East Timor Intervention: A retrospective on INTERFET

By John Howard

Australia’s involvement in the liberation of East Timor in 1999 was the most decisive demonstration of Australian influence in the region since World War II and the largest military contribution since the Vietnam War. Australian diplomacy and leadership shaped the events that led to the birth of Asia’s newest nation.
East Timor Intervention looks at the crisis through the prism of key participants and observers on the ground and abroad, including Indonesia’s martial law commander Kiki Syahnakri defending his record, the country’s first president Xanana Gusmão on the resolution and poise of Timor’s resistance fighters, Australia’s Chief of Defence Force Chris Barrie on cobbling the force together, commander of the International Force Peter Cosgrove on the operation, and key policy adviser Hugh White on Canberra’s policy contortions in the lead-up to the intervention.
This impressive collection includes significant new perspectives on Southeast Asian security affairs and the role Australia can play in regional security and stability.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Sep 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9780522867770

John Howard

John Howard is an internationally recognized therapist, wellness expert, and educator who uses the latest science to help couples have stronger relationships. He is the host of The John Howard Show, a wellness podcast, and the creator of the Ready Set Love® series of online programs for couples. John is a Cuban American whose first language is Spanish and thus prioritizes diversity and inclusion, drawing on multicultural influences from years of traveling and studying indigenous traditions. He has presented on the neuroscience of couples therapy at leading conferences and developed a couples and family therapy curriculum for the Dell Medical School in Austin. In 2019, he developed Presence Therapy®, an integrative mind-body approach to couples therapy taught to psychotherapists worldwide. John is also the CEO of PRESENCE, a wellness center in Austin dedicated to helping you achieve optimal physical, mental, and relationship health.

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Introduction

Marking Fifteen Years on for INTERFET

Dr John Blaxland

As the Asian Financial Crisis struck Southeast Asia in August 1997, I was a student at the Royal Thai Army Command & Staff College in Bangkok participating in the climactic command post exercise at Sattahip Naval Base on the Gulf of Thailand. For the exercise, I was appointed the notional commander of the ‘ASEAN and Allied Forces Brigade’, designated to work alongside the Royal Thai Armed Forces in the fictional military operation. As students, we all participated with gusto, role playing the various staff and command functions for combined and coalition military operations, giving little thought to the prospect of such a scenario ever remotely resembling a future reality. Little did I realise how prescient and uncanny that scenario would prove to be.

Just over two years later I was the principal intelligence staff officer on Brigadier Mark Evans’ Headquarters 3rd Brigade deploying as the main Australian land force component of an International Force to East Timor, which came to be more commonly known by its abbreviation as INTERFET. That international force was commanded by Major General Peter Cosgrove, the commander of the Deployable Joint Force Headquarters. Cosgrove’s headquarters happened to be dual-roled as Headquarters 1st Division, to which the 3rd Brigade belonged. The multinational coalition that was formed would include almost all of the participants represented at the earlier staff college activity, including officers from Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, the Republic of Korea, Japan and the United States (I later encountered several of my Thai classmates on duty in Dili as part of INTERFET).

The Asian Financial Crisis took its toll on Thailand in a way that would be noticeable for years afterwards, most visibly with abandoned half-built skyscrapers scattered across the Bangkok skyline. For Indonesia, however, the Asian Financial Crisis was far more devastating, economically and politically, leading eventually in May 1998 to the downfall of Soeharto as president of Indonesia and the ushering in of his deputy, BJ Habibie.

In the lead up to Soeharto’s downfall, riots and protests in Jakarta triggered concerns that there may be a need to evacuate Australians who could have been caught up in the apparently escalating violence. Headquarters 3rd Brigade and elements of the Townsville-based Ready Battalion Group undertook preliminary preparations in case assistance was needed. In the end, our help was not needed. Nevertheless, engagement with ABRI (Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia or the Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia) would be a focus as the crisis loomed and beyond. For while the crisis in Jakarta quickly passed, the experience brought to our attention the vulnerability of what Professor Paul Dibb called the ‘arc of instability’ to Australia’s north.

