And, finally, these all need time, a lot of time.

ABS-CBN
Timor-Leste

CONTINUUM
By EDGARDO B. ESPIRITU

Timor-Leste’s experience provides many important lessons for the rest of the world. Perhaps chief among these is that a nation’s strength and permanence rest primarily on the unity and aspirations of its people, and also to a large extent on the existence of institutions and mechanisms that enables the nation’s wealth to serve the people’s needs.

East Timor, or Timor-Leste, is the world’s newest sovereign state, having been formed in August 1999 through a UN-supervised referendum in which the majority of the East Timorese voted for independence from Indonesia. Before being occupied by Indonesia in 1976, Timor-Leste was a colony of Portugal for about four centuries, which is why we Filipinos feel a special affinity with this fledgling nation, having been under Catholic colonizers ourselves for about the same length of time.

Timor-Leste is also this century’s first experiment in building a new nation, having gained its independence just at the turn of the new millennium. There have been many other new nations that have emerged toward the close of the last century, mostly in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, following the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. But Timor-Leste is closer to home and more familiar relative to our own experience here in Asia. It was a novel and significant experiment since it was sponsored by the entire international community, through the United Nations, which provided the peacekeeping forces, the experts and the transitional administrative infrastructure. It was supported financially by the world donor community, which poured in massive official development assistance totaling about US$ 2.2 billion from 1999-2002.

But now, six years from the nation’s birth, this great experiment is at the brink of collapse if no action, perhaps as massive and as decisive as that which attended its creation, is undertaken. The country is gripped by widespread anarchy and lawlessness—gang warfare and looting, violent clashes between mutinous soldiers and government troops, refugees crowding in makeshift camps and facing food and water shortages. The crisis has been traced to the government’s hard-line response to a strike called by disgruntled soldiers and to the growing rifts within the country’s leadership itself, as well as to the pervasive poverty and unemployment, which drove many to form and join the warring gangs.

The crisis has gone to a point where other countries within and outside the region have again found it necessary to come to Timor-Leste’s aid. About 2,000 peacekeeping troops from Australia, New Zealand, Portugal and Malaysia are now trying to help restore some order in the country, but this task is proving to be very difficult indeed. The Australian defense minister has called on other countries in Asia and the Pacific to help Timor-Leste to get through this crisis, warning that allowing it to become a failed state would adversely impact the rest of the region since it would then become a have for transnational crime, terrorism, and humanitarian disasters and injustice.

Timor-Leste’s experience provides many important lessons for the rest of the world. Perhaps chief among these is that a nation’s strength and permanence rest primarily on the unity and aspirations of its people, and also to a large extent on the existence of institutions and mechanisms that enables the nation’s wealth to serve the people’s needs. No amount of outside assistance would sustain a nation if its people do not see themselves yet as having a common identity and shared goals. True, Timor-Leste has its share of freedom fighters and patriots, who are now in positions of leadership in the country, but the common folk, by and large, have not yet formed a strong sense of nationhood.

With regard to the economy, although the country possesses certain natural gifts, such as oil and gas, these are still largely undeveloped. Moreover, this technology and capital-intensive industry has hardly helped in creating jobs for the large number of unemployed, which comprises about 50 percent of its labor force. There are no production facilities in the country itself and the gas is piped directly to Australia. The country is still agricultural with around a quarter of the GDP coming from agriculture and yet only around eight percent of the land is arable and is arid and of poor quality relative to its neighbors in the region. No wonder, around 42 percent of its people live under the poverty line.

The billions of dollars of foreign aid have not been enough to build sufficient physical, social, and institutional infrastructure to enable the country to face the myriad problems and meet the enormous needs of a newborn nation. External help and resources can only go so far. These are usually good for the initial efforts but can rarely be counted on for the very long haul. A graphic account of the situation, for instance, depicts Timorese farms where foreign-provided tractors lie broken and idle for lack of fuel and poor maintenance. The foreign experts and advisers also rarely stay and soon leave the country to poorly-trained and ill-prepared bureaucracy and administrators.

As a Timorese villager said of the foreign peacekeepers who now come to help them, "If they come, it’s OK. But then they leave, and it [the violence] starts again." This applies to other forms of assistance as well. The international community wanted to jumpstart the building of this new nation, to set it up as a model for other newly independent nations to emulate. But nation building really cannot be hurried. Besides financial and technical resources, more important, it needs the painstaking planting and nurturing of national pride and a true sense of independence, and of enhancing human capabilities.

Moreover, no outsider can impose or provide these to a people; although he can help, ultimately they have to find and work for these themselves.

And, finally, these all need time, a lot of time.