by John Howard
In a number of radio interviews, I was pressed directly by interviewers and also talkback callers as to why we couldn’t act immediately. In a painstaking way I had to explain that, without the authority of the United Nations, for Australia to send forces would be to invade Indonesia. To many people this sounded like a legalistic cop-out. Such had become the emotional attachment to the East Timorese cause that Australians from both the left and the right of politics were urging immediate action by their Government.
With a wide-ranging resolution, the UN Security Council processes authorised the intervention on 15 September. Andrew Peacock, still our ambassador in Washington, had maintained contact with Richard Holbrooke (later President Obama’s envoy on Afghanistan-Pakistan), the American diplomat who had negotiated the Bosnian peace settlement at Dayton in the mid-1990s. Holbrooke had impressed on Peacock the importance of the mandate for the peacekeeping force being as wide as possible. This was to avoid the terrible dilemma of many European soldiers who, literally, felt that they had had to stand by whilst the slaughter of Muslim men at the hands of the Bosnian Serbs in 1994 took place, simply because the UN resolution authorising their involvement was so limited. Holbrooke’s advice was very valuable.
Shortly after the resolution was passed, Kofi Annan spoke to me and confirmed that Australia would be asked to lead the peacekeeping operation. It was to be called the Interfet Force, and Major General Peter Cosgrove was appointed to lead the force. I had not previously met Cosgrove, but over the months and years ahead we were to get to know each other extremely well and to this day remain good friends. This was going to be a most challenging operation for him.
All concerned knew the inevitable sensitivities of the Indonesians. Diplomatic niceties aside, the reality was that Indonesia had been humiliated by the events of recent months. The people of East Timor had voted overwhelmingly to separate from Indonesia, unrestrained violence in that province had followed this vote, and precisely because the Indonesian authorities were either unable or unwilling to stamp out the violence, the rest of the world, through the United Nations, felt it had to intervene with a large force led by a Western country, Australia.
To a lot of Indonesians this was utterly galling. Many others, however, saw it as something that should have been faced years earlier. Indonesian sensitivity, nevertheless, did make it essential that the intervention force be drawn from a wide range of sources within the region. I worked very hard to give it the appearance of a regional, rather than Western, intervention.
The Australian public overwhelmingly supported our stance. It united people on both the right and left of Australian political opinion. Kim Beazley and his Labor colleagues presented a confused picture. The Labor Party’s Foreign Affairs spokesman, Laurie Brereton, argued that our policy had really been his in the first place, and continued to attack the Government for not having seen to it that peacekeepers had gone into East Timor before the ballot. In this, he ignored totally the fact that the Indonesian Government would not have accepted peacekeepers prior to the UN-supervised ballot.
Kim Beazley, endeavouring to find a reason to attack aspects of the Government’s handling of the issue, sounded both carping and equivocal in the process. He was being interviewed on Perth radio station 6PR on 5 October when a strong Labor supporter rang to reprove him for not unconditionally supporting what I had done. The caller said, ‘You are 100 per cent wrong on this, Kim … I can’t stand John Howard, but on this sort of issue you must stick together and not be driven aside.’5
There was a widespread feeling in the community that the Government had really done the right thing, and had stood up for a small, emerging nation which for too long had been pushed around by a corrupt and bullying regime. There was little concern amongst those many Australians with whom I discussed this issue, that we were putting our relationship with Indonesia at risk. To most, doing the right thing by the East Timorese was what really mattered.
This was not the case, however, with some in the foreign policy elite, who always felt that they knew better than the elected members of the Australian Government. For example, Richard Woolcott, who had played a significant role in advising Whitlam in 1975, when he was the Australian Ambassador in Jakarta, would pen an article in March 2003 for the Age in which he criticised the intervention, largely on the grounds that it had damaged our relationship with Jakarta.
Woolcott said that if his advice had been sought, he would have urged that Australia and other countries should have exhorted Habibie to delay any independence vote for at least five years. Such an attitude perfectly illustrated how out of touch he and others were with public sentiment on East Timor. If I had done that, the Australian people would have seen it as an act of gross betrayal of the East Timorese. His approach was typical of the craven attitude of some who regarded good relations with Jakarta, irrespective of the regime in charge at the time, the cost to others or the price Australia might pay through sacrificing its own values, as the sine qua non of good Australian foreign policy. They could not have been more wrong.
Having achieved the diplomatic and political outcome we had worked for, the more sober and potentially much more difficult phase lay ahead. Australia was about to embark on its largest foreign military activity since its involvement in the Vietnam War, some 30 years earlier.
It is easy now to look back, knowing that the intervention went smoothly, and to play down the potential risks involved at the time, and the danger to which thousands of Australian military personnel were exposed. The reality was that we had no way of being certain that there would not be conflict between Australian and Indonesian soldiers. I certainly was concerned that there would be casualties, and I know how heavily that weighed on the minds of our military leaders.
