Can somebody help enlighten me on Chomsky's "Rogue States?" re: East Timor

[Tiggeroshii]

I'm trying to figure out how exactly the United States and Australia were involved in allowing th atrocities in East Timor take place as well as helping to prevent East Timor's indepenence from Indonesia. Anybody who can help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[SteppingRazor]

1. The history, in brief:

East Timor was a Portuguese colony until 1975. Portugal pulled out in that year, and East Timor declared its independence. About a week later, Indonesia invaded, with the support of both the U.S. and Australia, because we feared that East Timor would go Communist. The day before the invasion, President Ford and Henry Kissinger met with Indonesia's Suharto, essentially giving their blessing to the invasion. America also sold arms to Indonesia during the invasion and subsequent suppression.

[Jcrowley]

2. Here ya' go

In 1975, Suharto invaded East Timor, then being taken over by its own population after the collapse of the Portuguese empire. The United States and Australia knew the invasion was coming and effectively authorized it. Australian Ambassador Richard Woolcott, in memos later leaked to the press, recommended the "pragmatic" course of "Kissingerian realism," because it might be possible to make a better deal on Timor's oil reserves with Indonesia than with an independent East Timor. At the time, the Indonesian army relied on the United States for 90 percent of its arms, which were restricted by the terms of the agreement for use only in "self-defense." Pursuing the same doctrine of "Kissingerian realism," Washington simultaneously stepped up the flow of arms while declaring an arms suspension, and the public was kept in the dark.

The UN Security Council ordered Indonesia to withdraw, but to no avail. Its failure was explained by then-UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In his memoirs, he took pride in having rendered the UN "utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook" because "he United States wished things to turn out as they did" and "worked to bring this about." As for how "things turned out," Moynihan comments that, within a few months, 60,000 Timorese had been killed, "almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War."

The massacre continued, peaking in 1978 with the help of new arms provided by the Carter administration. The toll to date is estimated at about 200,000, the worst slaughter relative to population since the Holocaust. By 1978, the United States was joined by Britain, France, and others eager to gain what they could from the slaughter. Protest in the West was minuscule. Little was even reported. US press coverage, which had been high in the context of concerns over the fall of the Portuguese empire, declined to practically nothing in 1978.

In 1989, Australia signed a treaty with Indonesia to exploit the oil of "the Indonesian Province of East Timor" -- a region sober realists tell us is not economically viable, and therefore cannot be granted the right of self-determination. The Timor Gap treaty was put into effect immediately after the army murdered several hundred more Timorese at a graveyard commemoration of a recent army assassination. Western oil companies joined in the robbery, eliciting no comment.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/east_timor/comment/chomsky.html

East Timor: Comments On the Occasion of the Forthcoming APEC Summit
Noam Chomsky
ZNet, September 10, 1999
There are many topics of major long-term significance that should be addressed at the APEC conference, but one is of consuming importance and overwhelming urgency. We all know exactly what it is, and why it must be placed at the forefront of concern -- and more important, instant action. This conference provides an opportunity -- there may not be many more -- to terminate the tragedy that is once again reaching shocking proportions in East Timor. The Indonesian military forces who invaded East Timor 24 years ago, and have been slaughtering and terrorizing its inhabitants ever since, are right now, as I write, in the process of sadistically destroying what remains: the population, the cities and villages. What they are planning, we cannot be sure: a Carthaginian solution is not out of the question.

The tragedy of East Timor has been one of the most awesome of this terrible century. It is also of particular moral significance for us, for the simplest and most obvious of reasons. Western complicity has been direct and decisive. The expected corollary also holds: unlike the crimes of official enemies, these can be ended by means that have always been readily available, and still are.

The current wave of terror and destruction began early this year, under the pretense that the atrocities were the work of "uncontrolled militias." It was quickly revealed that these were paramilitary forces armed, organized, and directed by the Indonesian army, who also participated directly in their "criminal activities," as these have just been described by Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, still maintaining the shameful pretense that the "military institution" that is directing the crimes is seeking to stop them.

The Indonesian military forces are commonly described as "rogue elements." That is hardly accurate. Most prominent among them are Kopassus units sent to East Timor to carry out the actions for which they are famed, and dreaded. They have "the job of managing the militias, many observers believe," veteran Asia correspondent David Jenkins reported as the terror was mounting. Kopassus is the "crack special forces unit" modeled on the U.S. Green Berets that had "been training regularly with US and Australian forces until their behaviour became too much of an embarrassment for their foreign friends." These forces are "legendary for their cruelty," observes Benedict Anderson, one of the leading Indonesia scholars. In East Timor, Anderson continues, "Kopassus became the pioneer and exemplar for every kind of atrocity," including systematic rapes, tortures and executions, and organization of hooded gangsters.

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19990910.htm

East Timor Retrospective
Noam Chomsky
Le Monde diplomatique, October, 1999

It is not easy to write with feigned calm and dispassion about the events that have been unfolding in East Timor. Horror and shame are compounded by the fact that the crimes are so familiar and could so easily have been terminated by the international community a long time ago.

Indonesia invaded the territory in December 1975, relying on US diplomatic support and arms, used illegally, but with secret authorisation from Washington; there were even new arms shipments sent under the cover of an official "embargo". There was no need to threaten bombing or even sanctions. It would have sufficed for the US and its allies to withdraw their active participation, and inform their close associates in the Indonesian military command that the atrocities must be terminated and the territory granted the right of self-determination that has been upheld by the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. We cannot undo the past, but we should at least be willing to recognise what we have done, and face the moral responsibility of saving the remnants and providing ample reparations - a small gesture of compensation for terrible crimes.

The latest chapter in this painful story of betrayal and complicity opened right after the referendum of 30 August 1999 when the population voted overwhelmingly for independence. At once, atrocities mounted sharply, organised and directed by the Indonesian army. The UN mission (Unamet) gave its appraisal on 11 September: "The evidence for a direct link between the militia and the military is beyond dispute and has been overwhelmingly documented by Unamet over the last four months. But the scale and thoroughness of the destruction of East Timor in the past week has demonstrated a new level of open participation of the military in the implementation of what was previously a more veiled operation."

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199910--.htm



Go Here:
http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Timor/timor_index.htm

[Tiggeroshii]

3. The oil contracts..

I couldn't find that in the cahpter, thanks!

Very helpful links.