>Was it that "reconciliation of factions" (in East Timor? you mean
including the militia and/or Indo military as "factions"?) was not
possible, or less probable, with an armed UN faction there that might be
able to prevent the bloodshed?<
not exactly. i guess i'm saying that the whole idea of reconciliation here was an absurdity. right up until the ballot was announced, the Aust govt was arguing against independance and for autonomy, and as the diplomatic papers now show, this was done by way of the phraseology of 'the need for reconciliation between the factions', as if the militia were indeed autonomous from the TNI.
> So in effect they were arguing for massacre as reconciliation?<
in that sense, yes. and the fiction of the militia independance from the TNI is what draws all the other fictions together into a seemingly coherent whole: the various agreements brokered by the UN to disarm the "competing factions" in the lead up to the ballot, the line pursued by the Aust govt, etc. the militia handed their weapons over to the TNI and police, only (it's fairly obvious) to have them handed back again, or rather, distributed.
the stuff about "competing factions" was (and still is to a large extent) a theatre designed to present both the indonesian govt and the australian intervention as *above and outside the conflict*. it was a strategy that was surrisingly effective given how much is known, how much contrary evidence there was --- but i guess, i need to remind myself that ideology isn't unsettled by the facts.
the other interesting thing about the recent revelations in the _Bulletin_ on the diplomatic minutes is that Ali Alatas (the indon foreign affairs minister) readily admitted to the aust diplomats that the TNI was, as he argued, legitimately arming the militia as a TNI auxiliary. so, they both knew; and they both publicly presented it as otherwise.
> What do you suppose the *real* argument of the Aus/Indo govts were, if
you think it was necessary to make any real arguments? Was their any
branch of imperial capital that needed convincing that the ET people should
not be protected? Was there anybody besides the CNRT that argued for more
protection?<
i'm not sure what you're asking about the first question. if you mean re an armed UN presence, then it's quite clear that about a week or two after the ballot, when it was becoming obvious that aust audiences were finding it impossible to endure, and with trade and tourism bans starting to bite into aust capital (trade between aust and indonesia is quite huge) and howard's standing, howard (the aust pm) approached alatas and suggested a UN force only to be told it was impossible because indon soverignty would never abide by it; he then decided that the "international community" (ie., the US) did not, as he put it, have the stomach for an intervention into asia.
on the second question, i think the portugese govt were facing a more sustained popular call for intervention. unlike the aust govt, which insisted that it did not want to go to war with indonesia (ie., a UN force could only enter east timor with an invitation from indonesia); portugal had no such qualms, citing that indonesia was not according to the Un sovereign over east timor, that the militia and the TNI would fold when confronted with soldiers rather than unarmed civilians, and of course, trade between portugal and indonesia is negligible if not non-existant, so portugese capitalist had little to lose by going to war, and everything to gain by regaining lost colonial territory as if it was merely repaying a moral debt.
>So what happened to most of the ET leaders who did that convincing of
their own people, if you have been able to find out? Escape to the
mountains? Surely they had time to plan that kind of a defense, didn't
they?<
falantil were already in the hills, and joined by many more i suspect. then again, the bulk of the CNRT leadership are in exile, or like gusmao under house arrest (but quite safe) in jakarta. (the CNRT have just set up the offices of a provisional govt here in darwin.) but, i haven't heard of any single moment when any confrontation occured between falantil and the militia. there was one occassion where pro-independance youths broke the falantil discipline and destroyed a militia members' house, only to be lectured later by gusmao that they had acted rashly. it was it seems decided that the east timorese had to not only be victims, but act as victims to an amazing extent. and there's the press release from the CNRT which cites the falantil commander saying that people should not confront the militia, this being articulated at the point when it looked most likely that the UN would not move. (i took this to imply that there was some popular pressure within the falantil ranks to mount a campaign, but that the CNRT were holding fast to the line of relying on an armed UN intervention, and indeed playing the game of hinting to the Un that unless they intervened, the slaughter would become a war.)
> But, Ange. It's unlikely the nun had a desire for the bloodshed. Rather
her statement sounds more like the rationalization you would expect from
her. Rationalizing death is what nuns do. But I agree, in this context, to
try to enoble the victims of the slaughter that way is particularly
egregious.<
no, not a desire for bloodshed, but a willingness to let the spectacle unfold in order to acheive the aim of a UN intervention. and yes, catholic nuns talking about matyrdom is nothing new; and this one happened to talk wistfully of "the old ways" when east timorese showed missionaries some respect (she was an aust nun, btw), so i get the heeby-jeebies whenever i think of that interview all round.
but, look at this comment from gusmao a couple of nights ago during the press conference in melbourne. he was responding to a question about howard having blood on his hands. first, he defended howard. second, he said, "during the struggle, we have always thought about death as a duty. If anyone must be blamed, [and he then paused at length] ourselves." that's word for word. i was a little taken aback to say the least.
