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Peace-keepers as Nation-builders:
Dilemmas of the UN in East Timor
Published in International Peacekeeping. Vol. 8, no 4 (2001).
ASTRI SUHRKE
____________________________________________________________________
The UN mission in East Timor is the most comprehensive transitional
administration undertaken by the UN to date. While having a combined
function of peacekeeping and civil administration, UNTAET was shaped by
the standard procedures and principles developed for ordinary
peacekeeping. This entailed a short time-scale for completion,
international staff centrally recruited, no requirement for local
expertise, no provisions for local capacity building, and no initial
structures for local participation. Yet the purpose was to prepare the
territory for independence. The lessons of UNTAET suggest that
peacekeeping-cum-governance missions should be separated, not integrated,
contrary to the Brahimi Report’s recommendation.
________________________________________________________________
Introduction
The UN mission in East Timor, variously described as an unprecedented
‘governance’ or ‘nation-building’ mission, has come to be regarded
as something of a test case. Already in February 2000, the British
ambassador to the Security Council suggested that it could be a model for
future UN ‘nationbuilding missions’.i Yet
the mission suffered throughout from an underlying contradiction between
the UN structure that shaped it - which outfitted the mission with classic
peacekeeping tools – and its mandate, which was to prepare the Timorese
for independence.
When the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) was
established in late 1999, it was generally accepted in the UN system that
peacebuilding missions had different requirements than conventional
peacekeeping operations. The point was articulated in the Brahimi report,
released just a few months later, which affirmed that complex governance
missions could not be cut from a conventional peacekeeping cloth, or
treated institutionally as a peacekeeping operation with a civilian
governance function attached.ii Yet, UNTAET
was shaped by procedures that had developed as part of standard UN
peacekeeping. The mission was planned and operated under the auspices of
the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), which had little
experience with governance. Most of the budget was assessed, i.e. based on
non-voluntary contributions from UN members, which entailed pressure to
complete the operation as soon as possible to prevent an open-ended drain
on UN finances. Following standard UN practice, the staff for the civilian
administration was internationally recruited with little regard for local
expertise, as was the military component. No structures were built into
the mission for Timorese participation, either in the administration or
through political consultations. Unlike the UN mission in Kosovo, which
was launched only a few months earlier, UNTAET did not even have a
dedicated unit for institution building on par with its other main
functions.
Given the nature of ‘peace- or ‘nationbuilding’, a long time
frame and substantial local participation would seem critical for a
successful mission. ‘The UN’s role,’ as Amnesty International
pointed out, ‘is not to deliver a country and a system to the East
Timorese but to enable them to decide for themselves what kind of country
they want.’iii Indeed, the failure to
include participatory mechanisms from the outset put UNTAET on a difficult
course vis-à-vis the local population. The slow pace of ‘Timorization’
became the perhaps most vexing issue facing the UN mission. Why, then, was
UNTAET moulded in conventional peacekeeping form? And what are the
implications for future missions of this kind?
[back to top]
Towards Unprecedented
Involvement
Security Council Resolution 1272 of 25 October 1999 gave UNTAET mandate
to provide security and maintain law and order, establish an effective
administration, assist in the development of civil and social services,
ensure co-ordination and delivery of humanitarian assistance,
rehabilitation and development assistance, support capacity-building for
self-government, and assist in the establishment of conditions for
sustainable development. Without specifically saying so, the UN had
ultimate authority of a kind that in the contemporary international system
is reserved for sovereign states.
The East Timor mission was the most comprehensive transitional
administration undertaken by the UN during the 1990s.iv
In Cambodia, the UN had assisted the existing government to develop a
post-war political structure. In Kosovo, the UN had assumed full governing
authority but not sovereignty; the peace agreement in June 1999 affirmed
that Kosovo was a province of Serbia whose eventual status would be
determined at a later date. East Timor in 1999, by contrast, was in
UN-terms a non-self- governing territory, and the UN mission was precisely
to prepare it for independence. The closest in sovereignty terms was the
transition in Namibia, where the UN briefly took over the trusteeship
previously held by South Africa Yet here the UN relied on the South
African administration during the transition to independence. In East
Timor, an early directive noted, ‘UNTAET will proceed to establish its
administrative capacity throughout all sectors of governance and
administration.’v
The direct role assumed in 1999 reflects a much longer UN involvement.
Refusing to accept Indonesia’s occupation in 1975, the UN had adopted
Portugal’s view that East Timor remained a non-self-governing territory.
This gave the UN Secretary-General authority (under Chapter XI, Art 73(e))
to concern himself with the territory. In 1982, instead of passing the
annual resolution calling on Indonesia to withdraw, the General Assembly
asked the Secretary- General to ‘initiate consultations with all parties
directly concerned’ (Res 37/30). This led to the Tripartite Talks among
Portugal, Indonesia and the UN, and gave the Secretariat an institutional
niche to mediate. The opportunity for change came in mid-1998 when the
Suharto regime in Indonesia collapsed. The new UN Secretary-General had
considerable interest in human rights and decided to deepen his
involvement. At the Tripartite Talks in October 1998, Kofi Annan’s
Personal Representative to East Timor presented a proposal for East
Timorese autonomy. It was in response to this initiative that the new
Indonesian president, Habibie, announced the surprise ‘second option’,
i.e. that if the East Timorese did not accept autonomy, he would grant
them independence.
The terms of the ‘second option’ were spelled out in the important
agreement of 5 May 1999, which allowed the UN Secretary-General to hold a
referendum (‘popular consultation’) to ascertain the wishes of the
East Timorese. Unlike most other elections in which the UN has been
involved, the referendum was not merely monitored, but prepared, conducted
and verified by a UN mission (UNAMET). The prominence of the UN reflected
the existence of partial and conflicting authority claims: Indonesia had de
facto but not de jure control, Portugal had de jure
authority but none de facto, and the East Timorese independence
movement, Conselho National da Resistencia Timorense (CNRT), had a
wide international solidarity network and a Nobel prize winner, but no
formal international standing and only a one-man lobby at the UN. Between
these claims the UN appeared an impartial broker to carry out the
referendum.
