EAST Timor will become the 190th member of the United Nations when it achieves independence sometime this year. It is currently governed by the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and there is a Cabinet of the Transitional Government in East Timor. The East Timorese are almost free at last. But freedom has had a high price tag and East Timor has many problems ahead.
The Lessons of History
East Timor was a Portuguese colony for over three centuries. When the military dictators were overthrown in Lisbon in 1974, the Portuguese colonies in Africa and East Timor had to prepare themselves for independence. Portugal was appalling as an imperial power and it was also appalling in setting its colonies on the road to independence.
Meanwhile, Indonesia decided that it could not risk an independent country in the middle of its island chain and so it invaded East Timor in late 1975. The Indonesian Government feared that an independent East Timor would somehow be an example to other parts of the sprawling country to stimulate a campaign for their independence. Whether that would really have been the case will never be known. After all, East Timor was never a part of the old Dutch Empire (as was the rest of Indonesia). The war in East Timor 1975-99 was, in per capita terms, one of the world's most violent wars since 1945. About 200,000 people were killed (the population in 1975 was about 600,000 people).
The Indonesian Government from 1975 onwards under-estimated the desire of the East Timorese for independence. Despite 24 years of war and suffering, the Indonesians never broke the resistance of the people. The East Timorese showed that a well-organized, well-motivated guerrilla group fighting on its own terrain, with the support of the local people, is almost impossible to beat. The East Timorese guerrillas had no military support from the outside world because Indonesia sealed off the island following the 1975 invasion. The fighters had to rely on homemade equipment and weapons taken from Indonesian soldiers. But they successfully resisted one of the largest defence forces in the world.
Ironically, the way that East Timor resisted the Indonesian aggression for 24 years - and it is now being set on the path to independence - provides an inspiration to the more independent-minded parts of Indonesia. The East Timorese have proved that it is possible to defeat Jakarta. Thus, Jakarta invaded to stop East Timor from indirectly providing a model for parts of Indonesia to try to break away. But its defeat in East Timor has provided an inspiration for parts of that increasingly turbulent country to try to break away (such as Aceh at the western end of the country and West Papua at the eastern end) because the East Timorese have shown that the Indonesian military are not invincible.
Western countries (such as Australia and the US) have also played an appalling role. They have consistently helped Jakarta and so have colluded in one of the worst violations of human rights in the twentieth century. I have been interested in East Timor since just prior to the 1975 invasion, when I got to meet the world's youngest foreign minister: Jose Ramos Horta. The Portuguese colony had just declared its independence and Mr Horta was visiting Australia to get Australian support for the new country. Mr Horta failed to get any governmental support (or support from the opposition) and so he was visiting non-governmental people such as myself. I have maintained my opposition to the Indonesian invasion. I have therefore clashed with every Australian foreign minister since 1975 over this issue. Each one claimed that East Timor was a lost cause and that we ought to forget about it. Each one has now been proved wrong. Australia's Whitlam Labour Government did nothing to stop the Indonesian invasion in 1975 -- a nd may even have encouraged it. This pro-Jakarta policy was followed by all the subsequent Australian governments.
Similarly, when US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited Indonesia just prior to the 1975 invasion, they were advised of the forthcoming invasion but they did not discourage President Suharto from going ahead with it. Ninety per cent of the weapons used in the invasion came from the US. 1975 was the year in which the US was driven Out of Vietnam and Cambodia and there were renewed fears in Australia and the US about the spread of communism. Australia and the US were worried that an independent East Timor could become a 'Cuba' immediately to Australia's north. The country (they feared) would be small and poor and so vulnerable to communist manipulation. Therefore, it would be better for Indonesia to control it.
Twenty-six years later, communism has collapsed in Eastern Europe and Asia. Meanwhile, China is a major trading partner for Australia and the US. The short-term political thinking of the US and Australia was therefore wrong. It has resulted in a situation very different from what they expected. Instead of Indonesia quietly swallowing up East Timor, East Timor has given Indonesia indigestion.
