John McBeth, Jakarta and Michael Vatikiotis, Washington – It was a humiliating moment for Abdurrahman Wahid. At the United Nations' Millennium Summit in New York, the Indonesian president stood with 154 other world leaders as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked for a minute's silence in memory of the Puerto Rican, Ethiopian and Croatian aid workers butchered in a September 6 attack on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees compound in the small West Timor town of Atambua.

With the eyes of the world focused on Indonesia's failure to deal with its side of the Timor problem, Wahid's response has been to blame the international community for not providing enough assistance – or simply to try to redirect attention.

Following the attacks, Wahid was subjected to a litany of outrage from Annan, US President Bill Clinton and other leaders. In a testy meeting with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in which Albright berated Wahid for his failure to control the militias responsible for the killings, he responded by reminding her he had been swamped with pleas to help resolve international conflicts from the Middle East to Kashmir. He made the same boast in a gathering the next day at Columbia University in New York, where he received an award for his "lifetime contribution to humanity."

A human-rights official in New York says that though Wahid handled the criticism well, "you didn't get the sense he really knows what's going on" in West Timor.

Barely 48 hours after Wahid arrived in New York, machete-wielding militiamen hacked to death the three UN workers, burning their bodies in the street as seemingly outnumbered soldiers and policemen looked on. The next day, eight people were killed in fighting between local villagers and militiamen outside the Betun refugee camp, south of Atambua. As the worst case of violence between locals and militiamen so far, that incident was yet another sign of rising social tensions across West Timor.

For months now, UN peacekeepers have warned that the Indonesian government's failure to assert its authority has put the province of West Timor in increasing danger of falling under militia control. Annan and US and European leaders have pressed Jakarta for much of this year to rein in the militias; at the summit, the UN Security Council called on Indonesia to immediately disarm and disband them. But a Western military officer who toured the West Timor border region a fortnight before the Atambua attack told the Review: "The Indonesians just haven't provided the resources the problem needs. There doesn't seem to be the will to do anything."

Says a Jakarta-based ambassador: "We just can't understand why the government is allowing one of its own provinces to be subverted." Wahid's weak civilian government, a yawning leadership gap in the Indonesian armed forces, and support for the militias from active and retired military figures are all blamed for Jakarta's failure to impose effective control.

The mayhem was sparked by the September 5 slaying of militia leader Olivio Moruk, who was decapitated and castrated in Betun just a week after Indonesian prosecutors named him as one of 19 people suspected of human-rights abuses in East Timor. Indonesian officials claim he was the victim of a local dispute, but the timing suggested other motives: He was killed exactly one year after his militiamen allegedly slaughtered 200 independence supporters in a church in Suai, on East Timor's southwest coast. Was it revenge or were some of his former military backers enforcing a code of silence?

Only last month, Indonesian Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab said he needed three to six months to close the camps and put a lid on the problem. Since then, little has changed. Two Indonesian infantry battalions are strung out along the 170-kilometre border trying to prevent 200 hard-core militiamen crossing into East Timor. The security forces have done nothing, however, about the militias' control of the refugee camps or their intimidating acts in other parts of the province, including Kupang, the West Timor capital.

Little wonder, perhaps. Eurico Guterres, the leader of the Aitarak militia, which was blamed for some of the worst atrocities in East Timor after the UN-supervised vote on independence last year, now heads the West Timor paramilitary youth wing of the Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle, headed by Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Two months ago, Guterres was seen dining with disgraced former special-forces commander Lt.-Gen. Prabowo Subianto in Kupang, suggesting continued military collusion with his militia. Western intelligence agents have seen Prabowo in Kupang three times this year, most recently on August 31.

Megawati, a fervent nationalist, sided with the military over the East Timor issue. She also enjoys good relations with former armed-forces commander Gen. Wiranto, who may yet face trial for failing to stop the militia rampage in East Timor last year that left more than 1,000 people dead.

In a poignant example of just how much Jakarta has lost control in West Timor, regional commander Maj.-Gen. Kiki Syahnakri dispensed with time-consuming clearances and gave the go-ahead for three armed New Zealand helicopters carrying special-forces troops to evacuate 55 UN and other aid workers trapped in Atambua hours after the militia attack. Given the strained relations between Indonesia and the UN authority in East Timor, this was an extraordinary move.

In New York, Wahid asserted the murders were committed to embarrass him, and ordered troop reinforcements into West Timor "to help control the situation." But he expressed no regret over Indonesia's failure to act against the more than 2,000 militiamen in West Timor, and said it would take money from the international community to resettle them in other parts of Indonesia.

New Coordinating Minister for Security and Political Affairs Bambang Yudhoyono, who in a recent published interview did not mention West Timor as being among his priorities, has since promised to restore security and order. He didn't say what he would do about the militiamen, all of whom were originally armed and trained by the Indonesian military. By mid-week, Jakarta was moving at least three army battalions of up to 800 men each into the province.

Now that UN agencies are refusing to return until the militias are removed, aid workers worry about the spectre of famine and the possibility of refugees going on the rampage in search of food. UN officials estimate that 60,000-70,000 refugees would return to East Timor if they were permitted to do so by the militias.

The rest of the refugees include 2,600 former East Timorese soldiers, 8,000 ex-civil servants and their families who would lose their Indonesian pensions if they returned, and others who have been won over by militia propaganda, which teaches camp residents that UN workers will rape female returnees and use the men as forced labour. Senior UN military sources in Dili told the Review that militia recruitment in the camps has in fact accelerated in the past two months.