| Subject: Washington Post: Rebuilding
East Timor--From Scratch Washington
Post Sunday, October 10, 1999
Rebuilding East Timor--From Scratch
>From Ashes of Turmoil, U.N., Relief Agencies Will Try
to Create a New Nation
By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service
DILI, East Timor—In their two-week outburst of
violence following East Timor's vote for independence, Indonesian soldiers and militiamen
managed to take this small territory back to what some are calling Year Zero. Now the
United Nations and relief agencies arriving here just behind international peacekeeping
troops are trying to figure out how to put East Timor back together.
The job is daunting. In Dili, the capital, the central
business district has been destroyed by fire, according to a preliminary U.N. assessment.
All the banks have been burned down, as have the restaurants. The markets are all gone.
The destruction caused by militias and members of the
Indonesia army angered by the independence vote was wide and severe, particularly in the
western part of the territory. According to the U.N. assessment. Maliano is 80 percent
destroyed, Balibo is 95 percent destroyed, Liquica 60 percent destroyed, Glenois 80
percent destroyed, and Suai 90 to 95 percent destroyed, with "all major government
buildings . . . the fuel storage facility, water reservoir and marketplaces
destroyed," according to the assessment.
More than 80 percent of the territory's civil servants,
most of whom were Indonesian, have left--and that includes hospital staff, port workers,
municipal employees and 87 percent of the teachers.
There is no government, no court system, no legal system,
no police. The only functioning justice system is that imposed by the Australian-led
peacekeeping force, which has been detaining suspected militiamen and holding them for
72-hour periods.
"This is no man's land now," said Ross Mountain,
the U.N. humanitarian affairs coordinator, as he ticked off the problems facing the world
body as it tries to shepherd East Timor toward nationhood.
"This is about nation building," he said, and the
incoming U.N. Transitional Authority for East Timor is "going to have to more or less
run a country with a civil service that has been decimated."
Since East Timor voted Aug. 30 to separate from Indonesia
after 24 years of harsh occupation, the list of questions about its future is has grown.
For example, what will be the official language? Indonesian
is almost certainly out, because of the association with brutality and the violence of the
first two weeks of September after the election results were announced. The
pro-independence Falintil guerrillas would prefer Portuguese, the language of the former
colonial power, but they have been isolated in the mountains for more than two decades and
few young people speak or understand the language. The language commonly used here is
Tetun, but it is not spoken outside East Timor--and for now many civil servants and
teachers likely will be foreigners.
Another question: What currency will be used? The
Indonesian rupiah is still the common currency, although once the territory formally
breaks from Indonesia after the election is ratified in the People's Consultative
Assembly, there will be strong pressure to change that. But to what? And how will a
financial system be constructed?
"There's no bank operating anywhere in this
territory," Mountain said. "You can walk by and see they're pretty well
gutted."
The U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) would like to get primary
schools up and running quickly, and is looking at a Dec. 1 start date. Primary school
teachers, who were mostly East Timorese, have largely stayed. But they have no textbooks,
no curriculum. Also, all the principals, teaching instructors and Education Department
administrators are gone.
There is also a question of what to teach. "The
curriculum is unusable," said Robert Bennoun, UNICEF's director in East Timor.
"Is it a history of East Timor? No. It's a history of Indonesia. They have to develop
a curriculum that's consistent with the people, culture, history and aspirations of the
people of East Timor." Asked how long it would take to develop it, he sighed and
replied: "About 200 years."
One surprising aspect of the wave of destruction here has
been that school buildings were left largely undamaged. But since they are among the few
buildings still standing, most are being used either as U.N. facilities or base camps for
the peacekeeping troops.
Even seemingly simple jobs like getting water and
electricity restored to the capital are time consuming and costly. The central part of the
city was served by a water pipe system that is intact. But six of the seven supplementary
bore holes are inactive because there is no electricity to run the pumps.
Most of the outlying areas of Dili are served by a ground
water system that relies on hand pumps, and many of those are not working. UNICEF's water
expert, Philip Wan, said they are trying to assess how many hand pumps need to be
replaced, and he has ordered 1,000 sets of spare parts and 1,000 new pumps. The bigger
problem, Wan said, is finding mechanics who can fix the systems.
Restoring the agricultural sector is another major
challenge. The rainy season begins in just a matter of weeks. But hundreds of thousands of
people are still displaced, and might have already missed the planting season. With no
crops in the ground, the marketplaces in towns and cities cannot be revived.
The larger questions, of course, are how much this massive
reconstruction will cost, and who should pay.
The United Nations and relief agencies are planning to
launch an appeal for an amount initially estimated at $135 million, although that
figure--which would cover a period up to nine months--is being revised constantly.
Despite the massive problems, relief officials are
optimistic. For one thing, they say, East Timor has two institutions active across the
territory--the Roman Catholic Church and the main independence group, the National Council
for Timorese Resistance. The council is already helping relief groups organize food
distributions around Dili neighborhoods.
Also, the United Nations is hoping to persuade some of the
thousands of East Timorese expatriates to return. There are an estimated 22,000 East
Timorese in Australia, with huge numbers also in Portugal, Mozambique and Macau. "One
would hope one could find talent there that can be attracted back," Mountain said.
"This is a very doable operation," said Michel
Barton, spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian affairs office.
"I don't believe East Timor is going to be an Asian
Tiger any time soon," he said. But he added, "What's been destroyed is shelter,
they haven't destroyed hope."
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