Where to begin. You wonder these days. Overload after overload. Bloody world gone mad. Newspapers page after page of war, murder, disease, corruption, disasters. Are we better knowing or unknowing? My newshead says one, my heart says the other.
Where to begin? Well, from a panoply of terrors East Timor probably tops the list right now. Once part of the Portuguese empire, it was taken over by Indonesia a generation ago, occupied and brutalised. This process was certainly not opposed by the world community.
Indonesia is as unknown to us as we are to Indonesia. It is composed of many islands of various sizes we rich northern folks (yes, you) know some of these islands because we holiday on them. It s a place of many riches, but few rich. Most of the population are very poor and most of the wealthy are very rich indeed.
Within this large group of islands, there are many peoples. And, as is the way of things, some are dominant, some are submerged, some are repressed. Contending views abound, regarding democracy, identity and government.
It is, I think, the fourth most populous country on earth, and they go about their lives as though there is no outside world. Probably like many Serbs, come to think of it. The parallels do not end there. And if it unravels, the consequences are unknowable.
But then, empires do not willingly dismantle and sometimes, when you see the stability they imposed (for their own ends, of course) you might be tempted to yearn for something of their structuring presence. Certainly many in Russia do.
Let s be clear it s not that empires are good or desirable. They are neither. But frequently their general (and often impersonal) blanket of security and administration allows for ordinary lives to continue in relative peace. It s stifling, corrosive and repressive, but it works. Looking at the aftermath of imperial disintegration, and especially the ethnic hatreds and brutalities unleashed, I think we may need to rethink what were once unchallenged truths.
The best way to envisage it is as a managed process of realignment. Quite the opposite of what happened in East Timor, where (I think) the unfortunate (and perhaps gullible) inhabitants were brought to a vote on independence, which they passed, without any adequate plan regarding what would follow.
Many of the outside and overseeing agencies might be accused of stupidity or incompetence in this. But the Timorese were suckered. They were led up the garden path and now they may be sold out.
I suppose the United Nations has to shoulder the blame. But so too must anyone who did not foresee the murderous assault by the pro-Indonesian militias, and the threat of genocide. But they also ignored (probably wilfully) the clear messages from the militias that they would not accept a referendum result in favour of independence.
So what have we got now? Basically it s a coup d etat. A paramilitary takeover. A people has been led up the garden path and is now being burned and looted out of hearth and home.
It s a human, military and geo-political disaster. And the fuckers know only too well that the West is unlikely to bomb Jakarta, or to send in troops, and the terrain is so unsuited to the West s sophisticated weaponry as to render it unusable.
It s like this: there is no peaceful solution to certain problems. So what do you do? Repressors and monsters laugh at the idea that we might persuade them. Just as the militias are sneering at the lassitude of the UN s approach in East Timor. And they will continue to rampage and murder and loot, and to ignore the referendum vote, and all efforts to ostracise them.
Therefore, any strategy to change that situation must be long-term and it must seek to understand them, so that they may be defeated. But if the situation is to be resolved, sadly, I think a meaningful military threat may be necessary. (And that was a hard sentence to draft for an anti-imperialist).
Perhaps there should also have been specialist commando teams in place on the island for months, training the East Timorese to defend themselves, to be less helpless in the face of intransigence. But that s veering very close to what the US did in Vietnam.
Questions, questions, questions. And meanwhile, the unfortunate Timorese, who were naive enough to believe in the process because it was underpinned by the UN, are hunted and harried as the Indonesians commandeer their homes and villages and create a new reality on the ground.
Watch out for the moral high ground. Your inconsistencies can be easily seen. There are other countries which are just as repressive why don t we act against them too? (The Nigerian oppression of the Ogonis, for example). Oil? And some of those who complain about refugees coming into Ireland oppose actions that would make their countries of origin more democratic and richer, thereby removing the pressure to migrate.
We are early into the autumn of the last year of the millennium. Things are getting worse rather than better. We need to start practising what we preach, in Ireland, in Europe, in the West . And time is getting short. The four horsemen await. n
The Hog