Invasion in Timor

Just before dawn, seven Indonesian warships knifed into the waters off Dili, a faded coffee port that serves as the capital of the Portuguese colony of East Timor. Minutes later the ships' guns lit up the night sky. Indonesian marines with full packs and battle dress charged ashore from assault boats, while planes arced overhead dropping paratroopers. Within a few hours it was all over but the mopping up--and that apparently was bloody. Ham radio operators 400 miles away in Australia picked up the last faint pleas from a lone transmitter: "Women and children are being shot in the streets. We are going to be killed. Please help us. Please..."

Thus was one more remnant of Portugal's colonial empire lost last week. East Timor is a mountainous patch of jungle and coffee plantations on the eastern half of the 300-mile-long island of Timor; the other half is part of Indonesia. The Indonesian invasion at least resolved a dilemma for East Timor's 650,000 inhabitants, who had been faced with one of three political fates: continued association with Portugal leading to gradual independence, immediate independence or integration with Indonesia. The generals in Jakarta decided on integration, evidently because they feared that if independence were chosen, East Timor might some day be used as a staging ground for guerrilla operations mounted by Indonesian dissidents or Communist-backed rebels.

Various armed groups had been struggling for post-Independence power in East Timor for six months. In August the Timorese Democratic Union (U.D.T.), a right-wing group favoring Portuguese federation, fought its way to power in Dili, only to be driven out by the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin), a leftist group that advocated immediate and total independence. Amid what some Western witnesses described as "bloody carnage," which included children being bashed to death against the trunks of trees, Fretilin troops forced the Portuguese colonial governor and his aides to flee to an island 20 miles offshore.

Armed and trained by left-leaning sympathizers in the Portuguese army, Fretilin troops drove their rivals in the U.D.T. and other groups right up to the Indonesian border. Alarmed, the Jakarta regime offered sanctuary to some 40,000 Timorese fleeing the fighting. The Indonesians also began rearming the battered troops of the U.D.T. and its allies, including the pro-Indonesian Timorese Popular Democratic Association (APODETI), for a counteroffensive. Fretilin forces, described by an Australian reporter as "looking like a Dad's army of hippies," had set the stage for last week's showdown in November, when, already in retreat, they declared East Timor an independent free state.

Call to Surrender. Lisbon severed diplomatic relations with Jakarta following last week's invasion. It also called upon the United Nations to "protect the territorial integrity" of East Timor. From Jakarta, Indonesia's Foreign Minister Adam Malik coolly dismissed the Portuguese protest, insisting that Indonesian troops had landed in Dili "at the request of the people of East Timor."

As the U.D.T., APODETI and their pro-Indonesian allies set about establishing a provisional government in Dili, Indonesian radio (preceded by a fast-paced rumba) urged remnants of the Fretilin forces hiding in the jungles to "throw down your arms, return home and surrender." If they do not? Last week's fighting reminded many old South Pacific veterans that during World War II, some 400 Australian commandos pinned down 21,000 Japanese troops in a long guerrilla campaign in the wilds of East Timor.

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