The united nations in east timor: Intervention at the military operational level

Contemporary Southeast Asia

Volumn 23, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 213-232

  Dickens, David ^a  

^a VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84937334662     PISSN: 0129797X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1355/CS23-2B     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. James Cotton, “Against the Grain: The East Timor Intervention”, Survival 43, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 136.
2. Don Greenlees, “Indonesia: Paramilitary Leader Vows Guerrilla War”, Reuters, 1 February 1999.
3. Cotton, op. cit., p. 7.
4. See, for instance, independent witness accounts documented by the Carter Center referred to by Anthony Smith in “Intervention and East Timor: A New Zealand Perspective”, Non-Intervention and State Sovereignty in the Asia-Pacific, edited by David Dickens and Guy Wilson-Roberts (Wellington: Centre for Strategic Studies, 2000), p. 83. Its weekly reports on East Timor can be found at http://www.cartercenter.org/reports.html. Smith himself witnessed militia burning a village and firing shots towards a polling booth.
5. Smith, op. cit., p. 82.
6. Mari McInerney’s article is illustrative of media reports at the time. See her “Australia: Snipers Target UN Compound As Dili Burns”, Reuters, 8 September 1999. A flavour of the media warnings of large-scale human rights abuses is illustrated by banner headlines such as “The spectre of ethnic cleansing”, New Zealand Herald, 8 September 1999, B 1; and “There will be a massacre”, “Terror In East Timor”, ”Genocide feared”, in Evening Post (New Zealand), 9 September 1999. These stories were largely derived from international news outlets such as Reuter and Australia Associated Press.
7. Interview with Gerald Hensley (New Zealand Secretary of Defence, and later with the Prime Minister’s Department and Cabinet during this period).
8. The following two paragraphs are informed by interviews with officials at APEC and in Jakarta who were close to the events. The New Zealand officials were Graham Fortune, East Timor Special Adviser to New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Don McKinnion, and Gerald Hensley.
9. The meeting was originally proposed by Canada’s Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy.
10. Interview with a senior Department of Defence official. According to a political adviser to President Habibie, the British mission to the United Nations played a critical role in ironing out potential obstacles that may have discouraged Indonesia from inviting the international community to send a force to East Timor.
11. UN Timor Resolution (1296/1999) at http://www.airforce.mil.nz/hotgen/un/Articles/UNResolution.htm
12. Stephen Romei and Robert Garran, “Jakarta To Pull Out”, The Australian, 16 September 1999; and Daniel Morrissey, “East Timor Force Steams Out Of Darwin”, Reuters, 19 September 1999.
13. Interview with a senior Department of Defence official.
14. Interview with a senior Department of Defence official.; and with a senior officer at the Land Component Headquarters of INTERFET.
15. Authority for INTERFET was provided by Security Council Resolution 1264 which was agreed on unanimously on 15 September 1999. See Alan Ryan, Primary Responsibilities and Primary Risks: Australian Defence Force Participation in the International Force East Timor (Canberra: Land Warfare Studies Centre, 2000), p. 25.
16. Although this extract is taken from a document updated in early 2000, it is typical of the briefs provided to all ranks in INTERFET in September 1999. See East Timor Handbook (Australian Theatre Joint Intelligence Centre, January 2000), p. 35.
17. Australian Defence Force Participation (ADFP) 9 (Joint Operations).
18. Ryan, op. cit., p. 113.
19. East Timor Primer (USCINCPAC Virtual Information Center, 2000), p. 25.
20. Interview with a senior officer at the Land Component of INTERFET.
21. BBC Worldwide Monitoring Service translation of a report that appeared on the website of the Indonesian news agency, Antara, 19 September 1999.
