Showdown in Timor: Notes from the (battle) field

Abstract

The celebration of the first anniversary of the UN-sponsored ballot in Dili on 30 August 2000 brought East Timor back into the world's headlines, but only for a moment. Meanwhile, a sense of international drift seemed to prevail about the UN-administered territory: the World Bank and, behind it, the United States were struggling to rally donor pledges for the Trust Fund for East Timor (TFET); and Australia was otherwise focused on the Olympic Games (although, apart from the distraction of the games, the Howard government was seriously weighing the costs of rising anti-Australian nationalism in Jakarta versus some kind of return to the status quo ante, even including renewed military links with Indonesia). But we should not ignore ambiguities in the U.S. position as to re-building security alliances with Jakarta, especially as Washington weighs the merits of restoring the military assistance it had cut off after the militia violence in East Timor in October 1999.