Posted on 8-3-2003

Reply To Horta

Max Lane, a key figure in the international part of the Free East Timor
movement, replies to Ramos Horta's support of the US warmongering. Lane's
brief history is somewhat Australia-centric, leaving out completely the
significance of the APEC meeting in Auckland, but this is an interesting
read from a man who has probably met and admired Horta in previous times.
(stu@ihug.co.nz)

East Timor, Iraq and Ramos Horta: the failures of the diplomatic memory
By Max Lane

The article by Jose Ramos Horta defending the aggressive strategy of the US
administration of George W Bush towards Iraq is not a surprise. Hortas
approach to diplomacy throughout the struggle for East Timors independence
was always based on offering assurances to Washington that an independent
East Timor would be friendly towards US interests. This approach was bound
to lead to major defects of memory (and analysis) once Independence was
achieved. These defects are most evident in his article War for Peace? It
worked in My Country, published in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age on
February 25.

Foreign Minister Horta tries in his article do equate the case of Iraq with
that of East Timor. Of course, in this he follows in the footsteps of John
Howard and Alexander Downer. Horta states: In 1999, a global peacekeeping
force helped East Timor secure its independence and protect its people. The
truth is that the peacekeeping force, INTERFET, played no role in either
securing East Timorese independence or protecting its people. INTERFET
soldiers arrived in East Timor AFTER the Indonesian government and military
had agreed to respect the referendum and withdraw. When INTERFET did
arrive, they took no action to prevent some final acts of destruction by
Jakarta forces. INTERFETs main role was to help rebuild some of the East
Timorese damaged infrastructure, such as roads and bridges.

Throughout the struggle for East Timorese independence, right up until the
arrival of INTERFET, the primary force that was exerted to defeat Suharto
and then the Indonesian military was the mass street action by the peoples
of East Timor, Indonesia, Australia and Portugal. In this struggle, the
threat of military force played no role.

There were four major turning points in the struggle for East Timorese
independence.

The first was mass demonstration in Dili in November, 1991 which ended with
the Santa Cruz massacre. This demonstration and the televised massacre,
which was the culmination of a series of demonstrations, including one
during the visit to Dili of the Pope a year earlier, revived East Timor as
an issue for international public opinion. The previous level of lobbying
and other state level diplomacy in the United Nations had in the meanwhile
totally failed to have any serious impact.

The second turning point was the mass upheaval in Indonesia in early 1998.
The Indonesian student led anti-dictatorship movement forced the collapse
of the Suharto dictatorship and its replacement by a much weaker government
under continuing pressure to democratise and demilitarise. Another wave of
mass demonstrations took place in November 1998 demanding, among other
things, a reduction on the role of the military in Indonesian politics.
Facing a deep economic crisis and mass pressure for reform on many
different fronts, and receiving advice from figures outside the old Suharto
ruling circles, President Habibie decided to allow the United Nations to
hold a referendum in East Timor. If the students had not overthrown
Suharto, it is very possible that Xanana may still be in jail and East
Timor still occupied.

The third turning point was the incredibly courageous mass mobilisation of
East Timorese in the face of violent opposition by the Jakarta backed
militia to participate in the campaign for the referendum and in the vote
in September, 1999.

The fourth turning point was the mass protests in Australia and Portugal
demanding international intervention in East Timor as a response to the
Indonesian militarys scorched earth policy and the mass forced deportations
and the militias violent attacks and murder of pro-Independence people. In
Australia, demonstrations escalated in size from a few hundred to more than
50,000 in Sydney and Melbourne each within just a six days. These
mobilisations were not only driven by a sense of solidarity with the East
Timorese people but with intense and growing anger with the Australian
government for its inaction. This was an anger which had acumulated over
two decades of inaction and complicity. These demonstrations threatened to
escalate into even larger and angrier demonstrations, drawing in the trade
unions, if the Australian government continued its defence of Jakarta and
the Indonesian military. Howard lobbied Washington frantically to pressure
Habibie to allow international forces to enter East Timor in order to stave
of a political crisis in Australia.

Habibie made his decision not because of fear of some overhwelming military
force about to descend on East Timor from Darwin. Habibies decision was a
response by a weak and crisis ridden government desperately looking for
international support. It was threatened with increasing isolation as
Western capitals, especially Washington and Canberra, were faced with
rapidly increasing hostility from a mobilised public opinion. So the
INTERFET forces arrived in East Timor as a volunteer construction team and
a border patrol unit. In this role, INTERFET has been involved in no
military offensives and only in very rare exchanges of fire with remnant
militias.

So it was neither the threat of force nor state level diplomatic lobbying
that were crucial in this struggle. The failure of state level diplomatic
lobbying was reflected most vividly in the incredible passivity of
Washington and Canberra in the aftermath of the September 1999 referendum.
Both Clinton and Howard were willing to accept the implementation of the
scorched earth policy and the mass deportations in East Timor. Perhaps -
but only perhaps - they may have later insisted in East Timorese
independence, after the damage was done. In the meantime, it was the mass
protests in Sydney, Melbourne and Lisbon that forced an end to that rampage.

There are obvious other differences between the case of Iraq and East
Timor. Perhaps the most important is that the leadership of the National
Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), which represented close to 100% of
the massive pro-independence popular sentiment, supported the campaign for
an international intervention. In Iraq today, there is no clear
overwhelming call from the Iraqi people for the United States, United
Kingdom and Australia to invade, overthrow the regime, and set-up a
temporary US military administration. Opposition groups in Iraq are divided
on this question with many groups opposing the US plans. Furthermore it is
impossible to say who has popular support and who does not.

The real lesson from the East Timor case is that democratic political
change, including national liberation, will come about as a result of the
oppressed people themselves organising and mobilising an opposition. The US
aggressive strategy, pursued by Bush and by Clinton earlier in the form of
the embargo on Iraq, has in fact held back such a process.

The embargo and the bombing of the so-called no-fly zones have driven Iraqi
society so dramatically backwards, socially and economically. Survival,
rather than the struggle for democratic change, has become the necessary
focus of so many people in Iraq. This, combined with pressures to unite to
overcome the US driven, embargo and bombings, has strengthened the
repressive regime in Baghdad rather than strengthened any struggle for
change. Iraq has long ceased to be a military threat to any of its
neighbors. Its armed forces are half the strength they were at the time of
the invasion of Kuwait. They are also much more poorly equipped. Iraq has
no industrial infrastructure to back an aggressive military policy.
Countries like Kuwait are now defended by the militarily superior United
States.

Meanwhile we have the statements by earlier UN arms inspectors such as
Scott Ritter that Iraq has been effectively disarmed of weapons of mass
destruction. Even the French and German governments, in their current
memorandum submitted to the UN Security Council, state that there is no
evidence that Iraq continues to possess such weapons. On this last aspect,
Foreign Minister Horta has swallowed holus bolus Washingtons version of
reality.

Horta cannot tell apples from oranges. Howard, Downer and Co. want us all
to believe that apples are oranges. To date, the mass of people in
Australia have not been confused by this deception (except for a few
people here and there on the Left). When hundreds of thousands of people -
including no doubt all those who came out for East Timor in 1999 -
demonstrated around Australia against the US, UK, Australian invasion of
Iraq, they voted with their feet against this spurious attempt to equate
the case of East Timor and Iraq. It was good to see that such protests also
took place in East Timor last February 15 as well.

[Max Lane chaired the 50,000 strong demonstration in Hyde Park, Sydney on
September 11, 1999 demanding that Australia and the United Nations send
troops to East Timor. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for
Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), University of
Wollongong. He is also the national chairperson of Action in Solidarity
with Asia and the Pacific.]