22. For a detailed study of these issues, see Ryan, op. cit.
23. Interview with a senior officer at the Maritime Component Headquarters of INTERFET.
24. Interview with a senior officer at the Maritime Component Headquarters of INTERFET.; and Ryan, op. cit., p. 66.
25. Information provided by Dr Alan Ryan of the Australian Land Warfare Studies Centre. Ryan visited East Timor during this period and personally saw barracks that had been destroyed. He also interviewed soldiers who had found the torture sites. Correspondence between Alan Ryan and the author, 27 March 2001.
26. Major General P.J. Cosgrove, “Australian Army”, The ANZAC Lecture at Georgetown University, 4 April 2000, p. 3.
27. Interview with a senior officer at the Land Component Headquarters of INTERFET.
28. Alan Ryan, “Achieving C3I Interoperability for Coalition Operations: Lessons from INTERFET” (Paper presented at the Technical Co-operation Program Workshop, DSTO 4 May 2000), pp. 6–10; and Cosgrove, op. cit., p. 4.
29. Interview with a senior officer on the staff of 3 Brigade and the Land Component of INTERFET.
30. Interview with a senior officer at the Maritime Component Headquarters of INTERFET; and Captain James Goldrick, “East Timor Maritime Lessons” (RAN Maritime Studies Centre, 2000), p. 3.
31. Trevor Datson, “Australia Warns Indonesia of Retaliations”, Reuters, 17 September 1999.
32. Interview with a senior Department of Defence official.
33. Goldrick, op. cit.
34. Goldrick, op. cit., p. 2.
35. Interview with a senior officer at the Maritime Component Headquarters of INTERFET.
36. This assessment is based on interviews with participants of these events.
37. Interview with a senior officer at the Maritime Component Headquarters of INTERFET.
38. This assessment is based on interviews with participants of these events.
39. The submarine was detected by the New Zealand frigate HMNZS Canterbury. The Canterbury’s ROP records that the ship “detected an unidentified submarine contact”, classified the contact as “a possible submarine”, in an area of ocean where a Type 209 was thought to be operating. Thanks to CNS New Zealand Rear Admiral Peter McHaffie for verifying this information.
40. Interview with a senior officer at the Maritime Component Headquarters of INTERFET.
41. Goldrick, op. cit., pp. 2-3.
42. “Strategic and Military Lessons from East Timor”, CSS Strategic Briefing Papers, (February 2000), at .
43. The first Maritime Component Commander of INTERFET was Commodore Jim Stapleton RAN.
44. Commodore B.D. Robertson, “Not Learning the Lessons of Operation Stabilise”, Journal of the Australian Naval Institute (April/June 2000), p. 11.
45. Interview with a senior officer at the Maritime Component Headquarters of INTERFET.
46. Cosgrove, op. cit., p. 8.
47. Interview with a senior officer at the Maritime Component Headquarters of INTERFET.
48. Interview with a well-placed RAAF source.
49. Cosgrove, op. cit., p. 7.
50. Ryan, op. cit., pp. 132–33.
51. Cosgrove, op. cit., p. 3.
52. Interview with a senior officer at the Land Component of INTERFET.
53. Cosgrove, op. cit., p. 3.
54. Interview with a senior officer at the Land Component of INTERFET.
55. Ryan, op. cit., p. 133; and interview with a senior officer at the Land Component of INTERFET.
56. Interview with a senior officer at the Land Component of INTERFET.
57. Cosgrove, op. cit., p. 3.
58. Interview with a senior officer at the Land Component of INTERFET.
59. Interview with Ramos Horta on Radio New Zealand Morning Report, September 1999.
60. Interview with a senior officer at the Land Component of INTERFET.
61. John Hunter Farrell, “Peacemakers INTERFET’s Liberation of East Timor: Day One in Dili to the Border and the Enclave”, Australian and NZ Defender Magazine (2000), p. 16.
62. Cosgrove, op. cit., p. 3.
63. This assessment is based on numerous interviews with Australian Defence Force personnel at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.
64. Cosgrove, op. cit., p. 3.
65. Interview with a senior officer at the Land Component of INTERFET.