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Dili

It’s raining on my bed, oops, no ‘tis only the air con splashing on the bedside cabinet.  It is a quiet Saturday thank goodness as the Dili bug has struck along with strange dreams from inside the gold mine.

The next night ants would ingress my cell size cot (a child’s divan) nipping my neck awake at 0200 hours and again at 0300 red centipedes an inch or so long, creep about the industrial carpet floor.  No more whinging, the streets are afire beyond the hotels walled compound on the sea front half a klick from the port where massive naval assault freighters line the quay and jostle with aid vessels flying Viet flags.

This is an unfathomable story.  Random acts of arson and violence with no real reason or call.  Calming now, as Oz and Malay troops fan out and saturate the smoldering ruins of this ramshackle burg.

Roadblocks and snatch squads of Portuguese SWAT and SAS units try to catch the neighbouring gangs who torch each others houses.  Shades of Bosnia, Beirut and Belfast.

An inanity of violence and destruction that somehow starts to feel as though it is all being orchestrated.  Turned on and off at random moments for the benefit of the media and watching super powers.  The latter all vying for the escrow to be had on the second largest bubble of as yet, untapped gas on this planet.  Pause to remember here that the world is energy hungry, energy starved and embroiled in economic conflict.

The neo-con nations coalesced as willing and supporting; mega aero-space defense industries and stock markets founded on ether net and digi communications, ripe for collapse.  (An emperors clothing of no substance or resource).

It is difficult to garner information and intelligence from such a disparate bunch of mobs whose choice of argots level out in Bahasa or Tetun unless you are educated to tertiary level.  Then Portuguese became requisite.  Today’s youth yearns to learn English, the schools are shut and all but a few clinics not staffed.  For there is fear to be seen helping.  The roving youth has fire in its eyes, evil in its impoverished minds.  65% literacy, 65% unemployment, 240 million aid dollars and still the highest birth rate in the Asia Pacifica region.
 
The population had decamped as IDP’s (internally displaced persons) to the church complexes, the traffic intersections, the sidewalks outside embassies and UN compounds. Just as in Bosnia, the middle class become refugees in vehicles, on Hondas, carts and along the airport approach.  Dual carriageway IDP’s petrol tankers, dump trucks and local mini-buses. 

Exiting the arrival / departure lounge at Dili airport deposited you straight into a refugee camp packed with thousands as the UNDP white tents went up in adjacent vacant lots.  Visa facilities required USD in a porta-cabin after a hike from the overpriced turbo prop ride from Darwin.  A bored SAS trooper was sat on the baggage carousel.  Eventually a small tug and 2 car train putter-ed up and we walked our bags out of the terminal which was unlit and pass the immigration booths which were abandoned. Two surprised uniformed officials opened up their domains before we emerged into the chaos of an international terminal turned into a crisis centre.

We were met at the airport by John Hunter Farrell, owner/editor of ‘Australian Defender’ magazine and with him was Roberto, a Bolivar working for the Brazilians putting in the gas terminal for the offshore fields.  Roberto had now become the most ardent Boy Scout photojournalist armed with an Olympus digital space like ‘capture device’.  His images surprisingly good, for he was fearless and drove his 4x4 in a cavalier Rio way. 

I arrived in Dili with my compatriot, David Dare Parker (DDP), from our new photographic collective - “°SOUTH”. This was to be our first journey/job together and we went into bat from a room you felt should have been an Iraqi interrogation cell, well the bathroom at least.  DDP asked me to pull the curtains to introduce daylight into our box; 2 beds and a wardrobe a la Salvation Army.  Bags down, no room to swing a cat, parting the drapes only revealed a rectangle of ply wood.  We did have a kettle and brewed up regularly.  Still, it was creepy. An executive decision made a day or so later, meant adieu ‘Audian,’ Bonjour Bom Dias – ‘The Hotel Dili’. 

Squads of media had turned the compound into a dollar cruncher for Gino, the proprietor and courtyard host (he also had the local LPG bottled gas franchise). We got deluxe room #7 for USD upfront, three days in advance.  There was a desk for DDP’s digital set up, a kettle and an ensuite.  A small porch saw delivery from the bar by the Filipina staff of all provisions.  Now we felt we were living!
A short lived euphoria before decanting to separate ‘boxes’ in the main block -where this piece opens.  At least David had broadband for USD per day. The boxes cost USD upfront, credit cards initially not on since the system was devoid of greenbacks. The folks out there in the feral streets hadn’t seen a pay cheque for a good three months.  No wonder some extreme entrepreneurs were flogging military grade weaponry out there to paramilitaries. ‘Hotel Dili’ was an excellent fire base. Right on the beach – a view of the port and Artuo island 4 hours away by boat.

Stacked on the foreshore were tangled rusting heaps of Japanese barges and craft from WWII when Beau fighters out of Darwin had strafed and bombed the shipping to the bottom. The Japanese raids on the OZ mainland had been flown out of the strip adjacent to downtown Dili, now basing APC units of ‘Operation Astute’. There was always an awesome sunset with the big Brazilian donated Rio look-a-like ‘Christus on the Cliff’ to the right, past the seafood café’s and UN watering holes.

