Indonesian invasion of East Timor
During the 1st few years of the war, the Indonesian military faced heavy insurgency resistance in the mountainous interior of the island, but from 1977â€"1978, the military procured new advanced weaponry from the United States, Australia, and other countries, to destroy Fretilin's framework. However, the last two decades of the century saw continuous clashes between Indonesian and East Timorese groups over the status of East Timor, until 1999, when the East Timorese voted for independence in a United Nations Mission in East Timor referendum.
East Timor owes its territorial distinctiveness from the rest of Timor, and the Indonesian archipelago as a whole, to the fact that it was colonized by the Portuguese, not the Dutch. Colonial rule was replaced by the Japanese during World War II, whose occupation spawned a resistance movement that resulted in the deaths of 60,000 Timorese, or 13 percent of the entire population at the time. Following the war, the Dutch East Indies secured its independence as the independent Republic of Indonesia and the Portuguese, meanwhile, re-established control over East Timor. When East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in December 1975, "it had few prior links to the rest of the archipelago. As a former Portuguese colony, it lacked a shared colonial experience with other regions."
According to the pre-1974 Constitution of Portugal, East Timor, known until then as Portuguese Timor, was an "overseas province", just like any of the provinces that composed continental Portugal. "Overseas provinces" also included Angola, Cape Verde, Portuguese Guinea, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe in Africa; Macao in China; and had included the territories of Portuguese India until 1961, when the Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, ordered its invasion and annexation.
In April 1974, the left-wing Movimento das Forxas Armadas within the Portuguese military mounted a coup d'xtat against the right-wing authoritarian Estado Novo government in Lisbon (the so-called "Carnation Revolution"), and announced its intention rapidly to withdraw from Portugal's colonial possessions (including Angola, Mozambique and Guinea, where pro-independence guerrilla movements were fighting since the 1960s).
Unlike the African colonies, East Timor didn't experience a war of national liberation. However, indigenous political parties rapidly sprang up in Timor: The Timorese Democratic Union was the 1st political association to be announced after the Carnation Revolution. UDT was originally composed of senior administrative leaders and plantation owners, as well as native tribal leaders. These leaders had conservative origins and showed allegiance to Portugal, but never advocated integration with Indonesia. Meanwhile, Fretilin (the Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor) was composed of administrators, teachers, and other "newly recruited members of the urban elites." Fretilin quickly became more popular than UDT due to a variety of social programs it introduced to the populace. However, UDT and Fretilin entered into a coalition by January 1975 with the unified goal of self-determination. This coalition came to represent almost all of the educated sector and the vast majority of the population. APODETI (Popular Democratic Association of Timor), a 3rd minor party, also sprang up, and its goal was integration with Indonesia. However, the party had little popular appeal.
By April 1975, internal conflicts split the UDT leadership, with Lopes da Cruz leading a faction that wanted to abandon Fretilin. Lopes da Cruz was concerned that the radical wing of Fretilin would turn East Timor into a communist front. However, Fretilin called this accusation an Indonesian conspiracy, as the radical wing didn't have a power base. On 11 August, Fretilin received a letter from UDT leaders terminating the coalition.
The UDT coup was a "neat operation", in which a show of force on the streets was followed by the takeover of vital infrastructure, such as radio stations, international communications systems, airport, police stations, etc. During the resulting civil war, leaders on each side "lost control over the behavior of their supporters", and while leaders of both UDT and Fretilin behaved with restraint, the uncontrollable supporters orchestrated various bloody purges and murders. UDT leaders arrested more than 80 Fretilin members, including future leader Xanana Gusmxo. UDT members killed a dozen Fretilin members in four locations. The victims included a founding member of Fretilin, and a brother of its vice-president, Nicolau Lobato. Fretilin responded by appealing successfully to the Portuguese-trained East Timorese military units. UDT's violent takeover thus provoked the three-week long civil war, pitting its 1,500 troops against the 2,000 regular forces now led by Fretilin commanders. When the Portuguese-trained East Timorese military switched allegiance to Fretilin, it became to be known as Falintil.
