Managing the East Timor problem
Australia pointedly maintained its links with the Indonesian armed forces (ABRI) in the aftermath of the fall of Suharto. In March 1999, the Chief of the Australian Defense Force (CDF), Adm. Barrie, led a large Australian delegation to Jakarta for talks with ABRI. High on the agenda was the problem of East Timor, about which much dubious history has been written recently.
East Timor, the eastern half of the island of Timor, is just off Australia's northern coast, and has long been an irritant in the bilateral relationship. Until 1974, East Timor was a neglected and mismanaged remnant of the Portuguese empire. Then a left-wing army coup in Lisbon provoked civil war there. Having acquired weapons from the Portuguese, the Marxist Fretilin group took power and declared independence. Fretilin was a carbon-copy of the Soviet and Cuban-backed guerrilla groups in the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola. That was alarming to Indonesia, especially after the fall of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to the communists in early 1975. With the Soviet navy an unwelcome but increasing presence in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, Indonesia was alarmed at the prospect of a Cuba astride some of its most sensitive SLOCs.
President Suharto would have preferred a political resolution of the East Timor problem. He had always been anxious to distance himself from his predecessor, President Sukarno, whose adventurist policies had created turmoil, and led to the foreign intervention that Indonesia feared most. Suharto also knew that Indonesia's international reputation, important for its access to loans and aid, would beat risk if he used force. But Suharto was unable to engineer a political solution for the Timor problem, and Indonesia invaded the colony in December 1975. Conscious of the regional security issues at stake, Indonesia's ASEAN partners made no complaint. Australia, while unsettled by Indonesia's use of force and the harshness of its occupation, recognized Indonesia's incorporation of East Timor in 1978. That was partly because Australia needed to negotiate a sea-bed boundary agreement with Indonesia. But the United Nations continued to recognize the sovereignty of Portugal.
Indonesia has done much to develop East Timor, providing nearly all of the budget for its 800,000 people. But Indonesian role has been brutal, even if estimates of 200,000 deaths are probably exaggerated. Several thousand refugees have fled to Australia. These include former Fretilin leader, Jose Ramos Horta, a Nobel peace laureate, who has for many years helped to orchestrate an international campaign against Indonesia.
In 1975, East Timor represented a greater threat to Indonesia 'out' rather than 'in'. That situation is now reversed. With the Cold War over, no hostile great power is poised to make a Cuba out of East Timor. ABRI's brutality there is a constant cause of criticism of Indonesia, jeopardizing the international financial and other support that Indonesia desperately needs.
