East Timor Intervention

A retrospective on INTERFET

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• Publisher: MUP Academic Digital
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780522867763
• eBook ISBN: 9780522867770
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Australia's involvement in the liberation of East Timor in 1999 was the most decisive demonstration of Australian influence in the region since World War II and the largest military contribution since the Vietnam War. Australian diplomacy and leadership shaped the events that led to the birth of Asia's newest nation.
East Timor Intervention looks at the crisis through the prism of key participants and observers on the ground and abroad, including Indonesia's martial law commander Kiki Syahnakri defending his record, the country's first president Xanana Gusmo on the resolution and poise of Timor's resistance fighters, Australia's Chief of Defence Force Chris Barrie on cobbling the force together, commander of the International Force Peter Cosgrove on the operation, and key policy adviser Hugh White on Canberra's policy contortions in the lead-up to the intervention.
This impressive collection includes significant new perspectives on Southeast Asian security affairs and the role Australia can play in regional security and stability.

Part I

The Lead-up to the Intervention

1

INTERFET and the United Nations

Michael G Smith

The International Force in East Timor was a multinational coalition of twenty-two nations that successfully restored security in East Timor in 1999 after violence erupted following the UN-supervised electoral ballot. INTERFET was authorised under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1264 of 15 September 1999, with the agreement of Indonesia. The operation was led by Australia under the command of Major General Peter Cosgrove. INTERFET was preceded by the United Nations Mission in East Timor, a UN electoral mission authorised on 11 June 1999 under Resolution 1246. UNAMET was led by Ian Martin from Great Britain, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for East Timor, to enable the Timorese people to vote on their political future through a ‘popular consultation’ (ballot).

On 30 August 1999, 78.5 per cent of the eligible population voted for East Timor not to be incorporated into the Republic of Indonesia. Intimidation by pro-Indonesian militias that had commenced in the lead-up to the ballot quickly turned into systematic violence when the electoral results were announced. East Timor’s infrastructure was largely destroyed, and gross human rights violations were perpetrated by Indonesian-backed militias. INTERFET quickly commenced stabilisation operations in East Timor on 20 September, only five days after receiving UN authorisation. Five months later, with peace restored and without sustaining any fatal casualties, INTERFET successfully handed over to the United Nations Peacekeeping Force, which was part of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor. UNTAET was headed by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello from Brazil and mandated by the Security Council under Resolution 1272 of 25 October 1999 to shepherd the nation to independence, which ultimately occurred on 20 May 2002. Both INTERFET and UNTAET were conducted under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter and Australia provided the largest military contingent to both.

These sequential UN-mandated missions—UNAMET, INTERFET and UNTAET—were not without significant challenges, but generally they have been assessed as among the most successful in the UN’s history.¹ Australia’s role in these operations was substantial, and East Timor’s independence was possible in part because of the overall responsible approach by Indonesia in accepting the UN’s authorised interventions following the post-ballot violence.

At the global level, resolution of the East Timor problem reflected a willingness by the international community to intervene in disputes in the post–Cold War era. However, unlike the international intervention in Kosovo that preceded the ballot in 1999, Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor had since 1975 been a specific and long-standing issue on the UN agenda, and the UN’s actions in East Timor always remained cognisant of international law and national sovereignty.

For Australia, INTERFET can be seen as an important part of its contribution to the UN’s efforts to resolve the contested occupation of East Timor by Indonesia. More broadly, however, Australia’s involvement can also be seen as a continuation of its support to the United Nations in resolving regional conflicts. Australia’s involvement in East Timor was the fourth occasion since the UN’s establishment after World War II that Australia’s national security interests in its immediate region were enacted through support to the United Nations. Earlier precedents were in support of Indonesia’s independence in 1948–49, the Korean War in 1950–53, and the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia in 1992–93. These very different interventions all occurred with the legitimacy bestowed by the United Nations and can be perceived as a continuation of Australia’s national security policy. As a small to medium power, Australia’s civil-military support to and through the United Nations has been a sensible and cost-effective approach to contributing purposefully to regional and global security. Moreover, on each of these four instances the importance of Australia’s alliance with the United States was not jeopardised.

This chapter sets the scene for the ones that follow. It explains INTERFET in the context of the succession of UN-mandated missions required to resolve the question of independence for East Timor in 1999–2002. INTERFET operations are addressed in this context, and strategic lessons highlighted relevant to Australia’s national security.