By the end of August, UDT remnants were retreating toward the Indonesian border. A UDT group of nine hundred crossed into West Timor on 24 September 1975, followed by more than a thousand others, leaving Fretilin in control of East Timor for the ensuing three months. The death toll in the civil war reportedly included four hundred people in Dili and possibly sixteen hundred in the hills. In the aftermath, "numerous UDT supporters were beaten and jailed" by the Fretilin victors.
Indonesian nationalist and military hardliners, particularly leaders of the intelligence agency Kopkamtib and special operations unit, Opsus, saw the Portuguese coup as an opportunity for East Timor's annexation by Indonesia. The head of Opsus and close Indonesian President Suharto adviser, Major General Ali Murtopo, and his protege Brigadier General Benny Murdani headed military intelligence operations and spearheaded the Indonesia pro-annexation push. Indonesian domestic political factors in the mid-1970s, however, were not conducive to such expansionist intentions; the 1974â€"75 financial scandal surrounding petroleum producer Pertamina meant that Indonesia had to be cautious not to alarm critical foreign donors and bankers. Thus, Suharto was originally not in support of East Timor invasion.
Such considerations, however, became overshadowed by Indonesian and Western fears that victory for the left-wing Fretilin would lead to the creation of a communist state on Indonesia's border that could be used as a base for incursions by unfriendly powers into Indonesia, and a potential threat to Western submarines. It was also feared that an independent East Timor within the archipelago could inspire secessionist sentiments within Indonesian provinces. These concerns were successfully used to garner support from Western countries keen to maintain good relations with Indonesia, particularly the United States, which at the time was completing its withdrawal from Indochina. The military intelligence organisations initially sought a non-military annexation strategy, intending to use APODETI as its integration vehicle. Indonesia's ruling "New Order" planned for the invasion of East Timor. There was no free expression in "New Order" Indonesia and thus no need was seen for consulting the East Timorese either.
In early September, as many as two hundred special forces troops launched incursions, which were noted by US intelligence, and in October, conventional military assaults followed. Five journalists, known as the Balibo Five, working for Australian news networks were executed by Indonesian troops in the border town of Balibo on 16 October.
| On 7 December 1975, Timor. | Indonesian forces invaded East - |
On 10 December, a 2nd invasion resulted in the capture of the 2nd biggest town, Baucau, and on Christmas Day, around 10,000 to 15,000 troops landed at Liquisa and Maubara. By April 1976 Indonesia had some 35,000 soldiers in East Timor, with another 10,000 standing by in Indonesian West Timor. A large proportion of these troops were from Indonesia's elite commands. By the end of the year, 10,000 troops occupied Dili and another 20,000 had been deployed throughout East Timor. Massively outnumbered, FALINTIL troops fled to the mountains and continued guerrilla combat operations.
In the cities, Indonesian troops began killing East Timorese. At the start of the occupation, FRETILIN radio sent the following broadcast: "The Indonesian forces are killing indiscriminately. Women and children are being shot in the streets. We are all going to be killed.... This is an appeal for international help. Please do something to stop this invasion." One Timorese refugee told later of "rape [and] cold-blooded assassinations of women and children and Chinese shop owners". Dili's bishop at the time, Martinho da Costa Lopes, said later: "The soldiers who landed started killing everyone they could find. There were many dead bodies in the streets â€" all we could see were the soldiers killing, killing, killing." In one incident, a group of fifty men, women, and children â€" including Australian freelance reporter Roger East â€" were lined up on a cliff outside of Dili and shot, their bodies falling into the sea. Many such massacres took place in Dili, where onlookers were ordered to observe and count aloud as each person was executed. In addition to FRETILIN supporters, Chinese migrants were also singled out for execution; five hundred were killed in the 1st day alone.
