The rescue of East Timor is delicately called a “peacekeeping mission.” But make no mistake. This is really a peacemaking mission. According to the mandate of the U.N. Security Council, the international force can use “all necessary measures” to “restore peace and security” and help deliver food and other supplies to the wounded, sick and starving. U.S. President Bill Clinton, who has pledged some 200 soldiers to help with logistics, communications and perhaps intelligence, last week warned that International Force for East Timor (Interfet) will “face some stiff challenges.” Australian Prime Minister John Howard was more blunt. “There will be danger. There could be casualties. And the Australian public should understand that.”
Could East Timor become a depressing death trap for well-intentioned foreigners? It was only six years ago that U.S. troops tried and failed to enforce peace on warring militias in Somalia–and withdrew after the corpses of dead GIs were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. But East Timor is considered a very different case. Nearly 80 percent of East Timorese recently voted under U.N. auspices for freedom from the oppressive occupation of the Indonesian Army and its allied militias. This vast majority is on the side of Interfet troops. The paramilitaries, meanwhile, resemble scruffy street gangs. The long-haired Guterres, who sports an earring, is a former pro-independence activist who did jail time in 1991 and later emerged as a pro-Indonesian leader. (It is widely believed that he was “turned” in prison with torture or bribes.) Many ordinary militiamen are armed only with machetes and slingshots. Some are forced conscripts. Even hard-core fighters are more accustomed to murdering civilians than to fighting pitched battles. But then, that’s what a lot of people said about the Somalis. The primary fear now is that militiamen will snipe at foreign troops, or stage hit-and-run attacks from Indonesian-controlled West Timor.
Teenager Joo Brito was lucky to escape one of the Thorn militia massacres. Sitting on a cot in the stifling heat of an army tent inside a refugee camp in Darwin, Australia, last week, he recalled what happened in his hometown, Ermera (map). When the militias began their rampage, Brito hid in a coffee plantation overlooking the town. From there, he watched Thorn militiamen, wearing black T shirts and red and white headbands (the colors of the Indonesian flag), fire automatic weapons wildly to force people indoors. Then they poured gasoline around the houses of independence activists and set them alight. The militiamen allowed women and children to flee, Brito says, but forced men back into the flames. As houses burned, the militiamen danced. “They shouted, ‘You dogs, you don’t have the right to become independent!’ "
At the Vatican last week, frantic church officials tried to determine the fate of East Timorese priests and nuns who had been reported killed. They were unable to confirm accounts that rampaging paramilitaries had murdered several nuns. They were told by one source, however, that six nuns in the city of Dili, who were believed to be dead, were very much alive. Priests in the town of Suai, sadly, were not so fortunate.
Father Mark Raper, an Australian who directs the Jesuit Refugee Service in Rome, pieced together an account of a massacre at the parish house of Father Hilario Pereira in Suai. Toward nightfall on Sept. 7, Raper says, Thorn militiamen surrounded Pereira’s house. “Come out, Father,” called a member of the group. The first man out the door was a young Jesuit priest, Tarcisius Dewanto, who had been ordained on July 14. The gunmen shot him dead. A second priest bolted outside and met a fusillade of bullets. When Pereira didn’t answer orders to come out, the attackers tossed grenades inside, then charged in and shot him dead. Then they proceeded to a nearby church, where Pereira was sheltering some 100 refugees. A nun who was hiding nearby told Raper that the attackers hurled grenades inside, killing most of the men, women and children who were hiding under the pews; they shot those who stumbled out of the smoke and ruin.
The priorities of Interfet forces in East Timor will be to protect civilians and to open routes for urgently needed aid. Australia began air drops of rice from transport planes late last week, but tens of thousands of people were still hiding in the mountains, living on roots, bark and coconuts. The killing continued. In Indonesian West Timor, aid workers reported finding unidentified corpses–presumed to be pro-independence activists–near camps crammed with 130,000 refugees. Guterres had been visiting the camps, encouraging the militia bosses in control there and intimidating displaced civilians. “He’s even been crying over the refugees, saying he’s here to protect them,” says an Indonesian who works in the camps. “That’s a double-edged message.”
The Indonesian Army and the police have begun to disarm some militiamen in West Timor, according to relief officials. But most of the arms they collected last week were homemade knives and machetes, not automatic weapons. “The security forces are making some gestures, but they clearly aren’t doing enough to bring the militias under control,” said an Indonesian aid official.
One fear is that the paramilitaries will use West Timor as a staging area to conduct raids against the Interfet troops across the border in East Timor. “The Australians will stick out like sore thumbs,” says Dewi Fortuna Anwar, President B. J. Habibie’s top foreign-policy adviser. “The militias have made clear their strong animosity toward the Australians; now the hostility will be multiplied 100 times.”
If the paramilitaries attack from West Timor, the Australians will be very reluctant to strike back. The forces don’t have a mandate to enter West Timor, which is within Indonesia’s internationally recognized boundaries. That means Interfet forces might have to rely on the Indonesian Army to disarm the militias for them–a strategy that hasn’t worked in the past.
The stance of the Indonesian military, indeed, is the biggest question mark over the operation. It’s widely accepted–by U.N. officials and intelligence sources, among others–that Indonesian military officers orchestrated much of the recent violence. (A U.N. Security Council team that visited East Timor reported that the violence could be “switched on and off” by the military.) But last week several thousand Indonesian troops loaded weapons and gear onto transport planes and ships, and began withdrawing. Major Gen. Kiki Syahnakri, the commander of Indonesian forces in East Timor, said he expected it would take about a week for the bulk of his troops to leave. In the meantime, he’d hand command of the province to Interfet, once it had completed its deployment. Presidential adviser Anwar told NEWSWEEK that only a small number of barracks-bound Indonesian soldiers would remain in East Timor after Interfet arrived.
That was the good news. But there were other reports that soldiers, together with militiamen, were looting what little was left in Dili, the East Timorese capital. Top Indonesian officers claim that they’ve had difficulties getting their troops to follow orders, mainly because the soldiers have “psychological problems” taking on the pro-Indonesian paramilitaries. (The Indonesian Army invaded the tiny territory in 1975, after Portuguese colonial authorities withdrew, and departing is a deep blow to its pride.) Analysts warn that the military could still try to stir trouble in East Timor to boost its power back home in Indonesia’s internecine political struggles (box). “The military will try to manufacture incidents,” says Richard Robison, international politics professor at Murdoch University in Australia. “An incident with Australian peacekeepers would be very advantageous to the military hard-liners.”
Nobody knows how many people pro-Indonesian militias have murdered since the independence vote; estimates range from the hundreds to 7,000. But as refugees come out of hiding, they’ll help to clarify the extent of the atrocities. Many will finger Indonesian officers who armed and trained the paramilitaries. “The real culprits are the Indonesian military,” says exiled independence leader Jose Ramos-Horta, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996. “The war criminals, wherever they are, will be hunted down. We will find them one by one.”
The Security Council resolution demands that people responsible for the violence “be brought to justice.” Eventually, that could entail a formal investigation into crimes against humanity. Ramos-Horta believes that prospect alone could be a death sentence for militia leaders like Guterres. “He can testify on the role of the Indonesian Army,” Ramos-Horta says. “But I doubt Eurico Guterras will be alive for more than two months. He knows too much.” It may take more than peacemakers to bring an end to decades of intrigue and bloodshed.
