| Subject: IHT: UN
Challenge: How to Bring East Timor Back to Life
International Herald Tribune Thursday,
December 9, 1999
UN Challenge: How to Bring East Timor
Back to Life
By Michael Richardson International
Herald Tribune
LOS PALOS, East Timor - When Elsa Magno,
a schoolteacher, stood up the other day at a crowded meeting with visiting
East Timorese leaders, she raised a question that went to the heart of
this soon-to-be-independent nation. ''What languages will we teach in our
schools, where will we get enough teachers, and how will we pay them?''
she asked at the gathering in a traditional community hall with no walls
and a thatched roof.
In a former Portuguese colony that was
invaded and occupied for 24 years by Indonesia, such a question had many
heads in the audience nodding in agreement. For a generation, the language
of instruction in East Timor's schools has been Indonesian, not Portuguese
or the widely spoken indigenous dialect, Tetum. Many schools were staffed
by Indonesians who fled as violence between supporters and opponents of
independence intensified this year.
The conflict culminated in a systematic
campaign of terror, burning, looting and forcible displacement of the
population by pro-Indonesian militias and hard-line nationalists in the
army after nearly eight out of 10 East Timorese voted for independence in
a UN-organized referendum on Aug. 30.
Slowly, painfully, but with surprising
resilience, East Timor's traumatized people are piecing their lives
together again. With international aid, families are being reunited, given
temporary shelter and food, and hope for the future. In the past few
weeks, for example, UN officials say that 51 of the 65 schools in Los
Palos district have reopened. ''The local community and the Roman Catholic
Church have done an amazing job in getting kids back into classrooms,''
one official said. ''For the moment, it doesn't matter that we can't pay
the teachers.''
While the emergency relief effort in East
Timor has been hampered by some delays caused by supply and coordination
problems, aid workers said it had largely achieved its aims and would soon
be superseded by a longer-term reconstruction and development program. The
aim is to provide a firm foundation for East Timor's independence within
three years. ''The sooner the better,'' said the independence leader
Xanana Gusmao. ''It should take no more than two years.''
But the questions posed by Miss Magno and
other residents of this town 180 kilometers (110 miles) east of the
capital, Dili, indicate the magnitude of the task facing the UN
Transitional Administration in East Timor and the pro-independence
leadership group, the National Council for Timorese Resistance, which Mr.
Gusmao heads. The Los Palos residents wanted assurances not just about
improvements in education, but in employment, public health, agriculture,
government and the rule of law.
East Timor is likely to be the first new
state of the 21st century. It is both a major challenge and a unique
opportunity for the United Nations.
''This is the first time the UN has been
given responsibility and massive resources to take over the complete
running of a country,'' said Jose Ramos-Horta, a senior member of the
council who for years acted as its chief spokesman abroad. ''If we fail,
it will be a disaster for UN credibility as well as the people of East
Timor.''
Dili, the wrecked capital, is slowly
coming back to life. An estimated 60,000 East Timorese have returned to
the town from hiding places in the hills or from camps in Indonesian West
Timor. Power supply has been restored. The market is partly occupied again
by people buying and selling food and basic household items. Vendors have
set up stalls on the streets, although almost none of the shops have
reopened.
A few taxis and microbuses ply town
routes. In the past few days, following two fatal traffic accidents,
UN-trained traffic wardens have started directing vehicles and pedestrians
at some busy intersections. But the task of rebuilding public
administration and institutions almost from scratch, training East
Timorese, reviving the economy, and providing enough jobs to sustain
viable independence is daunting. ''The key issue is employment, especially
for young people,'' said the owner of one of the few restaurants operating
in Dili. ''Without that, the promise of independence will turn sour.''
The World Bank last month estimated that
the cost of a three-year reconstruction program for East Timor would run
from $260 million to $300 million. Representatives of the East Timorese,
the United Nations, aid agencies, international financial institutions and
foreign governments will meet in Tokyo next week to discuss the program
and how to fund it. A recent draft report by a World Bank-led survey team
said that the violence after the independence vote had caused
''catastrophic human and physical damage.''
East Timor had an estimated annual per
capita income of $431 in 1996 and 30 percent of households lived below the
poverty line - double the average for Indonesia. The survey concluded that
more than 75 percent of East Timor's population - thought to have been
around 850,000 - was displaced in the weeks following the ballot results,
and almost 70 percent of the country's physical infrastructure, including
homes, schools and administrative buildings, was destroyed or rendered
inoperable. ''Both the public and private sectors have suffered almost
total collapse in the aftermath of the violence in East Timor,'' the
survey report said. ''The civil service is not currently functioning at
any level.''
While the destruction provides an
opportunity to build something better for the future, the United Nations
and the nearly 60 different aid organizations working under its aegis in
East Timor are racing against time and conflicting pressures, not least
the need to get things done as quickly as possible while ensuring that
East Timorese are properly consulted.
The recently arrived head of the United
Nations in East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, has acted speedily to
overcome tensions between locals and foreigners by setting up a National
Consultative Council with a large majority of Timorese members to advise
him on all major policy issues. ''I don't want the Timorese, who feel
weak, to be asphyxiated by a huge international superstructure under which
they feel crushed and denied initiative, latitude and participation,'' he
said.
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