East Timor was discussed at a September meeting of the National Committee of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. It was noted that there were discussions on troops in WL Australia. The minutes then state: “Doubt there will be disagreement on UN troops here [Britain] — after Kosova debates: don’t call for peacekeeping troops; don’t necessarily denounce them. The implication was clear — we shouldn’t have had a problem in Australia — the British debates on Kosova had already sorted out the issues.
Unfortunately, the advice offered — don’t call for peacekeeping troops; don’t necessarily denounce them — put WL Australia on the wrong side of the debate on East Timor.
The request for troops had come from the East Timorese leaders. After fighting alone for 24 years, and after the overwhelming popular vote for independence, were they not entitled to invite in a military force, to protect the population from the Indonesian army and the anti-independence militia gangs? For the largest left party in Australia, the Democratic Socialist Party, it was clear that the East Timorese leaders did have this right.
Furthermore, the Australian government was ignoring the East Timorese request, so the DSP, in solidarity, itself raised the call for troops to be sent.
The WL Australia position amounted to saying to the East Timorese: “We know that Australian/UN troops will save many of your lives. Secretly, we hope troops will be sent; if they are sent we will not call for their withdrawal. But we can’t be seen to support the sending of troops. That would destroy our revolutionary reputation.”
Yet the AWL had rightly castigated the British SWP for its indifference to the fate of the Kosovars. So how did the position of WL Australia on East Timor relate to the Kosova debates in Britain?
These debates are surveyed in “The left during the Balkans war”, by Sean Matgamna (WL 62). The responses to the war fell into two main categories: 1. the main issue was Serbian ethnic imperialism in Kosova, 2. the main issue was the military action by Nato. There were those who attempted to give both issues equal prominence, but Sean argues that they tended in practice to fall into the second category, because “Stop the Bombing” was their only concrete slogan. The effect of this slogan was to demand that Milosevic be given a free hand, despite “support” for the Kosovars with calls of “Down with Milosevic” and “Independence for Kosova”.
However there was another “Third Way” — don’t have any concrete slogans! This (seriously) was the position stated by Hillel Ticktin in WL 56: “The first thing for socialists to realise is that we have very little role. There is no socialist movement on the ground. That leaves us with putting forward our socialist programme. The left must not degenerate into supporting the nationalism of either side. That includes the nationalism of the oppressed Kosovars.” The interviewer contended that, “We should say whether we believe the British government should lift the arms embargo and give the Kosovars guns to defend themselves,” to which Ticktin responded, “I don’t think socialists can give advice to a bourgeois government.” The interviewer replied: “This is not advice. Socialists should simply say what we want done.”
Yes indeed! So, did the AWL want military assistance to be given to the Kosovars or the East Timorese? Apparently not, if the assistance took the form of Nato ground troops or the Australian army. But it would be nice if some unspecified agency transported arms to Kosova and East Timor and somehow supplied the resistance movement, despite the opposition of the Serb or Indonesian military.
Trying to make this incoherence into a political virtue, Sean states: “Watching the agony of the Kosovars — or the East Timorese — naturally produces in decent people the urge to shout out ‘instructions’ to the rulers: essentially it is an ineffective cry of protest and, subconsciously, a belief in word magic. It is like the shouts of the mother who from a distance helplessly watches her child stepping out in front of a speeding car. It is a call for saviours on high. Its only effect is to express our real weakness and add to it political confusion — about what the role of socialists must be and what revolutionary socialist politics is — that will forever keep us weak.”
So “send ground troops” was a pitiful cry of helplessness, but “arm the Kosovars” or “military assistance to the East Timorese” was clear headed revolutionary socialist politics? In the case of East Timor, the resistance leaders had already specified that the assistance they needed was troops. The DSP rightly demanded that the troops assist the East Timorese as allies rather than act as an overlord, but the demand by WL Australia for “military assistance” without troops was downright fakery. There is little doubt that the Kosovars also required more than hypothetical rifles. If anyone believed in word magic it was those who imagined that the call “arm the Kosovars”, when specifically not addressed to Nato, helped the Kosovars in any tangible way. Even sillier is the implication that decent people, who shout if their child steps in front of a speeding car, will forever keep “us” weak — the clear headed socialists who would keep quiet and go straight home to conceive another child!
In Australia, decent people insisted on “confusing” the issue by expressing solidarity with the people of East Timor. Trade unions (illegally) stopped the movement of goods to and from Indonesia. Large rallies were held in all the state capitals. The key demands were for recognition of the independence of East Timor and for a military force to be sent to defend the East Timorese. It was obvious that the United States would not send any troops, because (as William Cohen stated with crystal clarity) US national interests were not involved.
Were these decent people “foolishly” demanding an Australian war with Indonesia, as one AWL observer alleged? Perhaps some were, but the main thrust of the rallies was to “simply say what we want done”, namely an Australian or UN force sent to East Timor to assist the independence movement. How to face down Indonesia and avoid a war was the government’s problem. It was certainly no solution to assure the Indonesian government that they could veto the deployment of troops in East Timor. The Foreign Minister (Alexander Downer) suggested sending unarmed peacekeepers, but this was shot down by the Australian military. The commanders demanded and got a government commitment to seek “robust” rules of engagement. Indonesia finally yielded to economic and diplomatic pressure and consented to the entry of the Australian-led UN force.
The overwhelming majority of people at the Australian rallies were reformists, according to Sean’s definition. That is they believed that the state, “with enough pressure, can be influenced to do what people of good will want”. Isn’t that exactly what happened? The explanation is contained in an Australian labour movement song from 1891 — “ the ballot is a thing they did not have to reckon with when George the Fourth was king”. Sean also defines the revolutionary belief that the state,“is a class state, which, even when — for its own reasons and with its own methods — it does something desirable, is not our state”. OK, so the Australian government acted for its own reasons, which included a desire to stay in office. But eventually it did, partially and unreliably, what people of good will wanted. Shouldn’t we aim to create our own state? Of course, but thousands of East Timorese had an immediate and urgent problem of survival. In these circumstances, mindless maximalism was the height of irresponsibility.
The reason that WL Australia opposed a “troops in” position on East Timor, was that this was seen as the equivalent of calling for ground troops in Kosova. The AWL had supposedly established that to call for ground troops in Kosova was to abandon working class politics in favour of political support for Nato. Calling for ground troops in Kosova was alleged to be advising Nato how to conduct its war against Serbia. Similarly, calling for troops in East Timor would be advising the Australian government how to… er… ? There was no war with Indonesia. Advising the Australian government on how to stabilise the region? No. It was telling the Australian government to abandon its long-standing policy of accepting Indonesian rule over East Timor. So the parallel with Kosova was questionable. If the parallel did hold, then it would establish nothing more than a requirement to look afresh at the Kosova question. In rational politics, a “precedent” can never be a reason for refusing to properly consider the current problem.
The claim, that calling for ground troops in Kosova automatically implied political support for Nato, was never proved.
Roger Clarke
