many fortune seekers have come to settle in Timor Leste. They come
mainly from neighbouring countries, in search of employment and other

154
opportunities, making use of the fact that a 30-day visa is granted on arrival at the
airport to anyone upon payment of US$25. No further questions are asked by the not
very skilled immigration police officers, nor is there any facility to access a database
of undesirable persons evident. The visas so obtained can be renewed on a monthly
basis by mere payments of US$ 30. By February 2004, new regulations, as specified
in the „Immigration and Asylum Law‟ (N 9/2003 of October 15, 2003) had not yet
been implemented. Clearly, border control is very weak. Given that access to Timor
Leste by regular air services is only possible via Australia or via Indonesia, and in
view of the extremely tight Australian border control measures, non-Australians can
easily reach Timor Leste via Indonesia, where, as is well-known, for a sufficient fee,
obtaining a transit visa from a compliant immigration officer is not all too difficult.

The impact of such unselective immigration is being clearly felt. Despite the huge
local unemployment, employers –mostly foreign entrepreneurs- prefer to bring in
people from outside rather than using the local population with its low skills and poor
work habits. Even low skilled labourers, mainly from the People‟s Republic of China,
are being brought into the country, as are typists, sales girls, restaurant waiters, cooks,
and prostitutes from ASEAN countries. Merchants from Indonesia, Malaysia,
Singapore and other countries close by are making good profits from the fact that
Timor Leste uses a strong currency, the US dollar. As an International Monetary Fund
official told me, a product selling for 1 Malaysian or 1 Singapore dollar in their
countries of origin, can fetch one US dollar in Timor Leste, an profit of 100 to 150%.
Given patterns prevalent in Indonesia, it is highly unlikely that these people are
paying due taxes on their profits, which they can easily repatriate. In most cases they
are not properly registered, and given the weakness of the tax collecting capacity,
even if they were registered, tax avoidance would not be difficult. What little
investment is taking place in Timor Leste is usually only done by these types of
people; it is relatively small, and short-term high return on investment oriented.
Lodgings, restaurants, shops, night-clubs and such-like are the main activities
undertaken. Such investments also present opportunities for some of the investors to
launder funds they may not be able to legally use in their own countries. While there
is this marked and virtually uncontrolled inflow of such foreigners taking place, who
seek profit opportunities in areas which elsewhere would be considered legal as well
as criminal, the people of Timor Leste are being marginalized. While the foreigners
come in, there is also an emigration of people in search of jobs, such as many of the
several hundred young recipients of Portuguese scholarships who, once they were
able to successfully invoke their existing right to Portuguese citizenship, dropped their
studies and left for other EU countries to seek work, rather than developing their skills
or staying home to contribute to their own country‟s development. I wonder how this
vicious circle will be broken in future without some catalytic agency intervening. This
was not the understanding of independence that we had envisaged during the years of
struggle!

The few job opportunities for the locals created by the foreign entrepreneurs are
mostly at the very lowest level. Little is being done in terms of capacity building. Yet
as consumers of the –in most cases unnecessary- goods and services being provided, it
is the poor people of Timor Leste, together with the dwindling numbers of
international officials, who make it possible for the foreign entrepreneurs to earn their
profits. Many of these newcomers are also obtaining their profits in areas of activity
of dubious propriety. It is not possible to speak of dubious legality, given the absence

155
so far of laws prohibiting many activities that are clearly not in the interest of the
common good. More still, with its lack of official controlling capacity and the
government‟s foreseeable lack of capacity to enforce relevant laws in future, the
probability is high that Timor Leste, like so many weak and failing states, attracts
people whose activities represent threats to its society, to the security of the region,
and are dysfunctional to the international system in general. The warnings of the
Australian Justice Minister, at the December 2003 donors conference, that Timor
Leste may also become a haven for criminals is not hypothetical. In fact it is already
happening, as I have seen, even if I do not know to what extent. The presence in Dili
of a number of drug dealers from remote countries was made evident to me in 2002
and Immigration authorities have also mentioned their concerns about suspect
foreigners entering the country. I can relate this reality clearly to Cooper‟s
observations about the threats to world order posed by pre-modern states.

Western business people have commented to me that with the progressive

deterioration of the rule of law and the growth of Indonesian-style corruption in
Timor Leste, western entrepreneurs are thus increasingly leaving the country because
they are not used to perform in such an environment. As they leave, business people
from countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and others, more used to operating
successfully under the conditions emerging in Timor Leste, are taking over.

The weakness of the state also has serious consequences in a number of other areas,
including the fundamental revenue raising capacity of the state. The collection of
taxes is proving problematic. Taxation of the mostly low-income population is
limited. To simplify their own work, the tax authorities often tend to press the very
few bona fide foreign corporations operating in Timor Leste with unrealistically high
demands that act as a strong disincentive for the creation of a climate of mutual trust
necessary for their further or expanded involvement in the country. As to the others-
mostly the transient foreign entrepreneurs- when targeted, resort to well-entrenched
corruptive practices as they apply in neighbouring countries, which the weak local
system cannot prevent from being imported. Despite statements to the contrary, no
disciplinary action is being taken to correct these insidious developments so damaging
to the state. The Government‟s Inspector-General Office is overwhelmed, and the
judiciary is inoperative. For me the ambiance is so very reminiscent of the Indonesia I
knew in the 70s and 80s, especially in its more remote and backward provinces.

The existing stagnation and lack of leadership have created an atmosphere of apathy
and frustration, leading to resentment and tensions. A foretaste of this was seen in the
December 4, 2002 riots in Dili which sounded the first warning bells that the
UNTAET „success‟ may not have been all it was claimed to be. Youths rampaged
through the city, burned a supermarket associated with the presence of expatriates,
and the house of the Prime Minister. A few deaths resulted from the police response.
It gave a bad image about the country‟s stability to the international community,
which was made to wake up after the fantasies of the independence celebrations. This
waking up about the reality in Timor Leste was accompanied by a headache- for
which the international community had no one to blame but itself and its haste in
discharging the state-building responsibility it had assumed a mere three years before.
Expressions of concern by many of the international stake holders in the success of
Timor Leste followed, and the Government made a dramatic statement, promising an
in-depth investigation as to the causes of the riots to be published within 72 hours, an

156
stated its commitment to take necessary measures to overcome these causes. Over a
year later, there was still no published report or any tangible evidence to the
population of meaningful measures having been taken to overcome the obvious
reasons for the incident, namely the lack of jobs and opportunities for improvement in
the lives of the majority of the people, despite official statements to the contrary.
Instead, it is increasingly evident that the level of dissatisfaction and potential for
conflict is growing.

But, let me stop painting this grim picture. By now I must have surely succeeded in
conveying the impression that all is not well in Timor Leste in its second year after
independence, and that the UNTAET state-building tutelage had not laid the
foundations for the democratic and just society we had struggled for. What is being
done to correct the situation? From outside, the perception is that very little and that
the response of the „Excellencies‟ and „Doctors‟ -who suddenly abound in the new
governing elite of the country- is indeed very inadequate, even if, to make up for their
inaction, they convey a strong sense of importance of themselves and of their status.
An inordinate usage of honorific titles and honorific language has emerged. It appears
to be aimed at creating an aura of power and importance that would –in the absence of
more tangible attributes- underline the gap that is developing between the new elite
and the bulk of the population, until recently no different to its rulers. But now that
these rulers enjoy the benefits of international legal sovereignty -which makes them
formal peers of their counterparts in New York, Brussels, Canberra, Jakarta, Lisbon,
or Maputo- the situation has changed. Holding office clearly does provide power to
the incumbents, and enables them to enjoy a privileged lifestyle that they would
certainly not readily wish to give up when their terms end. The salary scales legated
by UNTAET are generally modest and equitable, even if compared to neighbouring
Indonesia they are uncompetitively high. Also, considering that Timor Leste is as yet
virtually not producing anything, their level could be excessive. But there are other
important benefits accruing to higher office. These range from the use of government
motorcars and drivers, to the frequent junkets to foreign countries. The intensity of
international travel –first and business class, as befitting to the gravitas of a higher
office holder of a sovereign state – has been remarkable, and must have been meant to
compensate for the years of isolation and misery of the past. How compatible this
intense program of exploration of the outside world is with the duties of leadership
seems, however, not to be too important a question for many of the perennially
globetrotting rulers. To be fair, I should note that due to budgetary restrictions
eventually imposed by donors, much travel had to be frozen in 2004. It is hard not to
think of Reno‟s characterization of a „shadow state‟ presented in Chapter II when
looking at the present realities of Timor Leste. The seeds are being sown for it. It is
easy to anticipate that they may healthily germinate, like in many similar countries
with weak state control capacity, once the revenue flows from the oil and gas
exploitation earnestly flow in, and the leverage possessed at present by international
donors by virtue of the country‟s total dependence on aid to fund its budget is
significantly diminished.

