Timor Today: Haiti Redux

[Julio Pino <jpino@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Note in particular Senor Jose Gusmao's, the "independence hero", suggestion
for how to get Timor on its feet again.
Ruined East Timor Awaits a Miracle
New York times
Saturday 22, 2000

          By SETH MYDANS

               DILI, East Timor, April 17 -- People here have gotten used
to                 the
               scene: a mob of unemployed young men shoving, shouting and
               weeping in anger outside the headquarters of the United
Nations,
          held back by an impassive multinational police contingent.

          "Nothing has changed!" they
          shouted the other day, and their
          complaint has become a theme
          for critics -- both foreign and
          Timorese -- as the United
          Nations passes the six-month
          mark in its first experiment in
          building a new nation.

          As monsoon rains bring added
          misery, whole towns and
          villages still stand burned,
          roofless and silent, devastated
          by the rampage of destruction
          that followed East Timor's vote
          last August to end 24 years of
          Indonesian occupation.

          As many as 80 percent of the
          territory's 700,000 people still
          have no jobs. Another 100,000
          or more remain in camps
          across the border in Indonesian
          West Timor, still afraid to
          return.

          The desperation of East
          Timor's unemployed, and the
          first spasms of violence it has
          spawned, are the sharpest signs
          of a swelling discontent in this
          physically and emotionally
          traumatized land.

          Aid workers and diplomats say they fear that this discontent
could          lead to
          lawlessness and political disarray and could open the door to
trouble            from
          the Indonesian-backed militias that crossed the border to
Indonesian           West
          Timor after laying waste to the territory last September.

          Despite an invasion of peacekeepers, bureaucrats and aid workers
in           the
          months since, much of this battered land remains, as officials
like           to say, at
          ground zero. There is still no working police force or justice
        system, no
          government structure, few schools, no working water or power or
          transportation system, no post office, not much of an economy,
little
          reconstruction.

          "Very sad story," said one young woman, summing up this moment in
her
          country's history in halting English. "Hungry. Cry. Hope."

          The slow pace of recovery has called into question the capacity
of           the
          United Nations, with its lumbering, centralized bureaucracy, to
        address
          urgent needs and operate as the government of a nation in crisis.

          "It's hard to conceive of how anybody could go in there and make an
          instant success out of such a complex set of problems," said
Sidney           Jones,
          who heads the human rights office of the United Nations.

          It has never tried anything quite like
          this before: to create and administer
          a nation from a fresh blueprint of its
          own. When it tried to do so in
          Cambodia nearly a decade ago,
          there was already a government
          structure to work with. In Kosovo
          today, the United Nations effort is
          closer to traditional peacekeeping.

          "It's a huge machine, an enormous
          machine," said a Canadian aid
          worker, speaking of the United
          Nations. "Every time you want
          something done it has to be checked
          and rechecked. If something needs
          to be done right away it's not
          unusual to take a week, two weeks,
          three weeks."

          An urgent multimillion-dollar job-creation program that was
approved           in
          January, for example, is now scheduled to go into operation in
June,           if
          indeed there are no further delays.

          "For the United Nations that's moving quickly," said Manoel de
       Almeida e
          Silva, the chief spokesman for the United Nations here.

          "Definitely we are dealing here with a level of expectations that
is            not
          being met by international community mechanisms," he said. "You can
          destroy in a matter of days but you don't reconstruct in a couple
of           days or
          a couple of weeks or a couple of months."

          Before the reconstruction can begin, he said, "you need to
establish           a
          central payments office, a border service, a fiscal authority, a
         civil service
          commission, because you are really starting from scratch, from
zero."

          East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, was invaded by Indonesia in
          1975, touching off a resistance war that eventually took as many as
          200,000 lives. Last year nearly 80 percent of the population
voted           for
          independence, despite a campaign of intimidation by the
Indonesian-          backed
          militia groups.

          That vote was followed by a brutal organized campaign in which 70
          percent or more of East Timor's buildings were destroyed and more
          than
          one-fourth of its population kidnapped and forced into exile.

          International investigators say as many as 700 people were killed
and           an
          uncounted number of women raped.

          Much of East Timor is agricultural, but most farm implements have
          been
          destroyed and most farm animals killed.