We continued to reflect on the relationship with ABRI and its successor organisation created when the Indonesian National Police (POLRI) was separated from ABRI in April 1999, known as the TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia or Indonesian National Military). That priority increased significantly once President Habibie made it clear that Indonesia planned to allow a ‘popular consultation’ in East Timor in 1999 to decide the territory’s future. Speculation was rife that, despite assurances from Canberra, there was no role for Australia to play in the unfolding events, the 3rd Brigade would have some role to play in whatever was about to take place, be it assisting with peace-keeping, evacuation operations or a more robust peace enforcement mission. Planning for operations in East Timor was actively discouraged from higher up the command chain, so Mark Evans tasked us to study a mythical place called ‘Orangeland’, which as it happened had a look and feel remarkably like East Timor!

The Headquarters 3rd Brigade chief staff officer known as the Brigade Major (or S3), Major Marcus Fielding, and I were class mates from the Royal Military College Duntroon. We already knew each other well, but the experience of preparing for and deploying on operations together in East Timor generated a strong bond of friendship. As the dust settled in East Timor and we found some time to reflect on what had been happening, Marcus suggested that one day I should write a book about our experience. In the intervening period, I have written occasionally on East Timor (including a monograph entitled Information Era Manoeuvre¹ and a couple of chapters in The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard²), but not until now have I focused on drawing together a more substantial body of work specifically about the intervention in East Timor.

As the fifteenth anniversary of INTERFET grew near, no official history of the intervention in East Timor had yet been commissioned. Marcus Fielding, as the President of Military History and Heritage Victoria approached me about a collaborative project between it and the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University to hold a conference, invite key participants and reflect on the significance and lessons of the INTERFET experience. The Head of SDSC, Associate Professor Brendan Taylor could see the usefulness of the project and agreed to support the venture. Professor Michael Wesley, the Head of the School of International Political and Strategic Studies, under which SDSC sits at ANU, equally backed the project (the School has recently been aptly renamed the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs). Dr Helen Taylor subsequently provided invaluable support in helping to turn many of the conference papers into book chapters and I am very much in her debt for her work.

With this support, we set about inviting key participants to contribute papers for a conference with a view to publishing the proceedings. Prompted by my colleagues Associate Professors Brendan Taylor and Peter Dean, Melbourne University Publishing caught the vision for the project and agreed to publish the results.

In the meantime, the Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy under Professor William Maley (also part of the Bell School) convened a small conference to discuss the fifteenth anniversary of the unarmed United Nations Mission in East Timor, which was set up for the East Timorese popular consultation (plebiscite) of 1999. The speakers, Professor Hugh White, Michael Maley, and Martin Hess, presented excellent papers on Australia’s role in the lead up to the intervention in East Timor, the electoral mission and policing under UNAMET. They agreed to contribute chapters to this volume and their contributions help provide important context in the period leading up to the popular consultation prior to INTERFET.

Readers will note there are several gaps in the coverage. In piecing together a work like this there will, inevitably, always be some perspectives unable to be afforded the attention they deserve. With twenty-two contributing nations, allowing space for specific contributions from all of them would have been unmanageable. Many are mentioned in passing in respective chapters and others in more detail, but it is worth noting that several countries that made significant efforts do not have a chapter dedicated to their contribution. These include Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Malaysia, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, the United States and the United Kingdom. In our defence, speakers from several of these countries were invited but were unable to participate. Several others who have written about or participated in the events in East Timor also were approached but declined to participate.

Similarly, there are several aspects of a mission like INTERFET that cannot be covered adequately in a work such as this and which may have to wait until the commissioning of an official history. Aspects of the operation not covered in detail include the roles and performance of the Australian infantry battalions (including the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment (2RAR), the 3rd Battalion (3RAR), the 5th/7th Battalion (5/7RAR), the 3rd Combat Engineer Regiment (3CER), 5th Aviation Regiment, Aviation reconnaissance squadrons, the logistic support units and health support elements, as well as various intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sub-elements. The role of the Royal Australian Navy also is given only cursory attention while the ships which participated, including HMAS Tobruk, Jervis Bay, Success, Sydney, Darwin, Newcastle, Melbourne and several naval landing craft heavy and clearance diving teams, receive occasional mention. They were absolutely crucial to the success of the mission. Likewise, the role of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and other countries’ air components are given only a cursory cover in the context of the wider picture of the intervention. The role of the C-130 Hercules, the CC-08 (short-take-off and landing) Caribou and other aircraft has yet to be fully explored and understood. But their contribution was remarkable.