By late 2003 Timor Leste had lost much of the international interest and good will
that had made this little, otherwise insignificant, country attract such a high degree of
international attention and good will in preceding years. It had become yet another
weak, poor and stagnant post-colonial quasi-state like so many others, loosing a good
part of its original outstanding opportunities of attracting international assistance that

157
would have enabled it to become an exemplar of what could be achieved by inspired
governance. With the dropping of its international media profile, its capacity to attract
much-needed aid has also significantly diminished 99. This applied to non-
governmental projects, as well as to direct government funding, Considering that
since 1999, 37 donor countries and international agencies have donated USD 993
million, i.e. some USD1200 per capita for the three years, achieving little impact on
alleviating the poverty of the population, it cannot be expected that funding
enthusiasm will continue at levels anywhere resembling those of the past.

But sight must not be lost of the fact that the country has a good potential for earning
the revenue it needs to cover its governing expenses and to invest in human
development and the development of its facilities, provided that it a) gets equitable
access to its rich offshore hydrocarbon resources, and b) that this revenue is
judiciously and efficiently utilised for the benefit of its development and is not
corrupted or wasted away by its rulers, as has been the case in so many other similar
situations in other parts of the world.

One issue that has helped Timor Leste gain some international media salience in early
2004 is a growing maritime boundary dispute with Australia. The new statelet has
encountered the opposition of Australia to draw a boundary half way between the
Australian and East Timor coasts, as the application of the UN Convention on the
Law of the Sea would determine. Australia, basing itself on the maritime border treaty
concluded with the weak Indonesia of the early 1970s, claims that the boundary lies
close to the East Timor coast, since Australia‟s continental shelf extends well into the
Timor Sea. The application of the Australian position would give that country a much
larger maritime exclusive economic zone than would be the case if the median line
boundary were chosen. The implications are significant in terms of the revenue to be
obtained by Timor Leste from the exploitation of the hydrocarbon resources beneath
the seabed, since the largest deposits lie in the areas that Australia wishes to claim for
itself. A median line boundary approach would place over two thirds of the existing
resources in the Timor Leste zone, and almost treble its share of these resources as
compared to present arrangements under the Timor Sea Treaty100. At stake are
revenues of some US$6 billion over some two decades, which proportionally to the
Timor Leste government‟s budget of currently less than US$ 100 per year, is a huge
amount. The Australian strategy of delaying maritime boundary negotiations, which
could potentially be extended for decades using this approach, allows Australia to
meanwhile benefit from the status quo as defined by the Timor Sea Treaty
exploitation regime. The reaching of agreement on a maritime boundary more
favourable to Timor Leste by the time the resources are exhausted would be of little
financial advantage to the virtually destitute country.

99
The 2002/3 International Committee of the Red Cross yearly report on catastrophes in the world
observes that aid organizations of donor countries are strongly biased to give attention only to countries
that have a high media profile due to conflicts or disasters. More funds go to Iraq and Afghanistan than
to Angola and in general to the areas in need in Africa. We have also seen that in East Timor. While the
issue had a high media profile, aid agencies streamed in. Funding interest once the media attention has
subsided has become significantly less.
100
La'o Hamutuk Bulletin Vol. 4, No. 3-4: August 2003,
www.etan.org/lh/bulletins/bulletinv4n34.html#update

158
The image of the Timor Leste David again fighting for its survival against a
neighbouring Goliath, this time Australia, has rekindled the vigour of Timor Leste
supporters in civil society internationally, who have mounted the beginnings of a new
protest campaign, this time aimed at embarrassing the current Australian government
internationally and affect its popularity at home, like was so successfully done against
the Indonesian occupation up to 1999. Of course it needs to be noted that a dispute
over seabed resources does not have the poignancy of a genocidal occupation, which
was able to provide such lurid images as Max Stahl‟s Santa Cruz massacre video
tapes which so moved TV audiences world-wide, leading to the emergence of
decisive international support network for the East Timorese people. For the
increasingly beleaguered Timor Leste government, the Australian policy also provides
a convenient rallying point to ingratiate it with its domestic constituency, which is
increasingly disillusioned by the stagnant conditions in the country following
independence. Whether the stimulation of bellicose tendencies among the people,
leading to hostility and xenophobia, is the most constructive strategy to follow to
protect the country‟s interests is unclear to me. I also fail to see the long-term utility
of a policy by wealthy Australia, for which the Timor Sea deposits are but a little part
of its total energy resources, of depriving Timor Leste of the means of funding the
development of its state institutions, its human development, and its future economic
prosperity. Would a more accommodating approach, providing for higher revenues to
Timor Leste not be better in the long run, both for itself and for the region, including
Australia‟s longer-term national interest?

The previous consideration, of course, is made under the proviso that Timor Leste has
the capacity to properly utilise the revenue it receives and does not lose it to
corruption by an elite, as has happened in so many weak states affected by a „resource
curse‟ of this type. I am referring to the well-documented deleterious effects of high
oil and other resource extractive activities on the people of weak states, leading to the
development of corruption-riddled shadow states where only minute elites are
benefited, to the detriment of the majorities. Using the perspective of Cooper, it is
easy to argue that as a modern state bearing responsibility for order in its pre-modern
state neighbourhood, Australia has a vital interest in establishing a close cooperative
relationship with its weak neighbour, to strengthen its governance institutions so it
develops into a prosperous, democratic and orderly country rather than as a source of
disorder fro its region. A policy of allowing Timor Leste greater access to Timor Sea
resource revenue, while simultaneously ensuring their rational utilisation, should be
beneficial to the people of Timor Leste, Australia, and the wider region.

A lost opportunity?
It is not my purpose here to make an exhaustive study of the difficulties Timor Leste
is facing, or to suggest solutions. I feel that the examples I have touched upon so far
are sufficient to convey the point I am trying to make regarding the incomplete state-
building job performed by the international community in East Timor. The unique
aspect of the East Timor case was the fact that the international community had
sovereignty over this waif of decolonisation, which provided an exceptional
opportunity to mentor it into successful independent statehood. This is especially so
considering the unique advantages it presented as a small country with a small
population not seriously divided and experiencing an internal conflict. Yet, little use

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was made of this opportunity, and the sovereignty over the territory was hastily
relinquished in favour of a premature formal independence.

The difficulties encountered by UNMISET in its state-building work as a result of the

path that was chosen, that is, to grant formal sovereignty and provide a support
mission to continue the state-building task, clearly show how much easier it would
have been to carry out this process under tutelage before independence would have
been granted. Initially UNMISET was expected to deploy some 300 foreign adviser
to the Timor Leste government (100 of them as part of the mission and 200 hired
through UNDP) for the year 2002/3. Filling these positions proved to be a major
challenge, with the result that only a fraction of the target was achieved. Much time
was wasted in the recruitment process because of the need to cater to the preferences
of the new government officials. In many cases these preferences were not necessarily
based on rational professional considerations, but had to do more with cultural or
linguistic aspects, and reflected the feelings of insecurity of the mentored. Months
passed before acceptable candidates were found, leaving the positions vacant. In other
cases, perfectly competent professionals of good standing were rejected or
prematurely terminated because the mentored did not like them, be it for personal or
temperamental reasons, or because they were too demanding and had too high
standards. Very rarely in the last couple of years did an advisor get dismissed because
of incompetence. Clearly, a lesser degree of power over such selection decisions by
the mentored could have been more expedient. After all, in institutions of learning, be
it for infants on one extreme or for post-graduate tertiary education on the other, the
students also don‟t have a total freedom to choose their teachers. Also, many of the
200 positions that were to be paid not from UN member assessed contributions but
from individual donor countries‟ bilateral aid commitments could not be filled for
lack of funding. Only 118 out of 209 positions had been filled by January 2004, 20
months after the program began. What the advisors have actually accomplished is
another story, into which I am not able to delve here, but which some accounts from
others as well as some personal observations, including as a result of my temporary
involvement in a top-level executive bureaucratic position in one of the Ministries,
allowed me to conclude. The results in many cases were poor. So, in brief, the
conclusion that can be made about the modality of mentoring a sovereign state to
build up its governance capacity from such a low base as in East Timor, is that it is
best done under conditions of limited (or as was the case with East Timor: no-)
sovereignty, rather than of formally full sovereignty.

