By Veronika Habib
An Australian businessman has shown his entrepreneurial spirit by opening a new "hotel" in East Timor, the Dili Lodge, where stubbies of VB and Carlton Cold can be purchased, along with plastic thongs. For $110, you can spend the night in on-site vans. He is not alone.
On October 19, the Forum on the Reconstruction of East Timor, organised jointly by Austrade and AusAID, took place in Canberra. It was attended by some 500 representatives of business. The forum heard from representatives from the two Australian government agencies, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
A casual glance through the notes collected from this forum would suggest that East Timor's destruction is a boon for Australian business. The irony of this is inescapable: was it not these very same business interests which influenced Australian foreign policy to support the Indonesian occupation of East Timor? Now the corporate sector is being rewarded again.
According to World Bank statistics presented at the forum, 500,000 people were displaced by East Timor's deliberate destruction, and more than 50% of homes in Dili and the western part of East Timor have been damaged or destroyed. There has been widespread damage to infrastructure and looting. This is in addition to the long-term requirements of the country, such as economic development, improved health and education services, reconstruction of communities and infrastructure.
The UN has as yet done little to improve this situation, a fact highlighted last week when 150 refugees arrived back to find no support from the UNHCR, resulting in the death of one baby. The UNHCR claimed to have no knowledge of the refugees' arrival until news of the baby's death reached them.
This was followed by news, reported by the Melbourne Age on November 11, that the UNHCR was considering withdrawing staff from West Timor due to repeated attacks and harassment by militias there.
Yet the UN operations were touted as good for Australian business at the forum. The Austrade presentation said that 8000 peacekeepers are due to hit the territory by next year, accompanied by 1000 civilian police and 500 support staff.
The Washington, DC, trade commissioner, Alistair Nicholas, pointed out that this operation will require "housing, furniture, fuel, electric generators, vehicles, military rations (including cold storage facilities), communications equipment, aviation fuels, oils and lubricants, LPG gases and gas cylinders, long term charter of aircraft, stationery and general supplies" and projected spending of US$100 million per year for the next three years.
Companies were then given advice by many of the agencies present as to how to get on the procurement lists of the various UN agencies. They were promised support from Austrade's Washington office, close to the headquarters of the UN and its agencies. Businesses were advised not to forget about the "pizza and Coke market", catering to UN workers.
The Northern Territory government's representative marketed Darwin as an effective base for Australian companies, citing advantages such as a small government which is "willing and able to respond fast", "a strong, supportive, local East Timorese community" and a construction industry experienced in remote areas and in the Asian region. National companies were pushed to form "strategic alliances" with companies in the Northern Territory "to provide competitive advantage when tendering for major reconstruction packages".
The Australian government has given only $14 million in humanitarian aid, and committed to the Interfet operations only after much public pressure. There has been no pledge from the government as to how much it is willing to commit in grants to the new East Timorese government in reconstruction aid. East Timor's per capita gross domestic product stands at US$168 per year, giving it a position amongst the poorest 30 countries in the world.
The World Bank presented a detailed paper on the reconstruction needs of East Timor and its coordination of "donor assistance". Klaus Rohland, the head of World Bank operations in the Pacific, warned that assistance should not come all at once, but stressed that assistance must be coordinated before donor interest moved elsewhere to "yet another Pacific island".
Rohland was in East Timor in early November as part of a fact-finding mission. The World Bank's mission was to assess the needs of the country and return to present findings to a donor conference in December, at which donors will be asked to contribute to a trust fund which will be divided up by the bank amongst sectors, such as agriculture, public service and so on.
A group of East Timorese was also part of the mission. The bank's involvement of local stakeholders was lauded as a first — but was this not rather used by the bank as a way of camouflaging its real agenda?
Another member of the World Bank team, Sarah Cliffe, gave the East Timor economy a clean bill of health. She was quoted by the Melbourne Age on November 11 as stating that coffee would be key to the economy in the medium to long term. Coffee is a cash crop largely grown on privately owned land in East Timor.
Rumours that East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao had accused the World Bank of pursuing its own economic agenda were dismissed by Cliffe and by Mario Carrascalao, a former governor of East Timor under Indonesian rule, and now a representative of the National Council of Timorese Resistance involved in seeking business ties for East Timor from around the world.