Though the Indonesian military advanced into East Timor, most of the populations left the invaded towns and villages in coastal areas to the mountainous interior. FALANTIL forces, comprising 2,500 full-time regular troops from the former Portuguese colonial army, were well equipped by Portugal and "severely restricted the Indonesian army's ability to make headway." Thus, during the early months of the invasion, Indonesian control was mainly confined to major towns and villages such as Dili, Baucau, Aileu and Same.
Throughout 1976, the Indonesian military used a strategy in which troops attempted to move inland from the coastal areas to join up with troops parachuted further inland. However, this strategy was unsuccessful and the troops received stiff resistance from Falintil. For instance, it took 3,000 Indonesian troops four months to capture the town of Suai, a southern city only three kilometers from the coast. The military continued to restrict all foreigners and West Timorese from entering East Timor, and Suharto admitted in August 1976 that Fretilin "still possessed some strength here and there."
By April 1977, the Indonesian military faced a stalemate: Troops had not made ground advances for more than six months, and the invasion had attracted increasing adverse international publicity.
In the early months of 1977, the Indonesian navy ordered missile-firing patrol-boats from the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Taiwan, as well as submarines from West Germany. In February 1977, Indonesia also received thirteen OV-10 Bronco aircraft from the Rockwell International Corporation with the aid of an official US government foreign military aid sales credit. The Bronco was ideal for the East Timor invasion, as it was specifically designed for counter-insurgency operations in difficult terrain.
By the beginning of February 1977, at least six of the 13 Broncos were operating in East Timor, and helped the Indonesian military pinpoint Fretilin positions. Along with the new weaponry, an additional 10,000 troops were sent in to begin new campaigns that would become known as the 'final solution'.
The 'final solution' campaigns involved two primary tactics: The 'encirclement and annihilation' campaign involved bombing villages and mountain areas from airplanes, causing famine and defoliation of ground cover. When surviving villagers came down to lower-lying regions to surrender, the military would simply shoot them. Other survivors were placed in resettlement camps where they were prevented from traveling or cultivating farmland. In early 1978, the entire civilian population of Arsaibai village, near the Indonesian border, was killed for supporting Fretilin after being bombarded and starved. During this period, allegations of Indonesian use of chemical weapons arose, as villagers reported maggots appearing on crops after bombing attacks. The success of the 'encirclement and annihilation' campaign led to the 'final cleansing campaign', in which children and men from resettlement camps would be forced to hold hands and march in front of Indonesian units searching for Fretilin members. When Fretilin members were found, the members would be forced to surrender or to fire on their own people. The Indonesian 'encirclement and annihilation' campaign of 1977â€"1978 broke the back of the main Fretilin militia and the capable Timorese President and military commander, Nicolau Lobato, was shot and killed by helicopter-borne Indonesian troops on 31 December 1978.
The 1975â€"1978 period, from the beginning of the invasion to the largely successful conclusion of the encirclement and annihilation campaign, proved to be the toughest period of the entire conflict, costing the Indonesians more than 1,000 fatalities out of the total of 2,000 who died during the entire occupation.
The Fretilin militia who survived the Indonesian offensive of the late 1970s chose Xanana Gusmxo as their leader. He was caught by Indonesian intelligence near Dili in 1992, and was succeeded by Mau Honi, who was captured in 1993 and in turn succeeded by Nino Konis Santana. Santana's successor, on his death in an Indonesian ambush in 1998, was by Taur Matan Ruak. By the 1990s, there were approximately fewer than 200 guerilla fighters remaining in the mountains, and the separatist idea had largely shifted to the clandestine front in the cities. The clandestine movement, however, was largely paralyzed by continuous arrests and infiltration by Indonesian agents. The prospect of independence was very dark until the fall of Suharto in 1998 and President Habibie's sudden decision to allow a referendum in East Timor in 1999.
Related Sites for Indonesian invasion of East Timor
- East Timor History read Indonesian invasion of East Timor
- East Timor: Maps, History, Geography, Government, Culture, Facts ... read Indonesian invasion of East Timor
- ETAN News and Statements - East Timor and Indonesia Action Network read Indonesian invasion of East Timor
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