The grim reality portrayed above does contrast with instances of success, however. As
I mentioned earlier, given the required time, and attending to such barriers as the
negative effects of the still so widespread trauma, as well as respecting local values
and concepts, to develop organizations and a management capacity equal to anywhere
else could also be achieved in Timor Leste. As I saw it in the NGO context, I also
experienced it in the country‟s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where I had the good
fortune of participating in organizational development work as an ad-interim Director
General for a couple of months in late 2002. The Ministry has some excellent officers
among its personnel, who have the potential to achieve good professional results.
What is required to bring this potential out is proper nurturing, at a pace that is
appropriate, and after allowing for the required confidence building. Several observers
have remarked how much higher the performance of Foreign Affairs Ministry
officials is when compared to other parts of the state administration. I am convinced

160
that, given sufficient time, this could be also replicated elsewhere. The key is time and
nurturing. Unfortunately, in the case of capacity building for post-colonial states the
political will and commitment by the international community has not been evident.
Premature granting of sovereignty to dependent entities has led to expensive failures,
as history has shown in the second half of the 20th century, and is beginning to show
again in the case of the newest independent state of the 21 st.

State failure?
So far, and while the supplies of nourishment provided to it are still available even if
they are getting low, it is too early to tell whether the fledgling Timor Leste will
survive. What is quite clear, however, is that it is faring less well than what was
originally claimed, and that it is lagging behind original expectations. For some
members of its ruling elite the infantile fascination with the thrills of the sovereignty
ride appear to be still strong, even if the unforeseen difficulties of independent
statehood are becoming obvious to more and more of them. Will Timor Leste succeed
to fulfil the expectations of its people for a better life under independence and the
hopes of those who invested so much, even their lives, so that this could be achieved?
The signs do not look very promising. The question that is increasingly being posed is
thus whether the exceedingly weak Timor Leste state is sliding towards failed state
status. If this were to happen, especially so soon after independence, it would be a
terrible indictment of the UN‟s state-building capability, despite the care taken by the
UN at the time it relinquished sovereignty over East Timor to trumpet the UNTAET
experience as a success, implying that results after May 20, 2002 would be the
responsibility of the East Timorese.

The fact that UNMISET was extended in May 2003 for a further year at the request of
Secretary-General Annan, who stressed the worsening security situation in Timor
Leste due to developments not foreseen in the optimistic months after independence,
and the evidence that F-FDTL and PNTL did not yet have the sufficient capacity to
deal with these challenges, show that rhetoric aside, there were serious concerns about
the viability of the state, if left unaided 101. In his report to the SC of 17 February 2004,
and in line with a written request by Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, the Secretary-
General asked for yet another extension of one year for UNMISET, albeit with a
reduced size. A new development of concern mentioned in the report was the
occurrence of clashes between members of the F-FDTL. Foreign Minister Horta, on
behalf of the RDTL repeated the request to the Security Council in person. The
extension approval of May 2004 was granted by the SC in a meeting reported to have
lasted six minutes! Clearly, there can not be much ongoing interest in the new state
any more, despite the fact that the state-building job has not been properly done so
far. The new UNMISET term‟s of reference are to provide judicial and administrative
assistance, support the development of law enforcement, support the maintenance of
security and stability in Timor Leste, employing up to 58 civilian advisers, 157
civilian police advisers, 42 military liaison officers, 310 formed troops and a 125-
person International Response Unit 102.

101
Special report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor,
S/2003/243 (3 March 2003).
102
Security Council Resolution 1543 (2004). See www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/sc8092.doc.htm

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I have found the significance of the change in position of the local leaders regarding
the presence of the UN in their country remarkable. Is it a sign, perhaps, of their
increased maturity as statesmen? Or is it a reflection of the fact that their ambitions
for power having been achieved, they now were anxious to seek international support
so as to be able to maintain their positions? At first they could not wait for the UN to
depart, yet only a few months after independence they were pleading for its ongoing
support. The doubts about the desirability of a fully sovereign status for this quasi-
state, as opposed to some arrangement of constitutional dependency on a stronger
entity that could share the burden of governing East Timor, so surprisingly uttered in
early 2004 by one of the „icons‟ of the independence struggle, as mentioned earlier,
are apparently starting to be shared by other leaders of Timor Leste. Unfortunately for
them, and for the people of the country, the opportunity to reverse the hastily granted
independent status of the RDTL towards some more realistic arrangement, more in
line with its governing capacity at this point in time, has been missed. Unless
voluntarily accepted by all sides, which is most unlikely, a new intervention could
only be considered by the international community after much hardship and suffering
occurred in the RDTL under conditions of state failure. Will such a point need to be
reached before a more effective method of state-building than the present
arrangement, encumbered as it is by obsolete conceptions of sovereignty in the case of
quasi-states, is found for similar cases in future?

The report released by the by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute at the time
Timor Leste came into being bluntly states that Australia‟s long –term strategic
interests in East Timor are to help it become a viable state, free from foreign
interference and serious internal unrest, as well as ensuring it does not complicate
Australia‟s relations with Indonesia 103. It acknowledges that the Dili government
does not have the capacity to meet its pressing problems, and points out how
Australia‟s assistance either through the UN or directly is not satisfying the
requirements to the necessary extent. The question arises, who is? The lack of clear
answer does prompt concerns about a possible security threat to the region posed by
the weak new neighbour. Reflecting concerns about possible instability in the region
shared with Timor Leste, Charles Darwin University organised a symposium drawing
both Australian and international authorities on security in September 2003. In his
presentation, the University‟s Senior Lecturer in Politics and close observer of East
Timor, Dr. Dennis Shoesmith, proposed a very simple and quite arbitrary numerical
measure of risk of state failure, based on Rotberg‟s list of factors characteristic of a
failed state104. Out of a maximum possible score of 32, denoting a failed state,
Shoesmith‟s simple evaluation of the various factors for the East Timor situation gave
a total of 18, that is, a 56% risk of moving towards failed state status. Using the same
crude method, and not forgetting that this was a very subjective assessment, I came up
with 68%.

There is a noticeable growth in dissent in Timor Leste. This is particularly so due to

the increasing lack of trust and confidence of the population in the ability of their
leaders to fulfil the unrealistically high expectations for a better life which were held
at the time of independence. The problem is compounded by the perceived lack of

103
E. Wainwright, New Neighbour, New Challenges- Australia and the Security of East Timor,
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), on www.aspi.org.au/programsStrategy.cfm
104
Dennis Shoesmith, „East Timor and Australian Security‟ Charles Darwin University Symposium
The Eye of the Storm, 29-30 September 2003, see www.cdu.edu.au

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legitimacy possessed by many state institutions, being as they were, the creation of a
group of foreigners working together with an elite group of politicians, mostly
returnees from the diáspora, who, with the exception of Xanana Gusmão, had little
local legitimacy. Chopra‟s statement that the UN has given birth to a failed state in
East Timor, and his observation that short term missions that are not participative
since they exclude the local population, “may undermine indigenous forms of political
legitimacy without establishing a reliable alternative and functioning administrative
structure…often facilitat[ing] the strongest player in taking the capital city” 105, are
ominous. He adds that the UN contributed to the next round of state-failure in East
Timor, through the short-term non-participative, authoritarian UNTAET
administration, which legitimated as its successor the party that had managed to
extend its control furthest into the districts. I have repeated a similar point often
enough in preceding pages in this book. If we consider the exclusivity and non-
participatory attitudes of the ruling group, its increasing alienation from the people,
the incipient nepotism and corruption, the lack of economic development, decay in
government provided public services, the inertia of the bureaucracy, executive
pressures on the inept judiciary and legislature, the weakness of the capacity to protect
the territory and to control its borders both physically and to prevent smuggling of
goods and the entry of undesirable people, high levels of infant mortality, poor health
services, poor educational standards, huge unemployment, and the potential for rising
communal conflict and violence of a variety of types in this fragmented society, the
prognosis is not too encouraging. If we further consider that in about three years time
significant revenues from the extraction of hydrocarbon resources in the Timor Sea
will start to become available to a state with such weak institutions of control,
administration and justice, that is, such a weak domestic sovereignty capacity as
Krasner calls it, it is difficult not to envisage the development of shadow-state
elements as defined by Reno. This would only accelerate the slide of the state to
failure, unless drastic measures are taken to ensure that these revenues flow to the
state and are applied to its development so as to genuinely satisfy the needs of the
people. Here is where the shared sovereignty contracts creating joint authority
structures in specific issue areas proposed by Krasner I mentioned earlier, could be of
great use.