The UN’s Role in East Timor

The UN’s role in resolving the East Timor dispute originated as part of the decolonisation process following World War II. Except for a brief period of independence in 1975 (discussed below), and until the UNAMET-supervised ballot on 30 August 1999, the Timorese people were ruled by foreign powers and had little say in their political destiny. Portugal was the colonial power for more than 400 years, only to be supplanted briefly by Japan in World War II, the country was returned to Portugal after that war, and then occupied by Indonesia in 1975.

The Portuguese were benign rulers and allowed the traditional system of authority to continue under a veneer of colonial administration. Portuguese was the official language, but by the late nineteenth century the Roman Catholic Church had begun to promote the dominant local language, Tetun, as the lingua franca. The colonial power, however, did little to develop Portuguese Timor. For example, a UN report in 1975 noted that, ‘As late as 1974 … over 90 per cent of the East Timorese population remained illiterate, the territory had but one high school and, with the exception of some paved streets in [the capital] Dili, all roads in East Timor were unsealed.’²

In 1942, during World War II, Japan occupied the Dutch East Indies and Portuguese Timor, but these territories reverted to colonial rule immediately following Japan’s surrender in 1945. The Dutch reign was short lived, however, with the Republic of Indonesia achieving its independence in 1949, which included the former Dutch territory of the western part of the island of Timor. Close relationships between Australian troops and the Timorese people were established during World War II, and strengthened within civil society when large numbers of Timorese settled in Australia following Indonesia’s occupation of the country in 1975.

Portuguese Timor continued as a colony until 1975, but in the wake of Portugal’s socialist Carnation Revolution on 25 April 1974, the distant colony remained under-resourced and neglected. Following the 1965 abortive communist coup in Indonesia, the Soeharto regime became increasingly concerned at the prospect of instability on its borders. In late 1974 a group of senior Indonesian generals launched a covert operation (Operasi Komodo) to establish the conditions to justify the incorporation of the colony into Indonesia. Relations were established first with the leadership of the small Timorese Popular Democratic Association (APODETI) party that favoured incorporation with Indonesia, and then with the more popular right-wing Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) party. Indonesia also indicated that it would not accept self-determination for the colony if it meant the coming to power of FRETILIN, the left-wing Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, assessing this party as controlled by communist elements.

On 11 August 1975, UDT conducted a coup and assumed power from the Portuguese authorities, catalysing a short and bloody civil war with FRETILIN (and FRETILIN’s military wing, the Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor—FALINTIL). FRETILIN was victorious over UDT, but soon came under attack in the western border region from Indonesian military forces and their supported militias. On 28 November, FRETILIN unilaterally declared independence but failed to gain international recognition. On 7 December, Indonesia assaulted and captured Dili, having received tacit approval from the United States and Australia.³ Indonesia incorporated East Timor as its twenty-seventh province on 17 July 1976, ignoring UN resolutions from the General Assembly and Security Council affirming the right of East Timorese to self-determination.

In 1983 the UN Secretary-General instituted tripartite talks between Portugal, Indonesia and the United Nations to review the prospects for settlement, but little progress was made until the end of the Cold War in 1989, the Asian economic crisis of 1997 and Soeharto’s fall the following year. UN negotiations intensified in 1997 with the appointment of Jamsheed Marker as the Secretary-General’s Personal Representative for East Timor, and with the assumption of power by Indonesia’s new President, BJ Habibie, in May 1998. On 27 January 1999, Habibie announced that a referendum should be conducted to enable the East Timorese to decide if they wanted to remain within Indonesia. The President’s decision was contrary to the advice he had received from Australia’s Prime Minister, John Howard, and did not reflect consultation with the Indonesian military forces, which had developed a deep psychological and economic commitment to retaining the twenty-seventh province, where its forces had suffered many casualties and where it was the preeminent force in business and government.

On 5 May 1999, agreements were signed between Indonesia, Portugal and the United Nations for the conduct of a UN-supervised ballot. The account of the ballot is beyond the scope of this chapter, but has been well addressed by Ian Martin, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for UNAMET and is covered further in this book.⁴ Of relevance to UNAMET and INTERFET, however, is the level of assistance provided by Australia for the UN-supervised ballot.

