East Timor, Study Case

INTERFET in East Timor East Timor (1999-2000) The deployment of the Australian-led INTERFET to East Timor in September 1999 was seen as a necessary step to establish the political stability the UNTAET administration needed to fulfil its tasks. The operation was prompted by the wave of Indonesian-backed violence that followed the East Timorese decision to opt for independence in a referendum. East Timor’s misery began in 1974-5 when Indonesia used the turmoil that accompanied the withdrawal of Portuguese imperial rule to intervene and subsequently annex the country (Subroto 1997). Many East Timorese resisted Indonesian occupation and thousands joined the Falintil guerrilla movement and launched an armed struggle against Indonesian rule. The Indonesian government responded severely, ethnically cleansing villages thought to be sympathetic to the rebels and deliberately causing major food shortages (Taylor 1999). Although estimates vary, it is thought that around 10,000 Indonesian soldiers were killed by the rebels and as many as 230,000 (out of a population of 630,000) East Timorese died as a result of direct Indonesian action or the malnutrition and disease that accompanied it (Dee 2001: 19n5; Shwarz 1994). The issue attracted significant international attention in 1991 when 271 unarmed East Timorese civilians were killed and 382 wounded by the Indonesian army during a pro-independence march in Dili (Cotton 2001: 134). After Habibie replaced Suharto as Indonesian president in 1998 progress began to be made until under pressure from the UN, the government agreed to hold a referendum on independence, under UNAMET supervision. Unsurprisingly, the election resulted in an overwhelming vote for independence (78.5%) and sparked Indonesian-backed militia to unleash a wave of mass murder and looting (Bartu 2000; Fischer 2000;

Kingsbury 2000; Martinkus 2001: 51-200). Indonesia insisted that regardless of the vote, it continued to hold sovereignty over East Timor. This

References: Bartu, P. (2000), ‘The Militia, the Military and the People of Bobonaro District’ in D. Kingsbury (ed.), Guns and Ballot Boxes: East Timor’s Vote for Independence (Melbourne: Monash Asia Institute), pp. 81-98. Bull, C. (2008), No Entry Without Strategy: Building the Rule of Law under UN Transitional Administration (Tokyo: UN University Press). Chesterman, S. (2007), ‘East Timor’ in M. Berdal and S. Economides (eds.), United Nations Interventionism 1991-2004 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 192-216. Cotton, J. (2001), ‘Against the Grain: The East Timor Intervention’, Survival, 43(1): 127-42. Dee, M. (2001), ‘“Coalitions of the Willing” and Humanitarian Intervention’, International Peacekeeping, 8(3): 1-20. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT, Australia) (2001), East Timor in Transition 1998-2000 (Canberra: DFAT). Fischer, T. (2000), Ballots and Bullets: Seven Days in East Timor (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin). Howard, L.M. (2008), UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kingsbury, D. (2000), ‘The TNI and the Militias’ in D. Kingsbury (ed.), Guns and Ballot Boxes: East Timor’s Vote for Independence (Melbourne: Monash Asia Institute), pp. 69-80. Mack, A. (1999), ‘Intervention in East Timor – From the Ground’, RUSI Journal, 144(6): 20-26. Martinkus, J. (2001), A Dirty Little War (Sydney: Random House Australia). Schwarz, A. (1994), A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia in the 1990s (Sydney: Allen and Unwin). Seybolt, T. (2007), Humanitarian Military Intervention (Oxford: Oxford University Press for SIPRI). Smith, M. and M. Dee (2006), ‘East Timor’ in W. J. Durch (ed.), Twenty-First Century Peace Operations (Washington DC: US Institute of Peace), pp. 389-466. Smith, M. and M. Dee (2003), Peacekeeping in East Timor (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). Subroto, H. (1997), Eyewitness to Integration of East Timor (Jakarta: Pustaka Sinar Harapan).