The diplomatic aspects of the crisis are covered from the perspective of practitioners within the Department of Defence, not the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade – although key participants were approached to contribute chapters from the DFAT and ministerial perspective. A more complete account would also feature contributions from journalists and those who worked for non-government organisations including the fifty-six humanitarian assistance organisations that participated including CARE, Medécins Sans Frontières and the International Commission for the Red Cross. These organisations played critical roles providing shelter, food, water and medical support available to all East Timorese, including the more than 140 000 internally displaced people who returned to East Timor during INTERFET’s tenure with the assistance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. For many, their experiences were harrowing and traumatic.

Notwithstanding the space constraints and limitations in scope, the contributing authors offer a broad perspective on what happened, how it happened, why it did so and what were the ramifications. These contributors have sought to address a number of questions including the following: what was the crisis about and how did it occur? What were the events that led up to the intervention? What did the intervention achieve and what did it fail to achieve? How did the crisis affect relationships in the region both in the short term and medium to long term? How did the experience foster ties between participating nations?

A range of contributors address these questions, including Major General Mike Smith, whose chapter sets the scene for what follows, reflecting in particular on Australia’s engagement with the United Nations as part of three missions to East Timor. Professor Hugh White, then deputy secretary strategy in the Department of Defence in Canberra, explains the machinations of the decision making process in the lead up to the intervention, focusing on many of the sensitive political decisions made by the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Admiral Chris Barrie, Chief of the Defence Force at the time, highlights key events he was involved in and explains the distinctive Australian way adopted in creating a multinational coalition. Dr David Connery explains how Australia went about ‘learning by doing’, highlighting how the East Timor crisis tested the strength and utility of Australia’s national security policymaking system. General Sir Peter Cosgrove puts his commander’s hat back on to offer his reflections on leading INTERFET. Associate Professor Bob Breen presents lessons learned by the Australian Defence Force from the critical first ten days of the operation—some now well learned, others not yet so. Dr Joanne Wallis and two Timorese students who attended the conference offer their perspective on the intervention, wondering why INTERFET took so long to be fully launched, but grateful for the life-changing results. Major General Michael Crane explains the belated deployment into the Oecussi enclave and the subsequent humanitarian assistance role undertaken by Ambeno Force. Colonel Neil Thompson explains the dynamic and critical role played by the Special Forces on a range of tasks early on in the operation, which required political acumen, military prowess and deft handling.

In a collaborative work like this, it is virtually inevitable that differing accounts may appear to clash. How do we reconcile competing perceptions of what actually happened? Some contributors offer starkly differing perspectives. Retired Indonesian Major General Kiki Syahnakri stoutly defends Indonesia’s role, offering a distinctly nationalist perspective and calling for understanding over the grief and anger felt by those who had invested their lives in East Timor only to be spurned at the ballot by those they had sought to win over. His account differs considerably from that of Professor Damien Kingsbury, who spells out the scale of the crimes committed. Both were eye-witnesses of the events, yet they offer sharply differing accounts. Brigadier Gary Hogan seeks to help us understand the Timor experience from the Indonesian perspective, while also being instrumental in explaining the Australian perspective back to Indonesians. He helpfully portrays the ups and downs of the bilateral Australia–Indonesia relationship as being like a game of ‘snakes and ladders’. His Excellency Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão seeks to rise above the enmity of the past and focus on the significance of INTERFET to East Timor and the path of reconciliation to the future.