To assist Australian governments to approach the matter of agreeing to a more

equitable distribution of the Timor Sea deposits with its small neighbour in a more
visionary way, that looks at Australia‟s national interest in a less narrow perspective
that the current policy, confidence must be built regarding the effective utilization of
the additional revenue by Timor Leste. Under the conditions presently existing, I
doubt very much that the weak state with its underdeveloped institutions would have
the capacity to ensure an effective utilization of its hydrocarbon revenues, whether
these remain at their present level or are increased by a more equitable definition of
the maritime boundary. The growing corruption, which includes widely publicised,
but as yet unproven, allegations about the Prime Minister receiving bribes from oil
companies, do not augur well in this regard. Instead, I see an excellent opportunity
here to apply some of Krasner‟s trusteeship or conservatorship arrangements sharing
sovereignty in joint authority structures managing the hydrocarbon resource revenues.
The consequences of the premature cession of sovereignty to the RDTL in this
crucially important area could thus be palliated, for the country‟s, and ultimately the

105
Chopra, J., „Building State Failure in East Timor‟ p 979

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region‟s, future. It might even well be that in financial terms, the revenue forfeited by
Australia by agreeing on a lesser share of the deposits in the Timor Sea, would easily
be regained by the benefits of a successful state building in Timor Leste, contrasting
with the longer-term consequences of the emergence of a failed state there. Will the
lessons learned so far allow the stakeholders in this situation to elicit the necessary
political courage to propose such a novel way out?

What went wrong and who is at fault?

Our hopes had been that once the struggle for the liberation of East Timor had ended,
a partnership would be established between supportive states and the local people that
would lay the foundations for a truly democratic, and well-administered state that
could provide its people a life of justice, economic, cultural and social development,
as well as material prosperity. This is what the many years of resistance, struggle and
deprivation had been for, and this is what would justify the long-suffering the
martyred people of East Timor had to endure for so many years. Such a result would
also have justified the great sacrifices made and risks taken by so many non-Timorese
or Timorese in a variety of countries through their committed engagement with the
issue. I would also count my wife and myself among the latter group, including even
our two daughters, who have been so disadvantaged in several ways as a result of our
years of intense dedication to this cause. Were our expectations for the type of
country that could emerge in East Timor utopian? Not really, considering the small
size of the land and of its population, its potential for future wealth from its rich
hydrocarbon resources, and the enormous international interest and good will that was
available both, from civil society and from key governments, as a result of the very
high media profile that East Timor enjoyed at the time.

The Timor Leste National Development Plan and Roadmap, unveiled just before
independence in May 2002, like so many aspects of the new Timor Leste state designed
mostly by foreigners in the presence of some local acolytes -so as to convey an
impression of local effort and ownership- states the following vision for the country for
2020:

East Timor will be a democratic country with a vibrant traditional

culture and a sustainable environment; It will be a prosperous society
with adequate food, shelter and clothing for all people; Communities
will live in safety, with no discrimination; People will be literate,
knowledgeable and skilled. They will be healthy, and live a long
productive life. They will actively participate in economic, social and
political development, promoting social equity and national equity;
People will be no longer isolated, because there will be good roads,
transport, electricity, and communication in the town and villages, in all
regions of the country; Production and employment will increase in all
sectors – agriculture, fisheries, and forestry; Living standards and
services will improve for all East Timorese, and income will be fairly
distributed; Prices will be stable, and food supply secure, based on
sound management and the sustainable utilization of natural resources;
The economy and finances of the state will be managed efficiently,
transparently, and will be free from corruption; and The state will be
based on the rule of law. Government, private sector, civil society and

164
 community leaders will be fully responsible to those by whom they were
chosen or elected106.

The picture is beautiful, and is consistent with the vision of the future for East
Timor that drove our resistance actions against the Indonesian occupation. I
wonder, what it will take to achieve it?

At present, every time I visit Timor Leste it looks to me more and more like a
cruder copy of Indonesia in miniature, a country that after more than half a
century of independent statehood continues to see the majority of its population
plagued by poverty and its state apparatus weak and corrupt, even if enormous
wealth has been extracted from its abundant natural resources, now severely
depleted as a result. My current vision for the future of Timor Leste -given the
hurried and top-down way its state institutions have been constructed, and the
way the handing of power to an exclusive elite has been legitimated by the UN- is
one of poverty for the majority of the suffering population. At the same time, the
small elite, which will live very well enjoying the support of the international
community for as long as it is expected to guarantee stability to the foreign
companies extracting the country‟s oil and gas resources or investing in other
fields such as tourism -developed mainly to enable outside visitors to enjoy the
country‟s natural beauty. Such an elite, like in Indonesia, Nigeria, Equatorial
Guinea, Gabon, Angola or Cameroon, to name but a few oil-funded quasi-states
sovereign for the last 40 or so years, will lead a privileged lifestyle, based on a
disproportionate access to the hydrocarbon resource revenues, and the small gains
from tourist investments that will remain with local partners, will amass relatively
vast wealth, and thus should have the power to ensure it remains on top, supported
by the foreign stakeholders in the country‟s status-quo. The poor, excluded, bulk
of the population, as well as the weak state apparatus and weak political
institutions, will not have the power to be able to ensure that this wealth is
equitably distributed. As a result, high levels of personal affluence and
corresponding high levels of consumption will coexist with general poverty and
underdevelopment. I can only hope and pray that future developments will prove
me wrong, even if the state building process followed in Timor Leste does suggest
that it is not likely to differ much from that of other faltering quasi-states.

Unfortunately, East Timor was placed in the care of the UN, which adhering to an
increasingly obsolete conception of sovereignty and being driven by an uncritical self-
determination and decolonisation agenda of uneven effectiveness, as the many failing
and failed post-colonial states in the world show us, could not succeed in the unique
challenge East Timorese represented. In this case, there was even a paradox with
regards to self-determination in evidence. On one hand the principle of self-
determination, belatedly respected by the international community with regards to the
Indonesian occupation, had ultimately enabled the liberation of the territory from
Indonesia and its placement under UN administration. On the other hand, the UN‟s
excessive zeal for the accession to formal sovereignty by post-colonial territories
worked against the true interests of the East Timorese people. By refusing to fully
106
The World Bank Group, „Timor Leste (East Timor) Country Brief‟,
http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/eap/eap.nsf/Countries/East+Timor/53ABB12BEB1B7CA285256C32006
B9E12?OpenDocument

165
accept the fact that the UN was in reality exercising tutelage over a failed entity, with
a trusteeship mandate that went far beyond peacekeeping, the UN‟s state-building
presence in East Timor was not sufficiently committed -being too weak and too short-
to adequately undertake the required state-building task. Or, as the King‟s College
report more diplomatically puts it “[t]he political timetable eventually adopted by
UNTAET was not optimal from the point of view of building capacity for sustainable
self-government, establishing stable political institutions or creating a democratic
political environment”107, in other words, it says that the UNTAET results were not
satisfactory. I have been told by a private source that the King‟s College Report did
come to the conclusion that the granting of independence for Timor Leste was
premature. This conclusion was, however, excised from the final published report.
Paragraph 378 quoted above, says it anyway, even if in a more oblique form.

