Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – The thugs of Dili's streets disappeared quickly. When the first Australian soldiers arrived in full combat dress, their rifles at the ready, the militiamen pretended they were the very refugees they had terrorised for weeks.
Some of the killers, rapists and looters walked in small groups along debris-strewn streets waving at the Australians who began arriving shortly after dawn yesterday in huge cargo planes from Townsville and Darwin in what is likely to be Australia's most significant military operation since World War II.
But the militias no longer carried the rifles given them by the Indonesian armed forces or brandished their machetes, knives or home-made pistols.
A couple of the thugs were confronted by heavily armed New Zealand soldiers on Dili's docks but handed over their pistols without argument.
"They are basically cowards," said an Irish journalist, Robert Carroll, who has spent the past nine days hiding out in Dili and the surrounding mountains. "They ran away when real soldiers arrived." The militia last night emptied their rifles into the air as they had done every night since the United Nations announced that the East Timorese had rejected Indonesia's brutal rule and voted to become the world's newest independent state.
They set alight or trashed the few buildings still habitablein the town from which 70,000 people have fled. But as hundreds of foreign troops arrived, tense and ready for action, the bullies disappeared and the fires were burning themselves out.
Major Chip Henriss-Anderssen, of Townsville's 3rd Brigade, said at Dili wharf that genuine refugees appeared to be frightened and remained in small groups.
"But after a while they came up, one or two at a time, and shook our hands," he said. "The little kids were saying, hey mister! Perhaps after a while we will be able to teach them to say g'day."
The scene at Dili's airport was surreal. Shortly after dawn crack Special Air Service troops based in Perth were among the first Australians to arrive in giant Hercules transports.
They ran across the dusty tarmac, securing the perimeter. But waiting and watching were a few dozen Indonesian soldiers, representatives of a humiliated, embittered and convulsively violent force that is leaving East Timor in disgrace.
Indonesia has never suffered so great a humiliation – the world's fourth most populous nation rejected by people who had suffered 24 years of repression, most of whom are now homeless and still living in terror.
The few dozen Indonesian soldiers who remained to watch wave after wave of troops arriving did not seem too fussed. Asked about the destruction and looting, one said: "This incident happened before we arrived." He declined further comment.
Major-General Peter Cosgrove, the Australian commander of the multinational peacekeeping force, described the reception his soldiers received as "benign". "We have had a cordial reception from the TNI [Indonesian armed forces]."
Nobody mentioned that it was the TNI which through its proxy militias had destroyed most of what Indonesia claimed was its 27th province and stood by and watched mass killings and other atrocities.
General Cosgrove was not underestimating the risks as more than 1,000 of his troops sat under the few trees at the airport with shade. "It is still from my point of view a very risky environment beyond the sight of the nearest Australian soldier."
Our group of 40 journalists was ordered not to leave the airport after we arrived in a crammed Hercules from Darwin.
The first soldiers who went into the now wrecked departure lounge found it smeared with excrement. Red and white banners, the colours of Indonesia's flag, still hang outside the VIP lounge, one of the few buildings in Dili not destroyed.
Tonight we will be escorted under armed guard to the Turismo, the waterfront hotel from where many of us had fled in fear of our lives.
The hotel is trashed but we will set up a makeshift camp in the mosquito-infested garden where only a couple of weeks ago Australia's former deputy prime minister, Mr Tim Fischer, and an Australian delegation of ballot observers sat and drank beer and talked confidently of the birth of a new nation.
There is some good news, though. The UN compound where we spent six long and scared days before being evacuated has not been burnt and much of the UN's equipment is untouched.
But a UN official who has been staying at the fortified Australian consulate, not far from the airport, said: "It's a pretty horrific picture overall. There are thousands of people dying up in the hills without food or water. They need urgent help. There is nothing left in the town for people to return to."
Robert Carroll, the Irish journalist, said he had seen young children with bloated stomachs and families with nothing to eat but small portions of rice. "People have been told the peacekeepers are coming but they don't believe anything any more," he said.