Kosovo and East Timor

The arrest of Care Australia's Steve Pratt and Peter Wallace by Serb authorities exposes more than the risks faced by aid workers in a war which masquerades as "humanitarian relief". It also reveals the perils faced by good people as a result of their own government's stupidity.

If we dismiss Serbian claims that they were Western spies, Pratt and Wallace were arrested either (a) because they were easy targets and possibly useful as bargaining chips in halting NATO's bombardment, or (b) because they were Australian. My hunch is that they were victims of their nationality.

Despite being irrelevant to the conflicts in the Balkans and having no influence on either side, the Australian Government's fulsome support for NATO's attack on Yugoslavia was as predictable as it was consequential. Instead of being able to go about their work as nationals of a neutral party to the dispute, Pratt and Wallace were presumably seen by Serbs as citizens of a state whose government reflexively endorsed an illegal and brutal attack upon their homeland. Would they otherwise have been of any interest to Belgrade? The Australian Government has not only been unable to protect its nationals abroad, it has, in fact, made two of its most altruistic citizens unnecessary targets in a propaganda war which it has nothing whatever to do with.

There is considerable irony in the Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, now crowing about enlisting Kofi Annan's support for the release of Pratt and Wallace. It was, of course, the United Nations which NATO conspicuously bypassed in order to launch its attack on Yugoslavia - a strategy which drew no complaints of any kind from the Australian Government at the time. The Secretary-General is probably too polite to remind Canberra of this fact.

Meanwhile closer to home, the Australian Government is reaping another bitter policy harvest. In East Timor, private militias are killing any Timorese suspected of being sympathetic to the struggle for independence. These militias are armed and paid by ABRI, Indonesia's military forces, and are doing everything they can to thwart a UN sponsored ballot on independence, provisionally scheduled for early July.

The Australian Government, alone in the world in recognising Indonesia's sovereignty in East Timor, argues that Jakarta is responsible for law and order in the disputed territory. In other words, the very organisation that committed the worst slaughter relative to a population since the holocaust between 1975-8, should now be relied upon to pacify East Timor in preparation for the UN ballot. Unsurprisingly, the act of self-determination which both Jakarta and Canberra opposed for so long, looks certain to be postponed. The East Timorese have been cruelly betrayed yet again.

The Howard Government also accepts the Habibie Government's denials that it is backing the militias, claiming instead that the latest massacres in Liquica (+60 dead, 8 April) and Dili (+30 dead, 17 April) were sponsored by 'rogue elements' in the Indonesian military. Even if this was true, and it is highly improbable, what does this say about Canberra's confidence in ABRI's ability to maintain law and order in East Timor? More importantly, when will foreign policy in Australia recover from its present paralysis and move towards supporting UN intervention in what will soon be, one way or another, a new independent state? After all, we can't just sit back and do nothing while people are being slaughtered, or can we?

Scott Burchill
Lecturer in International Relations
School of Australian and International Studies
Deakin University
221 Burwood Highway
Burwood Victoria 3125
AUSTRALIA

Email: burchill@deakin.edu.au

Website: arts.deakin.edu.au/sais/Staff/burchill

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