Our driver, Reuben waited in the spreading shade opposite the beat up Toyota, minus its customary rooftop TAXI sign. You left the compound and scanned the horizon for a tell-tale plume of smoke, the blacker the better. Otherwise it merely signified a garbage or grass burn-off.

Reuben locked on and we decanted into the midst of chaos.  Folk still lighting and trashing other folk’s property.

Should you be doing a story on a town of 100K population’s fire department over a week, you might get lucky and get one fire. Here there were forty a day to choose from. The conflagrations could only get the attention of a total of 3 land cruiser pumpers (a gift from Western Australia) with one flat bed tanker; one of the pumpers was down (out-of-order).  Inevitably you got there before the overstretched brave souls - also unpaid, were deemed to be public enemies like the army and police and hence stoned and threatened on their way to extinguish neighbourly arson.  Finally, eight days after their arrival, the ADF task force liaised with the Bombieros’ and put SAS guys on the pumpers, as well as a full troopie down the burning back street lanes.  Satellite dishes stood out charred in the smouldering petit bourgeois neighbourhoods. The heat had turned the tropical trees into New England; those fall colours, autumnal browns and yellows, blackened bougainvillea slanted in strips, flickering window and door frames, small bits of everyday life abandoned to random select violence and terror.

First stop was a clinical visit to the Portuguese embassy for 2 old nuns to dress my wounds incurred on the tarmac in Darwin, approaching our BRASILIA turbo prop. Then to the ‘clean’ Aussie gas station and a looting scene 250meters away across downtown Dili’s show park.  Random mobs targeting and looting the police warehouse. Enthusiastic locals scurried out with plan tables, desk sections, cases of thongs strewn in the street, chaos and anarchy until a couple of tough looking Portuguese SWAT troopers in black rocked up, packing their hi-tech squirt guns; that could decimate a crowd at 50meters range. Their presence set a reverse flow of the typing chairs and police horse saddles. Then the diggers turned up and started corralling folks away. It was over, save the wreckage and a few peripheral fisticuffs.

Somebody had turned the thing off, or maybe it was because it was lunch and siesta time, or that the pickings were thin. Pathetically a big item for looting was the bottom castors of typing chairs.

Timor Leste was heading towards a stable developing nation, following a quarter century of Indonesian neo-colonialism. The bitter neighbours trashed the whole place before bowing out ungracefully leaving maggot militias to rule the roost. Shades of these same gangs of ferals were now holding Dili to ransom. The same disaffected youth and few senior controlling scout masters day after day.  Now enhanced by sectarianism, dividing easterners and westerners – Lora Sai against Lorommo.  Recently living peacefully side by side.

Everyday another raft of ordinary next door people got chased, terrified out of their small gains, which were then torched, trashed and grafittied. Unlike the warehouses
, the looting was minimal. The small stuff left reminders of a recent normalcy. Photo albums, kid’s toys, a typewriter, a Christmas tree. Weird shit, nay normal everyday stuff you have in your home. Garbaged by orchestrated vandals, who are trying to play a ‘new look’ with a flawed fledgling ‘democracy’.  A ‘coffee’ not a ‘banana’ republic - Starbucks ethically reaping in a good chunk of the crop. A kilo costs you USD.50 in the few open Chinese run emporiums. No one was out fishing, few people ventured out, sullen knots at corners, erratic driving down the pot-holed Rues and boulevards of ‘shackdom’ and dry season dust. After dark it was not advisable to move about a lot, albeit patrols of diggers would joke before letting you pass.

No breathalyzers, no speed guns, no seatbelts, no traffic lights, no law, or order. No Governance, army or police.  Swarms of robo-cops of the friendly ‘willings’ opting for the oil cartel.  Demonstrators calling for the demotion of PM Mari Alkatiri; a guerrilla turned politico, turned oil investor, and cheque book signatory to the offshore gas bubble, the second biggest globally and untapped. Prudent and exemplary had been the millennium funds analysis of Alkatiri’s cautious budgets since 2002, when they became the youngest UN guided state. Squillions of dollars have been in-poured, millions more in escrow in NY for the privilege of a cut of this bubble of LPG.

They are an impoverished nation, developing marginally after massive setbacks, surrounded by the energy hungry of Malaya, Indonesia, China and Brazil. Not to mention BHP, with Canberra’s blessing of a force of 3 thousand troops, so far costing the Aussie tax-payer a 0million taxi meter ticket over three weeks.  Eight black hawks thud around the sky, backed by SeaKings and Gazelles, C130’s come in round the clock, while on land the forty RM113 APC’s which started life in Vietnam, will see their last track time.

Every available 4x4 in town has been snapped up at premium rates. The lucky staff photographers with black double cab utes, our lowly, low slung, non-rear-left window operational apology gets us to the occasional incident afore the pack could rock up.  Other 4x4’s, now minus their rear doors contain the mobile SAS and Commando units.