This historical trajectory goes some way to explain why the UN assumed
full governing power when, after the referendum, violence erupted and
Indonesian authorities withdrew. The path was staked out in the May 5
Agreement, which specified that if the East Timorese voted to leave
Indonesia, then Portugal and Indonesia would agree to ‘a peaceful and
orderly transfer of authority in East Timor to the United Nations’,
which would initiate the process towards independence (Art.6). In other
words, the UN would be the sovereign authority in an interim period.
The formula did not necessarily exclude Timorese participation in the
political and administrative structures during the transition period. The
issue was raised at the time by both the Timorese independence movement
and its supporters.vi Yet UNTAET was
established as an exclusively UN-staffed entity, and political mechanisms
for local consultation were gradually added as the Timorese and donor
governments pressed for greater ‘Timorization’.
A main reason for the initial non-inclusion of Timorese in the
transitional administration is found in the continuation of the political
logic that had underpinned the May 5 Agreement. The Timorese had not
participated directly in the negotiations leading to the Agreement. Given
strong opposition in the Indonesian military to let the territory go,
attempts to include the Timorese would probably have derailed the talks.
The Timorese made their inputs through the Portuguese and the UN
delegations. The latter was headed by the PRSG (Jamshid Marker, a
Pakistani diplomat), with staff support from the UN Department of
Political Affairs (DPA). The UN staff regularly consulted the CNRT
president Jose Alexandro ‘Xanana’ Gusmão - accessible in his Jakarta
jail and subsequent house arrest - and exiled Nobel Prize winner Jose
Ramos-Horta. The informal consultations were evidently close and frequent,
earning DPA officials a reputation in the Secretariat for being favourable
to the Timorese.
The CNRT leadership readily accepted Art.6 of the agreement which
stipulated transfer of authority to the UN during the transition to
independence. Indeed, the CNRT’s long-standing position had been that
the Timorese needed a gradual preparation for independence – Gusmão had
in 1986 called for a phased transition to independence under UN tutelage.
Their overriding worry during the negotiation was that the May 5 Agreement
left Indonesia in charge of security during the referendum, permitting
only an unarmed UN presence.
The security concerns of the CNRT and their supporters were shared at
the highest level in the UN Secretariat. Over the summer, the
Secretary-General regularly reported to the Security Council that the
Indonesian army was complicit in the growing violence that was unleashed
on the East Timorese as the ballot date grew near.vii
However, the weak Indonesian government could not, or would not, reign in
the military. Nor would key members of the Security Council pressure
Indonesia. As violence mounted, UN negotiators as well as the Timorese
leaders concentrated their attention on ways to improve security
conditions, including an international security presence, so that the
consultation process could go ahead. The precise role of the East Timorese
during the transition period was left for later determination.
[back to top]
Enter UNTAET: Political Constraints on Planning
When the referendum produced a decisive ‘no’ to continued
integration with Indonesia (78.5% as against 21.5), and the Indonesian
army launched the Timorese militia on a scorched earth campaign, this did
not immediately change the Security Council calculus that in the preceding
months had favoured caution. Between 3 September, when the results of the
referendum were announced and violence erupted, and 7 September, when the
Security Council demonstrated concern by sending a mission to Indonesia,
the Council was reluctant to take action, maintaining that it was the
responsibility of the government of Indonesia to provide security in East
Timor.viii It took another 8 days before
the Security Council authorized an international military intervention -
the Australian-led INTERFET - and only after reluctant agreement had been
extracted from the Indonesian government. By Security Council standards,
this was rapid; for the victims on the grounds and a shocked international
audience, the pace seemed glacial. In the interim period, around one
thousand persons were killed and the territory laid waste.
As the partially open debate in the Security Council shows, the concern
not to offend or further destabilize Indonesia mainly accounted for the
delay; there was also the sovereignty issue. Indonesia had strong support
in the Council from Malaysia and other non-aligned states. The United
States wished to deal with the conflict in a manner that served its
long-standing interests in maintaining good relations with Indonesia and
was conducive to regional order and stability. China and Russia held
similar views, and additionally worried about setting a precedent for
uninvited interventions. In a longer-term perspective, it was evident that
independent but tiny East Timor would remain in the shadow of Indonesia.
The more acceptable the transition was to Jakarta, the better the
prospects for future relations.
The constitutive principles of the emerging UN state of East Timor
reflected in some respects the political logic in the Security Council
that embodied caution and consensus. The least divisive stance was simply
to restate the provision in the May 5 Agreement that stipulated transfer
of authority to the UN in case of a ‘no’ vote. This the Security
Council did on 15 September in a brief and non-controversial item in the
resolution authorising an Australian-led military force to end the
violence (Res.1264/1999). The second, implicit message was that, in
deference to Indonesian sensibilities, the East Timorese resistance
movement should keep a low profile in the governing structures of the
transitional state. This was the perception of some key persons in the
planning process, and it is reflected in the language of the
Secretary-General’s report to the Security Council that formed the basis
for the resolution authorising UNTAET. The UN would ‘need to be fully
responsible for the administration of the territory’ in the transition
period, and would itself be the administrative agent. The voice of the
Timorese would only be heard through unspecified ‘mechanisms for
dialogue at the national and local level’ (S/19991024). In colonial
terms, it was a model of direct rather than indirect rule.
[back to top]
Models and Planners
The planning process contributed to this result as well. The planning
of UNTAET took place in the context of a fierce bureaucratic power
struggle between DPA and DPKO. Before the crisis, DPA had been the
principal unit in the Secretariat to handle East Timor. The department had
been in charge of the negotiations leading to the referendum as well as
the $52-million mission (UNAMET) that organized it. UNAMET’s mandate
further gave it a role in the initial transition period regardless of the
outcome of the ballot. DPA had developed considerable local expertise - it
was virtually the custodian of the Secretariat’s knowledge about East
Timor, both at headquarters and in the field where some 800 international
UNAMET staff had been working closely with the Timorese for three months
to organize the vote. Not surprisingly, DPA wished to participate in the
post-ballot mission and started planning in early September. The head of
UNAMET, Ian Martin, returned to East Timor after the violence to formally
but briefly continue as mission head. However, the department ran headlong
into strong opposition from DPKO.
