East Timor policy causes havoc

East Timor policy causes havoc

By Bantarto Bandoro

JAKARTA (JP): Ever since the government announced in January
that it would give East Timor either autonomy or independence,
hardly a day has passed without people discussing the province.

But no one predicted that the announcement would create such
havoc in the province. Neither does anyone really know the idea
behind the government's policy, since it was issued at a time
when the government was attempting to regain confidence amid the
persistent economic crisis.

The situation in the territory, which was relatively calm
before the announcement, quickly deteriorated into a new war
between proindependence and prointegration groups.

Certainly, Indonesia should not leave the territory
arbitrarily. It has a two-pronged responsibility to begin with.
On an international level, it has to reach an agreement with
Portugal. But the latest report reveals that despite progress, no
significant deal has been reached. On a national level, the
government faces two fronts, namely reducing violence in the
territory and create a conducive climate at the negotiating table
by sponsoring talks between the leaders of the warring groups.

The latter came into being when hostile East Timor factions
signed a peace accord a week ago which is expected to halt the
violence between the warring groups. The accord is seen as a
beginning of renewed concerted efforts to put back on track the
process to determine the future of East Timor. It can also be
said that the peace accord and political settlement are not ends
in themselves, but the beginning of a process. This would mean
that a peace-building component needs to be included in the
overall framework of the settlement, and the objective should be
to prevent further conflict and the reemergence of instability.

The signing of a peace accord means that the warring factions
should be committed to enforcing the accord throughout the
territory. But perhaps their tasks go further than that. They
should demonstrate the political will to lay foundations for
reconciliation, restore stability and trust through a continued
dialog process necessary to implementing the peace accord.

Peace is not static. It is a dynamic and fluid process that
requires nurturing and support. Military commander Gen. Wiranto
was perhaps right when he appealed to the warring factions to
make known the peace accord to all supporters in villages,
mountains and forests. On paper this may be possible, but on a
practical level no one is sure that it can be easily achieved.
The accord can successfully be disseminated and effectively
implemented if only three conditions are met.

First, there should be an awareness that the idea of winning
and losing has to be abandoned and replaced, and the idea of
moving away from the present position has to be stressed. It
means not to look back, not to let the past dictate or write the
future, but to encourage and to speak about a common future.

In other words, as the accord lays ground for tension
reduction, there is a need to start a process for the
transformation of conflict in the course of which opposing
interests become a problem to be solved jointly. Such a process
could involve the adaption to a new condition including the
adaption of new values. The warring parties should direct their
efforts to achieve further common understanding.

Second, there is a need for awareness on the part of the
warring parties that conflict is an integral part of human
relations that does not have to be violent. Their awareness
should reflect their wholehearted commitment to steadily move the
conflict cycle they are facing away from violence and harness its
more positive aspects in such a way as to benefit rather than
harm society in the territory. This could be a (long-term) goal
from which immediate benefits are not to be expected. The
cessation of war among prointegration and proindependence groups
is just the first step to a longer process toward the restoration
of peace and stability in the territory. The warring factions
must remember this and allow themselves to be discouraged.

Third, awareness on the part of the military to halt whatever
support it renders to the prointegration faction and allow the
warring groups to select and follow the best route to their
destination and not to contaminate the process leading toward
their desired direction. For the sake of an effective
implementation of the East Timor accord, it is also important for
the military not to exacerbate enmity between warring groups. One
must remember that the military is part of the solution, because
many believe it was and still is an active participant in the
conflict.

The aforementioned perhaps reflects the hopes of those who
really wish to witness the impartial and effective execution of
the accord, including those of the signatories. Priorities must,
of course, be given to a political and acceptable solution. The
search for peace is political research conducted by diplomatic,
not destructive, means. This demands laborious and tedious
negotiation with all parties to the conflict. The signing of the
peace accord is certainly welcome, and therefore it should also
be endorsed by all important players.

