Indonesia’s war against East Timor: how it ended

ABSTRACT

Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 and occupied it for the next 24 years with the military and diplomatic support of major powers. Despite its insistence that its annexation was irreversible, Indonesia was forced to withdraw in 1999, resulting in an independent East Timor. This article explains how the 24-year war against East Timor ended by analysing the three pillars on which Indonesia’s control rested: its military superiority over the East Timorese resistance; the support of the international community; and its determination to retain the territory. Indonesia’s overwhelming military superiority persisted until the very end. East Timorese resistance and international solidarity weakened international support for the occupation. Indonesia’s determination to retain the territory underwent a complete reversal over the course of 1999. The East Timorese resistance was successful although they lacked a land border with a friendly state, an external supplier of weapons, or a liberated area in which to recover between guerrilla operations.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-determination
• guerrilla war
• counter-insurgency
• air power
• solidarity
• US foreign policy
• Indonesian military
• Timor-Leste

Acknowledgments

I thank the Timor-Leste Studies Association for the opportunity to test some of the ideas in this paper at their 2019 conference. I dedicate this paper to the late Dr Andrew McNaughtan.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Clinton Fernandes

Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Australia. He is a former Australian Army officer who served in the Australian Intelligence Corps. He has published on the relationship between science, diplomacy and international law, intelligence operations in foreign policy, the political and regulatory implications of new technology and Australia’s external relations more generally. He is the author of several publications including Island off the Coast of Asia: Instruments of Statecraft in Australian Foreign Policy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018).

Clinton Fernandes is a professor at the University of New South Wales. His research focuses on emerging technologies ranging from hypersonic missiles to electromagnetic pulse weapons, directed-energy weapons, human performance enhancement, bioengineering, nanotechnologies, and advanced materials and manufacturing methods.