The entry of international troops under the UN-authorized INTERFET
radically changed the nature of the mission. DPKO maintained that with the
deployment of international troops in a peacemaking or peacekeeping
capacity, the mission should be moved to its departmental jurisdiction. In
terms of numbers, moreover, the military component was clearly
predominant. Initial plans for UNTAET included 8900 military, as against
ca 1200 civilian staff.ix Inter-departmental
rivalry over institutional mandate was reinforced by personality clashes,
especially at the top level. The DPKO did not even respond to a proposal
from DPA’s Under-Secretary-General for a joint planning mission. The
fact that UNAMET had ended in disaster was used in the inter-department
rivalry as well. Given the tense relations between the two departments,
formalized joint planning or a joint mission seemed impossible. In
mid-September a decision in the Secretary-General’s office settled the
matter: while the planning team drew its staff from both departments and
was assisted by a wider agency cast, DPKO was to be in charge.x
The institutional lead of DPKO in planning and implementing the mission
had significant consequences. In general terms it meant that the entire
civilian operation was staffed and organized by, and ultimately
responsible to, a department that had little experience with ‘governance
missions’, no country-knowledge of East Timor, and whose standard
operating procedures were designed for military and preferably short-term
operations.
Institutional location also influenced the choice of ‘model’ for
planning purposes – another important element in the genesis of the
mission. Since the UN essentially assumed a trusteeship role in East Timor
as part of decolonization, it would seem logical to legally anchor the
mission in the UN Charter’s provisions for trusteeship.xi
Politically, this might be a liability in that the trusteeship model was
associated with colonialism after World War I and South Africa’s illegal
control over Namibia after World War II. On the other hand, basing the
mission on a specific Charter provision for direct UN rule might pre-empt
critics who questioned the legitimacy of the UN’s unprecedented
authority in East Timor.xii Whichever the
case, the trusteeship model was briefly considered and quickly discarded.
Looking to something more institutionally familiar, DPKO chose its
operations in Kosovo as the model. A comprehensive ‘peacebuilding’ and
‘governance’ mission had been established in Kosovo in June 1999. When
the Security Council three months later asked the Secretariat to plan a
similar operation for East Timor, Kosovo seemed the obvious reference
point. The logistics of planning pointed in the same direction. The
Secretariat had no central institutional memory, so to speak, where the
experience of various missions could be stored and easily retrieved. Time
was of the essence; the Secretariat had only a few weeks in which to
launch the mission. With no spare planning capacity in the Secretariat at
large or in DPKO,xiii the department
mobilized individuals in the UN system who had been involved in the
planning or early phase of the Kosovo mission (UNMIK).xiv
The marching order of the East Timor planning team was, in short, to ‘take
the Kosovo plan and rejig it to fit East Timor,’ as a participant later
recalled.
The Kosovo mission itself reflected a broader doctrinal evolution that
incorporated experiences from Namibia to Eastern Slavonia, and UNTAET was
not a complete structural replica of UNMIK. The administration for East
Timor had only three pillars (as against five in Kosovo) –
governance&public administration (GPA),
humanitarian&rehabilitation, and the (military) peacekeeping. There
was no separate pillar for institution-building or reconstruction. While
critically important to a ‘governance mission’ in a war-devastated
country, both those functions were assumed to be part of GPA. In practice,
they were largely taken over by the World Bank, the donors and, very
belatedly, UNDP. The relatively more simplified structure reflected the
lesser significance of East Timor to the major powers when compared to
Kosovo. For the same reason, heads of the various pillars did not include
representatives of other international organisations (as in Kosovo), but
merely different geographic regions (in line with UN practice).
Regarding relations with the local parties, the impartiality principle
was applied in both cases even though conditions on the ground differed.
East Timor was decidedly on the road to independence, and the political
forces favouring independence were grouped under one umbrella organisation,
the CNRT. The main political division was between the proponents and
opponents of independence, and the latter were a distinct minority,
displaced to West Timor and discredited by the post-ballot violence. In
Kosovo, by contrast, rival factions vied for power when UNMIK was
established, and the eventual status of the province was uncertain. More
fundamentally, the impartiality principle derived from a long-established
institutional perspective in the UN that allowed for only two kinds of
representative authorities: sovereign governments and factions. Insofar as
the CNRT was not a sovereign entity, it was relegated to the conceptual
category of ‘faction’ and treated accordingly (the pro-Indonesian
integrationists being another faction). That the CNRT was a different
creature, requiring a different approach, was not recognized.
The dominant institutional culture in DPKO, which held that
peacekeeping missions must be neutral in relation to the local contending
parties, worked in the same direction. No challenge arose on political
grounds. While the Security Council had authorized an intrusive
intervention, it had waited for Indonesian consent, and the Council was
concerned to develop a transition acceptable to Jakarta. Treating the
Timorese independence movement as merely a faction was consistent with
this concern.
While prevailing in the end, the impartiality principle was questioned
during the planning process and challenged by alternative approaches
adopted by other agencies. Already when preparing for the referendum, DPA
staff had considered ways of involving the Timorese in the transition
period.xv In co-operation with World Bank
staff – who was also looking towards the post-referendum phase – plans
were made for a national consultative commission consisting of both the
pro-independence forces and the pro-Indonesian factions. The commission
would serve as a quasi-legislative body and a framework for participation
in the transition period. While the post-referendum violence ended hopes
for a truly bipartisan commission, DPA staff assisting in the planning
process continued to favour significant Timorese participation.
While accepting UN tutelage in a transition period, leaders of the
Timorese independence movement clearly expected to participate. When
negotiations with Indonesia moved forward in early 1999, the CNRT had held
a major conference of exiled leaders, Timorese diaspora, and supporters in
Melbourne (in April) to map out a strategy for economic development. Soon
after the referendum, and while East Timor was still in ashes after the
violence, the CNRT called a meeting in Darwin, Australia to establish a
consultative council to liase with the UN. The Transitional Council
included the political and professional elite of the CNRT, each person
having a functional or line responsibility that could form the basis for
parallel staffing during the transition.xvi
It was a concrete expression of the dual-structure state that the CNRT’s
leadership hoped for.
