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by Noam Chomsky
9/99
It is not easy to write with
feigned calm and dispassion about the events that have been unfolding in
East Timor. Horror and shame are compounded by the fact that the crimes
are so familiar and could so easily have been terminated. That has been
true ever since Indonesia invaded in December 1975, relying on U.S.
diplomatic support and arms -- used illegally, but with secret
authorization, even new arms shipments sent under the cover of an official
"embargo." There has been no need to threaten bombing or even sanctions.
It would have sufficed for the U.S. and its allies to withdraw their
active participation, and to inform their close associates in the
Indonesian military command that the atrocities must be terminated and the
territory granted the right of self-determination that has been upheld by
the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. We cannot undo
the past, but should at least be willing to recognize what we have done,
and to face the moral responsibility of saving the remnants and providing
ample reparations, a pathetic gesture of compensation for terrible crimes.
The latest chapter in this
painful story of betrayal and complicity opened right after the referendum
of Aug. 30, 1999, when the population voted overwhelmingly for
independence. At once, atrocities mounted sharply, organized and directed
by the Indonesian military (TNI). The UN Mission (UNAMET) gave its
appraisal on September 11:
The evidence for a direct link
between the militia and the military is beyond any dispute and has been
overwhelmingly documented by UNAMET over the last four months. But the
scale and thoroughness of the destruction of East Timor in the past week
has demonstrated a new level of open participation of the military in the
implementation of what was previously a more veiled operation.
The Mission warned that "the
worst may be yet to come.... It cannot be ruled out that these are the
first stages of a genocidal campaign to stamp out the East Timorese
problem by force."
Indonesia historian John Roosa,
an official observer of the vote, described the situation starkly: "Given
that the pogrom was so predictable, it was easily preventable... But in
the weeks before the ballot, the Clinton Administration refused to discuss
with Australia and other countries the formation of [an international
force]. Even after the violence erupted, the Administration dithered for
days," until compelled by international (primarily Australian) and
domestic pressure to make some timid gestures. Even these ambiguous
messages sufficed to induce the Indonesian generals to reverse course and
to accept an international presence, illustrating the latent power that
has always been at hand.
The same power relations ensure
that the UN can do nothing without Washington consent and initiative.
While Clinton "dithers," almost half the population has been expelled from
their homes according to UN estimates, and thousands murdered. The Air
Force that was able to carry out pin-point destruction of civilian targets
in Novi Sad, Belgrade, and Ponceva lacks the capacity to drop food to
people facing starvation in the mountains to which they have been driven
by the terror of the TNI forces armed and trained by the United States,
and its no less cynical allies.
The recent events will evoke
bitter memories among those who do not prefer "intentional ignorance." We
are witnessing a shameful replay of events of 20 years ago. After carrying
out a huge slaughter in 1977-78 with the decisive support of the Carter
Administration, Indonesia felt confident enough to permit a brief visit by
members of the Jakarta diplomatic corps, among them U.S. Ambassador Edward
Masters. They recognized that an enormous humanitarian catastrophe had
been created. The aftermath was described by Benedict Anderson, one of the
most distinguished Indonesia scholars. "For nine long months" of
starvation and terror, Anderson testified at the United Nations,
"Ambassador Masters deliberately refrained, even within the walls of the
State Department, from proposing humanitarian aid to East Timor," waiting
"until the generals in Jakarta gave him the green light" -- until they
felt "secure enough to permit foreign visitors," as an internal State
Department document recorded. Only then did Washington consider taking
some steps to deal with the consequences of its actions.
As TNI forces and their
paramilitaries were burning down the capital city of Dili in September
1999, murdering and rampaging with renewed intensity, the Pentagon
announced that "A U.S.-Indonesian training exercise focused on
humanitarian and disaster relief activities concluded Aug. 25," five days
before the referendum. The lessons were applied within days in the
standard way, as all but the voluntarily blind must understand after many
years of the same tales, the same outcomes.
One gruesome illustration was the
coup that brought General Suharto to power in 1965. Army-led massacres
slaughtered hundreds of thousands in a few months, mostly landless
peasants, destroying the mass-based political party of the left, the PKI.
The achievement elicited unrestrained euphoria in the West and fulsome
praise for the Indonesian "moderates," Suharto and his military
accomplices, who had cleansed the society and opened it to foreign
plunder. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara informed Congress that U.S.
military aid and training had "paid dividends" -- including half a million
corpses; "enormous dividends," a congressional report concluded. McNamara
informed President Johnson that that U.S. military assistance "encouraged
[the army] to move against the PKI when the opportunity was presented."
Contacts with Indonesian military officers, including university programs,
were "very significant factors in determining the favorable orientation of
the new Indonesian political elite" (the army).
