East Timor is independent. So long as it does as it's told
President Bush cannot leave the world's newest state alone
Jonathan Steele
Wednesday May 22 2002
The Guardian
It's a hard world to be born into, even for nation-states. This week
East Timor, half of a small island a few hundred miles north of
Australia, became the youngest member of the so-called international
community. Out went a temporary UN administration, established three
years ago after Indonesian troops had run amok when the Timorese voted
in a referendum for independence. In came the leaders of one of the
bravest resistance movements of modern times, who fought for two
decades in the mountains and doggedly lobbied in foreign capitals to
keep East Timor's illegal occupation on the international agenda.
One might have thought such a small country with so difficult a
history might have been granted a few years of innocence as it finally
achieved sovereignty. But no. The dread hand of American hegemony,
corporate as well as diplomatic, was already in action, squeezing the
embryo in the womb.
Unlike Bosnia, Cambodia, Haiti and Kosovo, where the UN recently had
or still has advisory or administrative missions, East Timor is
rich. It has large oil and gas reserves under the sea which separates
the country from Australia. Rare among small developing states, East
Timor ought to be able to stand on its own feet and avoid foreign
debt.
So, one of the first decisions the UN administration took when it
arrived in Dili in 1999 to help to prepare the country for
independence was to open negotiations with Australia on a new energy
treaty on East Timor's behalf. It could have waited and left the issue
for the Timorese to handle after independence. But UN officials felt
they had to go forward, even though it put the UN in a unique position
of sitting as an adversary across the table from a sovereign
government, Australia, which is a wealthy and powerful member of the
UN system.
The UN put up a tough fight to get a better deal from Australia and
the mighty oil companies, including US-based Phillips Petroleum, than
the one which Indonesia had made years earlier. The surprise came last
year when the US started warning East Timor not to push Australia too
hard shortly after Vice-President Dick Cheney had received Australian
representatives in his Washington office. Mr Cheney is, of course, an
oil-man with continuing contacts with businessmen but here he was,
using the weight of his governmental position, to interfere in
discussions between the UN and a foreign government. Odd, but
symptomatic of the world tiny East Timor was entering. East Timor's UN
negotiators resisted and did not give way.
More recently, it was the turn of the Bush administration's
"moderate", the secretary of state, Colin Powell. He wrote to the
incoming government a month ago, warning them to give a written
promise not to prosecute any US citizens for crimes against humanity
under the procedures of the newly established international criminal
court. Otherwise the US Congress would find it difficult to go on
giving aid, he advised them.
There are no US troops in the UN peacekeeping force in East Timor,
making the US demand almost entirely theoretical. The urgency of the
pledge being demanded from East Timor was hard to see, let alone the
propriety of forcing a country to make exceptions to one of the first
international treaties it intends to sign, but on this occasion the
Timorese gave in. The principle is the thing: even embryonic states
have to make a declaration of dependence to the world's only remaining
empire before they assume their notional "independence".
If the US historical role in East Timor's long struggle for
sovereignty had been benign, the Bush administration's pressure
tactics might seem less grotesque. But Washington's hands have long
been covered in blood. Previously classified documents released last
December show how Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, approved
Indonesia's plans to invade East Timor after the Portuguese, the
original colonisers, pulled out in 1975. In "talking points" prepared
for President Gerald Ford's visit to Jakarta in December 1975,
Kissinger proposed to double US military aid to Indonesia. He also
described the "merger of East Timor with Indonesia" as "a reasonable
solution".
American intelligence saw the mounting preparations for an invasion
and when Ford met General Suharto, the Indonesian dictator told him:
"We want your understanding, if we deem it necessary to take rapid or
drastic action." Ford answered: "We will understand and not press you
on the issue." Kissinger's only worries were that US-made weapons not
be used and no military action be taken until he and Ford got out of
Indonesia. "If you have made plans, we will do our best to keep
everyone quiet until the president returns home," Kissinger told
Suharto.
The invasion happened two days later when the American party had moved
on to the Phillippines. During the course of the 24-year Indonesian
occupation up to 200,000 Timorese are thought to have died. Bill
Clinton, who represented the US at the UN hand-over ceremony in Dili
on Sunday, had a better record on East Timor but for many Timorese he
is a negative symbol, a man of inaction.
When Indonesia's new post-Suharto government agreed in May 1999 to
permit a referendum on independence, security was the decisive
issue. Even though it was well-known that the Indonesian army had
already begun to organise local militias to harass and murder
supporters of independence, the UN security council agreed to let
Indonesia, rather than an international peacekeeping force, maintain
security for the pre-referendum period.
Publicly, the argument was that Indonesia had already made a huge
concession by agreeing to a referendum. To insist on foreign
peace-keepers would be a demand too far. Privately, it was said the US
would exert pressure on the Indonesian government, which was desperate
for IMF loans, to rein in the army and militias. There need be no
worries about security.
Clinton let the Timorese down. If he did put pressure on Indonesia, it
had no effect. Violence rose to a climax in the hours after polling
when it became clear that voters had opted for freedom and against
Indonesia. Troops and militias ransacked Dili and other towns and
villages, transporting hundreds of thousands of people to West Timor
and forcing the rest of the population to flee to the hills. Only then
did the US finally weigh in, under the pressure of the international
media, and persuade the Indonesians to accept the referendum result,
withdraw their forces and allow in foreign peacekeepers.
Even now, the US is failing to press Indonesia to take seriously the
tribunal set up in Jakarta to try former generals and militia leaders
or to hand over suspects indicted in East Timor for trial in Dili. As
part of the "war on terrorism", senior US administration officials
want to relax restrictions on contacts with the Indonesian military.
Far from pressing tiny East Timor to toe the US rejectionist line on
the international criminal court, the Bush administration would do
better to get justice done for the Timorese as they become a
nation-state at last. There is not much chance of that.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
-- We are guilty of the grossest, and most narrow partiality, and make ourselves the model of the universe ... What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole Universe. - David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
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