The CNRT president Xanana Gusmão was given a hero’s welcome at the
opening session of the UN General Assembly in September, but the CNRT was
only marginally involved in the planning of UNTAET. The Timorese had no
formal standing in the planning process, and met with staff sporadically
and informally, mostly outside the UN premises. Moreover, the CNRT was
structured around its top leaders and had weak representation in New York.
No major decision could be made without Xanana’s approval, and the CNRT
leader was not always within easy reach.
Nevertheless, early drafts and ideas prepared for the planning group
included significant Timorese participation. Some proposals built on the
notion developed earlier in DPA to separate legal and political authority.
In this scheme, the Timorese would have political power while the UN would
assume legal authority and serve in an advisory role. A fully
dual-structured state was proposed, drawing on a similar CNRT proposal for
Timorese participation throughout the administration – including the top
political level.xvii The proposal had an
integrated, dual desk system with Timorese working alongside UN
international staff, and included a schedule for elections so as to
emphasize the transitory nature of the mission.
Few of the draft provisions for Timorese participation survived the
final reviews undertaken by high-level DPKO staff and the head of the
planning mission. The impact of the early DPA planning was reduced by the
radical transformation of the situation on the ground – from the
assumption of a peaceful transfer to the reality of violence, division and
destruction – and the transfer of planning jurisdiction from DPA to DPKO.
As the inter-departmental turf war and bruising personality clashes among
UN staff moved centre stage; the issue of Timorese participation receded
into the distance. At the level of the head of the planning mission and
senior staff in DPKO, there were other concerns as well. The plan had to
be acceptable to the Security Council (i.e. subject to consensus
politics), and to be quickly implementable (i.e. based on standard
operating procedures).xviii
In the final document forwarded to the Security Council on 4 October,
the dual political structure and the timetable for elections had
disappeared. The mission plan included only unspecified ‘consultative
mechanisms’ with the Timorese people. The principle of parallel staffing
was tucked in towards the end of a long document. The pertinent paragraph
affirmed in strong language that the Timorese would be brought into the
administration even if they did not have the required expertise –
apparently as on-the-job training - but the staffing tables and budgets
subsequently prepared by the planning mission told another story.xix The
main principles of standard peacekeeping were applied: as an assessed and
international operation, UNTAET’s professional staff was reserved for
internationally recruited personnel. Only support staff such as drivers,
security guards and interpreters were recruited locally. In line with
standard peacekeeping operations, there was no capacity or dedicated staff
for on-the-job training. When the Security Council approved the final
mission plan, the principle of Timorese participation was retained as a
one-sentence clause in the resolution
While authorising a transitional administration, the understanding in
the Security Council – especially in the US delegation – was that that
training and institution building belonged bureaucratically to the world
of development. ‘Nation-building’ activities must be organized and
financed outside the framework for assessed contributions, which only
covered the UN mission proper.xx A small
voluntary UN Trust Fund was established to cover some local recurrent
expenses, and could have been used to pay Timorese professionals. The fund
was initially used to pay salaries for Timorese school teachers.xxi
In terms of budget procedures, UNTAET was treated as ordinary
peacekeeping. The Security Council did not authorize the size of the
UNTAET’s civilian ‘governance’ administration. The budget was
negotiated with the relevant committees of the General Assembly and passed
by that body. The civilian component of traditional peacekeeping missions
had traditionally been quite small, and the Council did its own mission
costing based on the sise of the military component only. The Council was
in for a surprise: the civilian component of UNTAET turned out to be
almost as costly as the military. The budget for the first 7 months (until
30 June 1999) totalled 386 million, of which almost equal amounts were
allocated to military and civilian personnel (slightly under one-third
each), and the rest for operational requirements. Similar proportions
appeared in the budget for the following 12 months.xxii
In the months that followed, the proportion between civilian-military
expenditures was of less concern to the Security Council than the overall
budget. As a mission financed by assessed contributions, it had built-in
demands for rapid completion. While UNTAET was less expensive than many
other peacekeeping missions (e.g. about half the monthly rate of the UN
mission in Mozambique in 1992-94), Security Council members were acutely
aware that the taximeter was ticking at the rate of half a million dollars
a day.xxiii
[back to top]
A Foreign Mission
The fate of Falintil, the armed wing of the Timorese resistance
movement, was similarly shaped by the consensus logic in the Security
Council and reinforced by the neutrality culture of DPKO. There was some
initial discussion in DPKO of making Falintil the core of the territory’s
security forces, patterned after Kosovo where the Kosovo Liberation Army
at that precise time was turned into a Kosovo Defence Force. Yet, a
similar decision was not taken for East Timor until almost a year later,
when relations with Indonesia had improved and after an independent study
had legitimated this course of action.xxiv
In the meantime, some one thousand Falintil guerrillas languished in
enforced cantonment in the interior, creating additional tension between
the transitional state and its Timorese subjects.
Timorese participation in UNTAET was tied up with the broader question
of whether to recognize the CNRT. The predominant view in the Secretariat
was that although the referendum had been conducted with the CNRT logo on
the ‘no’ ballot, the result was a vote for independence, not for the
CNRT. Early recognition would amount to political favouritism and could
encourage corruption, it was argued. Negative precedents were cited,
including recognition of the Palestinian Liberation Organization as the
Palestinian Authority and early recognition of the South West African
People’s Organization in Namibia. Institutionally, it seemed premature
for the UN to recognize a national authority in advance of the elections,
which the world body was intending to hold. As a result, early recognition
was not supported by the DPA Under-Secretary-General, and certainly not
the Office of electoral affairs in DPA, which was in charge of the future
elections. DPKO’s institutional culture of neutrality clearly worked
against early recognition, as did the UN institutional culture in which
the CNRT appeared as ‘a faction’ insofar as it was not a government.