I worked hard to secure the involvement of a diverse group of nations in the Australian-led force. Jenny Shipley, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, promptly committed a New Zealand battalion, and I was grateful that, when the change of government occurred, the new Labour Prime Minister, Helen Clark, confirmed New Zealand’s continued participation. With 1603 troops, Thailand made the largest land forces contribution after Australia. This was significant; it gave real expression to the belief I had that it must be a genuinely regional force. Big contributions were also made by Jordan, Italy, South Korea, Canada and the Philippines. For much of an entire week I was never off the phone, talking to other leaders, soliciting commitments to the force.
The British provided a company of Gurkhas. I was disappointed at the response of Malaysia. The Malaysian military were keen to be involved, but that idea was knocked on the head by the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir. He was later to make some quite absurd remarks about Australian soldiers harassing Islamic people in East Timor. I was also surprised that Singapore did not make a larger contribution. A contribution of ground troops would not have created any difficulties for Singapore, and would have recognised the closeness of our relationship. The reality still was that in Southeast Asia, Indonesia remained the 800-pound gorilla, and neighbouring countries were very reluctant to do anything that might impinge on Indonesian sensitivities.
At its peak the Australian contribution to the Interfet Force was just over 5000. Although we committed many more people to fight in South Vietnam, this time we were leading the operation. The world spotlight would be on us. We had plenty of assistance, but the rest of the world was relying on Australian leadership and, in substantial measure, Australian soldiers to do the job. I was conscious of the historic character of the commitment.
I was also mindful of the miserable fashion in which Australia had treated soldiers returning from service in Vietnam. It remains one of the awful blemishes on the honour of this country in recent history. When I addressed federal parliament on 17 August 2006 to mark the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, I apologised, on behalf of the Australian people, to those Vietnam veterans who had been so shabbily treated by their fellow countrymen and women when they returned.
As
I moved around the country in the lead-up to the sending of our forces to East Timor, veteran after veteran who had served in Vietnam raised this issue with me and, in some cases, pleaded that I make sure that when our troops came home from East Timor, no matter what the circumstances, they were openly greeted as patriots who had done their duty by Australia. I promised them, and I promised myself, that I would make sure that this happened. It certainly did. Two major welcome-home parades occurred: one through the streets of Sydney and another poignant one through the streets of Townsville, where so many of the forces had been based. In other ways, too, their service was honoured.
There was one other matter I attended to, of direct personal concern to the troops we were sending into danger. I decided on a large increase in their special-deployment allowances. It was a very long time since we had sent people abroad to fight and, given that only a small portion of our military-aged population was involved, I felt they deserved better pay. I gave instructions that their deployment allowance be increased significantly.
I was determined to visit the troops before they left. On Sunday, 19 September 1999, Janette and I went to Lavarack Barracks in Townsville, had dinner with as many of the troops as possible, chatted to them, assuring them of the support of the nation and our belief that they were highly trained for the challenge that lay ahead. Neither of us will ever forget walking quietly through the grounds of the barracks after dinner, on a warm spring evening, and seeing small groups of NCOs and their soldiers talking intently about the task that lay ahead. Both of us were deeply affected by the realisation that some of these young people could meet death in the service of their country.
The force, led by Australia, would be working with the approval of the Indonesian Government and, therefore, the Indonesian military to achieve a smooth handover, and the restoration of law and order. That very day Major General Cosgrove had had a productive first meeting with his Indonesian counterpart, Major General Syahnakri, but it was only a cautious beginning. What was unspoken, but well and truly understood, amongst senior ADF people and my cabinet colleagues, was that the lack of discipline over locally raised units in the militia might continue after the Interfet Force arrived. If this proved to be the case, there was a real possibility of an Australian patrol or the like being caught in an ambush and diggers being killed. That hung upon us heavily.
The following day Janette and I flew to Darwin and, as well as seeing a number of the troops who were based at Robertson Barracks and due to go to East Timor, I also had the first opportunity of meeting Peter Cosgrove. I had heard a lot about him, all of which had been favourable, and he impressed me with his direct, no-nonsense style. He filled me in on the details of his discussion with his Indonesian opposite number.
The troops went into East Timor only a week before the Rugby League Grand Final, played between the Melbourne Storm and my team, the St George Illawarra Dragons. Although the Dragons had led 14-nil at half-time, the Storm scored an upset and spectacular win, right at the end of the game. My most vivid memory from that afternoon was the emotional comments made by the Melbourne Storm captain, Glenn Lazarus, after I had presented him with the Telstra Trophy.
Before talking about the game, he asked all Australians to think of the thousands of their fellow countrymen and women who were in East Timor. It was an example of how the nation felt, and the widespread understanding that this was something different from what our country had done for many decades. Like most Australians, Glenn Lazarus worried that we might suffer casualties.