The subject of peacekeeping operations and UN transitional administrations, as well

as, of late, the activity of state-building in post conflict situations which follows on
from the original interventions, are topics of increasing study, in line with the
increased frequency of such interventions. All the recent literature on state-building in
post-conflict situation in failing pre-modern states stress the need for sufficient time,
funds and suitable personnel for state-building interventions if success is to be
achieved at building sustainable democratic governance structures108. This is a
recurrent theme in the writings on the subject. The UNTAET experience in the East
Timor case, more than clearly illustrates the validity of these points, as the preceding
chapters of this book have shown. As I have argued, an international tutelary
intervention in East Timor should have lasted several years, but the money for it was
not available, so under the pretext of heeding local demands, and in line with the
people‟s accepted entitlement to quick sovereignty, a hasty and premature UNTAET
exit took place, driven to a large extent by the need to cut costs.

The number of failed pre-modern states with profound internal conflicts requiring
international peacekeeping intervention is increasing (e.g. Liberia, Haiti), as are other
types of actions of such kind (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq). Whatever the real reasons for
these interventions, one of the professed aims is to protect a suffering population from
the plight of oppressive or weak regimes that do not provide the satisfactory life
conditions that democracy is expected to furnish. Hence, once peacekeepers are able
to pacify combatants, the intervener‟s aim is to build through an international
transitional administration the modern state institutions that will be able to henceforth
ensure truly democratic governance. Unfortunately, this noble aim is rarely achieved,
as the unsatisfactory conditions in several post-intervention situations have shown.
Extreme examples of unresolved conflict and failure to set up satisfactory systems of
governance are given by the recurring need for intervention in cases such as Liberia
and Haiti. It is also not my aim here to make an in-depth study of such UN state-
building interventions. The literature on the subject is sufficiently explicit. Common
107
King‟s College A Review of Peace Operations: A Case for Change, paragraph 378
http://ipi.sspp.kcl.ac.uk./rep006/index.html
108
This topic has been covered in great depth by the studies of the New York-based International Peace
Academy‟s „Project on Transitional Administrations‟ headed by Dr Simon Chesterman. See
www.ipacademy.org .
The King‟s College, A Review of Peace Operations… is another good example. Professor Jarat
Chopra‟s works on UN peace-maintenance missions are also an important contribution to the field. For
Chopra, the UN has shown its unsuitability to administer territories in transition. ( Jarat Chopra, „The
UN‟s Kingdom in East Timor‟ Survival, vol 42, no. 3, Autumn 2000, pp. 27-39, p. 35).

166
themes that run through these writings, as the latest report of the International Peace
Academy (IPA) says, is that the operations that have taken place so far have been
plagued by contradictions between means and ends109. For example, on one hand, the
transitional administrations are benevolently authoritarian while on the other they
expect to build democracies. To the arguments that there is a need for transitional
administrations to have the consent or „ownership‟ of the local population, the IPA
report answers that this is inaccurate and often counter-productive: if there would be
the possibility of genuine local control, then there would be no need for the
transitional administration. It is counter-productive because local actors react
suspiciously and with frustration to insincere claims of local ownership. The IPA
report also makes the point that means are inadequate for the ends, in other words,
that there is an insufficient commitment of funds and personnel to achieve the
objectives. Successful state-building requires time and money in addition to clarity of
purpose, the IPA concludes. As we have seen, in East Timor, these were lacking.

In an article assessing the clash between the international paradigm which UNTAET
attempted to apply to build a modern liberal democracy in East Timor, and the
existing indigenous paradigm of traditional political legitimacy, Tanja Hohe recalls
that centuries of Portuguese rule and decades of Indonesian rule did not manage to
eradicate resilient local socio-political structures110. If the international community
wishes to achieve success at democratic state-building, it is thus crucial that it
properly understands local social structures and ideas of political authority and
legitimacy when it tries to set up a new state structure, so that it is accepted and has
legitimacy with the local people, Hohe adds. This, clearly, requires more time than the
30 months of UNTAET‟s presence. The mere „successful‟ holding of western-style
elections is not a signpost of having created a sustainable democracy. We have also
seen from the previous discussion that the distinction between the skill requirements
of a peace-keeping or peace-maintenance intervention and those of a longer-term
state-building one needs to be clearly observed. The DPKO emphasis on military
operations greatly increased UNTAET costs beyond what was necessary and resulted
in a lack of attention to other aspects. State-building is a job not just for peacemakers
or diplomats. In addition to the more traditional skills needed such as governance
experts, economists jurists and so on, it requires a variety of professional skills.
Historians, ethnologists familiar with the societies in question, social psychologists,
trauma psychologists are but a few of the professional skills that would have been
required by UNTAET but were not sufficiently emphasized. The UN would do well to
prepare some expertise along these lines to deal with future state-building cases111.

What if?
I often wonder how it would have been if the task of mentoring the tardy East
Timor hatchling into independent statehood would not have been entrusted to a
UN peace-keeping- cum-state-building mission, but would have been assigned to
an entity other than the UN; one not previously dominated by an obsession with
the decolonisation of former European colonial dependencies at all cost, and their

109
Chesterman, Simon, „You, the People‟, Final Report on the Project on Transitional Administrations,
International Peace Academy, New York, November 2003.
110
Hohe, Tanja, „The clash of paradigms: …‟
111
See Erskine Childers, „Empowering the Peoples in their United Nations‟
www.globalpolicy.org/resource/pubs/childer1.htm.

167
accession to a sui-generis sovereign statehood whatever their viability. For the
East Timor state-building phase, the UN could have, for example, put this waif of
decolonisation in the trust of a coalition of states, or even of a single state, as in
the old UN Trusteeship regime. This could have been done at the end of the initial
INTERFET or early UNTAET peacekeeping operation. The objective of the
arrangement would have been to nurture the territory towards viable independent
statehood over a period of five, ten, or even more years, as deemed necessary by
both the people of East Timor and the UN itself, acting through the Security
Council for example, in the absence of a better alternative. As was the case with
the old Trusteeship regime, the UN would have requested periodic reports from
the trustee on the progress of the mentored.

If a single state could not have been found to carry out such a mentoring task,
primarily because of political considerations a coalition of willing states could
have been found, and they could have been paid in some appropriate manner for
their services with UN assessed funds. Portugal or Australia as joint sole trustees
would probably have been anathema to Indonesia, and furthermore they might
have been unable to successfully cooperate for reasons of cultural differences and
perceptions of competition for influence with the ward. If such a coalition would
have had a strong regional membership, involving some ASEAN and some South
Pacific Forum members for example, in addition, perhaps, to Portugal and even
Indonesia, operating costs would have been significantly reduced in comparison
to UNTAET expenses, regionally available expertise would have been utilized,
and the foreign contingent brought into East Timor would have had less cultural
and linguistic barriers to contend with. It would thus have been more able to
understand the local population, to work cooperatively with it, instead of
intimidating it, causing restlessness and a desire for the foreigners to leave
prematurely, as was the case with UNTAET. The mentors would have been more
welcome, and would have been able to establish the close relationships needed,
from the grass roots up, to cooperatively build the new state in partnership with
the local population. Besides, the personnel would also have been used to a more
frugal operating style and lower wages than the UN employees, saving much
money and creating less tensions and jealousies with the locals, than was the case
during UNTAET on account of the huge disparities in income and lifestyles. May
be the travel companies and the suppliers that made fortunes out of UNTAET
might have been less happy with such an arrangement, but I am sure that donors,
and particularly the local people in East Timor, would have appreciated the
arrangements more.

It needs also to be recalled that by the time UNTAET was established, East Timor
was not a conflict area where two warring sides were pitted against one another.
The security threat in East Timor was far less than it appeared after the TNI had
been removed, so UNTAET never required the large military force that it
deployed. I would question if it needed a military force at all. The military force
was expensive, required expensive equipment and civilian personnel back ups,
and its presence was unsettling for the local population. By not being under the
DPKO, a tutelary mission of the type suggested above would have had a lesser
proclivity to over-emphasize the military aspect of the operation than UNTAET
did. A stronger gendarmerie, rather than the 10,000 odd troops deployed, should
have sufficed to ensure the security of the relatively peaceful territory. Military

168
expenses were the highest cost component by far of the UNTAET budget. An
important part of these expenses could have thus been saved.