The accord is sure to help lessen psychological pressure and
tension among faction leaders. This is, of course, important and
necessary but not quite sufficient to help eliminate enmity and
create peace and stability on the ground level. For those on the
battleground level, peace is not simply an absence of war. For
them, perhaps peace can be sustained only if they keep the threat
alive. This is exactly what is happening on the ground. Violence
remains and continued to escalate even two days after the signing
of the peace accord (The Jakarta Post, 23 April, 1999). Perhaps
the warring parties are unaware that their leaders shook hands
for the purpose of peace. The clashes indicate that the situation
remains precarious and vulnerable. Whether peace prevails depends
on the willingness of the warring parties to abide by the terms
of the accord.

Familiarization of the accord among warring parties will be a
difficult undertaking, since hatred and suspicion have been
present for decades. To draw the warring parties to a stage where
they can see and feel what peace really is will be even more
difficult. Fighting, killing and violence have become part of
their day-to-day activities for more than 10 years.

The signing of the peace accord is of course a positive sign.
But one must remember that peace will not be preserved simply by
their proclaimed love for it. It is perhaps not an exaggeration
to say that for the warring groups, peace is the product of daily
combat and ever-renewed vigilance. If one prescribes to such a
believe then it would be extremely difficult for the parties to
arrive at a compromise. There is little prospect that the peace
accord will alter the attitude of those fighting on the ground
and this also means that the accord will have limited success
because it makes no reference to disarming the factions.

Conflict, tension and fighting in the territory will
definitely continue in a mode short of total war despite the
peace accord and progress in the negotiation brokered by the
United Nations. But if there is to be a resolution, it appears it
could result only from exhaustion after a lengthy test of
endurance and arms.

The peace accord is understood to be meant as a process which
will help the parties in the dispute confront the fact that in
some sense their definition of the problem may need to be
revised. The accord, however, does not explicitly say how the
definition of their problem should be revised nor address the
cause of conflict, and it merely appeals to the warring groups to
support the peace efforts. Thus, the accord seems to provide only
a settlement, not a resolution, that is an arrangement adopted by
the parties to deal with the matter in dispute. It is the
readiness to negotiate the matter.

In this approach, dispute settlement is the imposition of a
resolution on conflicting parties by, for example, coercion or by
other kinds of pressure. If the prointegration and
proindependence groups' consciously or not prescribe to this kind
of approach, then this would mean that the causes of the conflict
were not being dealt with adequately. Therefore, a settlement, if
ever reached, is likely to leave a lingering sense of grievances,
with those on the ground feeling that the accord provides only an
arrangement and not terms of resolution.

Of course they would like to have peace, and peace for the
groups -- be they prointegration or proindependence -- continues
to be a powerful wish and desire, a passion deeply felt and
aspired for. But peace can also lead some to "action", even if
this is in the form of "action against", which may result in
further deterioration of stability in the territory. The
situation on the ground reveals such a condition. Thus the East
Timor peace accord will most likely fail to prevent the warring
groups from taking action against each other.

Moreover, the implementation of the peace accord does not only
create problems of political will; there is also the question of
practical means. For example, the accord stipulates that all
conflicting parties are obliged to take "necessary measures" to
implement the peace accord involving both armed and unarmed
supporters.

This obligation cannot be fulfilled because of the absence of
assurances, on the ground level, that the warring groups will not
attack each other once they show their goodwill by, for example,
surrendering their arms. The imposition of the accord without any
assurances will only bring insecurity instead of security to the
territory.

One must acknowledged the fact that there is a lack of mutual
trust and cooperation between warring groups, perhaps because the
integration process in 1976 was created through war and violence,
and therefore mutual trust and cooperation is unlikely to be
achieved easily in the future, even when the decision on the
future of the territory is fixed.

The 1999 East Timor peace accord is indeed a historic document
and provides ground for new hope and conditions in the territory.
But no one knows whether all East Timorese prescribe to the peace
conveyed in the document.

If this is the case, the East Timor peace accord will
definitely lead to no peace, and the question of what peace
really means for the people of East Timor will remain unanswered,
even after they have chosen one of the options offered by the
government of Indonesia.

The writer is with Department of International Affairs, Centre
for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta