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Restoring the Peace in Timor

The youngest nation on the planet is in deep strife again.  Just when we thought that the intervention in ’99 had got it all stabilized, just when the U.N. had pumped in a quarter of a billion dollars and believed all was on line; the feral elements reared their heads and chaos ensued.

Liberation and independence from Portuguese colonial rule in ’75 had been both a tough and a lengthy struggle.  It was only to be supplanted a few months later by an Indonesian takeover and a quarter century of neo colonialisation.   Admittedly the country received more development under its neighbour’s fiefdom than during the five centuries of Portuguese Catholic impression.  The Indonesians left on a sour note, their militia trashing the whole infrastructure, even removing phone and power cables from the poles and a final defecatory note in all the hotel rooms and airport lounges.  Thousands had been murdered and disappeared.  Fretilin, the underground movement came to power under a U.N. protection.

The millions in aid that poured in were abetted by large slabs of Catholic relief funding in this over 85% fervently Christian nation, where the bishops hold the sway that Imams do in fundamental Islamic countries.  West Timor, its capital, Kupang is a mere 300 kms from Dili – a poorer sibling than the independent east.  More bush than tropical verdancy.  There is little of the munificent coffee, on the hills that abut the whole coast.  Tropical rainforest and clouded cols ala the Himalayas.  The statistics are mind boggling, over 130 known languages/dialects, 65% literacy, 65% unemployment, highest birthrate in Asia, lowest average income at 0 per annum and its ranking as the worlds 197th poorest nation.

Then the second biggest gas bubble on the planet is tapped under the Timor Straits between Australia and the island.  A mere one hour flight from Darwin.  The downtown Dili runway and heliport is the same one that served the Japanese to launch their only bombing runs on downtown Australia.  The newest most desperate state has access to one of the biggest Norwegian managed escrow accounts in downtown Manhattan.  It would appear that a mere piddle has fallen on this blighted city.

Once again it is plagued with, orchestrated, nay, puppeteered, feral players.  They are guiding their terror campaign of arson, looting and random violence under ethnic pretences.  They are escalating and inflaming them just when things were settling down – running up to next years first general election.  There was a fine balance, just, in the hierarchy of power.  The Fretilin Party always had its factions.  It’s charismatic Mandela like leader, Xanana Gusmao along with new PM Jose Ramos Horta - joint Nobel laureate both left the central party early in the piece.  They believed through their prison times and overseas sojourns a less Marxist approach would be the role model.  Ex-Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, a Muslim from the west, non elected by the people, only by the party central congress, favored the regulated approach he had learnt during his architectural studies in Mozambique (also a former Portuguese colony) and periods in China and Cuba.  The World Bank praised his economic prudence.

Maybe therein lays the rap.  He should have spent more on the folks.  The World Bank wanted to make him favoured loans.  U.N. rubber stamped in midtown Manhattan.  Anyway, he had learnt a lot in his travels and demanded that in fair trade BHP should offer more than 27% of the gas revenues.   Then he asks why not open it up to government tender – like a grown up country or corporation would?  Problem.  This is not a grown up place.  It is dirt poor on a par with Laos in 1964 where I worked at the USAID mission.

There are only three fire pumper trucks in town.  Bush fire land cruisers that were a gift from the West Australian government.  Only two are running.  We watched one of those suffer a pump failure in the middle of a repeat fire in the southern Santa Cruz suburb.  A street full of the ubiquitous satellite dishes surrounded by smouldering ruins.  Grotesque artistic skewered tin sheets at grey angles.  Flickering flames on gutted door jambs and window frames.  Abandoned, blackened everyday family possessions.  Lives of small familiar things.  The firemen arrive before the flatbed tanker truck to roll out pitifully small gauge hoses.  All the while they are under hostile gaze and often rocks from the locals.  The brave ‘Bombieros’ have somehow ended up as a common enemy, bit like Belfast.  Their families have been threatened and moved to security at the firehouse.  This has left their homes exposed to arson – it’s hard to figure, neighbours gutting neighbours property.  Shades of the Balkans.  The fires pick up tempo almost to suit the Medias pace of ‘need of coverage’.

Are we being manipulated, used or misinformed?  Rumours are rife. The photo and television pack darting between incidents as though they were timed for deadlines.  The same mobs somehow spirited across town to reemerge and create more mayhem, more refugees, and more terrified, displaced people.  A town already grappling with reconstruction did not need another 50,000 folks out of a home – living on food aid in UNHCR tentage.  Our, the medias attention gathers the public opinion necessary to prosecute the intervention, this peace making mission.  We guarantee the focus on the victims stirring our empathies to wage an involvement this protracted and costly.  0 million had been consumed in under three weeks, supporting 2,800 military personnel is a mega budget consideration.  Eight Blackhawk’s, Seaking and Gazelle choppers fly around the clock while four warships stand offshore.   The already thinned ranks of the SAS stretched to provide protection for the various Timorese leaders.

Hence we have ‘Operation Astute’, a peace for gas intervention, quietly doing what the RAR’s always seem to do in any conflict.  They get on with the job, with affability, a laid back approach – though totally professional there pervades a lackadaisical attitude which belies the Rambo like stance.  They’ve all learnt to say ‘Bom Dias’ (G’day) and ‘Obrigado’ (thanks).   The locals regard them as a placebo on the arson and violence, they see the tangible inroads, the absence of certain gang leaders, the hear the rumble of the APC tracks 24/7, the Blackhawk’s circling constantly and above it all the Orion electronic counter measures aircraft hoovers up all mobile phone transmission.  One should remember here, that the political maneuverings and meetings among the Timorese were arranged on their mobiles, in fact the resignation of PM Alkitiri was conducted by SMS message, surely a world first!  Landlines are non existent and broadband a rarity and expensive.