But, should such an „outsourcing‟ of the state-building activity not have been desired,
the UN could have conducted the tutelage itself, retaining sovereignty over East
Timor for a sufficient number of years, as the proposal in Appendix II below
suggested. It would have been preferable in that case to have a suitable UN organ in
charge. As previous chapters have argued, this would not have been the DPKO or the
DPA. In my opinion, reviving the currently dormant „Trusteeship Council‟ could be
an option for longer-term state-building of weak, failing and failed post-colonial states
in future, after international peace enforcing and peacekeeping interventions. A
number of commentators have suggested this as a useful measure. However, for the
legitimate acceptance of tutelary international involvement to become possible, the
existing political reluctance among UN members to accept such a „return to
colonialism and paternalism‟ must be first overcome.

I feel that a revived Trusteeship Council properly equipped in terms of mandate,

suitable human resources, and procedures, so as to be able to handle long term
tutelary state-building intervention either directly by itself or as a broker between
trustees, be they individual states or coalitions of states or even other ad hoc
organisations, may be a suitable response to the problem presented by weak, failing
and failed states. The basic starting point for this to become possible, however, would
be to update our obsolete conception of sovereignty, and to accept the fact that such
pre-modern states do not deserve to enjoy unqualified sovereignty, but instead, they
should be taken under state-building tutelage by the international community until
they have developed the true capacity to enjoy the benefits and to fulfil the obligations
that accompany sovereign statehood. Unlike Cooper, I feel that in such a case, the
increasingly necessary trusteeship over pre-modern states by developed states,
through a competent international agency would be more acceptable, and thus
effective. I can only hope that the example provided by the birth process of Timor
Leste will serve to encourage the members of the international community to think
about making the necessary paradigm shift.

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Chapter VIII: Conclusion
Through the preceding pages of this book I have reviewed the origins of the
Democratic Republic of Timor Leste in East Timor. This newest member of the
international community of states -this quasi-state using Jackson‟s terminology, or
pre-modern state, using Cooper‟s- came into existence through a protracted and
complex process. The fact that I was closely involved with some of the main phases
of it, and my familiarities with some of they key cultures that have interacted in this
process, give me, I believe, a good understanding of the events and circumstances
related to it. The book represents my attempt to understand these events and
circumstances, and to place them in the broader context of today‟s post-colonial
world. I hope that, just as the exercise has been immensely useful for me, helping me
to come to terms with some major questions and tensions, it will be of value to the
reader interested in the subject, especially those who have to deal with any of the
dimensions of such types of states in general, or with Timor Leste in particular.

The small and for so long insignificant East Timor has proved to be unique in many
ways. It is the last of the European colonies to come to formal independence after a
long and convoluted process. It tested the international community in several ways.
While under Indonesian occupation, it was a test case for the genuineness of the UN
membership‟s commitment to human rights, especially to self-determination. Its
liberation struggle was in itself unique, succeeding to convey an illusion of a much
stronger and cohesive quality than was actually the case, which had a greatly
beneficial effect as it helped to increase the legitimacy internationally accorded to it.
Under UN transitional governance, which held the unique and unprecedented status of
sovereign authority over it as a ward of the international community, the objective
was to build the institutions of a democratic sovereign state. Unfortunately the process
failed, due to the application of an obsolete paradigm. The experience itself, however,
throws a valuable light that could be of use for other cases of international state-
building tutelage of failed states: sufficient time and the required resources are needed
if sustainable success is to be achieved. This is what I aimed to show through my
recollections and discussions in this book, hoping to assist in this way to bring about
the changes that are needed for the success of similar undertakings in future.
Regrettably in East Timor, despite the relatively favourable conditions for success in
building a democratic state that the international community had, the resulting
Democratic Republic of Timor Leste has been a failure as credible observers,
including myself, are concluding. I fear that the unfolding of events in coming years
will unfortunately confirm this point. For me, given my considerable personal
investment, and my closeness to the people of this attractive land, this is particularly
regrettable. For those directly affected, namely for its own people, it is even worse.

One of the questions that arise is if the people of Timor Leste should bear the blame
for a mishandled tutelary process that failed to accomplish its objective. I feel that the
East Timorese people deserve compassion and understanding for their plight as the
last and most convoluted case of European decolonisation. They experienced the
neglect of a colonial mentor, they suffered the horrors of a neo-colonial occupation by
a state itself lacking properly developed governance institutions, and were then caught
in the bind of a United Nations tutelage which the UN members deemed not

170
politically correct to acknowledge, and for which the institution was not prepared. In
Chapter III of this book I tried to portray the past history of hardship and poverty,
both before and during colonization by Portugal, which did so little to lay the
foundations for a modern state in East Timor. Then came the disastrous Indonesian
occupation, and the resistance against it, which, while heroic under the circumstances,
was in fact very basic if assessed in comparison to other independence struggles, as I
have suggested in Chapter IV. Were then the expectations of the international
community at the time of intervention that a viable democratic modern state could be
constructed in a few months of tutelage realistic? Is it the fault of the people of East
Timor that these expectations are not likely to be achieved? For me, the answer is no.
Furthermore, the valuable experience of East Timor clearly shows that there is a need
for the international community, specifically the UN, to develop a greater attention
and capacity to be able to satisfactorily handle tutelary situations like the East
Timorese one, should they arise in future. And arise they will, given the many post-
colonial quasi-states that are failing and the imperatives of order-maintenance in the
international system in a highly interdependent world.

As I have tried to show by means of the portrait of East Timor and its people I have
painted through the pages of this book –which I acknowledge to have been quite
negative112- is that in order to be able to satisfy the requirements of success in modern
sovereign statehood a process of education is required. The aim of this process would
be to transform a pre-modern society into a modern or post-modern one, by
transferring relevant skills and building capacity so that the required values permeate
to both the governing and the governed. Such a process is lengthy and should build
upon a foundation of local social organisation and governance traditions. To merely
graft on foreign values and methods in a purely cosmetic way does not lead to
success, as the East Timor case has shown.

In our contemporary interdependent world a serious commitment is needed by the

more developed state members of the international community to provide this
education to pre-modern states, before the latter are allowed to enjoy the full benefits
of membership in a formally egalitarian sovereign state system. This, in turn, requires
sufficient awareness among the more developed about the strong necessity for such a
commitment, which after all is also in their own interest as well in that of the world as
a whole, besides being urgently needed by the suffering populations of the
misgoverned pre-modern states. The change we need to bring about also requires a
modification in our contemporary understanding of sovereignty.

My views may appear reminiscent of outdated paternalistic and racially

discriminating imperialist doctrines held in the not-too-distant past. They might be
considered paternalistic, inasmuch as I acknowledge the obligation by the more
advanced to mentor the less developed. May be, we could call them fraternalistic
instead, if that makes it easier to accept? Unlike previous doctrines postulating
burdens allegedly held by people with certain skin colour vis-à-vis certain others, I
consider that the burden of tutelage of pre-modern states is held by developed states,
whatever the physical traits of the majority of their population may be. What is

112
I regret that the subject of this book, namely their suitability for modern sovereign statehood, did not
enable me to write about the more positive aspects of East Timor, its people and their culture. Their
attractiveness to many outsiders is a testimony to the many positives that exist in this beautiful country.
It is just that modern state governance is, as yet, not one of them.

171
undeniable, however, is that our developed states, whether in Europe or elsewhere,
represent the evolution of a model initially originating from Europe. It is this model,
after being further developed by a variety of nations in the world, that has been
adopted by the entire membership of our contemporary international sovereign states
system. New entrants like Timor Leste, or other past-colonial quasi-states, must
satisfy certain minimum entry requirements if they are to perform satisfactorily as
members of the system, both for the good of their own people and for the benefit of
the system as a whole. A process of induction is thus required, to enable them to meet
these requirements. How is this to be achieved in the absence of appropriate tutelage?
Who should provide it?

