People's War: Militias in East Timor and Indonesia

Abstract

Much of what has been written about East Timor's militias has focused on their relationship with the armed forces, and on the latter's legal responsibility for the 1999 violence. This preoccupation with culpability, while important and understandable under the circumstances, has obscured the much deeper historical origins of the violence and the militias, and has diverted attention from the notable similarities between East Timor's militias and those in Indonesia itself. Indeed, it has meant that basic questions about the historical origins of the militias, and the political conditions of their existence, have scarcely been asked. Where did the militias actually come from? Why did they act in the ways that they did? And what explains the marked similarities between the militia groups in East Timor and those in Indonesia? Existing explanations of East Timor's militias, and of the violence of 1999, generally fall into two categories, both of which ignore or elide these crucial historical questions. The first, commonly expressed by Indonesian officials, is that the militias formed spontaneously in response to pro-independence provocation in late 1998, and that their acts of violence were an expression of ‘traditional’ cultural patterns such as ‘running amok’. The second view, more common among Western journalists and scholars, is that the militias were formed at a stroke by the Indonesian army in late 1998, and that the violence was carefully orchestrated by military commanders. The author's view is that both characterizations are in significant respects wrong, or at least misleading. This paper explains why, and provides an alternative explanation.