Australia’s Assistance to UNAMET

Before the signing of the 5 May agreements, and although not party to these tripartite negotiations, Australia intensified efforts to assist the United Nations. In early 1999 an East Timor Task Force was established within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) under Nick Warner to monitor developments and recommend policy options to government. This task force assured a ‘whole-of-government’ approach through its composition and regular consultation with relevant departments and intelligence agencies. Critically, it maintained close working relations with the Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York which, under Ambassador Penny Wensley, was particularly active, including as a member of the East Timor core group of countries. Within Defence, a special position of Director-General East Timor was established to ensure close liaison with the task force and Australia’s UN Permanent Mission, and to strengthen support to the UN Secretariat, particularly to the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), which had the lead for East Timor under Francesc Vendrell, the director of the Asia and Pacific Division, and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which was responsible for military and police planning. The Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Chris Barrie, appointed Brigadier (later Major General) Michael Smith to this position, in part to ensure a suitable Australian candidate was ready should a UN PKF be required to deploy on short notice.

Commencing in April 1999, and almost every month ahead of the ballot, representatives from the task force visited New York to confirm assistance to the United Nations. Support was provided to DPA regarding political and security assessments and to strengthen capacity within the Electoral Division. Assistance was also provided to the understrength military planning service in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations to undertake contingency planning for a possible PKF following the ballot. This force structure and capability planning later proved invaluable when INTERFET was required to be established at short notice.

A lack of information sharing and joint planning within and between departments and agencies is common in many bureaucracies, and so it was within the UN Secretariat in 1999. This deficiency was later highlighted in the seminal Brahimi Report of 2000,⁵ but in 1999 the regular visits by Australia helped strengthen the work of the Australian Permanent Mission and bring together the various areas of the UN Secretariat responsible for East Timor planning and assessment. Australia proved a willing workhorse for the understrength Secretariat, drafting a number of documents for UN consideration that later were adopted. An early success of Australia’s diplomacy occurred when the chief of the Electoral Division, Carina Perelli, decided to establish the operational base for UNAMET in Darwin. Other locations were considered, but Australia’s agreement to provide logistic support proved convincing. In the wake of the violence that followed the ballot, the decision to base in Darwin proved even more sensible, providing a safe sanctuary for UN and Timorese evacuees, and a secure location from which INTERFET could be launched and logistically supported.

The preparation for the ballot was a monumental task for the modest UNAMET mission of around 1000 personnel. In addition to logistic support, Australia contributed personnel to the mission’s field operations. Alan Mills from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) was appointed the UNAMET Police Commissioner, and he was accompanied by a number of Australian police, who formed the small UN Civilian Police (CIVPOL) unit that had been authorised for 280 personnel. Following Indonesia’s belated agreement to the deployment of UN Military Liaison Officers, the Australian Defence Force quickly assigned officers to the small international unit that had been authorised for fifty unarmed military officers.⁶ A number of Australians were also selected by the United Nations to fill civilian electoral and administrative positions, and to be part of the contingent of UN volunteers required to assist with implementation of the ballot. Despite this significant Australian presence and the blatant intimidation of voters by pro-integrationists in the lead up to the ballot, the extent of violence that followed surprised the United Nations and most countries, particularly given Indonesia’s assurance that it would maintain security.

Australia’s support to and understanding of UNAMET, and its close geographic proximity to the territory, enabled Australia (with the consent of the United Nations and Indonesia) to successfully evacuate UN personnel and ‘approved nationals’ (vulnerable people, other than those from Australia, considered to be at risk) by air from Dili to Darwin, concluding on 14 September 1999. A small group of twelve UNAMET personnel, headed by the Chief Military Liaison Officer Brigadier Rezaqul Haider from Bangladesh, camped in the former Australian Consulate in Dili and awaited the arrival of INTERFET.

The determination of the final ballot results by the independent electoral commission in Dili on 4 September revealed that of 446 953 votes counted, only 1.8 per cent were invalid, and that a substantial majority of 78.5 per cent of voters had rejected the proposed constitutional framework for East Timor to remain part of Indonesia.⁷ In light of this clear verdict by the Timorese people, the extent of violence, destruction and forced displacement perpetrated by Indonesia and its proxy militias was made even worse. The result was a major hum...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by John Howard
• Map of East Timor
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction: Marking Fifteen Years on for INTERFET
• Part I: The Lead-up to the INTERFET Intervention
• Part II: The Intervention
• Part III: International Perspectives
• Part IV: Reflections
• Appendix: Military History and Heritage Victoria
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Time Line of Key Events
• Index