In our contemporary globalised world, human activities –whether political, economic

or social- increasingly take place not within the confines of the sovereign nation state,
but on a global stage where traditional political and economic borders are less and less
meaningful. Yet the rules that were designed for the sovereign state system can rarely
be applied to the world taken as a whole, allowing a large part of the globalised
activities to be unregulated. Yet the high level of interdependence of all the peoples
and states of the contemporary world makes it essential that increasing global
challenges be adequately managed. If we adhere to Cooper‟s vision of the
contemporary world as being made up of three parts: pre-modern states -post-colonial
states whose structures are weak or not functioning; modern states –where the
classical and obsolescent sovereign state system remains intact; and post-modern
states which have willingly ceded some of state sovereignty to strengthen their
cooperation with other states; we can see that the collapse of the sovereign states
system into greater order, in the case of the post-modern states, represents an
evolution which is necessary to deal with current global challenges. It allows the
emergence of the mechanisms of global governance and rule of law needed to manage
global activities resulting from increased global interaction and interdependence. As
to the threats to world order represented by the collapse of the pre-modern states
sector into greater disorder due to the increasing failure of many of these post-colonial
states, the fact that the imperial urge is dead in our present times, means that
traditional imperialism is no longer available as an order preserving mechanism. In
the absence of imperial approaches the more developed modern or post-modern states
need to join efforts to tackle the threats to world order and security represented by the
collapse of these pre-modern states. Thus, in the globally interdependent
contemporary world, pre-modern state collapse is also a global challenge in need of a
response by the international community, preferably through emerging post-modern
mechanisms of global governance, or at least, by means of effective international
cooperation. I feel that at this stage, UN Trusteeship over failing pre-modern states
would be an appropriate answer to this problem, even if under current thinking, it is
not generally accepted as politically correct.

As I have repeated often enough in the previous pages of this book in connection with
the East Timor/Timor Leste case, and addressing some of the obstacles for this type of
activity identified by Cooper, for international state-building tutelage to be successful,
a paradigm shift by the international community is required in the case of failing pre-
modern states with respect to the sacrosanctity accorded to sovereignty. In addition,
and for everyone‟s benefit, developed states need to be willing to commit the
necessary material, human and institutional resources for state-building tutelage of

172
pre-modern members. The expense of this is significant, but is likely to be inferior to
the longer-term cost of letting current threats to world order and security posed by the
pre-modern sector continue uncontained. I purposely do not wish to refer in this book
to the case of Iraq –which dominates media headlines at the time I write these lines-
but I am sure that the applicability of these arguments to that situation would not be
too difficult to establish, as long as the required provisos are made. Whatever the
particularities of the Iraq case may be, it has shown us that in the absence of global
order-providing mechanisms, as is the case in the traditional sovereign states system
despite its contemporary improvements such as the UN, if there is no consensus on
intervention by the international community in a member considered a threat to a
particular state‟s national security, unilateral intervention will be considered if it is at
all within the means of the threatened state to do so. It was done in Iraq by the lone
superpower, the hegemon that naturally attempts to fill the existing global governance
vacuum. It was also done by Indonesia with regards to East Timor in 1975. Since such
measures can lead to contention from other members of the system, and thus become
disruptive of harmony in it, as both East Timor and Iraq have shown, unilateral
intervention needs to be countervailed by the development of inclusive democratic
institutions of global governance. The principle of state sovereignty needs to be
correspondingly adjusted and the sovereign state system is in urgent need of change.

The problem of post-colonial, pre-modern, state failure, is among the many presently
existing global challenges. It arises from the inability of former colonial masters to
properly prepare their dependencies for successful independent and democratic
statehood. Whether due to the self-determination and decolonisation pressures
through the UN in past decades, which forced a premature emergence of quasi-states,
or due to other reasons, significant numbers of people in post-colonial states are
currently suffering from the deleterious effects of the poor governance capacity of
their societies under deficient or unsuitable state structures bequeathed to them by
their former colonists. Ruling elites empowered by the decolonisation process, and
benefiting from the international legal sovereignty accorded to them by the system,
exploit the country‟s resources, and oppress the bulk of its population, condemning it
to lives of misery, in blatant violation of the human rights principles which all
member states of the United Nations are committed to observe as enshrined in the
organization‟s Charter. In addition, because of their weak domestic and
interdependence sovereignty, such states can often harbour -with the cooperation of
members of their ruling elite or without it- individuals or groups that engage in
activities dysfunctional to the global system such as terrorism, drug trafficking and so
on. Improving the plight of the suffering populations of the weak and failing states is
a matter of justice as much as ensuring that weak or failing states do not become
harbours of activities dysfunctional to the international system is a matter of global
security interest. International intervention to correct such situations is so far only
beginning to be accepted as legitimate in cases of great humanitarian need. Such
interventions are therefore limited in scope and in duration and rarely succeed in
removing the deeper lying root causes of the problems they attempt to correct. The
repeated need for humanitarian interventions in places like Haiti and Liberia hase
shown this. What will happen in the case of Afghanistan, or even in the related but
dissimilar case of Iraq still remains to be seen? The threats to the security of the
global community presented by failing pre-modern states, as well as the moral
obligation of developed states to correct the negative legacy of past colonisation and
improve the situation of millions of voiceless victims of mis-governance, demand an

173
acceptance of longer-term state-building interventions. This is so despite the
protestations of the ruling elites of the failing pre-modern states which, attempting to
defend the valuable asset which sovereignty represents for them, try to deny the
legitimacy of long-term tutelary state-building interventions.

The peculiar case of East Timor has shown both the need for acceptance of tutelary
state-building interventions and the need for such undertakings to be sufficient in
duration if they are to be effective. The development of modern democratic state
institutions requires time, and must be undertaken participatively with the population.
It must not be designed from the outside, but must build upon local values and
conceptions of political legitimacy. Creating a modern state structure, and artificially
empowering a particular group in society, legitimating it in the eyes of outsiders on
the basis of foreign liberal-style methods is not a guaranteed recipe for obtaining the
desired democratic results. Such methods may artificially promote a group of
questionable commitment to inclusive and democratic rule, and lay the foundations of
a so-called „shadow state‟, leading to eventual state failure. In the case of the East
Timorese high profile waif of decolonisation, the conditions for a relatively easy
success were present, yet the reluctant UN did not do well in its state-building efforts,
laying the foundations for future state failure. However, it is my view that the
UNTAET failure is not an indictment of its personnel, nor of the East Timorese
people, but a reflection of the fact that the mandate was wrong, which in turn is the
consequence of current conceptions of sovereignty that are increasingly obsolete in
this globalised world. State-building to correct the deficiencies of post-colonial quasi-
states cannot be done as an adjunct to peace keeping, but needs a suitable and well-
equipped organ of global governance such as a revived UN Trusteeship Council,
under an updated conception of sovereignty. The emerging gang of failing pre-
modern states threatening the international community needs proper tutelage to
rehabilitate them. This tutelage must involve the right tutors for the right time span,
and based on the acceptance that the wards are not currently fit to partake in the
normal life of the international community.

It is my hope that through this examination of the East Timor experience, I may be
able to contribute to raise awareness about the need for the UN to play a stronger role
in state-building in the context of our globalised world. It is clear that advanced states
have an interest, besides a historical burden, to finish what premature decolonisation
did not manage to do. As our global interdependence grows, the weak links in the
international system become less and less tolerable, be it on moral grounds or on very
practical security grounds. Should the lessons provided by East Timor be learned,
then the many deaths and huge suffering of its people, the large material costs which
the birth of Timor Leste entailed, and the hard work and sacrifices of all of us that
participated in the process, would have been of benefit, even if Timor Leste itself has
so far not been able to fulfil the original expectations of its wide ranging stakeholders.

Darwin, Australia, June 2004

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APPENDIX I

Acronyms and Abbreviations

ABRI Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia (Indonesian Armed Forces)

APEC Asia Pacific Economic Counil
CFET Consolidated Fund for East Timor (UN Trust Fund)
CNRM Conselho Nacional da Resistencia Maubere
CNRT Conselho Nacional da Resistencia Timorense
CPLP Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa
(Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries)
DPA Department of Political Affairs (UN Secretariat)
DPKO Department of Peace keeping Operations (UN Secretariat)
ETAN East Timor Action Network (USA)
ETISC East Timor International Support Centre
ETNC East Timor National Council
ETTA East Timor Transitional Administration
FDTL Forças de Defesa de Timor Leste
FALINTIL Foças Armadas de Libertação de Timor Leste
F-FDTL Falintil-Forças de Defesa de Timor Leste
FRETILIN Frente Revolucionária de Timor Leste Independente
GA General Assembly (UN)
GPA Governance and Public administration, UNTAET
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
IEC Independent Electoral Commission
INTERFET International Force in East Timor
MPR Indonesia‟s Peoples‟ Consultative Assembly
NCC National Consultative Council
NGO Non-Government Organization
NTT Nusa Tenggara Timur Province
PKF Peacekeeping force (UN)
PNTL Polícia Nacional de Timor Leste (National Police of TL)
RDTL República Democrática de Timor Leste
SRSG Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General
STL Suara Timor Loro‟sae (Dili newspaper)
SC Security Council (UN)
TL Timor Leste
TNI Tentara Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Army)
UDT União Democrática Timorense (Timorese Democratic Union)
UNAMET United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNHCR United Nations High Commission for Refugees
UNMISET United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor
UNTAET United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor
UNV United Nations Volunteers

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 APPENDIX II
A Gradual Path to Full Sovereignty in East Timor
(Draft paper for discussion: 2001)

The former Portuguese colony of East Timor, under illegal occupation by Indonesia
for almost 25 years, is currently being administered by a United Nations Transitional
Administration (UNTAET), which has a mandate from the Security Council to
prepare the territory for independence. This is a huge job requiring the massive
reconstruction of physical infrastructure, the development of state institutions, the
economy, and of all services. The shortage of local skilled human resources makes the
task even more difficult.