Generally everyone was on SMS and relayed information down to each other, even the opposition.  We were all knee deep in the same fire. Dueling sat dishes, the digital button push war at its game.  Sorry not a war, not a conflict, not a police action but ‘peacemaking’. So the squaddies according to Australia’s Defence Minister, Dr. Brendan Nelson are not entitled to their AU5 per diem combat duty loading.  Mercifully the ferals did not have vast amounts of Aussie tax payers top grade infantry assault weaponry.  Less was their desire to engage what they did have, a decided reluctance to open up on the storm-troopers patrolling the garbage strewn burnt out boulevards.  Road blocks were established at strategic intersections such as the Comora Bridge and the Kiwis at the Bocora Bridge out east. This well burnt burb emanated hate; the whole despair had overtaken the emergent chrysalis of development.  However the official death toll is remarkably low; UN and ICRC tallies don’t top 40 or 50 so far. No KIA or WIA among the task force of 500 Malaysian airborne or 112 Portuguese Tactical Police Force (TFP).

The daily tally at the hospital is a bit different as civilians are routinely assaulted by the mobs.  Rocks and penetrating viscous darts honed and barbed from knives and screwdrivers plus and sundry stones or bearings from sling shots caused horrendous injuries.  Machetes, axes and metal rods became the hard weapons.

DDP got one on his chest bone at 100 meters and the thing swelled like a black eye. The rocks splashed down around you. Without Kevlar and body armour there was certain risk and it was pure luck that no one from the media was badly hurt.

Better still; the disciplined diggers did not create that oxymoron situation of ‘friendly fire’ only sporadic odd angry shots could be heard at night, probably fools tinkering with an unfamiliar weapon.  Enough to send out night visioned SAS dudes on hunt and search snatches to turn the screws on the puppet masters to narrow the odds. They were too heavily encumbered to chase the nimble youth in the heat of the day and they had no remit to open fire unless fired on.

A suggestion of non-lethal tasers applied to maggot knee caps was met with benign smiles. The same goons posing in different suburbs; a gloat over their latest trashings. The same Che inspired and pokemon graphic t-shirts, strange face wraps crash helmets and board shorts.  The preferred feral footwear – the thong - albeit prone to glass shard infiltration.  I kind of giggled when a repeat hooner slashed open his foot on window glass he had seconds earlier smashed, apparently for my photographic appreciation.  Got the same kid with various implements in half a dozen different venues.  Same garb, same inane grin. The ADF and Federal cops would I’m sure love to see our digi sticks.   There was talk of judicial process. How? One wanted to ask.  Shipping containers could have served as cooling off stations for a few days. The same hoons were plasti-cuffed one day, bundled into an APC and then re-appeared across town in a ute bed with the other ‘would be’ Che’s and Ninja warriors.

The victim count picked up as hate boiled.  The mob appeared to turn on itself, there were multi tasking, protesting looting, burning, pillaging and rioting regular as clock work; particularly after breakfast and definitely post siesta. Once we were all mid dinner at the esplanade front ‘Castaway’ bar, an ex-pat owed haunt when the Chinese open air café next door was torched.  Its palm thatched roof engulfed in flames. A bucket chain of media ex-pats and police formed up to the sea 100meters away. The fire was put out and everyone resumed their escalope burgers or pizzas.  Above the bar a giant plasma screen fed live broadcasts of the days happenings to the gang who had shot it. Cheers and derisions echoed, rounds purchased; a bonhomerie and camaraderie of the media throng.  All burning candles at both ends, deadlines constantly closing. Competition fueling the top of the story, dual mobile phones ringing; even the political seesawing, resignations and machinations were going on by SMS and mobile calls. Landlines became virtually non-existent after the Indonesians left, having removed virtually all PTT and power lines from the poles. As in Baghdad, the politicos moved about in SAS guarded SUV’s, obligatory tinted windows, the low slung ones armoured. The media pack resembled the Cambodian army, off to war in a hodge podge caravan of utes, SUV, taxis and scooters.

Everyone has Media or Press signs affixed to the windscreens.

Political red herrings, alleged massacres, armed, renegade, crack soldiers on mountain-top posadas and surely the first time a Prime Minister has resigned via SMS. Central casting had gone full-bore on a banana republic coup film and then dropped in the robo-cops and peacemakers to scramble the original script. Was there ever a script?  What, apart from a gas pipeline deal is the exit strategy? Who really cares about the victims or the fate of a million East Timorese? They have admittedly a hard job to stay on page one against the atrocities in the Gaza or car bombs in Iraq.

There was always the World Cup to take our minds off it all. The Tour de France must have got to at least stage 3. How quickly we forget peace, savouring the whole concept of victory and wealth.

After much passive smoke inhalation and what turned out to be a great traveling companion, thankfully, DDP got a 10 page spread in ‘TIME ASIA’.   Our new collective “°SOUTH” gets its first byline.

Article ID: 11

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Last Updated: 11-09-2008

Date Created: 11-09-2008