>Here you argue that the Indo gov't military called the vote. And they
brought along Aus and presumably the US, getting their help to prevent the
UN from interfering. Yes, and they had good reason to want the vote: it
clarified the situation for them in several ways. They could better plan
the size of the task they faced in trucking people to West Timor, the
activity surrounding the vote allowed them to added to their list of ET
leaders to be killed, etc. (btw, since the first couple of days, I have not
heard anything more about the trucking of West Timorese into ET to replace
the people forcibly removed--did that actually happen?) And to complete
the plan, the UN "peacekeeping" force was all set up to enter after the
destruction was essentiall finished, or as much as they could reasonably do
in the alloted time, to try to blot out the inhumanity of it all with the
coming months of "humanitarian" action.<
yes, i think that's right. i think they trucked west timorese lumpenised youth into east timor, not to replace the population, but to act as militia. i hear the pay was quite good. and habibe called for a ballot on autonomy, gesturing that if the autonomy proposal was rejected, then he would offer independance. the CNRT and Portugal insisted that the independance option be put also. i think from this moment, things changed quite dramatically.
> But this still leaves open Andy's question. Indo wanted the vote. But
were the ET people really trapped? Was a boycott possible to delay the
vote? Was there enough unity in ET leadership and influence with the people
throw a monkeywrench into the Indo/Aus/ US plan by refusing to vote? If
they could, would it have made sense to do so? Or would the "factionalism"
reason you cite above--a vote boycott would certainly heighten that--be
simply used as the substitute basis for the massacre. The massacre, of
course, needed no reason; as far as I can tell none has been given. The
bloodshed has simply been presented as rogue action that could not be
controlled by anybody who could have stopped it. All the Indo govt needed
was a pretense.<
i don't know if a boycott would have been effective in the sense of numbers of voters, but i think it would have clearly signalled that dangers of the conditions under which the ballot was agreed to and the timing thereof. the militia had already decided to regard the ballot as illegitimate; so why not the CNRT? let's go back: the agreement on the ballot was signed by the UN, Portugal (as the legal sovereign), and Indonesia. Bishop Belo had argued that it was too soon. if the CNRT had done the same, Portugal would have found it politically very difficult (perhaps even impossible) to sign the agreement. Kofi Anan has already said that if he had known of the violent response, the UN would not have held the ballot.
>So perhaps the vote wasn't as much of a crisis point as I had originally
thought. It's still true, I think, that the only intervention that would
have really mattered was an armed one before the vote to protect the
result. But the ET people weren't going to get that; it was not possible.
The branches of capital, however you want to sort them and their interests
out, had planned the destruction of ET for more than a year. It was going
to be done, whether on the heels of the vote, their preferred option
because it allowed the most organization, or under some other excuse. The
ET people were going to left alone to face the onslaught. Their job was to
figure out how to survive.<
i still think the violence and the organisation of it would not have been possible without the vote. think of it like this: it allowed for the militia to emerge through the ideolody of fighting against western imperialism and old colonial powers (represented by the UN and Portugal).
without the presence of the UN (a sham presence), this would have been unthinkable and undoable, esp for the military who's ideology as a nationalist revolutionary army is the most distinctive thing about it. in many ways, it was as much about east timor as it was about the continuing presence of the military in the indon polity. replaying the glory days of anti-colonialism under sukarno is vitally important to how the military (and indon capital, since they are much the same thing) positions itself in the post-soeharto era as well as acheives (or tries to) a reassertion of the bond between the indon ruling class and the distrustful indon population.
as for other countries (aust and portugal), i'd say much the same kinds of things were in evidence, though with different ideological markings.
the events in east timor were like a sham war, not in the sense of no one dying (since there has been a lot of that), but in the sense that at no point in time did one armed force confront another one. all the deaths are civilian, and all the targets are civilian, esp in the sense of governments trying to outflank and divert the discontent of their home audiences.
in many ways, and contrary to those who have argued that events in east timor signal the powerlessness of the left in the 'west', i'd say it's the reverse. a) the limits placed on the military strategy of the US (no ground troops, no body bags) is a result of over twenty years of struggle since viet nam; b) the aust govt was forced to make at least a show of deep regret and concern because of the upsurge in union political activism (the bans, etc); c) the indonesian govt was forced to gesture a willingness to reformasi because of the insurgencies there; d) the indonesian govt knew that it could not pacify the east timorese resistance (esp after the asian crisis) and accounts had to be settled somehow... all the positions the geo-political actors took were calculated responses to working class struggles and worked within those limits.
Angela _________