Some voices in East Timor advocate the early departure of the United Nations, on the
grounds that the UN is in some way acting in a colonial manner, in opposition to the
real interests and empowerment of the East Timorese people.

Contrary voices argue that the United Nations presence is necessary for a period of
time which is longer than has hitherto been envisaged, because the people of East
Timor do not have as yet sufficient political experience to establish a democratic
system of government, technical skills for administering the country, modern military
skills for defending it and for guaranteeing its security, and a sufficiently developed
economy to ensure its viability.

This document aims to propose a middle way. One that reduces the direct UN
involvement in East Timorese government, giving the people of East Timor an
opportunity to take almost total control of their affairs, while retaining a safety net to
protect them -as well as the international community- against possible catastrophic
mistakes that may occur during a „probation‟ phase.

The document maintains that the current timetable –which envisages a

Constitutional Assembly election in August 2001 and independence in 2002-
could be retained, but that a longer tailpiece should be added to it.

The proposed tailpiece takes the following form:

a) Independence, -i.e. the granting of full sovereignty- should not take
place soon after the election. What should be granted instead is full
self-government.

b) Sovereignty is to be retained by the United Nations until the country is

deemed to be truly ready for full independence.

Self-government will institute a new period of government. UNTAET and the

current East Timor Transitional Administration (ETTA) will be replaced by a
fully East Timorese-run government, supported by a number of expatriate
advisors. The number and type of advisors will be negotiated by the ET
government and the UN, reducing the overall international presence.

176
 What are the reasons for only initially granting self-government rather than
full sovereignty?

Political
The introduction of a new constitutional system in East Timor (like
anywhere in the world) requires a period of probation.
All forms of probation have two purposes:
 to allow the trainee time to “learn by doing” and to ask for
assistance from the probation officer, and,
 to allow the trainer the opportunity to terminate a probation
that is conspicuously not working.

Once full sovereignty has been achieved, the possibility of termination of

an unsuccessful „probation‟ is very remote. An international intervention
in the internal affairs of an independent state can only take place in the
most extreme cases. In a non-sovereign country, an early corrective
intervention could take place well before a catastrophe is experienced, thus
preventing it from happening.

Military
East Timor will need international support for some time to ensure its
security. The presence of foreign troops is inconsistent with full state
sovereignty.

Economic
Until significant revenues from oil and gas exploitation start being
received, sometime in 2004 or 2005, and other economic activities develop
significantly, East Timor is highly dependent on international financial
supports. This is also not consistent with full sovereignty.

The proposed Self-government of East Timor would exercise most responsibilities of

an independent nation, including to some extent foreign affairs and defense, while
retaining a UN “sovereign presence”.

What form would the United Nations sovereign presence take during the period
of Self-government?

The sovereign authority, ie the United Nations, would be represented by a

Special Representative (SR) of the UN Secretary-General, resident in East
Timor.

 While remaining neutral with regards to local politics, the SR would

advise the Secretary-General during the „probation period‟ on
constitutional/political progress.
 Should the Secretary General determine that a need exists for
constitutional intervention in the political process, the SR would
communicate it to the affected parties in East Timor and ensure its
implementation.
 The SR would advise when the probation period should end, that is, when
the country was deemed ready for full sovereign independence.

177
  He/she would perform the highest ceremonial functions of the type
associated with a Head of State in a normal context.

The SR would have a small secretariat with UN personnel to assist the

carrying out of his/her functions.

The length of the probation period should not be pre-determined. Each year
(or every six months) the Special Representative to the Secretary-General
should request another period of UN sovereignty, if deemed necessary, or
alternatively, recommend the transfer of sovereignty from the UN to East
Timor. This constitutes the long tailpiece mentioned above.

The gradual path to independence, through a stage of non-sovereign Self-

government proposed by this paper would provide a safety net during a
probation period whose length would be determined by the pace of
development of political, economic and defense capacity of East Timor.

Dili, August 2001

178
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CNRT/National Congress, available on www.pcug.org.au/~wildwood/01junxanana.htm
Tanja Hohe, „Totem Polls: Indigenous Concepts and „Free and Fair‟ Elections in East Timor‟, International Peacekeeping, Vol.
9, No.4, Winter 2002, pp. 69-88, p 70.
Regulation 2001/2 UNTAET/REG/2001/2 16 March 2001., para 2.1
UNDP East Timor Human Development Report, 2002, www.undp.east-timor.org/documentsreports
Asia Foundation, East Timor National survey of Vote Knowledge, March 2001,
http://www.asiafoundation.org/pdf/easttimorvotered.pdf
1 http://etan.org,et2001b,may/20-26/23ethead.htm
„Independence for East Timor: A smooth and Representative Election Process, UN Chronicle, v28,n4, December 2001,
Department of Public Information.
UN Press Release SG/SM/7927, 30/08/01, www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2001/sgsm7927.doc.htm
Statement to the Security Council meeting 4403 & 4404 31 October 2001, SC/7192
„Proceedings of December 2001 Monthly Seminar in Public Policy Issues‟, www.tip.net.au/~wildwood/o1dectrans.htm
Report S/2001/983 see www.un.org
Report S/2002/432, §18, available on www.un.org
UNTAET/REG/2001/1 (Appendix I) of 31 January 2001 „On the Establishment of a Defence Force for East Timor‟ and
UNTAET/REG/2001/9 (Appendix II) of 19 June 2001 „On Amendments to UNAET Regulation 2000/1.
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1UNDP, East Timor: the Way Ahead, National Human Development Report, 13 May 2002. www.undp-easttimor.org
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2002) and (S/2002/432 of 17 April 2002).
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Suara Timor Lorosae, as reported in Timor-Leste Local Media Monitoring, December 4, 2003,
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10/2003 (10 December 2003).
Timor Leste Parliament LawN
Rowan Callick, „Bright Dawn, Dark Days in East Timor‟, Australian Financial Review, June 23, 2003.
Rowan Callick, „Dili trial leaves bad taste‟, Australian Financial Review, August 8, 2003.
Judicial System Monitoring Programme news, www.jsmp.minihub.org/5_8_3.htm, and The Age, Melbourne, August 6,
www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/05/1060064181809.html

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 „Immigration and Asylum Law‟ (N 9/2003 of October 15, 2003)1 I was told that a product selling for 1
Timor Leste
Malaysian or 1 Singapore dollar in Special Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission of Support in East
Timor (S/2004/117, 13 February 2004) p. 5.
Special report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor, S/2003/243 (3 March 2003).
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2004).
E. Wainwright, New Neighbour, New Challenges- Australia and the Security of East Timor, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
(ASPI), on www.aspi.org.au/programsStrategy.cfm
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September 2003, see www.cdu.edu.au
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http://ipi.sspp.kcl.ac.uk./rep006/index.html
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Academy, New York, November 2003.
Erskine Childers, „Empowering the Peoples in their United Nations‟ www.globalpolicy.org/resource/pubs/childer1.htm.
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http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/eap/eap.nsf/Countries/East+Timor/53ABB12BEB1B7CA285256C32006B9E12?OpenDocument
„Trusteeship Council‟, http://www.un.org/documents/tc.htm
Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century (Atlantic Books, 2003)

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