EastTimor2000p3

The day after I sent the last news, students who had failed their university admission exams showed up at the front door of the main UNTAET building where our office was (at that point) to lodge an official protest. While the security guards were able to keep the crowds out of the building, it was tense for a couple of hours, and we had to use side doors to enter and exit the building.

Since then, we�ve moved our office to the Communications Building. It was a frustrating move; we now have desktop computers, but it took most of the week to get connected to the network, and I had to figure out how to access the Internet; with so many thousands of staff, the computer folks can�t always get around to everyone instantly -- or even within a week sometimes: I�m still waiting for the floppy drive on my desktop computer to be fixed, so I�m still doing all my substantive work on my own laptop and my own printer. I�m not sure what would have happened if I hadn�t brought them. On top of that, I no longer have a working phone on my desk; no telling how long it will take to correct that. I�m also no longer walking-distance from my home on the Boat and the many restaurants that are springing up in �downtown� Dili. It�s not that bad, though, since we do have a lot more space and are now only half a block from the barracks of the Pakistani unit here, which is also the main PX in Dili. In addition to a small grocery store, they have great breakfast pastries, muffins, sandwiches, desserts, and pizza.

We also now have a driver, an older gentleman probably in his 60s who told me that he�s been a professional driver for 36 years. He�s very proud of the fact that he has the equivalent of a US chauffers license from Portuguese times (pre-1975) and that he�s never had an accident in all this time. He fought against the Indonesians for a while but ended up laying down his arms when his wife was about to have their first child. He is very humble and generally quiet but is happy to talk about his life and how things were in Timor in days gone by. It will be a fascinating experience for me to get to know him and to know Timor through his eyes. His Portuguese is excellent, so we communicate easily.

My direct boss is a Vietnamese who�s been working in elections for many years. I�ve known him for several years but have never had the opportunity to work directly with him. It�s fascinating listening to his stories, talking about some of the places we�ve both worked, and learning how to deal with the UN bureaucracy by watching him in action. Having him here has made getting started here much easier than it would have been otherwise.

Speaking of the bureaucracy, it really is maddening at times. We received a refrigerator my second day in the office, but I�ve been told that my first paycheck might be deposited in my bank account at the end of December -- three months after starting -- if I�m lucky, and my first subsistence allowance may or may not show up before then. On the other hand, the spirit of comraderie, of sharing with and learning from each other, is really heartening and one of the things that makes it worthwhile. Many of the people who are coming to the end of their contracts are truly sad to be going. There are also quite a few people who were here last year for the referendum who are anxious to come back. Many of the international staff developed friendships with their local staff and have been anxious to find out how they fared during the violence that followed the referendum. There�s also a very strong sense of family in that many of the people here with the UN have been together on other UN missions -- especially electoral missions - over the last ten years. We also have a steady stream of people working in other parts of the mission who want to join Electoral Affairs now that we�re up and running.

One of the problems that�s increasingly evident is a tension between the UN�s dual roles here. On the one hand, the UN is here to protect East Timor and to provide humanitarian assistance in the aftermath of the violence that followed the referendum. This is the role that makes the UN very popular among the local population, especially in the rural areas. At the same time, there is increasing pressure on the UN as the transitional government here (especially in Dili) to offer more jobs, pay higher salaries, improve water and electrical service, etc. The number of UN cars running around Dili is also (or perhaps should be) something of an embarassment to the UN and causing some resentment among the local population. In a place that has never had much in the way of traffic, the streets are now jammed with vehicles at all hours. Much of the evening traffic is people going out for dinner or parties, which is a bit much for the Timorese to handle, since they by and large don�t have cars or in many cases even dinner.....

Another complication here is that the political situation is looking more and more like 1975, when the Portuguese announced that they would grant East Timor its independence. Rival political parties began to fight and eventually issued competing declarations of independence, which gave the Indonesians an opening to move in and take over. During the Indonesian occupation, these groups coalesced into the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT) and worked together towards a common goal - independence from Indonesia. Now that that goal has been accomplished, they are increasingly squabbling with each other again, making progress on figuring out how things should proceed from here on that much more difficult. Increasingly, the local politicians are calling for an early turn-over - but they still want the UN here as insurance against militia violence....