Beyond the actual experience inside East Timor, the INTERFET experience has generated considerable discussion about whether there is a distinctive Australian approach to the conduct of such peace enforcement operations. To what extent is this true? A number of contributors discuss aspects of the approach taken by the ADF. Lieutenant Generals Mark Evans and Ash Power address this in their discussion of the conduct of military operations from the perspective of the Commander of the 3rd Brigade (the principal Australian military ground formation that deployed with INTERFET) and the perspective of what came to be Headquarters Joint Operations Command. Their perspectives are contrasted by the contributions of a number of international representatives. Colonel Kevin Burnett offers an excellent insight into the significance of New Zealand’s contribution, highlighting the many commonalities with the ADF, but in addition some of the unique and particularly helpful traits the New Zealanders bring to operations like INTERFET. The experience of Thailand, explained by Major General Surasit Thanadtang, and the Philippines, by Major General Orlando Ambrocio, serve as useful reminders of how complementary roles and tasks built on varying cultures and experiences, can capitalise on unique strengths and capabilities to make a meaningful contribution, aside from reliance on combat forces.

In embarking on this project, we recognise and build upon the scholarly work undertaken by others in the intervening years— including by many of the authors who have themselves contributed chapters here. Their works are listed in the bibliography, but it is appropriate to highlight some of the most important contributions that have shaped our understanding of the lead up to the ballot, the crisis and the intervention itself. Professor Damien Kingsbury was one of the first to publish, as editor of Monash Asia Institute ‘s Guns and Ballot Boxes: East Timor’s Vote for Independence in 2000. It covered the UNAMET period in particular and established Kingsbury as an authority on East Timor. Kingsbury’s work came out at about the same time as the publication of Alan Ryan’s Land Warfare Studies Centre Study Paper, entitled ‘Primary Responsibilities and Primary Risk’: Australian Defence Force Participation in the International Force East Timor. Ryan’s study, while noting the successes of INTERFET, addressed the significant challenges and weaknesses exposed in the ADF by mounting, coordinating and sustaining such a force.

Ian Martin wrote Self-determination in East Timor: The United Nations, the Ballot and International Intervention in 2001, which gave an insider’s account of the negotiations that led to UNAMET and beyond. Bob Breen was not far behind with Mission Accomplished, East Timor.This was a detailed, tactical-level, illustrated commemorative history of the events on the ground from an Australian military perspective, especially once the international force deployed. Professor William Maley and John McFarlane wrote a working paper entitled Civilian Police in United Nations Peace Operations: Some Lessons from Recent Experience. Their work reflected on the challenges and lessons learned from the international policing efforts with UNAMET. Eager to ensure its take on the record was made known, the Australian government published a book entitled East Timor in Transition 1998–2000: An Australian Policy Challenge. Launched by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, the book, written by diplomats, provided the sanctioned storyline in which it claimed it was not possible to determine the extent to which Indonesian military actions in East Timor were endorsed or ordered by Jakarta.

In 2002 Major General Mike Smith (with Moreen Dee) wrote Peacekeeping in East Timor: The Path to Independence. Their book addressed many of the key challenges faced in raising such a force and transferring power from an international organisation back to the people. Don Greenlees and Robert Garran wrote Deliverance: The Inside Story of East Timor’s Fight for Freedom the following year. Together these investigative journalists provided a vivid portrayal of the cost to the Timorese people of seeking independence. In 2004 Professor James Cotton’s book, East Timor, Australia and Regional Order: Intervention and its Aftermath in Southeast Asia, added further to the record on the exceptional nature of the Timor intervention and its impact on the regional order.

Also in 2004 Dr Clinton Fernandes published his book Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the Independence of East Timor. Fernandes took a highly critical approach to the challenges associated with the annexation and eventual independence of East Timor. His approach painted a complex picture in black-and-white terms. Fernandes’ former colleague Lieutenant Colonel Lance Collins took a complementary conspiratorial view in a book he co-authored with Warren Reed entitled Plunging Point: Intelligence Failures, Cover-Ups and Consequences. Fernandes’ and Collins’ impassioned approach had a positive impact, prompting a range of considered responses.