I was now conscious that I had done something quite different from anything which, for me, had gone before. If any Australian soldiers died, or were seriously wounded, it would be because of decision I had taken. It is the ultimate responsibility of a prime minister to commit the fighting forces of his country to a military operation. It puts their lives in danger. There is a near certainty that at some stage soldiers will be killed or seriously wounded. The only real question is how many. That is the grim reality, and there is no alternative to it and no way of explaining it in another fashion. It was my experience that on each of the occasions we as a nation committed forces overseas and put them in danger, my colleagues instinctively left the final decision to me. They made their thoughts known, and I am not being in any way critical of them in making this observation. I was in no doubt on each occasion as to what their views were, but in the end they accepted that, as Prime Minister, I should take the final decision. If I had on one or other occasions decided against sending the troops, they would have readily accepted that decision, even though they may have disagreed. As it happened, our views chimed on each and every occasion.
Thankfully we did not have the dreaded ambush of a patrol in the early days of the intervention, and it went with a remarkable degree of success. Cosgrove’s leadership and the support of such talented colleagues as his Chief of Staff, Brigadier Mark Kelly (later a general and our Commander of Operations in the Middle East), the excellent rapport they established with the senior Indonesian leadership and also the restored UN operation under Ian Martin, the fact that the intervention force included units from a variety of countries, most particularly within the Asian region, all combined to produce the right outcome.
Cooperation with the United Nations was important. The operation was not a ‘blue helmet’ operation under a UN-appointed commander. It was an international force, acting under the authority of a resolution of the Security Council, but it was not a UN force. The personnel making up the force remained soldiers of their respective countries, in turn working under the overall command of an Australian general. It was a subtle, but important, difference. Later on the international force was to morph into a ‘blue helmet’ operation under the command of a Filipino general.
Once things had stabilised, I was keen to go to East Timor and personally thank our troops for the difficult and dangerous job they were doing, as well as meet local leaders and UN personnel. Janette and I went there for a memorable visit on 28 November 1999. This was the first time that I had come across a large number of Australian troops who had just been through, and in fact were continuing to be engaged in, a military operation. Although, miraculously, we had not suffered casualties, there had been many near-run things. Nobody really believed, when the operations started, that that would be the situation two to three months on.
I was pleased to get a full briefing from Major General Cosgrove and his senior people, and meet Ian Martin and other local leaders. I was particularly keen to meet as many soldiers as possible and this, thankfully, I was able to do during a very full day. I have always had enormous respect for Australians who wear the uniform of their country, be it a military or police one. In dealing over a long number of years with Australian military personnel, I have always found that the direct and simple approach works a treat. Australians like directness in their dealings with political leaders. It is against their character to be unduly deferential, and frankly one wouldn’t want them to be, but they are respectful. Therefore it is for the political leader to break the ice and remove any awkwardness at a first meeting. When I encountered a group of military people, I simply dived into the crowd of them and began talking to one or two. This removed any barriers or awkwardness, and before long it was possible to be engaged in a continuous banter.
Whatever their individual politics might have been, the men and women I met in East Timor knew that I had been responsible for them going, that they had received plenty of strong support from the Government, and being particularly pleased with the way the operation had gone, they were very happy to tell me all about it.
It is a long tradition in the Australian military forces that irrespective of rank, every Australian soldier, sailor or airman has a right (even some see it as a duty) to complain directly to the boss if they think something is being done wrong. This does not mean that Australians lack discipline. It is just a metaphor for our egalitarian society. Recognising this, I invariably would ask troops I visited in the field, be it
East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Solomon Islands or indeed anywhere else, whether they had any complaints about their equipment, their food or any other aspect of their military life in that particular engagement. I am happy to say that most responses were positive; there was one complaint about the adequacy of State of Origin TV coverage, which was rectified.
Janette and I left Dili that day feeling as if we had made contact with hundreds of Australians who had really done a magnificent job, not only in mounting an effective military operation but through all of their conduct in East Timor, displaying the character and temperament of the Australian people to the East Timorese and the broader community of Southeast Asia. The modern Australian soldier must not only be a superb fighter, but he or she must also be sympathetic towards and helpful to the local civilian population. It is sometimes a fine line to draw, but the experience I gleaned from East Timor and subsequent military engagements, during my time as Prime Minister, told me that Australians drew that line and achieved the right balance better than any others.
We had one other East Timor-related activity before Christmas 1999, and that was to attend a large Christmas gathering at the Robertson Barracks in Darwin, involving the families of many of the troops who would spend Christmas in East Timor. It is always the hardest time for service families, and Janette and I were anxious to be part of the gathering and express our thanks to the wives, husbands, children, parents and others close to those who would be absent friends on Christmas Day.
I encountered one discordant note during the flying Saturday visit to Darwin. One soldier cornered me with a complaint. He was extremely unhappy that he had not been sent to East Timor! This incident said a lot about what that engagement, and subsequent ones, meant for the great bulk of the men and women who volunteered for the ADF. They wanted to put their training to the test and be involved in military operations. They wanted combat, not because they were warlike, but because that was what they were trained to do, and it was a natural part of career fulfilment that the opportunity to serve abroad, often in danger, would be grabbed with both hands. The nation should be eternally thankful that there are men and women who feel this way. Instead of seeing it, as some do, as a manifestation of a lingering militaristic element in our makeup, we should see it as a valuable defence in a world where there is no shortage of people hostile to the values and way of life of Australia.