The Bombieres and the ADF did not link up until the medic brought attention to the plight of the poor firemen who were being subjected to rains of rock and threats on the way to put out the deliberately set fires.  Only after a journalist from The Australian had raised the issue with the Commander, Brigadier Mick Slater were commando units detached to ride shotgun on the pumpers and a squad moved into the firehouse.

Most of the diggers were strapped with too much combat kit to effectively chase the nimble gangs of youths as they darted between arson, looting, GBH and riot.  The soldiers job that of a policeman yet with body armour et.al, the labyrinth of alleys and shanties in the 35 degree plus heat was not the task they should have been pursuing.  Political nuances and difficulties prevented the early deployment of 112 Portuguese SWAT and riot police teams.  When they did appear they had an instant calming effect, their ruthless demeanour enough to cow the crowds.  Lines of troopers patrolling down the principal streets, the tail ender rotating with his squad turning backwards to prevent rear ambush was reassuring to the gradually opening shops and roadside vegetable markets.  They moved down the sides of the breeze block and stucco walled town keeping to strategy of cover and shade, the gunner setting up in intersections, the clean links looped for action.  Kids clustered and locals stopped to exchange G’days.  That easiness of the digger smiled through.  Calm restored downtown.

The outer suburbs were still a front line, pockets of easterners and westerners prey to the puppeteered gangs, they needed mounted patrols of 4RAR commandos and SAS.  The rent-a-car agencies were out of 4x4’s and utes.  All the troopies were driving around with their rear doors off revealing a mini-mag and GPMG glaring backwards.  The Kiwi’s had commandeered the utes putting a machine gun on the cab roof, the gunner in the tray:  later their new Austrian built Pinzgauers would arrive.  They had the unenviable position on the eastern outskirts in Bocora.  Most of this suburb had been torched and gangs still lurked, the area had been heavily trashed by the retreating Indonesian’s in ’99.  The bridge at Bocora became a virtual front line, a Maori trooper astride a typing chair behind an impromptu roadblock.

The Malaysians were barracked in the old police H.Q. just to the west of the Comora Bridge.  Their crack airborne companies traveled in German built 4WD air-conditioned APC’s bristling with automatic weapons and grenade launchers.  They had the advantage of speaking Bahasa – a lingua franca across the archipelago.  Again they were kitted in full combat gear hampering their pursuit of the ‘maggots’ around the Comora Bridge, the hub of their TAOR (tactical area of operations).  Road blocks finally appeared at either end of the span across the almost dried up river bed.  Vehicles and their occupants were being thoroughly searched although a couple of hundred meters away the maggots were back at work, circling behind the lumbering patrol to incite more mayhem.  Even ten days later the same insanity is repeating as the central players jockey again for ascendancy.  The Malays also got the job of escorting the convoys of protesters who rolled in from the east and west, pro and anti Alkitiri.  By spacing APC’s at every tenth yellow dump truck bulging with the disaffected youth, not a female in sight, they capped the violent elements.  The protests passed off and out of town with only the odd angry rock lobbed.

Unlike Iraq or Afghan here diggers are welcomed, smiled at, their very look demands a certain respect, as with ‘Operation Anode’ in the Solomon Islands, the softly, softly approach began to pay off.  The town quietened allowing aid shipments to get to the church and U.N. compounds, as security improved a trickle of folks went back to their trashed or abandoned homes.  The tin-sheet aid project would need to kick in again.

It was still spooky to drive around at night.  Few vehicles circulated, checkpoints appeared out of the darkness for Dili has little street illumination.  Blissfully the disciplined diggers and Malays did not break into a disaster of ‘friendly fire’.  Casualties still stood at nil although enough smoke had been inhaled for an anti tobacco campaign suit.

I’d been to the Vietnam War and a number of other conflicts since, including a few peacekeeping wars like Cambodia and the Balkans.  Big fire power was pitted and ranged against opponents, even be they guerilla forces.  Here it was brazen gangs mercifully not kitted with infantry grade weaponry, orchestrated to provide the pantomime of political change.  A disciplined task force of now experienced in such missions, RAR men and women unknowingly now the choir and orchestra of this seemingly endless poverty stricken soap opera state.

I sense that ‘Operation Astute’ is going to become a long and expensive drawn out mission, guaranteed to end  only when the appropriate contracts are enjoined for the blocks of offshore gas fields.  A few weeks ago the Chinese signed a mega contract for LPG with Australia and the advertisement in The Australian, June 14th calling for tenders to supply 3, 000 troops in East Timor – suggest that Canberra could have told us earlier.

Strange, being the oldest member of the 4th estate, hobbling the Dili phenomena, always lagging behind, you see the effects, just past the hit, the terrified burnt out family, the agonized neighbour screaming, gashed and face with a stoned death.  The proud petit bourgeoisie crammed into tent cities with a scatter of possessions.  The snatch squad arrests, the in vain attempt to placate a berserk gang member.  This nation of a million souls needs the effectiveness of the task force just to stabilize until new elections and reinjected economy can reconstitute the shambles.  It is not a good trump card to hold when it has the ace of a barrel of oil on its face.

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Last Updated: 30-03-2008

Date Created: 14-06-2007