After last week's armed attacks on East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, angry voices have been raised in East Timor slamming the performance of the Australian-led International Stabilisation Force and the United Nations Police which includes Australian personnel.
Essentially, there have been two accusations. The Australians and the UN Police (so it is said) were too slow to get to the scenes of the attacks and, in the words of Ramos-Horta's brother, were "cowardly" when they did get there. And some, including East Timor's Defence Force Commander Taur Matan Ruak, have claimed that the ISF and UN Police ignored, or did not possess, crucial intelligence that might have prevented the attacks.
There is much that is still murky about the events of February 11, but I think it is already possible to assess these charges. The first is without substance. Both Ramos-Horta and Gusmao issued explicit instructions that their homes were to be guarded by Timorese soldiers and their personal security was to be in the hands of the Timorese Police working with UN Police, not Australian personnel. It is easy to see why. Images of the country's leaders under the guard of foreigners would have violated the nation's sense of "ownership" of its newly elected leaders and would have been damaging to the credibility of the Government, even to East Timor's reputation as a sovereign nation.
But unfortunately neither Ramos-Horta nor Gusmao made proper provision for their personal security. It is almost beyond belief that, in a situation of ongoing tension and political volatility, Ramos-Horta regularly took morning walks along the beach near his home with no more than a couple of guards. This was irresponsible. In security terms, he was a sitting duck. Similarly, Gusmao seems to have had minimal security at his home. Alfredo Reinado's heavily armed men were able to approach his house unchallenged.
What of the actions of Australian ISF troops once the gravity of the situation became apparent? As far as I can tell from sometimes contradictory eyewitness reports, Australian commanders acted professionally. They did not gallop into combat, nor should they have. In a combat situation the prudent, cool-headed commander will assess the situation with care. Where an ambush has occurred (and there were two ambushes), he will not expose his men to the danger of another ambush by instantly charging into the combat zone.
Bear in mind, too, that after the failed attack on Reinado in Same last year, the ISF was under instructions from the East Timorese Government not to pursue Reinado and his men. Clearly, the ISF has had to walk a very fine line between implementing the brief given to them by the East Timorese Government, and responding vigorously to immediate security threats. I would guess that the "slow" response (if indeed it was slow) may have been an expression of respect by Australian commanders for orders previously issued by the East Timorese Government.
On the face of it, however, there is more substance to the allegation that Australian personnel did not have adequate intelligence, or failed to heed intelligence that was conveyed to them. Little can happen in Dili that goes unnoticed or unreported, and the city is a hotbed of rumour. The difficult task facing a foreign peacekeeping force is to make assessments of claims and counter-claims, reports and rumours, without relying wholly on local assistants and informants. To maintain the independence of judgment that is essential to the gathering of good intelligence requires operatives with high-level local language skills and close familiarity with local society.
It is well known that very few Australian personnel in East Timor, whether in the ISF or in UN Police, have more than basic survival skills in Tetum, Indonesian or any other locally used language. The really sophisticated language skills needed for independent assessments of raw intelligence and to independently gather intelligence are in short supply. This is a major weakness in Australia's operations.
The weakness is not just an issue of military intelligence, it is a public relations issue. During his visit to East Timor last Friday, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd committed Australia to a long-term security presence in East Timor. But since 2006, anti-foreign sentiment, including explicitly anti-Australian sentiment, has been rising across the country. If our forces are not to become targets of growing popular resentment a really well-resourced program of training in local languages and cultures is essential.
Fortunately there is an excellent model to follow. The Australian Defence Force's Major Michael Stone has done wonders for the image of Australian soldiers, and Australians in general, in East Timor. A fluent, sophisticated speaker of Tetum, he is also a military affairs adviser to Ramos-Horta. But one man can't do it all. More are needed if Australia's long-term presence is to be professional in intelligence terms, and effective in public relations terms.
George Quinn heads the South-East Asia Centre in the Faulty of Asian Studies, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.
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