By Patrick O’Connor
Last month marked the tenth anniversary of the Australian-led military intervention into the previously Indonesian-controlled territory of East Timor. It is also a decade since a layer of pseudo “left” organisations organised a series of “troops in” demonstrations just prior to the deployment—performing a vital service for the government of Prime Minister John Howard and the Australian ruling elite.
The Timor operation was driven by Canberra’s desire to maintain control over the lucrative Timor Sea oil and gas reserves and prevent rival powers, above all former colonial ruler Portugal, from gaining a foothold at its expense in the strategically crucial region. These calculations could not be publicly aired, for obvious reasons, and so a “humanitarian” pretext was concocted for public consumption. Australian troops, the government insisted, were required to halt the destruction and violence unleashed by the Indonesian military and its anti-independence militia proxies after the Timorese people voted to secede.
The public campaign recalled the methods used by the US and its European allies in the lead up to the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia between March and June 1999. British Prime Minister Tony Blair even outlined a new doctrine—dubbed “ethical imperialism”—which insisted on the right of the major powers to disregard international law and national sovereignty, on the basis of so-called “humanitarian concerns” whenever they saw fit. The European ex-left played a critical role in this campaign. The “pacifist” Greens in Germany lent much needed political weight to the bogus humanitarian pretext for the bombing campaign that marked the German army’s first foreign intervention since the defeat of Nazism.
In Australia, the self-styled “radical” groups—working hand-in-hand with the Labor Party, Greens, and trade unions—played a no less vital role in relation to the Timor campaign.
In 1999, in the months prior to the intervention, hostility to the Howard government had been escalating. A year earlier, the prime minister had narrowly avoided losing office after one term—the conservative parties lost the popular vote to the Labor Party but held onto power due to the vagaries of Australia’s electoral system. Just four months before the troops went into Timor the government had succeeded in pushing through a widely despised goods and services tax.
In this context, the Howard government’s ability to posture as a friend and even saviour of the Timorese population was dependent on the political cover provided by the ex-left, led by the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP)—now Democratic Socialist Perspective, the main affiliate within the misnamed Socialist Alliance. The DSP organised rallies demanding that the government intervene to rescue the Timorese masses from violence by pro-Indonesian militias.
In the period immediately prior to the intervention, the DSP’s Green Left Weekly newspaper effectively functioned as the mouthpiece for the most aggressive elements of the Australian military and foreign policy establishment, and for the Fretilin and National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT) leadership in East Timor, which had concluded that its road to power was via Australian military intervention.
In the September 15 edition of the newspaper, DSP member Pip Hinman provided legal and military advice to the government in an article titled “Why Howard refuses to send troops to stop genocide”. Noting the objection that to send Australian troops in without a UN mandate would be illegal, Hinman countered: “This claim has absolutely no foundation … There is no legal obstacle to the Howard government immediately dispatching the 4,500 troops it has said it could have in Dili within 24 hours … Indonesia’s armed forces have little capacity to carry out a war against Australia. While Indonesia’s armed forces are five times larger than Australia’s in numbers, they are vastly outclassed in weaponry, organisation, and training.”
The “Resistance” lift-out of the same Green Left Weekly edition declared: “Rather than strengthening the hand of imperialism, sending troops in runs directly counter to the interests and wishes of imperialist countries like Australia, which do not want to undermine the power or authority of the Indonesian military … If the movement is strong enough to force an intervention, it would be a massive victory [because] if the solidarity movements and the liberation struggle in East Timor are powerful enough to force the UN or the Australian government to intervene, they will gain confidence that they have the power to force the government to act elsewhere.”
On September 29 Green Left Weekly readers were told: “The decision to send troops was a massive defeat for Howard.”