Paulo Gorjao – East Timor is seen at the United Nations headquarters as one of its state-building success stories in the past few years. Even though the UN had no prior experience in state-building, it administered and exercised all legislative and executive authority in the territory until its independence from Indonesia. Since May 2002, the UN has been devolving all operational responsibilities to the East Timorese authorities, and next May its mission in the new country will end.
The UN role in East Timor after 2004 remains unclear. The format, the dimension and the roles of the future UN structure are being discussed in both Dili and New York.
Next month the special representative of the UN secretary general, Kamalesh Sharma, will submit to the Security Council a first draft describing the future UN presence in East Timor.
East Timor – as well as Australia and Portugal – desire a continuing UN "mission" in the territory. East Timor is now a sovereign state but lacks significant expertise in several areas of civil administration. Moreover, since the financial dividends of the oil and gas from the Timor Sea will not be available until 2005 at the earliest, this means that East Timor does not have the resources to pay for the civilian expertise that it requires.
However, the Security Council and the United States in particular – mainly for financial reasons – wish to downsize substantially the UN involvement in East Timor after May 2004. The US is not against the continuing presence of the UN organizations in the territory, but Washington has resisted the idea of a formal UN "mission".
This is a mistake. The US should reassess its skepticism toward a successor UN mission in East Timor. Washington should do so in order to allow the consolidation of sovereignty in East Timor. In other words, it should do so for its own self-interest, not for altruistic reasons.
Southeast Asia harbors several active terrorist organizations with links to al-Qaeda. Moreover, East Timor has land borders with Indonesia, where operatives of Jemaah Islamiya recently mounted a terrorist attack against the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. Although there is no terrorist organization known in East Timor, it is plausible that terrorists might view the territory as a safe haven, bearing in mind that terrorists are being actively pursued elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
In light of the terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia, the State Department recommends that US citizens defer all non-essential travel to Indonesia and to exercise extreme caution while in East Timor.
Apparently, other states are taking the terrorist threat in Southeast Asia more seriously than the United States. This seems to be the case of Australia, which recently signed a memorandum of understanding with East Timor to boost cooperation in the fight against international terrorism. Therefore, it is plausible to argue that the US, the UN and the international community must remain engaged with East Timor in order to provide military and civilian training and expertise, for example in all matters related with border control.
Moreover, Washington should support a future UN mission in order to allow the consolidation of democracy in East Timor. The serious riots last December and other subsequent less serious disruptions of public order have shown that the East Timorese civil and security institutions remain weak. Indeed, some analysts consider East Timor as a potentially failed state.
East Timor still requires expensive foreign expertise to support the government and the parliament, the public administration and justice, as well as the police and the military.
As the US knows fully well, the threat of terrorism and a potentially failed state are an explosive mixture. Moreover, the US would not face any sort of resistance within the UN Secretariat and among the major donors involved in East Timor – Australia, Japan, and Portugal. In other words, there is a widespread consensus that a future UN mission, to succeed UNMISET (the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor), is required.
It would be a shame if, after so much effort, everything were to be lost because the United States – only for financial reasons and nothing else – did not support in the Security Council a future UN mission in East Timor.
[Paulo Gorjao is a senior lecturer at Lusiada University, Portugal, and editor of the forthcoming book Double Transition in East Timor: Consolidation of Sovereignty and Democracy.]