Professor Hugh White’s article ‘The road to INTERFET: reflections on Australian strategic decisions concerning East Timor, December 1998–September 1999’, published in Security Challenges (Autumn 2008), was an important attempt at putting the record straight on the policy choices made by the Australian government at the time. Dr David Connery undertook a PhD on the Australian mechanisms of state as applied to the East Timor crisis and built on White’s observations. His balanced and insightful work was published by ANU Press as Crisis Policy Making in 2010. Both White’s and Connery’s contributions in this book capture the essence of these works and reflect on the issue with the advantage of further research and consultation over time. With the benefit of detailed research, Iain Henry’s 2013 article ‘Playing Second Fiddle’ in Security Challenges and his 2014 article in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, entitled ‘Unintended consequences: an examination of Australia’s historic policy shift on East Timor’, together provide the most balanced explanation for the how and why of the Australian government’s reactive policy shifts in the lead up to INTERFET. He compellingly argues that Australia was forced into a reactive posture, which was constrained by the priority of maintaining sound relations with Indonesia.

Fifteen years on, this review shows that there is now a substantial body of literature about the intervention. Yet despite the wide range of books and articles available, of which this review is by no means a comprehensive catalogue, there remains considerable contention about the actual events and the apportionment of responsibility or blame. So how do these views stand up in the eyes of many of those who were there? This book, with the contribution of a wide range of participants in the momentous events of 1999, provides a timely reconsideration on how they see it—reflecting on the meaning, the consequences and the implications arising from the Timor intervention.

Notes

1 John Blaxland, Information Era Manoeuvre: The Australian led Mission to East Timor, Land Warfare Studies Centre, Duntroon, Working Paper No. 118, June 2002.

2 John Blaxland, The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2014.

Part I

The Lead-up to the Intervention

1

INTERFET and the United Nations

Michael G Smith

The International Force in East Timor was a multinational coalition of twenty-two nations that successfully restored security in East Timor in 1999 after violence erupted following the UN-supervised electoral ballot. INTERFET was authorised under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1264 of 15 September 1999, with the agreement of Indonesia. The operation was led by Australia under the command of Major General Peter Cosgrove. INTERFET was preceded by the United Nations Mission in East Timor, a UN electoral mission authorised on 11 June 1999 under Resolution 1246. UNAMET was led by Ian Martin from Great Britain, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for East Timor, to enable the Timorese people to vote on their political future through a ‘popular consultation’ (ballot).

On 30 August 1999, 78.5 per cent of the eligible population voted for East Timor not to be incorporated into the Republic of Indonesia. Intimidation by pro-Indonesian militias that had commenced in the lead-up to the ballot quickly turned into systematic violence when the electoral results were announced. East Timor’s infrastructure was largely destroyed, and gross human rights violations were perpetrated by Indonesian-backed militias. INTERFET quickly commenced stabilisation operations in East Timor on 20 September, only five days after receiving UN authorisation. Five months later, with peace restored and without sustaining any fatal casualties, INTERFET successfully handed over to the United Nations Peacekeeping Force, which was part of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor. UNTAET was headed by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello from Brazil and mandated by the Security Council under Resolution 1272 of 25 October 1999 to shepherd the nation to independence, which ultimately occurred on 20 May 2002. Both INTERFET and UNTAET were conducted under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter and Australia provided the largest military contingent to both.

These sequential UN-mandated missions—UNAMET, INTERFET and UNTAET—were not without significant challenges, but generally they have been assessed as among the most successful in the UN’s history.¹ Australia’s role in these operations was substantial, and East Timor’s independence was possible in part because of the overall responsible approach by Indonesia in accepting the UN’s authorised interventions following the post-ballot violence.

At the global level, resolution of the East Timor problem reflected a willingness by the international community to intervene in disputes in the post–Cold War era. However, unlike the international intervention in Kosovo that preceded the ballot in 1999, Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor had since 1975 been a specific and long-standing issue on the UN agenda, and the UN’s actions in East Timor always remained cognisant of international law and national sovereignty.

For Australia, INTERFET can be seen as an important part of its contribution to the UN’s efforts to resolve the contested occupation of East Timor by Indonesia. More broadly, however, Australia’s involvement can also be seen as a continuation of its support to the United Nations in resolving regional conflicts. Australia’s involvement in East Timor was the fourth occasion since the UN’s establishment after World War II that Australia’s national security interests in its immediate region were enacted through support to the United Nations. Earlier precedents were in support of Indonesia’s independence in 1948–49, the Korean War in 1950–53, and the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia in 1992–93. These very different interventions all occurred with the legitimacy bestowed by the United Nations and can be perceived as a continuation of Australia’s national security policy. As a small to medium power, Australia’s civil-military support to and through the United Nations has been a sensible and cost-effective approach to contributing purposefully to regional and global security. Moreover, on each of these four instances the importance of Australia’s alliance with the United States was not jeopardised.