So matters have continued for 35
years of intensive military aid, training, and communication, up to the
humanitarian training exercises of August 1999. A few months earlier,
shortly after the massacre of dozens of refugees who had taken shelter in
a Church in Liquica, Admiral Dennis Blair, U.S. Pacific Commander, assured
TNI commander General Wiranto of U.S. support and assistance, proposing a
new U.S. training mission. In the face of this record, only briefly
sampled, and duplicated repeatedly elsewhere, the government lauds "the
value of the years of training given to Indonesia's future military
leaders in the United States and the millions of dollars in military aid
for Indonesia," urging more of the same for Indonesia and throughout the
world.
The reasons for the disgraceful
record have sometimes been honestly recognized. During the latest phase of
atrocities, a senior diplomat in Jakarta described "the dilemma" faced by
the great powers: "Indonesia matters and East Timor doesn't." It is
therefore understandable that Washington should keep to ineffectual
gestures of disapproval while insisting that internal security in East
Timor "is the responsibility of the Government of Indonesia, and we don't
want to take that responsibility away from them" -- the official stance a
few days before the August referendum, repeated in full knowledge of how
that "responsibility" had been carried out, and maintained as the most
dire predictions were quickly fulfilled.
The reasoning of the senior
diplomat was spelled out more fully by two Asia specialists of the _New
York Times_: the Clinton Administration, they write, "has made the
calculation that the United States must put its relationship with
Indonesia, a mineral-rich nation of more than 200 million people, ahead of
its concern over the political fate of East Timor, a tiny impoverished
territory of 800,000 people that is seeking independence." The second
national journal quotes Douglas Paal, president of the Asia Pacific Policy
Center, stating the facts of life: "Timor is a speed bump on the road to
dealing with Jakarta, and we've got to get over it safely. Indonesia is
such a big place and so central to the stability of the region."
The term "stability" has long
served as a code word, referring to a "favorable orientation of the
political elite" -- favorable not to their populations, but to foreign
investors and global managers.
In the rhetoric of official
Washington, "We don't have a dog running in the East Timor race."
Accordingly, what happens there is not our business. But after intensive
Australian pressure, the calculations shifted: "we have a very big dog
running down there called Australia and we have to support it," a senior
government official concluded. The survivors of U.S.-backed crimes in a
"tiny impoverished territory" are not even a "small dog."
The guiding principles were well
understood by those responsible for Indonesia's 1975 invasion. They were
articulated by UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in words that should
be committed to memory by anyone with a serious interest in international
affairs, human rights, and the rule of law. The Security Council condemned
the invasion and ordered Indonesia to withdraw, but to no avail. In his
1978 memoirs, Moynihan explains why:
The United States wished things
to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of
State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in
whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried
it forward with no inconsiderable success.
Success was indeed considerable.
Moynihan cites reports that within two months some 60,000 people had been
killed, "10 percent of the population, almost the proportion of casualties
experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War." A sign of
the success, he adds, is that within a year "the subject disappeared from
the press." So it did, as the invaders intensified their assault.
Atrocities peaked as Moynihan was writing in 1977-78. Relying on a new
flow of advanced military equipment from the Human Rights Administration,
the Indonesian military carried out a devastating attack against the
hundreds of thousands who had fled to the mountains, driving the survivors
to Indonesian control. It was then that highly credible Church sources in
East Timor sought to make public the estimates of 200,000 deaths that came
to be accepted years later, after constant denial. The U.S. reaction to
the carnage has already been described.
As the slaughter reached
near-genocidal levels, Britain and France joined in, providing arms and
diplomatic support. Other powers too sought to participate in the
lucrative aggression and massacre, always following the principles that
have been lucidly enunciated.
The story does not begin in 1975.
East Timor had not been overlooked by the planners of the postwar world.
The territory should be granted independence, Roosevelt's senior adviser
Sumner Welles mused, but "it would certainly take a thousand years." With
an awe-inspiring display of courage and fortitude, the people of East
Timor have struggled to confound that cynical prediction, enduring
monstrous disasters. Perhaps 50,000 lost their lives protecting a small
contingent of Australian commandoes fighting the Japanese; their heroism
may have saved Australia from Japanese invasion. A third of the population
were victims of the first years of the 1975 Indonesian invasion, many more
since.
The current year opened with a
moment of hope. Indonesia's interim president Habibie called for a
referendum with a choice between incorporation within Indonesia
("autonomy") or independence. The army moved at once to prevent this
outcome by terror and intimidation. In the months leading to the August
referendum, 3-5000 were killed according to highly credible Church sources
-- twice the number of deaths prior to the NATO bombing in Kosovo, more
than four times the number relative to population. The terror was
widespread and sadistic, intended as a warning of the fate awaiting those
foolhardy enough to disregard the orders of the occupying army.
Braving violence and threats,
almost the entire population voted, many emerging from hiding to do so.
Close to 80% chose independence. Then followed the latest phase of TNI
atrocities in an effort to reverse the outcome by slaughter and expulsion,
while reducing much of the country to ashes. Within two weeks more than
10,000 might have been killed, according to Bishop Carlos Filipe Belo, the
Nobel Peace laureate who was driven from his country under a hail of
bullets, his house burned down and the refugees sheltering there
dispatched to an uncertain fate.
Even before Habibie's surprise
call for a referendum, the army anticipated threats to its rule, including
its control over East Timor's resources, and undertook careful planning
with "the aim, quite simply,...to destroy a nation." The plans were known
to Western intelligence, as has been the case from the outset. TNI
recruited thousands of West Timorese and brought in forces from Java. More
ominously, the military command sent units of its dread U.S.-trained
Kopassus special forces, and as senior military adviser, General Makarim,
a U.S.-trained intelligence specialist with experience in East Timor and
"a reputation for callous violence."
Terror and destruction began
early in the year. The TNI forces responsible have been described as
"rogue elements" in the West, a questionable judgment. There is good
reason to accept Bishop Belo's assignment of direct responsibility to
commanding General Wiranto in Jakarta. It appears that the militias have
been managed by elite units of Kopassus, the "crack special forces unit"
that had "been training regularly with US and Australian forces until
their behaviour became too much of an embarrassment for their foreign
friends," veteran Asia correspondent David Jenkins reports. These forces
are "legendary for their cruelty," Benedict Anderson observes: in East
Timor they "became the pioneer and exemplar for every kind of atrocity,"
including systematic rapes, tortures and executions, and organization of
hooded gangsters. They adopted the tactics of the U.S. Phoenix program in
South Vietnam that killed tens of thousands of peasants and much of the
indigenous South Vietnamese leadership, Jenkins writes, as well as "the
tactics employed by the Contras" in Nicaragua, following lessons taught by
their CIA mentors. The state terrorists were "not simply going after the
most radical pro-independence people but going after the moderates, the
people who have influence in their community." "It's Phoenix," a
well-placed source in Jakarta reported: the aim is "to terrorise everyone"
-- the NGOs, the Red Cross, the UN, the journalists.
Well before the referendum, the
commander of the Indonesian military in Dili, Colonel Tono Suratman,
warned of what was to come: "I would like to convey the following," he
said: "if the pro-independents do win ... all will be destroyed... It will
be worse than 23 years ago." An army document of early May, when
international agreement on the referendum was reached, ordered that
"Massacres should be carried out from village to village after the
announcement of the ballot if the pro-independence supporters win." The
independence movement "should be eliminated from its leadership down to
its roots." Citing diplomatic, church and militia sources, the Australian
press reported "that hundreds of modern assault rifles, grenades and
mortars are being stockpiled, ready for use if the autonomy option is
rejected at the ballot box." It warned that the army-run militias might be
planning a violent takeover of much of the territory if, despite the
terror, the popular will would be expressed.
All of this was understood by the
"foreign friends," who also knew how to bring the terror to an end, but
preferred evasive and ambiguous reactions that the Indonesian Generals
could easily interpret as a "green light" to carry out their work.
The sordid history must be viewed
against the background of U.S.-Indonesia relations in the postwar era. The
rich resources of the archipelago, and its critical strategic location,
guaranteed it the central role in U.S. global planning. These factors lie
behind U.S. efforts 40 years ago to dismantle Indonesia, perceived as too
independent and too democratic, even permitting participation of the
leftist peasant-based PKI. The same factors account for Western support
for the regime of killers and torturers who brought about a "favorable
orientation" in 1965. Their achievements were, furthermore, understood to
be a vindication of Washington's wars in Indochina, motivated in large
part by concerns that the "virus" of independent nationalism might
"infect" Indonesia, to borrow Kissingerian rhetoric. Support for the
invasion of East Timor and subsequent atrocities was reflexive, though a
broader analysis should attend to the fact that the collapse of the
Portuguese empire had much the same consequences in Africa, where South
Africa was the agent of Western-backed terror. Throughout, Cold War
pretexts were routinely invoked, serving as a convenient disguise for ugly
motives and actions, particularly so in Southeast Asia.
Surely we should by now be
willing to cast aside mythology and face the causes and consequences of
our actions, not only in East Timor. In that tortured corner of the world
there is still time, though very little time, to prevent a hideous
consummation of one of the most appalling tragedies of the terrible
century that is winding to a horrifying, wrenching close.
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