UNTAET with Hindsight: The Peculiarities of Politics in an Incomplete State

Abstract

In the rather chaotic history of UN peacekeeping operations, where results have not always matched the efforts of the international community, East Timor stands as an success. In two and a half years, from November 1999 to May 2002, this totally devastated country was entirely reconstructed--rather I should say: constructed--and brought to independence .... In the space of twenty-eight months, this country ... saw its external and internal security assured, and the establishment of central and district administrations, a police force, a judicial system, legal and regulatory codes, a central bank, a fiscal system, an educational system, agricultural development, the renegotiation of oil agreements with Australia, and a constitution. --Jean-Christian Cady,deputy special representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations in East Timor, February 2000-July 2001 (1) All of these factors contribute to the next round of in East Timor. The greatest reliance is now on the discipline of party leaders, village chiefs and ordinary people not to express their differences through violence. There will need to be good governance through good intentions in the absence of much of a functioning state--including a rule of law and pacific means of dispute settlement--and it is difficult for good intentions to survive the pursuit of power at any level of whatever form. --Jarat Chopra, head of district Administration, UNTAET, October 2000-March 2001 (2) In the months after independence on 20 May 2002, an outside observer could have been forgiven for concluding that East Timor's new institutions were failing. Disarray in the judicial system, which was barely functioning, was having a serious impact on the performance of the police and the prison service. The Timorese Lorosae Defense Forces (FDTL) and the East Timorese National Police (PNTL), which the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) had created, were suffering crises of legitimacy that had made them political targets. A combination of inexperience and the large majority held by the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin), which won fifty-five of the eighty-eight seats at stake in the Constituent Assembly elections of August 2001, placed the new National Parliament in clear subordination to a government intent on using its majority to push through its ambitious legislative program. How to assess these instances of institutional failure? Do they lead to the conclusion that state failure rather than undeniable success is the more appropriate judgment on the UN's two-and-a-half-year tenure in East Timor? If so, considering the uniquely favorable conditions that this particular transitional administration faced in carrying out its mandate, what are the implications for transitional administrations in general? In the now extensive literature on UNTAET, (3) there is almost total agreement on two points: that the powers granted to the transitional administration were unparalleled and that the conditions in which it operated were conducive to a successful outcome. UNTAET's mandate was unprecedented in its breadth, giving an extraordinary range of powers, including enormous discretionary ones, to the transitional administrator. Security Council Resolution 1272 of 25 October 1999 entrusted UNTAET with a range of governance functions that was unprecedented for a UN mission. In the absence of institutions of any kind or much of the capacity that would be needed to run them, the transitional administration was mandated to establish an effective administration. Reflecting its transitional nature, it was also to support capacity building for self-government. …