End of an episode
End of an episode
East Timorese independence leader Jose Alexandre "Xanana"
Gusmao could not have put it better. Paying a brief visit to see
off the last Indonesian Military (TNI) contingent in East Timor
as the soldiers were making preparations for their flight home
from Dili airport during the weekend, Xanana clasped hands with
the Indonesian officers and bid them farewell.
"This ends an historical error. A mistake between two
countries. Now we have to look at the future," the East Timorese
leader said.
A number of inferences can be drawn from Xanana's words. In
the first place, of course, they conveyed the kind of wisdom and
statesmanship that the East Timorese will need from the man who
is expected to become their first president. The East Timorese
can consider themselves fortunate to have this kind of leader at
a time when they are poised to embark on the arduous road of full
independence in the not-so-distant future.
No less fortunate -- for both East Timor and Indonesia -- a
similarly enlightened and democratic leadership exists in Jakarta
at this crucial point in history. Last week, in his first
official remarks to the press, President Abdurrahman Wahid made
it known that he and Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri would
personally welcome Xanana at the airport should the East Timorese
leader go ahead with his reported plan to visit Jakarta. This,
the President said, would serve as a signal that Indonesia was
serious in its resolve to honor international law to the fullest.
Secondly, Xanana's parting gesture and words aptly portrayed
the predicament which the drawn-out East Timor conflict has posed
for both Indonesia and East Timor.
Painful as the loss of the former Portuguese colony may be for
many Indonesians -- at least 5,000 Indonesian soldiers are
reported to have lost their lives in the conflict, not to mention
an estimated 200,000 East Timorese fighters and civilians -- the
24-year-long conflict can only be appropriately called a
historical error, given the sacrifices that have been made on
both sides and the international complications which the problem
has caused for Jakarta.
Hopefully, those problems will end with East Timor's
transition from a reluctant Indonesian province into an
independent state -- a transition which after Saturday's
departure of the last Indonesian military contingent in Dili
formally starts. And, having arrived at this point in their
respective histories, the only sensible thing for both
Indonesians and East Timorese to do obviously is, as Xanana said,
to look to the future. In that future, both Indonesia and
independent East Timor as well as the Asia-Pacific region as a
whole can only stand to benefit from maintaining good relations
between the two.
Naturally, it will take time and effort for the wounds to
heal. But with the kind of wise and democratic leadership that
now exists in Jakarta -- and hopefully in the near future also in
Dili -- there is every reason to believe that such a
rapprochement is possible.
For Indonesia, the whole East Timor episode can serve as a
valuable lesson in how popular resistance movements should not be
handled. Indonesia's fatal mistake in East Timor was that during
all of its 24-year-long presence in the territory it failed to
win the hearts and minds of the East Timorese people.
The pain that many Indonesians surely feel at the loss of East
Timor is easy enough to understand. But, now that they have come
to this final stage of the drama, all that can be said is that,
hopefully, the lesson is one well learned.