The signs of last year�s violence are all around. In Dili, most if not all government buildings were ransacked and/or gutted by fire, and most are still only shells. The thing which surprised me the most was the destruction by the militia of Indonesian military and other government properties. Infrastructure was also destroyed - transmission antennas, power stations and the distribution grid, water and water-treatment plants, even the traffic lights -- which makes intersections especially interesting and challenging. Most private homes were also destroyed, though apparently some of those belonging to supporters of the Indonesians and militia were spared.

I made my first trip out of Dili last weekend to Baucau, the second largest city in the country. Baucau is located in the hills overlooking the ocean about 120km east of Dili. Being up in the hills, it�s cooler and drier than Dili, but I�d have to say that the level of destruction I saw in Baucau seemed even worse than what I�m accustomed to here in Dili.

The road out of Dili towards Baucau is the best in the country, but it would probably compare to a county secondary road in the US - very winding and narrow in the hilly areas, with occasional evidence of rockslides and washouts or areas that look like they might give way if something heavy enough dared pass. The road is sometimes not quite enough for two vehicles, especially the heavy trucks that are distributing food and housing materials to outlying areas, and drivers have to be very careful about how far off the pavement they go when they�re on the downhill side of the road. For the Timorese, the main means of getting from one town to another is in crowded minivan buses; we saw many of them on the road with extra passengers - usually young men in their 20s - sitting on the roof! In the flatter areas, we had to wait for a couple of herds of goats and water buffalo to cross the road; we also saw plenty of chickens, banana trees, and coconut palms as well as a couple of areas of rice fields. In some places, it was obvious that the land had been burned during the violence last year and was slowly returning to normal, though some of it was burned more recently by the owners in order to clear the land for the next planting. East of Manatuto (half way to Baucau), there�s a semi-arid region which will undoubtedly turn to swampland during the rainy season. There�s also rapidly growing concern about deforestation; many families in rural areas returned home after last year�s violence to find their homes destroyed and so have had to turn to cutting wood for both shelter and cooking fuel. The dry river beds look like they are already full of silt and won�t be able to handle much water, so flooding is a very distinct possibility.

We also saw a number of beautiful beaches, some of them volcanic, but international staff are warned not to venture into the water because of the crocodiles (East Timor�s nickname is �Land of the Sleeping Crocodile�) and the poisonous fish that burrow into the sand and �involuntarily� inject lethal poison through their spines when stepped on. Luckily, I�m not much of a beach person anyway!

Rural homes generally have thatched or galvanized roofs; some of the villages we saw along the way consist entirely of thatched huts. We also saw many small shelters built on the burned-out foundations of larger homes that were there before the violence. Many of the homes have small tables out at the roadside where the family sells small amounts of extra produce or items they have made or have received in barter. It was heartening to see that the schools are being repaired and to hear that attendance is even higher than before.

This Monday I went on my first helicopter trip, this time to Viqueque on the south coast. The destruction in Viqueque was much less than what I saw in Baucau. According to a colleague who showed me around and who had worked in that area last year, it�s probably because the local Indonesian military commander was a Catholic and was able to convince the militia to stay out of his area. One of the biggest problem the UN staff are confronting is squatting - families moving into unoccupied buildings and refusing to leave. We�ve been told that if we need a building for voter registration and voting, we�ll have to provide round-the-clock security to ensure that we don�t lose it to squatters in the middle of the night....

On Wednesday, I travelled on a DeHavilland Caribou (a Canadian plane with the shortest take-off roll I�ve ever experienced) to Suai, in the southwest corner of the country. The south coast is much more lush than the north coast where we are, but the flip side is that most villages are completely cut off during the rainy season. Many of the village huts are even on pilings to help keep them dry during the floods. Being much closer to the border, the level of destruction in Suai was high, and there are continuing fears of militia attacks. Needless to say, this is also the region where the Peacekeeping Forces are most heavily concentrated. The Public Information Officer in Suai is also from DC, so we enjoyed trading a few stories.

Then on Thursday, our team took the holiday to drive to Ermera District, the coffee-growing region just southwest of here. There�s a spectacular bay just west of Dili, and the area around Gleno (a relatively new town in Ermera) is really beautiful. After lunch with the acting District Administrator, we walked for an hour along a country road, where we saw a number of small villages and were greeted by many of the locals who had been out to decorate the cemeteries for All Souls Day.

Anyway, that�s it for this issue. I�ve now been in Dili for a month and am looking forward to really getting into the substantive work of putting this election together. Debating how to convert votes into seats in the Constituent Assembly has been a fun challenge, but I�m really more excited about the operational phase and the prospect of working with what everyone says will be a �dream team� of election professionals from around the world.