The World Today
October 1999

EAST TIMOR: Secede and We Destroy You
By Peter Carey

 

The medieval barbarity of the Indonesian special forces—Kopassus—and the pro-autonomy militias, their paid assassins in East Timor, has pushed Indonesia to the brink of political and economic catastrophe. It has exposed the rottenness that lies at the heart of that society and turned the country into an international pariah.

Following the 30 August referendum when nearly the entire voting population of East Timor turned up at the United Nations poll, backing the independence option four to one, a reign of terror has been unleashed against the pro-independence majority. There has been a concerted attempt to eliminate the pro-independence intelligentsia: of a East Timorese population of 800,000, perhaps as many as 30,000 have been slaughtered, 130,000 forced at gunpoint across the border into Indonesian-controlled West Timor and a further 600,000 driven to seek refuge in the barren mountains at immediate risk of death from starvation and disease.

Every town and population centre has been razed and burnt by the militias. Even Catholic priests and nuns, who had hitherto been protected from the worst excesses of violence, became militia targets. They were accused of partiality towards the independence cause. At least fourteen priests and nuns were murdered, and the Nobel Prize winner Bishop Belo was forced to flee incognito to Darwin on a UN evacuation flight after his palace was burnt and the 2,000 seeking refuge there forced out at gunpoint. The head of the East Timorese Protestant Church, Arlindo Marcal, was not so lucky: he was hacked to death in a militia-run refugee camp in West Timor.

Mounting political and economic pressure on Jakarta—in particular from the United States, which severed all military contacts and threatened to veto further International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank loans—eventually pushed President Habibie into announcing on 12 September that Indonesia would be prepared to accept an international force. Subsequently authorised by the Security Council, this was given a tough peace enforcement mandate under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, enabling it to take offensive action against any pro-autonomy militias or renegade Indonesian units that might obstruct it.

The majority of the 7,500-strong force was drawn from the Australian Army’s strengthened Darwin brigade, with 2,500 troops as an advance party. Their deployment from Darwin became a matter of urgency as the scale of the humanitarian disaster became evident, and the numbers seeking shelter in areas held by the Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor—Falintil—reached crisis proportions.

 

Anti-Australian

As the tragedy unfolded, so tensions have mounted in Indonesia proper. These have been fanned in part by the same military intelligence units and special forces responsible for the East Timor carnage.

The Australians have become a particular target of resentment because of the prominent role they have been called upon to play in the peace enforcement mission. This has led in turn to attacks on Australian diplomatic personnel and property—the Australian ambassador was fired on in Dili and the Australian embassy trashed in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second city.

Canberra was seen as harbouring its own designs on East Timor. Some military hardliners accused it of seeking a foothold in the Indonesian archipelago in order to control vital resources, such as the oil of the Timor Gap, and position itself to take advantage of any future break-up of the nation.

The fanning of xenophobic sentiments and the deployment of international troops in East Timor has prepared the ground for a nationalist backlash as Indonesia prepares to elect a new President and Vice-President at the People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Perwusyawaratan Rakyat) in early November.

Until the East Timor debacle, President Habibie appeared to have a fighting chance of securing the presidential nomination in this first democratically elected Assembly since the 1950s. But this now seems unlikely.

On 18 October, the congress of Habibie’s pro-government Golkar (Golongan Karya) party, which won twenty-two percent of the popular vote in the 7 June national elections, is likely to ditch him in favour of a more credible candidate. This, in turn, will boost the chances of Megawati Sukarnoputri, the main victor in the June poll who has relied on her secular nationalist credentials as the daughter of Indonesia’s founding President. Her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-Perjuangan) garnered thirty-two percent of the vote.

The army, however, still remains the main power broker, controlling a vital six percent—thirty-eight seats—of the Assembly vote and their backing is crucial for any would-be presidential candidate.

So where does East Timor fit into all this? Since most Indonesians care more about the Bank Bali scandal—involving the loan of US$70 million to a debt collection company linked to the Golkar party—than the horrors in distant Timor, why should events in the former Portuguese colony be so important?

