Australian peacekeepers end East Timor mission
Australia’s military today ended six years of peacekeeping duties in East Timor, wrapping up a mission that strained ties with Indonesia and heralded a new era of regional military intervention by Canberra.
The troops were dispatched to East Timor in 1999 as part of a UN force days after the tiny country voted to break free from 24 years of Jakarta rule in a ballot organised by the world body. The vote triggered a rampage by Indonesian troops and their allied militias that left 1,500 people dead.
Australia, which lies a short flight south-east of East Timor, took the lead role in the mission, and contributed 5,000 troops at its peak – far more than any other nation.
Today, Australia handed over control of the Moleana military base to East Timor’s government at a ceremony with East Timor’s Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and military officials from both nations.
“I remember very fondly the brave East Timorese fighters ... who helped me to understand my task and who typified those people who had struggled hard, made great sacrifices and who wanted nothing more than a normal, peaceful life with a family,” said Maj. Gen. Ken Gillespie, an Australian army commander.
Moleana is small town close to East Timor’s border with Indonesia. The ceremony there marked the formal end of Australia’s mission in East Timor, the Australian military said.
The final Australian contingent numbered 120 troops, who were engaged in engineering and infrastructure development. About 80 left two weeks ago and the final group will leave on June 24.
Canberra’s lead role in the mission – its largest foreign troop deployment since the Vietnam War – angered the Indonesian government, and ties between the two nations have only recently begun to improve.
It also signalled the beginning of a more interventionist foreign policy by Australia. In 2003, Canberra sent some 2,300 armed troops and police to the Solomon Islands to restore order to the archipelago after four years of communal strife. Last September, Australia sent 154 police to Papua New Guinea in an attempt to shore up its former colony’s embattled police force.
The Indonesian military quickly withdrew from East Timor when the international peacekeeping force arrived, and the two forces never exchanged fire. Two Australian soldiers died in East Timor, one of a respiratory illness and the other when a rifle accidentally discharged in the vehicle he was driving in.
