A brief response to Mark Aarons, ‘Beloved Companheiros’ (August 2006).
Mark writes well and with authority concerning recent events in East Timor. However dismissing Indonesian and Australian involvement in the downfall of Alkatiri may be a little premature. It might surprise Mark that in a conversation with Jim Dunn about four months ago he expressed the view that Indonesia might well be interfering in the internal affairs of East Timor. It would be surprising if they were not. One has only to look at the modus operandi of the TNI and supporting intelligence agencies in the Moluccas, Aceh, West Papua and Kalimantan. Indeed Mark says in relation to 1975, “It was clear that Indonesia would not accept an independent East Timor”. Nothing about the TNI or the way it operates has changed over the intervening 30 years so we can assume it has a mandate to destabilise East Timor in order to demonstrate that independence as a mendicant, failed state is not an option worth pushing for.
For me the hastily produced and badly presented Four Corners program of 19 June did not produce compelling evidence. I believe many bits of information are still waiting to see the light of day but in the absence of investigative reporting by the Australian media, the limited attention span relating to any issue in this country and the fact that the problem appears solved, we may not, for the time being, get to the bottom of what was and is going on in East Timor. Israel and Lebanon rated better requiring, amongst many others, four ABC journalists.
Both Ramos Horta and Xanana Gusmao were prepared to let slide the prosecution of Indonesian soldiers involved in pre-Independence massacres, a decision which pleased both Indonesian and Australian governments. Alkatiri took a different stance. He also got up the nose of Howard and Downer over the oil negotiations, his refusal to deal with the World Bank and through his antipathy toward Australian businessmen.
Howard was spooked by advice from the US suggesting that Alkatiri might nurture and give safe haven to terrorists presumably based on the knowledge that he had allowed Cuban doctors to work in East Timor and that he was a former communist. Such are the times we live in. Both Horta and Gusmao have shown themselves to be flexible to the will of their two powerful neighbours, perhaps they are realists rather than compliant. However that should not blind us to where the pressure is coming from nor to the fact that when push comes to shove both leaders would look south. If Australia is going to fulfill those expectations it will expect easy access to the seat of power which it appears to have achieved.
It is to be hoped that Australia does not get carried away with its new-found influence and dissatisfied with its new Consuls.