At the international level, the reaction of the world community—especially the Paris Club creditors who have postponed talks on the rescheduling of US$6 billion in sovereign debt due for repayment in the next two years—have hit the Indonesian economy hard. Since late August, the rupiah has sunk more than five percent in value bringing the Jakarta stock market down with it.

The blacking of Indonesian ships in Australian ports and the possibility that the International Maritime Union might extend that ban worldwide if the killings continue, has jeopardised trade. Indonesian currency ratings have recently been put on credit watch by the Standard & Poor rating agency which cites the possible suspension of vital international lending because of the crisis as a major factor. All this could not come at a worse time. The economy was beginning to turn the corner after the steep fifteen percent GDP contraction of the previous two years—the largest by any market economy since the war.

 

Military Divisions

Yet, the true significance of the crisis lies principally in the rivalries it has exposed within the army. The original problem lay with President Habibie. He failed to realise the full implications of his Timor policy for the Kopassus generals who had run the former Portuguese colony as their fief since Indonesia’s invasion in 1975. Having nailed his colours to the reformist mast and having long debated with his advisers from the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals the possibility of letting East Timor go—for them it was an ungrateful Catholic enclave in a predominantly Muslim nation—Habibie rushed into his offer of a vote on autonomy or independence without properly consulting the military. Indeed, when they got wind of his intentions last October, they immediately implemented a counter strategy setting up pro-autonomy militias who would terrorise the local population into desisting from a pro-independence vote.

Once the referendum offer became public on 27 January, this strategy was ratcheted up, allowing the militias to take control of the populations of the four western regions through a sustained campaign of violence. Over 5,000 died. There was even talk of the militias partitioning East Timor and annexing the four western districts as a zone for pro-integrationists.

The 5 May New York agreement between Portugal and Indonesia permitted the deployment of an unarmed UN mission (UNAMET—United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor), but vested security in the hands of the Indonesian police. This was a monumental blunder since the police were very much under the thumb of the Indonesian army, which, in turn, controlled the militias.

Disaster loomed, yet the combination of UNAMET’s skillful handling of the voter registration process, the dedication of its volunteers and the bravery of ordinary East Timorese, ensured a remarkably high turn out on 30 August.

Thwarted in their attempt to cow the population into voting for the autonomy option, Kopassus and the militias then embarked on a policy of political genocide, eliminating all members of the pro-independence intelligentsia. This was accompanied by a ruthless scorched earth campaign designed to wreck the territory ahead of independence.

The message was not only directed at the East Timorese: Kopassus were also warning other parts of the fraying Indonesian archipelago, in particular Acèh and Irian Jaya (West Papua), which might be contemplating splitting away: secede and we will destroy you.

The sheer scale of the humanitarian disaster makes East Timor a Southeast Asian Kosovo. Yet, the savagery also has a political purpose: the destruction of President Habibie—whom the army never forgave for his East Timor blunder—and the compromising of Armed Forces Commander and Defence Minister, General Wiranto. He was shown publicly to have only limited control over his forces on the ground. On his first visit after the referendum he dared not even leave the VIP lounge in Dili airport, so insecure was the situation on the streets.

While Kopassus may have achieved their limited objectives, the costs to Indonesia are incalculable: international pariah status, the stalling of economic recovery and the strong possibility that the violence engendered in East Timor will destabilise the democratic transition in Jakarta and render a clean break with the Suhartoist past impossible. There are strong rumours that Suharto money is behind much of the army-engendered mayhem.

If the Kopassus ‘lost command’ in East Timor is given no escape route and refuses to accept the order of General Wiranto’s Marshall Law Commander to withdraw to West Timor, they may fight like condemned men, pulling the Australian-led peacekeeping force and the whole of Indonesia into the mire. With a Southeast Asian Yugoslavia in the making, what price stability in the Asia-Pacific region?

 

Peter Carey is Laithwaite Fellow and Tutor at Trinity College, Oxford, specialising in the modern history and politics of Indonesia and East Timor.