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The Australian
Editorial: Crisis in East Timor
Restoring the peace is the first step in a long process
May 25, 2006

AMBITIOUS politicians misjudge the mood in the military and soon the shooting starts, with the factions fighting over the pathetically small spoils of power. And an impoverished people scrambles to get out of harms way, while watching their aspirations for a better life disappear. For decades, this script has permanently played in Africa. But now it looks like it is occurring in East Timor, where the security situation is going from bad to worse. What was effectively a strike by soldiers angry at poor pay and what they claimed was ethnic discrimination has taken on the tone of a rebellion. That veterans of the struggle for independence against Indonesia are on opposite sides in a power struggle almost five years to the day since formal independence from Indonesia is a disaster. That they are shooting at each other is an absolute tragedy. In the short term, there is a great deal we can, and must, do to help restore peace. Australia was present at the creation of East Timor as an independent country and we are morally obliged not to abandon the struggling state. We also need to demonstrate to Indonesia that we are committed to a stable, sustainable East Timor. Last night, the nascent nation's leaders, President Xanana Gusmao and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, asked for assistance to restore peace, and Australia is responding. Good, the possibility of East Timor effectively collapsing in civil strife does not bear thinking about. Australian military personnel must stay there for as long as it takes to restore order, optimally as part of an international peacekeeping force under UN auspices.
But, while it does not seem so in all the drama of recent days, ensuring that the shooting stops may be the easiest aspect of East Timor's troubles to resolve, because the present crisis is only a symptom of a deep-seated problem, one of the country's leaders' own making. The World Bank has warned about the risk of official corruption. And it seems Mr Alkatiri has a political tin ear. He leads a government that got into a fight with the Catholic Church last year over religious education in state schools – staggeringly stupid politics in a devoutly Catholic country. And East Timor's official language is Portuguese, spoken by nobody outside Dili's tiny educated elite. Fretilin, the political wing of the independence movement, now runs the country like a one-party state. Last week, Mr Alkatiri saw off a move against him by a Machiavellian manoeuvre at a party conference, not in parliament. It was an act easily interpreted as the work of a leadership more interested in squabbling over the spoils of power than working out how to help the ordinary people, who suffered so much for so long in the era of Indonesian occupation. And Mr Gusmao, the revered elder statesmen of the independence struggle, seems unwilling, or unable, to bring his squabbling lieutenants into line.
None of this is good enough. East Timor is Southeast Asia's poorest country, generating public revenues of a mere $50 million. Life expectancy is just 55, half the country is illiterate and per capita income is $US1 a day. The present problem comes in large part from former soldiers who did not think they were getting a fair slice of a very small cake. That East Timor's leaders have trouble managing the public finances now does not bode well for when the river of gold from energy exports, worth $13 billion, starts to flow. The immediate challenge for Australia is to restore order in East Timor. But it is essential the Australian Defence Force is seen as the ally of all East Timorese, rather than the protector of politicians.
In the longer term, we must offer, firmly, to do everything we can to help the East Timorese develop their own accountable institutions, so ordinary people do not suspect their leaders of mercenary motives – as hundreds of alienated former soldiers do now. Or we can leave Dili to its own devices, until the next time they request Australian soldiers.
We cannot afford another Solomons-style situation.