This chapter sets the scene for the ones that follow. It explains INTERFET in the context of the succession of UN-mandated missions required to resolve the question of independence for East Timor in 1999–2002. INTERFET operations are addressed in this context, and strategic lessons highlighted relevant to Australia’s national security.

The UN’s Role in East Timor

The UN’s role in resolving the East Timor dispute originated as part of the decolonisation process following World War II. Except for a brief period of independence in 1975 (discussed below), and until the UNAMET-supervised ballot on 30 August 1999, the Timorese people were ruled by foreign powers and had little say in their political destiny. Portugal was the colonial power for more than 400 years, only to be supplanted briefly by Japan in World War II, the country was returned to Portugal after that war, and then occupied by Indonesia in 1975.

The Portuguese were benign rulers and allowed the traditional system of authority to continue under a veneer of colonial administration. Portuguese was the official language, but by the late nineteenth century the Roman Catholic Church had begun to promote the dominant local language, Tetun, as the lingua franca. The colonial power, however, did little to develop Portuguese Timor. For example, a UN report in 1975 noted that, ‘As late as 1974 … over 90 per cent of the East Timorese population remained illiterate, the territory had but one high school and, with the exception of some paved streets in [the capital] Dili, all roads in East Timor were unsealed.’²

In 1942, during World War II, Japan occupied the Dutch East Indies and Portuguese Timor, but these territories reverted to colonial rule immediately following Japan’s surrender in 1945. The Dutch reign was short lived, however, with the Republic of Indonesia achieving its independence in 1949, which included the former Dutch territory of the western part of the island of Timor. Close relationships between Australian troops and the Timorese people were established during World War II, and strengthened within civil society when large numbers of Timorese settled in Australia following Indonesia’s occupation of the country in 1975.

Portuguese Timor continued as a colony until 1975, but in the wake of Portugal’s socialist Carnation Revolution on 25 April 1974, the distant colony remained under-resourced and neglected. Following the 1965 abortive communist coup in Indonesia, the Soeharto regime became increasingly concerned at the prospect of instability on its borders. In late 1974 a group of senior Indonesian generals launched a covert operation (Operasi Komodo) to establish the conditions to justify the incorporation of the colony into Indonesia. Relations were established first with the leadership of the small Timorese Popular Democratic Association (APODETI) party that favoured incorporation with Indonesia, and then with the more popular right-wing Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) party. Indonesia also indicated that it would not accept self-determination for the colony if it meant the coming to power of FRETILIN, the left-wing Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, assessing this party as controlled by communist elements.

On 11 August 1975, UDT conducted a coup and assumed power from the Portuguese authorities, catalysing a short and bloody civil war with FRETILIN (and FRETILIN’s military wing, the Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor—FALINTIL). FRETILIN was victorious over UDT, but soon came under attack in the western border region from Indonesian military forces and their supported militias. On 28 November, FRETILIN unilaterally declared independence but failed to gain international recognition. On 7 December, Indonesia assaulted and captured Dili, having received tacit approval from the United States and Australia.³ Indonesia incorporated East Timor as its twenty-seventh province on 17 July 1976, ignoring UN resolutions from the General Assembly and Security Council affirming the right of East Timorese to self-determination.

In 1983 the UN Secretary-General instituted tripartite talks between Portugal, Indonesia and the United Nations to review the prospects for settlement, but little progress was made until the end of the Cold War in 1989, the Asian economic crisis of 1997 and Soeharto’s fall the following year. UN negotiations intensified in 1997 with the appointment of Jamsheed Marker as the Secretary-General’s Personal Representative for East Timor, and with the assumption of power by Indonesia’s new President, BJ Habibie, in May 1998. On 27 January 1999, Habibie announced that a referendum should be conducted to enable the East Timorese to decide if they wanted to remain within Indonesia. The President’s decision was contrary to the advice he had received from Australia’s Prime Minister, John Howard, and did not reflect consultation with the Indonesian military forces, which had developed a deep psychological and economic commitment to retaining the twenty-seventh province, where its forces had suffered many casualties and where it was the preeminent force in business and government.

