East Timor Retrospective
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It is not easy to write with feigned calm and dispassion about the events that have been unfolding in East Timor. Horror and shame are compounded by the fact that the crimes are so familiar and could so easily have been terminated. That has been true ever since Indonesia invaded in December 1975, relying on US diplomatic support and arms-used illegally, but with secret authorization, and even new arms shipments sent under the cover of an of ficial "embargo." There has been no need to threaten bombing or even sanctions. It would have sufficed for the US and its allies to withdraw their active participation, and to inform their close associates in the Indonesian military comrnand that the atrocities must be terminated and the territory granted the right of self-determination that has been upheld by the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. We cannot undo the past, but we should at least be willing to recognize what we have done, and to face the moral responsibility of saving the remnants and providing ample reparations, a pathetic gesture of compensation for terrible crimes.
The latest chapter in this painful story of betrayal and complicity opened right after the referendum of August 30, 1999, when the population voted overwhelmingly for independence. At once, atrocities mounted sharply, organized and directed by the Indonesian military (TNI). The UN Mission (IJNAMET) gave its appraisal on September 11:
The evidence for a direct link between the militia and the military is beyond any dispute and has been overwhelmingly documented by UNAMET over the last four months. But the scale and thoroughness of the destruction of East Timor in the past week has demonstrated a new level of open participation of the military in the implementation of what was previously a more veiled operation.
The Mission warned that "the worst may be yet to come…. It cannot be ruled out that these are the first stages of a genocidal campaign to stamp out the East Timorese problem by force."’
Indonesia historian John Roosa, an of ficial observer of the vote, described the situation starkly:
Given that the pogrom was so predictable, it was easily preventable…. But in the weeks before the ballot, the Clinton administration refused to discuss with Australia and other countries the formation of [an international force]. Even afler the violence erupted, the administration dithered for days, until compelled by international (primarily Australian) and domestic pressure to make some timid gestures. Even these ambiguous messages sufficed to induce the Indonesian generals to reverse course and to accept an international presence, illustrating the latent power that has always been at hand.
The same power relations ensure that the UN can do nothing without Washington consent and initiative. While Clinton "dithered," almost half the population were expelled from their homes, according to UN estimates, and thousands murdered.3 The Air Force that excels in pinpoint destruction of civilian targets in Novi Sad, Belgrade, and Pancevo apparently lacked the capacity to drop food to people facing starvation in the mountains to which they were driven by the terror of the TNI forces armed and trained by the United States and its no less cynical allies.
The recent events will evoke bitter memories among those who do not prefer "intentional ignorance." We are witnessing a shameful replay of events of 20 years ago. After carrying out a huge slaughter in 1977-78 with the decisive support of the Carter administration, Indonesia felt confident enough to permit a brief visit by members of the Jakarta diplomatic corps, among them US Ambassador Edward Masters. They recognized that an enormous humanitarian catastrophe had been created. The aftermath was described by Benedict Anderson, one of the most distinguished Indonesia scholars. "For nine long months" of starvation and terror, Anderson testified at the United Nations, "Ambassador Masters deliberately refirained, even within the walls of the State Department, from proposing humanitarian aid to East Timor," waiting "until the generals in Jakarta gave him the green light"-until they felt "secure enough to permit foreign visitors," as an internal State Department document recorded. Only then did Washington consider taking some steps to deal with the consequences of its actions.4
As TNI forces and their paramilitaries were burning down the capital city of Dili in September 1999, murdering and rampaging with renewed intensity, the Pentagon announced that "a US-Indonesian training exercise focused on humanitarian and disaster relief activities concluded August 25," five days before the referendum that elicited the sharp escalation in crimes-precisely as the political leadership in Washington expected, at least if they were reading their own intelligence reports.5 The lessons of this cooperation were applied within days in the standard way, as all but the voluntarily blind must understand after many years of the same tales, the same outcomes.
One gruesome illustration was the coup that brought General Suharto to power in 1965. Army-led massacres slaughtered hundreds of thousands, mostly landless peasants, in a few months, destroying the mass-based political party of the left, the PKI. The achievement elicited unrestrained euphoria in the West and fulsome praise for the Indonesian "moderates," Suharto and his military accomplices, who had cleansed the society and opened it to foreign plunder. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara informed Congress that US military aid and training had "paid dividends"-including half a million corpses-"enormous dividends," a congressional report concluded. McNamara informed President Johnson that US military assistance "encouraged [the army] to move against the PKI when the opportunity was presented." Contacts with Indonesian military officers, including university programs, were "very significant factors in determining the favorable orientation of the new Indonesian political elite" (the army).