          Now the international community has pledged more than $500
million to
          build a new East Timor during the next three years under the
guidance           of
          the United Nations. For aid groups and development specialists,
East           Timor
          is a sort of petri dish of nation-building where everything from the
          Constitution to the currency to the national language has yet to be
          determined.

          One predictable, almost instant
          effect has drawn the most
          criticism: the creation of a giant
          gap in wealth that threatens to
          distort East Timor's economy for
          years.

          Dili today does not present a
          pretty picture, with a separate
          expatriate world superimposed on
          a scene of destruction and
          poverty. The foreigners are rich,
          with cars, offices, hot running
          water, Sunday barbecues. The
          East Timorese have almost
          nothing.

          "They can't take a table out to the
          side of the road to sell things," one
          United Nations official said,
          "because not only do they not
          have anything to sell but they
          don't have a table."

          A new Chinese restaurant serving
          $50 meals is so crowded with
          foreigners that it has made a chic
          annex of the burned-out building
          next door, stringing it with
          Christmas lights. Just down the
          street, Eugenia Gago feeds her
          extended family on less than $5 a
          day, selling grilled meat to
          passers-by from the rubble of a
          burned-out shop. Unlike the
          Chinese restaurant she has no
          generator, so she stops when it
          gets dark.

          As the head of security for an
          international agency put it: "Salary
          scales are a real problem. We
          pay $3 a day for unskilled labor. I
          can get a good cappuccino at the
          Dili Cafe for $3."

          Given these problems, some local
          people have begun to give up
          hope that the United Nations can
          fix their broken country, said
          Milena Pires, one of the few
          expatriate Timorese who have
          returned to help rebuild.

          "There is a growing impatience
          because people do see the United
          Nations embodying all these
          ideals," said Ms. Pires, who leads
          a campaign to establish women's
          rights.

          "People see all these cars going
          back and forth and they think, 'If
          the United Nations is doing so
          much work, why don't we see a
          difference in our own lives?' " she
          said. "So now some have begun
          saying: 'O.K., wait two years until
          the United Nations is finished.
          Then we'll begin to rebuild.' "

          The view of one Western
          diplomat was only slightly more
          moderate.

          "What everyone has to do is
          lower their expectations a bit," he
          said. "The most they could hope
          for, I think, is to just get through,
          to keep the political process
          stable, to keep divisions within the community to a point where
they           are
          manageable."

          If this fails, some people fear, die-hard militia groups that
still           lurk just
          across the western border may try to stir trouble. If they cannot
           reverse
          East Timor's independence, perhaps they can at least vindicate their
          predictions that independence would be a catastrophe.

          Small groups of armed men continue their forays along the border,
          occasionally eliciting exchanges of fire. "The militia are still
         around and
          they are still getting some support," said James Dunn, author of
the           basic
          history of East Timor, "Timor, a People Betrayed" (ABC Books, 1996).
          "The militia wouldn't exist if the Indonesians really wanted to
         switch them
          off. It's a bit dangerous. It's tricky now."

          One critical problem, as the United Nations looks ahead to an
       eventual
          transition to local government, is that relatively few local
people           are being
          given important roles in the planning and running of the
  reconstruction
          effort.

          Foreigners, rather than local people, have been named as district
          administrators. And East Timorese deputies within the United Nations
          structure tend to have little influence, officials here say.

          "I thought they were coming to work with us, not us with them," said
          Father Jovito de Jesus Rego, an influential young Roman Catholic
          priest.
          "Now everything is being determined by outsiders. We have these
big,            big,
          big nations here and it seems we are becoming alien to our own
       culture
          and history."

          But given its history of colonial domination, East Timor is
      desperately short
          of the qualified people it needs to administer itself.


          At the demonstration outside the United Nations headquarters the
         other
          day, none of the young men demanding jobs appeared to be
qualified            for
          the available openings as interpreters, clerks and computer
     operators.

          The demonstrators were calmed only by the arrival of José Alexandre
          Gusmão, East Timor's independence hero and its moral center.
Don't           count
          on government jobs, he told them. He said Indonesia's bloated East
          Timorese civil service of about 30,000 people would be replaced by a
          government roster only one-fourth that size.

          East Timor will grow on the basis of private enterprise, not
     government
          make-work, Mr. Gusmão told them. "Just guarantee the peace," he
said,
          "and we will guarantee that investors will come to help East
Timor."