Beyond this was the perception that political sentiments at the highest
level of the UN, including both the Security Council and the
Secretary-General, did not favour recognition.xxv
The mission was thus launched as a purely UN operation, with no
recognized local counterpart. It had an internationally recruited civil
administration, mostly staffed by persons with no expertise on the country
or knowledge of locally understood languages. From the Transitional
Administrator down to the district level, officials brought from all over
the world via a UN personnel office in New York manned the state. In the
field, the intense competition for interpreters signalled the
fundamentally foreign nature of the governance mission.
The Security Council Resolution had given the Transitional
Administrator authority to move towards a dual structure in practice, and
to develop mechanisms for political consultation with the Timorese. This
he did only slowly, and only as the demand for Timorization mounted in
March-April 2000. The complex dynamic of the reluctant Timorsation process
cannot be analysed in depth here. Suffice to note that the planning
process in New York had set the template, but it did not dictate the
choice in Dili.
The Transitional Administrator seemed to follow a strategy tailored to
broader international issues and Headquarter perspectives. Citing the need
to avoid local ‘politicisation’ of the administration, he noted
divisions within Timorese society, the need to keep open the door for
refugees to come back from West Timor, and Security Council concerns. The
presumed neutrality of UN stewardship was preferred.xxvi
Senior staff in UNTAET that could have moved Timorization forward were
either steeped in the tradition of a non-political civil administration,
or initially preoccupied with foreign affairs.
Within UNTAET staff, opposition to Timorization before elections and
the establishment of a Timorese civil service was variously explained.
Some referred to the uncertain status of the CNRT. As the umbrella
organisation of the independence forces, the CNRT would be the likely
conduit for local recruitment to UNTAET. Timorese politics would thus
creep in through the back door by giving some the CNRT favourites
preferential access to the state relative to factional divisions based on
generational, language or personal differences. The argument was premised
on a Weberian notion of a non-political civil administration; the irony,
of course, was that the UN state instead came to be shaped by UN politics
and the numerous institutional and personal interests that affected the
international recruitment process and the functioning of UNTAET. In large
part, the bureaucratic politics of UNTAET – and the larger UN
institutional culture it reflected – in itself served to exclude
Timorese and persons with local expertise. The career system in the UN
Secretariat did not reward managerial or training responsibility for local
employees, while responsibility for professional UN staff did. Inclusion
of persons with significant local knowledge would threaten those whose
principal expertise was management in the UN system.xxvii
Timorization proved possible only over time as Timorese demands for
participation mounted and found growing support in the UN system, above
all among donors who recognized that the essence of a governance mission
was capacity building. At the same time, East Timor became less
controversial in the Security Council. The main concern in the Security
Council was to avoid another crisis in East Timor. When that did not
happen, even significant international issues, such as negotiations with
Australia over oil revenues from the Timor Gap, elicited little interest
among the permanent members.xxviii In
the regularized discussions in the Security Council on East Timor, some
members started calling for greater Timorese participation.
As the political universe to which UNTAET oriented itself changed, and
the daily Timorese reality pressed closer, the need to accommodate
insistent demands for greater Timorese participation became inescapable. A
modest consultative mechanism had been established in December 1999, which
slightly enlarged the e existing, informal consultations between Xanana
Gusmão and Sergio de Mello. Participation was expanded in the second half
of 2000 after an intense political struggle that pitted most of the
Timorese political and civil society, with key allies from the aid
community and a few UNTAET staff, against the heavy weight of a UN-staffed
state that resisted becoming superfluous. By early autumn, the political
consultative commission had 31 members, and some of the administrative
functions were put under Timorese political leadership (ETTA). Yet
international staff continued to dominate both in the central
administration and at the district level. By March 20001 only a couple of
the 13 District Administrators were Timorese.
The pace was much too slow for Timorese who increasingly complained
about the visible, expensive and foreign UN state. The supreme irony was
that while the CNRT had been a widely accepted umbrella organisation among
Timorese when UNTAET was established, and in that sense a manageable
partner, by the time Timorization took place in the second half of 2000,
the CNRT split wide open and was subsequently abolished. Political
fragmentation increased as the elections scheduled for August 2001
approached, making it more difficult for UNTAET to manage the Timorization
process.xxix In some measure, it was an
irony that the UN had brought upon itself by failing to deal more
constructively with the political movement at an earlier stage.
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Planning Assumptions: No Time and An Empty Place
Two fundamental assumptions guided the planning process. One was that
violence and flight had produced near-total destruction in what at the
outset had been an extremely underdeveloped society. The idea that East
Timor had nothing – indeed was a terra nullis of sorts, a place
that had to be created – soon became conventional wisdom in New York and
part of the Western media.xxx The other
assumption was that the UN had very little time to act.
The extensive destruction that followed the referendum created
immediate demands for relief and reconstruction.xxxi
The UN had been vested with the authority to provide all essential
services and rebuild the infrastructure, but had no plans and no ready
capacity to undertake a task of this kind. Yet there was tremendous
political pressure to demonstrate that the UN could act quickly and
effectively. Not only were there urgent humanitarian needs on the ground.
The debate in the Security Council in mid-September indicated that the
East Timor mission carried the larger burden of delivering a success so as
to compensate for previous UN failures in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. In
East Timor, all the ingredients for manageable operations seemed present.
If the UN could not succeed here, the feeling was, it would hardly succeed
anywhere.
Exactly what success required was unclear, except that it placed a
premium on speed and concrete results. Ideally, the UN needed 6 months to
prepare a multi-purpose mission like UNTAET, a senior DPKO official later
said.xxxii In fact, planning for UNTAET was
completed in about one month. Meaningful contingency planning had not
started before September, ostensibly because it would appear to prejudge
the outcome of the referendum.
Time constraint and a terra nullis assumption reinforced the UN
inclination to approach the crisis relying on standardized, external
packages. If there was ‘nearly nothing’ in East Timor for the UN to
build on, as Sergio de Mello later said, then nearly everything had to be
brought in.xxxiii DPKO had initially
asked for ‘national service packages’ equivalent to those earlier used
by UNHCR in massive humanitarian emergencies, hoping that one nation would
rebuild the electricity sector, another would take responsibility for
education, etc. In the event, the option was abandoned, and UNTAET had to
assemble the administration from smaller, foreign contributions.