Yet some Australians (and others) have consistently opposed the western governments and Jakarta. For example, Australia's ex-military personnel (usually a politically conservative part of the population) have supported the East Timorese case. They argued that there was a debt of blood. East Timor was invaded twice in the twentieth century: the first time by Australian military personnel in early 1942. Japan was heading south and so Australia decided to fight the Japanese north of Australia. Therefore Australia invaded East Timor. It is possible that the Japanese would have tried to get to Australia through West Timor (then a Dutch colony) but it would not have gone through East Timor because Portugal was neutral in World War II. The Australian invasion of Portuguese territory drew the Japanese into the colony. Despite the Australian action, the East Timorese were a great help to Australian troops. They suffered terribly as a result of their support for Australia. When the Australians left at the end of the w ar, they dropped leaflets promising that they would never forget the East Timorese assistance. Australian politicians and diplomats tried to do so but the ex-military remembered what they owed to the East Timorese. They, too, have been vindicated by East Timor's march to independence.
Future Prospects
East Timor will assume its independence with some hopeful prospects. First, Portugal is a member of the European Union (EU), the world's largest trading block with 15 members (with others from eastern Europe lining up to join). The EU has a special aid relationship with the former colonies of the EU member-countries. Until recently this was called the Lome Agreement. East Timor can use its status as a former Portuguese colony to get access to that agreement and so receive foreign aid and other assistance.
Second, East Timor may also want to explore the possibility of joining the Commonwealth. Originally this was a grouping of former British colonies but Mozambique, another former Portuguese colony, has joined up and so East Timor could use that as a precedent.
Finally, negotiations are underway on rewriting the most notorious treaty in East Timor's history: the agreement between Australia and Indonesia dividing up the Timor Gap (that is, the watery area immediately to the south of East Timor). In the 1960s, Australia decided to clarify its maritime boundaries and so negotiated with surrounding countries on just where the boundaries were. Portugal then controlled East Timor and said that it would prefer to await the outcome of the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference to see what new international rules would be agreed. A few years later Indonesia invaded East Timor and so in the 1980s Australia negotiated with Jakarta the boundary south of East Timor (the Timor Gap in Australia's maritime boundaries) covering about 38,000 square miles. This was, of course, contrary to international law because Indonesia had acquired East Timor by force and Australia should not have conducted these negotiations.
None the less, oil prospecting went ahead. This treaty has so far yielded little wealth (about US$ 7 million). But no one knows for sure just how much wealth could eventually be generated. A current suggestions is that from about 2003 and lasting for about 20 years, there could be an annual revenue of about US$100 million. East Timor will inherit the share destined for Indonesia under a revised form of the treaty. Meanwhile, there is an Australian non-governmental campaign arguing that the Australian Government should forego some of the money it expects to make under the revised treaty, so as to give more money to East Timor for its development efforts. East Timor will not become a new Kuwait but there is some money eventually to be made from the seabed.
Neo-Colonialism
The bad news is that East Timor needs to be careful that it does not lose national independence for some form of neo-colonialism. Traditional corporations are now the world's major driving economic force. Of the top 100 financial entities in the world, only about 50 are countries and the other 50 are corporations. While total foreign aid from all the developed countries has declined from about US$60 billion per year to US$50 billion in the past decade, the total of foreign direct investment (FDI) is now over ten times that amount each year.
The risk for any small developing country is that transnational corporations may try to exert undue influence over them. Even Australia which is ranked about 15th in the list of national economies has enough problems dealing with transnational corporations. East Timor will be one of the world's ten poorest countries and so will have even more problems.
Additionally, many European ex-colonies made many errors in their early years of independence. East Timor can easily be put on the wrong road to its post-independent status. For example, the politicians could get corrupted, they could be bribed by the corporations, and there could be a bloated bureaucracy that will only look after its own interests.
Finally, there is the problem that public opinion outside East Timor will be fickle. East Timor currently enjoys wide international sympathy from governments, the media and general public. But that public support is not necessarily permanent. For example, the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales had the largest television audience of any funeral in world history. But within two years, she had been consigned to history and some people were reading spiteful books about her. Public opinion is always volatile. East Timor is currently riding high in overseas public opinion. But some political instability or economic miscalculation could very easily turn public opinion against East Timor. Additionally, the general public overseas could become bored with East Timor and so lose interest in it.
To conclude: fighting for East Timorese independence has been tough enough. But surviving as a small developing country in a harsh world will be even harder.
Keith Suter is the author of East Timor, West Papua/Irian and Indonesia (London: Minority Rights Group, 1997).