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Tears for East Timor

By John J. Metzler
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

September 15, 1999

UNITED NATIONS -- Responding to the carnage, chaos, and calamity in the wake of East Timor's vote for independence from Indonesia, the UN Security Council has authorized a peacekeeping mission for the troubled island. The long-awaited move--four months too late--brings an Australian-led force, backed up by regional states, onto the island to put a political balm on the wounds which need not have happened.

East Timor descended into grisly anarchy at the time when the tiny tropical island should have been ecstatically celebrating its final emancipation from Indonesian neo- colonialism.

Though it remained a foregone conclusion that ethnically and religiously disparate East Timor would opt for freedom from Islamic Indonesia, it was equally transparent that Jakarta had yet to play all its trump cards.

The UN sponsored vote facilitated a positive political process but failed to plan for the logical outcome--a ferocious backlash from the Indonesian proxy militias who have acted in kind. What of the contingency plans??

Jakarta, through a force of thug militias, patiently prepared a timebomb which detonated as it was announced that 78 percent of East Timor's voters had opted for independence from Indonesia. Militant military-backed militias then went on a rampage turning the troubled island into a killing zone. Even the UN headquarters was looted and burned sadly symbolizing the temporary triumph of mob rule..

Last May I vividly recall UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, alongside Portugal's Foreign Minster Jaime Gama and Indonesia's Ali Alatas soberly signing the accords which would at long last allow East Timor the opportunity to determine its future. The fatal flaw in the accords rested with the acceptance of Indonesia's security role both among the military and police whose "absolute neutrality is essential." Realistically interpreted, this permitted the fox to be in charge of the henhouse!

After 25 years of forcible Indonesian occupation, Jakarta, at a point of domestic political weakness--caved into political pressure allowing the UN sponsored elections.

East Timor has always been a complicated case. It was Portugal's leftist military regime in 1975 who cut the island loose from Lisbon's torpid if benign 400 year rule, to a fate of civil conflict among local factions. Indonesia was presented with a perfect excuse to intervene--and it did--then instituting a hideous rule of Ethnic cleansing of East Timor's Roman Catholic population in the 1970's at a toll of 250,000 lives! Sadly the current carnage has again targeted churches, priests and nuns.

Indonesia who regularly championed itself as a paragon of anti-colonialism in the Third World has evolved into a neo-colonialist state--besides East Timor, Jakarta has forced other disparate peoples in the vast archipelago under its rule from the Molucca Islands and Aceh/Sumatra to name a few. Jakarta genuinely fears that East Timor independence will begin to unravel the loosely woven political patchwork of peoples and islands forming the Indonesian Republic.

The Clinton Administration has charastically flip-flopped on the crisis from its usual tough words and faux crocodile tears to the eventual commitment of American forces. UN peacekeeping forces are rightly focusing on a regional solution-Australia, the neighboring power with a keen national interest in the East Timor outcome, should stabilize the situation. And since Portugal never formally decolonized the island, Lisbon should legalize the transition to East Timor's de jure independence

Last May I warily wrote of Timor's ticking timebomb--that bomb has exploded with the world piously wringing its hands and issuing moral support--for those on the small island, words offered little balm. Now that the fires are smoldering, the refugees hiding in the hills, and the wounds so horribly fresh, the peacekeepers will arrive to bring a peace East Timor deserved from the start.

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues who writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

September 15, 1999


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