Outside the Secretariat, opinions differed as to whether East Timor in
fact lacked all necessary resources to rebuild the administration. While
the UN planning document for the mission claimed that all Indonesian and
other administrative staff had left,xxxiv
the Joint Assessment Mission led by the World Bank, composed of staff
members from the Bank, UN agencies, and Timorese and foreign experts was
less categorical. Some 20-25% of the civil servants had left, mainly those
estimated to be of Indonesian origin. Admittedly, these were concentrated
in the higher grades and skilled technical positions, ‘so this creates a
serious skill deficit for the civil service.’xxxv
Many of the remaining Timorese civil servants were primary school
teachers and nurses. The schoolteachers soon started to return to work and
were eventually paid by UNTAET through the UN Trust Fund. In the health
sector, Timorese district officials were also located and returned to
work, perhaps because the Interim Health Authority was the only agency
that from the outset had created a dual leadership by appointing a
Timorese doctor. The Land and Property Office of UNTAET soon found
Timorese legal and other experts, but UN regulations initially permitted
using them only on a volunteer basis (which the Timorese naturally
resented). There were skilled Timorese among the diaspora, among the
hundreds of Timorese students in Indonesia and elsewhere, and among the
remaining civil servants. The CNRT, as noted, had mobilized persons of
skills and authority to its Transitional Council. The CNRT (as well as the
Church) had local authority structures on the district level that could
have been better utilized. By early 2000 there were so many East Timorese
with a law degree (although of uneven quality) that they formed an
Association of Lawyers. When Oxfam staff restored water supply in the
districts, they relied mostly on local engineers and technicians who had
worked under the former Water Board of East Timor. In fact, the Water
Board operated the system for a while before turning it over to UNTAET.xxxvi
In technical and administrative skills overall, the Timorese obviously
could not match the international staff that arrived. However, they
possessed some – which were not utilized - and they had a range of
skills appropriate and necessary to the local situation that the
international staff lacked - starting with languages. What was missing,
and which made East Timor appear a terra nullis to many, was
management experience in relation to the UN system. Arguably, this was a
necessary skill in the transitional period, but not an exclusive one.
The final explanation for why even the limited skills and resources of
the Timorese were not mobilized by UNTAET was that neither the mission nor
the planning team stopped to make an inventory. UNDP and the World Bank,
by contrast, adopted different strategies.
The UNDP’s approach to the East Timor mission was based on the
alternative assumption that there were East Timorese with professional and
administrative skills who must be mobilized from the outset. The view was
articulated in a concept paper drafted in September 1999 that explicitly
rebutted the terra nullis assumption in favour of a
development-oriented perspective. East Timor was not an ‘empty state’
in terms of technical, administrative or political skills.xxxvii
‘In planning its interim role’, the paper argued, ‘the UN
Administration must, right from the onset, maximize the use of East
Timorese human resources’ to be found in the existing administration,
the sizeable diaspora, returning students and other residents (Indonesian
‘migrants’). The paper warned that ‘applying any ‘state of the art’
type system and facilities’ would not be sustainable. Instead,
sustainability and an independent governance process required ‘most
crucially the incorporation of East Timor citizens into positions of
importance, and not just as ‘apprentices’ or ‘shadow partners’.’
UNDP’s alternative position never got a hearing. The report was
prepared by UNDP’s New York office in September and lacked concrete
suggestions for how to proceed. UNDP had taken itself out of the early
planning process by letting its Indonesia office cover East Timor until
the time of the referendum. While protecting it’s the agency’s large
Indonesian portfolio, the decision effectively precluded UNDP from
actively canvassing Timorese resources. In the inter-agency discussions in
New York in September, moreover, different offices of UNDP appeared to
pursue conflicting priorities. In both New York and Dili, a main UNDP
agenda was perceived as competing with the World Bank. The result was to
reduce the saliency of the agency and the development perspective.
World Bank staff had made early efforts to identify skilled Timorese
who could be engaged in the post-referendum phase. Unlike in UNDP, the
East Timor portfolio was moved from the Bank’s Indonesia office to the
Pacific Island Division before the referendum, thus permitting more
aggressive planning. Bank staff had already in June-July canvassed the
Timorese diaspora as well as professionals within the territory. Some
Timorese professionals were brought to the Bank’s headquarter in
Washington for training program. While plans for a larger training program
were cut short by the post-referendum violence, the preparatory work done
by Bank staff enabled them to quickly include a number of Timorese
professionals on the large Bank-led mission that assessed the
rehabilitation and development needs after the violence.xxxviii
The inclusion of Timorese in the Joint Assessment Mission was in itself a
rebuttal of the terra
nullis argument.
Early preparation gave the Bank a lead in planning for the transitional
phase, but the Bank worked on a separate policy track that did not
influence the constitutive rules of UNTAET. The subsequent rivalry over
community development in early 2000 reflected not only intense
institutional rivalry over political power and control over substantial
development funds, but different approaches to the Timorese role during
the transition. The Bank promoted local-level Timorese participation in
development decisions through its Community Empower Program; UNTAET
opposed the scheme, arguing that local participation must await formal,
UN-held elections.
[back to top]
Conclusions
UNTAET’s position on the community empowerment scheme is indicative
of a broader alienation from the Timorese society. By mid-200, the
euphoria of the heady post-referendum days had given way to
disillusionment. A sense had developed among the population that ‘UNTAET
is on a separate path from the East Timorese,’ the Transitional
Administrator noted.xxxix
The path in fact consisted of two tracks. The planning and launching of
the mission made sense in terms of its peacekeeping and immediate relief
functions. These operations typically unfold in a situation where there is
little time, the stakes are high, and technical skills are at a premium
because the goals are specific and instrumentalities of reaching them are
relatively clear. External interventions based on standardized packages of
skills, tools and procedures are appropriate across a range of cases. This
logic was embodied in the standard operating procedures of peacekeeping,
reinforced in this case by politics in the Security Council and key
staffing decisions.xl The main financing
mechanism was assessed contributions that gave assured funding, but
imposed expectations of rapid results, and excluded local
capacity-training. Administrative staff was recruited centrally, with no
requirements of country expertise. The guiding principles were
impartiality rather than local participation. Into this structure, the
governance functions of the mission were fitted. It was a poor fit.