On 5 May 1999, agreements were signed between Indonesia, Portugal and the United Nations for the conduct of a UN-supervised ballot. The account of the ballot is beyond the scope of this chapter, but has been well addressed by Ian Martin, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for UNAMET and is covered further in this book.⁴ Of relevance to UNAMET and INTERFET, however, is the level of assistance provided by Australia for the UN-supervised ballot.

Australia’s Assistance to UNAMET

Before the signing of the 5 May agreements, and although not party to these tripartite negotiations, Australia intensified efforts to assist the United Nations. In early 1999 an East Timor Task Force was established within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) under Nick Warner to monitor developments and recommend policy options to government. This task force assured a ‘whole-of-government’ approach through its composition and regular consultation with relevant departments and intelligence agencies. Critically, it maintained close working relations with the Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York which, under Ambassador Penny Wensley, was particularly active, including as a member of the East Timor core group of countries. Within Defence, a special position of Director-General East Timor was established to ensure close liaison with the task force and Australia’s UN Permanent Mission, and to strengthen support to the UN Secretariat, particularly to the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), which had the lead for East Timor under Francesc Vendrell, the director of the Asia and Pacific Division, and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which was responsible for military and police planning. The Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Chris Barrie, appointed Brigadier (later Major General) Michael Smith to this position, in part to ensure a suitable Australian candidate was ready should a UN PKF be required to deploy on short notice.

Commencing in April 1999, and almost every month ahead of the ballot, representatives from the task force visited New York to confirm assistance to the United Nations. Support was provided to DPA regarding political and security assessments and to strengthen capacity within the Electoral Division. Assistance was also provided to the understrength military planning service in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations to undertake contingency planning for a possible PKF following the ballot. This force structure and capability planning later proved invaluable when INTERFET was required to be established at short notice.

A lack of information sharing and joint planning within and between departments and agencies is common in many bureaucracies, and so it was within the UN Secretariat in 1999. This deficiency was later highlighted in the seminal Brahimi Report of 2000,⁵ but in 1999 the regular visits by Australia helped strengthen the work of the Australian Permanent Mission and bring together the various areas of the UN Secretariat responsible for East Timor planning and assessment. Australia proved a willing workhorse for the understrength Secretariat, drafting a number of documents for UN consideration that later were adopted. An early success of Australia’s diplomacy occurred when the chief of the Electoral Division, Carina Perelli, decided to establish the operational base for UNAMET in Darwin. Other locations were considered, but Australia’s agreement to provide logistic support proved convincing. In the wake of the violence that followed the ballot, the decision to base in Darwin proved even more sensible, providing a safe sanctuary for UN and Timorese evacuees, and a secure location from which INTERFET could be launched and logistically supported.

The preparation for the ballot was a monumental task for the modest UNAMET mission of around 1000 personnel. In addition to logistic support, Australia contributed personnel to the mission’s field operations. Alan Mills from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) was appointed the UNAMET Police Commissioner, and he was accompanied by a number of Australian police, who formed the small UN Civilian Police (CIVPOL) unit that had been authorised for 280 personnel. Following Indonesia’s belated agreement to the deployment of UN Military Liaison Officers, the Australian Defence Force quickly assigned officers to the small international unit that had been authorised for fifty unarmed military officers.⁶ A number of Australians were also selected by the United Nations to fill civilian electoral and administrative positions, and to be part of the contingent of UN volunteers required to assist with implementation of the ballot. Despite this significant Australian presence and the blatant intimidation of voters by pro-integrationists in the lead up to the ballot, the extent of violence that followed surprised the United Nations and most countries, particularly given Indonesia’s assurance that it would maintain security.

Australia’s support to and understanding of UNAMET, and its close geographic proximity to the territory, enabled Australia (with the consent of the United