The degree of cooperation between Washington and Jakarta is impressive. US weapons sales to Indonesia amount to over $1 billion since the 1975 invasion. Military aid during the Clinton years is at about $150 million.
Through the 1990s, the US continued support for "our kind of guy," as General Suharto was described by the Clinton administration before he fell from grace by losing control and failing to implement harsh IMF orders with sufficient ardor. After the 1991 Dili massacre, Congress restricted arms sales and banned US training of the Indonesian military, but Clinton found devious ways to evade the ban. Congress expressed its "outrage," reiterating that "it was and is the intent of Congress to prohibit US military training for Indonesia," as readers of the Far Eastern Economic Review and dissident publications here could learn. But to no avail.
Inquiries about Clinton’s programs received the routine response from the State Department: US military training serves the positive function of exposing foreign militaries to US values. These values were exhibited as military aid to Indonesia flowed and government-licensed sales of armaments increased fivefold from fiscal year 1997 to 1998. In April 1999, shortly after the massacre of dozens of refugees who had taken shelter in a church in Liquica, Admiral Dennis Blair, US Pacific commander, assured TNI commander General Wiranto of US support and assistance, proposing a new US training mission.
On September 19, 1999, the London Observer international news service reported Clinton’s "Iron Balance" program, which trained the Indonesian military into 1998, in violation of congressional restrictions. Included were Kopassus units, the murderous forces that organized and directed the "militias," and participated directly in their atrocities, as Washington was well aware. "Iron Balance" provided these forces with more training in coumterinsurgency and "psychological operations," expertise that they put to use effectively at once.
All of this found its way to the memory hole that contains the past record of the crucial US support for the atrocities, granted the same (null) coverage as many other events of the past year; for example, the unanimous Senate vote on June 30, 1999, calling on the Clinton administration to link Indonesian military actions in East Timor to "any loan or financial assistance to Indonesia," as readers could learn from the Irish Times.
In the face of this record, only briefly sampled, and duplicated repeatedly elsewhere, the government lauds "the value of the years of training given to Indonesia’s future military leaders in the United States and the millions of dollars in military aid for Indonesia," urging more of the same for Indonesia and throughout the world.
… The reasons for the disgraceful record have sometimes been honestly recognized. During the latest phase of atrocities, a senior diplomat in Jakarta described "the dilemma" faced by the great powers: "Indonesia matters, and East Timor doesn’t."9 It is therefore understandable that Washington should keep to ineffectual gestures of disapproval while insisting that internal security in East Timor "is the responsibility of the government of Indonesia, and we don’t want to take that responsibility away from them"-the of ficial stance a few days before the August referendum, repeated in full knowledge of how that "responsibility" had been carried out, and maintained as the most dire predictions were quickly fulfilled.
The reasoning of the senior diplomat was spelled out more fully by two Asia specialists of the New York Times: the Clinton administration, they write, "has made the calculation that the United States must put its relationship with Indonesia, a mineral-rich nation of more than 200 million people, ahead of its concern over the political fate of East Timor, a tiny impoverished territory of 800,000 people that is seeking independence." The second national journal quotes Douglas Paal, president of the Asia Pacific Policy Center, stating the facts of life: "Timor is a speed bump on the road to dealing with Jakarta, and we’ve got to get over it safely. Indonesia is such a big place and so central to the stability of the region."
The term "stability" has long served as a code word, referring to a "favorable orientation of the political elite"-favorable not to their populations, but to foreign investors and global managers.
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Commenting on Washington’s refusal to lift a finger to help the victims of its crimes, the veteran Australian diplomat Richard Butler observed that "it has been made very clear to me by senior American analysts that the facts of the alliance essentially are that: the US will respond proportionally, defined largely in terms of its own interests and threat assessment." The remarks were not offered in criticism of Washington; rather, of his fellow Australians, who do not comprehend the facts of life: that others are to shoulder the burdens, and face the costs- which for Australia, may not be slight. It will hardly come as a great shock if a few years hence US corporations are cheerfully picking up the pieces in an Indonesia that resents Australian actions, but has few complaints about the overlord.
The chorus of self-adulation has subsided a bit, though not much. Far more important than these shameful performances is the failure to act-at once, and decisively-to cast aside mythology and face the causes and consequences of our actions, and to save the remnants of one of the most terrible tragedies of this awful century.