The problem was not so much that the situation was entirely new (the UN
had since the Namibia operation gradually taken on governance functions),
or that the requirements of a ‘peacebuilding’ missions were
unrecognized. Rather, knowledge was not matched by changes in
institutional structures and cultures at both the central UN level and in
the mission. Awareness of correct technical solutions was often
neutralized by fierce bureaucratic politics.
Gradually, the governance functions were accommodated by more suitable
structures that allowed for longer time frame, local participation and
institution- building. Additional funding mechanisms were used (both
bilaterally by donors and a UN Trust Fund). More fiscal and recruitment
power devolved from headquarters to the mission field. Timorese
participation increased through a local quasi-legislative institution
established (the National Council) and political leadership for some
administrative functions were turned over to Timorese (ETTA). This was
well in advance of August 20001 elections, but almost a year after UNTAET
was launched. Timorese civil service appointments gradually increased. Yet
the process proceeded in fits and starts, was typically accompanied by
bruising political battles, and required ad hoc innovation.
While the genesis of an organisation does not determine later choices,
as Howard Adelman has noted more generally, it ‘identifies the
boundaries within which those choices are made.’xli
The mission template laid down in New York is therefore critically
important. What are the lessons from the planning of UNTAET in this
respect?
For mixed peacekeeping and governance missions, some improvement on the
UNTAET model probably can be made through institutional changes in the UN
Secretariat as suggested by the Brahimi report (e.g. in planning,
recruitment and financing). Other parameters (especially the demand for
quick and concrete results, and for top-down, external control) are more
resistant. The political imperatives in the Security Council are
unpredictable and intrusive on the launching phase of most missions. Given
the typical characteristics of ‘nation-building’ or ‘governance
missions – long-term, messy, bottom-up and democratic – the most
logical solution appears to be a split the mission with one structure for
relief and peacekeeping, and another for governance. How the two would
relate to each other is an open question. Current efforts at the UN focus
on the opposite concept of integrated missions that can undertake both
peacekeeping and peacebuilding. The East Timor case points in the opposite
direction, suggesting the need for developing strategies that can
de-aggregate missions and thereby create a better fit between structure
and mandate.
[back to top]
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This article draws on interviews in New York, Washington and in East
Timor in the period March 2000–March 2001. It is part of a larger
project on the role of the UN in transitional administrations financed by
the Norwegian Research Council. The author wishes to thank an anonymous
reviewer for detailed comments on an earlier draft.
NOTES
i UN doc.SC/6799/3, Feb. 2000.
ii 'Report of the Panel on United Nations
Peace Operations', UN doc. A/55/305,S2000/809.
iii 'East Timor: UNTAET, justice and refugees
one year after the ballot,' www.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/ASA570042000).
iv
Michèle Griffin and Bruce Jones, 'Building Peace Through Transitional
Authority Mandates: New Directions, Major Challenges', in Adedekeye Abajao
and Chandra Lekha Sriram (eds), Managing Armed Conflict in the 21st
Century, London: Frank Cass, 2001, pp.75-90.
v UN doc. A/54/654, 13 Dec. 1999, para.44.
viAmong non-Timorese observers, Shepard Forman argued for a dominant
Timorese role during the transition, noting that the failure to include
Timorese in the administration had created 'a terrible sense of
exclusion'. 'Comments', International Peace Academy, New York, 9 May 2000
p.3. At a seminar, 'Kosovo and East Timor. Applying Lessons Learned' (30
September 30-1 October 2000) a prominent member of the Brahimi panel asked
why the UN had not turned the administration over to the Timorese at the
outset, leaving itself only an advisory role.
vii See UN docs S/1999/513 (5 May), S/199/595 (22 May), S/1999/803 (20 July).
viii
For instance, the statement of the Security Council president on 3
September to this effect (SC/6723) was left standing.
ix Not including nearly 500 UN volunteers. The civilian ceiling was set later
in the year during negotiations with budget committees of the General
Assembly (UN docs A/54/769,1999, A/55/543,2000).
x A note by Iqbal Riza, chef de cabinet of the Secretary-General settled the
thorny jurisdiction issue. The planning team was headed by a person
seconded to DPKO (Eric Morris), working in consultation with the head of
DPKO. A small number of staff from DPA and other UN offices and agencies
participated as well.
xi The UN Charter specifies that 'one or more states or the Organization
itself' may administer a territory placed under the trusteeship system
(Art. 81, italics added). East Timor might fit under Art.77 (c):
territories that are voluntarily placed under the system by states
responsible for their administration.
xii The point has been articulated by a former international UNTAET official,
Jarat Chopra, 'The UN Kingdom of East Timor,' Survival, Vol.42, No.3,
2000, pp.27-39.
xiii Several industrial states had seconded (gratis) military planning
officials to DPKO in the early 1990s, when UN's peacekeeping operations
suddenly increased. This was criticized by G-77 members for giving
northern states undue influence over peacekeeping. As a result, the
arrangement was terminated in February 1998, and DPKO's planning section
lost 134 staff members.
xiv The head of the planning group, Eric Morris, had been in the advance UN
mission to Kosovo and the planning mission for UNMIK. The head of the
advance Kosovo mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was concurrently head
of OCHA, was not directly involved in the planning, but was appointed
Transitional Administrator. He seconded an OCHA staff to the East Timor
planning team, Bruce Jones, who had been in the advance mission to Kosovo
as well.
xv The idea made its way into the 9 August report of the Secretary-General on
UNAMET's extension (S/1999/862), and the 28 August resolution of the
Security Council that authorized the extension (1262/1999).
xvi The Transitional Council was headed by Gusmão (President), with
Ramos-Horta as Vice-President (equivalent to their positions on the CNRT),
followed by 14 persons identified with line-responsibility equivalent to
that in a shadow-Cabinet, starting with the Falintil leader Taur Matan
Ruak responsible for Internal Administration, Security and Defence. The
Transition Council survived until early 2000, by which time most persons
had filtered into other positions in the CNRT, joined the modest
consultative mechanism established by UNTAET in December (NCC), or
returned to the diaspora. The Council composition was included in an early
information package distributed by UNTAET, PKF/HQ/Military Information
Cell, 'East Timor: Key Figures and Organizations' (n.d.).
xvii
The CNRT produced a similar version in mid-June 2000 when the Transitional
Administrator opened for greater Timorization. Their organogram placed
Timorese strategically and prominently placed throughout UNTAET, starting
at the top where the CNRT president appeared at the same level as the
Transitional Administrator, effectively exercising a veto. The
Transitional Administrator rejected equality at the top and the dual
structure throughout, proposing instead to share some Cabinet functions
with what became a Timorese transitional administration (ETTA).
xviii
The key person in DPKO, Assistant Secretary-General Hedi Annabi, had a
long tenure in the department. Part of his current duties was to brief the
Security Council on the East Timor mission. The head of the planning
mission, Eric Morris, had for many years been head of emergency operations
in UNHCR and was attuned to the logic of mounting quick and effective
relief interventions.
xix 'The United Nations will work on the
basis of the principles of participation and capacity-building. This will
involved assigning East Timorese to positions within the transitional
administrative structures to be established….Where [qualified
individuals] are not available, UNTAET will nevertheless assign East
Timorese to serve in positions inside the administrative structures
together with international counterparts, and deliver sufficient training
and capacity-building to enable these persons gradually to replace
international staff.'UN doc. S/1999/1024, 4 Oct. 1999, para. 47.
xx
The contradiction between the sweeping mandate and the narrowing financing
structure of the transitional administration was unwittingly articulated
by the US representative at the Security Council when the Council
authorized the establishment of UNTAET. Noting that peacekeeping
assessments were to support United Nations staff, peacekeeping forces and
civilian police, he pointed out that 'civil society projects' should be
financed through voluntary contributions by interested states. UN doc.
SC/6745, 25 October 1999.
xxi
The UN Trust Fund was separate from the Trust Fund for East Timor (TFET)
managed by the World Bank, which was the main funding source for
reconstruction and development.
xxii
This did not include humanitarian relief operations, which were financed
under a separate inter-agency consolidated appeal process. UN doc.
A/54/769,1999. In the budget for 2000-2001, 35% of the total 592 million
was allocated to civilian personnel and 39% to the military. Operational
requirements had sunk to 22% UN doc. A/55/43,2000).
xxiii Already in May 200, the US ambassador, Richard Holbrooke, spoke strongly
in favour of rapidly downsizing the military component of UNTAET. UN doc.
SC/6882, 27 June 2000.
xxiv
Independent Study on Security Force Options for East Timor. The Centre for
Defence Studies, King's College, London, 8 Aug. 2000.
xxv Interview with member of the planning mission, New York, March 2000.
xxvi
Interview with author, Dili, October 2000. See also de Mello's statement
to the Security Council on 3 February 2000 where he argues it was 'too
early to politicize the environment' by permitting new political parties,
prepare for constitution, etc. UN doc. SC/6799.
xxvii
For instance, the planned appointment of a leading Australian expert on
East Timor as special advisor to the Transitional Administrator, de Mello,
was blocked by a high-level staff in UNTAET who had worked with de Mello
in Kosovo but had no Timor experience.
xxviii
A high-level international UNTAET staff described the reaction when he
briefed the US ambassador in the Security Council on the Timor Gap
negotiations: 'His eyes glazed over.' Interview, Dili, October 2000.
xxix
By spring 2001, some 15 political parties and groupings had appeared to
contest the elections. East Timor's political parties and groupings, ACOFA
Development Issues, March 2001.
xxx
Returning from a first official mission in October 1999, the head of the
World Bank division covering East Timor declared that '[n]othing exists
anymore… This country really needs to be invented from scratch.' IPS, 18
November 1999. The same point was argued in an article with the title
'Inventing East Timor' in the influential US policy journal Foreign
Affairs, by James Traub, Vol.79, No.4, 2000, pp.74-89.
xxxi
The Secretary-General's report of 4 October described the situation as
'critical': 'The civil administration is no longer functioning. The
judiciary and court systems have ceased to exist. Essential services, such
as water and electricity, are in real danger of collapse. There are no
medical services, and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons are in
dire need of emergency relief.' UN doc. S/1999/1024, para. 22.
xxxii
Interview with author, New York, July 2000.
xxxiii
Statement to the Security Council, UN doc. SC/6799/ 3 Feb.2000.
xxxiv '[A]s there are no ….
administrative officials in Dili or in the rest of the territory…[UN-recruited
international] civil affairs officers and experts in local administration
will be deployed…', UN doc. S/1999/1024, para 14,23(c ).
xxxv
Report of the Joint Assessment Mission to East Timor. World Bank, 8 Dec.
1999, para 15. www.worldbank.org/eap/etimor. The Mission continues to note
that this presents an opportunity for reform since the
Indonesian-dominated civil service was bloated and inefficient.
xxxvi
Report by the Secretary-General to the Security Council, UN doc.
S/2000/53/para 31, 26 Jan. 2000.
xxxvii UNDP, Conceptual framework for reconstruction, recovery and development of
East Timor. New York, draft, Sept. 1999, p.5.
xxxviii
The subsequent head of the Bank's office in Dili, Sarah Cliffe, was
centrally involved in these preparations. She has described the
JAM-process in 'The Joint Assessment Mission and reconstruction in East
Timor', in James J. Fox and Dionisio Babo Soares (eds), Out of the Ashes.
Destruction and Reconstruction in East Timor, Adeleide:Crawford House,
2000, pp. 252-61.
xxxix He claimed this perception was 'mistakenly held'. Speech by Sergio de
Mello 2 June 2000, at the Tibar conference (outside Dili) that initiated
the first round of Timorization.
xl The head of the planning mission and the Transitional Administrator both
had a long tenure in UNHCR, where emergency relief operations dominated
the institutional culture in the 1990s.
xli
'From Refugees to Forced Migration. UNHCR and Human Security',
International Migration Review, Vol.35, Spring 2001, 7-32.
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