The Role Played by the International Force for East Timor in the East Timorese Efforts to Achieve Independence

According to the Saylor organization, The UN and the United Sates gave several justifications for why they have intervened in the conflict, the most raised being the Iraqi contravention of Kuwaiti territorial integrity . On the other hand, no force was mobilized when Indonesia invaded East-Timor in 1975. In addition, the Pentagon claimed that the source of information for which they knew about the Iraqi forces building up in Kuwait was satellite photos, this was later shown to be false as the Satellite photos turned out to show only empty deserts (Saylor

Unlike the Filipino and Burma’s revolution, the Indonesian national revolution or Indonesian war of independence, was a diplomatic struggle and war between Indonesia and the Dutch Empire. The Revolution started between Indonesia’s proclamation of independence in 1945 and the Dutch recognition of Indonesia’s independence on December 1949. The Dutch had gain control of Indonesia for more than 300 years. The kind of influence the Dutch had gave us can still be seen today, because Indonesia was a subject to imperial rule or influence and is still struggling till today. The strive for liberation endured for four years that involved an occasional violent conflict, inner Indonesian political and communal disruption, and two crucial international ambassadorial

Taking into account the political and diplomatic support and the supply of planes and other war equipment used to fight the Timorese Resistance and the covering up that the Authorities did of the crimes committed against the People of East Timor, we can say that it

Then again, what initially was the United Nations plan for East Timor? East Timorese begged to the United Nations to send help, and in 1999 they sent help for the elections to see if whether or not East Timor would be independent or still be under control of Indonesia. And as expected, They voted for independence. The Pro-Indonesian militias and allies in the military were not happy and went on a rampage killing hundreds of people. The UN had to leave, being that they were unarmed. September 12th, 1999 Indonesia made a request to the UN to send troops to secure to restore peace. (11,000 troops from eighteen different countries). The Indonesian Armed Forces eventually left, completely.

Starting in the 1960s, East Timor was trying to gain independence and in 1974 things seemed likely when Portugal began to relinquish control of its colonies. However, Indonesia decided to take advantage of the lack of control and on the 7th of December 1975, East Timor was invaded by the armed forces of the Republic of Indonesia. Soon after, East Timor was declared Indonesia’s twenty-seventh province on 17th of July 1976. This led to many reports of widespread atrocities, with the international community only prepared to engage in token gestures. Although the UN recognized East Timor’s right to self determination, there were not key powers within the UN that would actively fight against Indonesia, mostly for political

Civil intervention is a sensitive topic to discuss. Is it the obligation of other countries to get involved with civil affairs that take place in foreign lands? Is there a responsibility amongst the international community to aid people, who’s rights have been violated? Many people would argue yes to these questions; however, there are several reasons why countries should never intervene in civil conflict. The words that must first be outlined and understood to properly to answer these questions are; civil, conflict, and intervention.

The United Nations helped sponsored the act of self-determination which was the August 30, 1999 referendum. The referendum was able to held because of the resignation of Indonesian President Suharto and the new president Habibie Jakarta. The result of the referendum was about 78.5% voted for their movement toward independence and 21.5% voted against their movement toward independence. However, before the referendum violence started to break out. Anti-independence militia groups started killings and kidnappings of East Timor citizens. The indonesian military forced many East Timor citizens to join these groups and would train them. The few months before the referendum, the anti-independence militia killed 57 citizens and destroyed many of infrastructure. This created about 200,000 - 300,000 refugees. United Nations helped try keep the peace and stability in East Timor with the multinational military know as INTERFET or International Force for East Timor. Which was made up by 17 nations and about 9,900 soldiers. Most of the troops came from Australia making up 4,400 and the remainder was mostly from Southeast

The 1999 Kosovan War is a controversial event, usually used as a shining example of when humanitarian intervention has worked; unfortunately, when examined, it is unclear whether the international campaign for peace was an actual success or not. NATO justified their involvement by labelling Kosovo a ‘humanitarian war’ after diplomatic negotiations ground to a halt in March 1999 (Wood, 2007). A wide range of sources supported the war in Kosovo, such as David Clark in 2009, with ‘Every member of NATO, every EU country, and most of Yugoslavia's neighbours, supported military action’ (Clark, 2009). Leaders from the US and the UK respectively also stated ‘upholding our values, protecting our interests, and advancing the cause of peace’ (Clinton, 1999), and ‘to avert what would otherwise be a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo’ (Blair, 1999). However, it was not only ambassadors and high-profile politicians that took this stance; scholars and intellectuals were also vocal about their support for the war (Mellon, 2001). This implies that not only did the foreign western powers believe that a

The main limitation of this article is that it was unable to provide a sound reason of how a UN resolution would have transformed the situation as long as military means are not incorporated. Nonetheless, this article’s argument is useful as supplementary information for my research essay since it confirms how significant the role of state’s strategic and geopolitical position play when it comes to deciding whether to intervene or not.

Humanitarian intervention is a convenient label that has been used to describe everything from simple economic aid to military intervention. Because of the superfluity of conventional approaches to intervention, the question is no longer whether countries should intervene militarily, the

In this essay I will discuss, with reference to the Middle East, the claim that “Independence removed one set of problems only to have them replaced with another.” In order to find out if that statement is true and if so, to what extent, I will examine several Middle Eastern states during the early period of their independence. I will study the problems that occurred after the Middle Eastern countries gained independence and evaluate whether those problems in fact had anything to do with the independence. Above mentioned claim does not just suggest that there were problems in newly independent states, – surely there is no country without problems – it proposes that the former problems that independency removed were replaced by others, therefore implying that those new problems were caused by independence, if not directly then at least indirectly by giving them space. However, I argue that even though it is clear that some new problems arose, they were mainly caused by other factors, such as the influence of the age of imperialism, discovery of oil, the founding of the Jewish state of Israel and superpower rivalry. Furthermore, the above mentioned claim’s usage of word ‘only’ implies that the overall result of independence was negative or neutral to the newly independent states. I argue that this understates the importance of the right of nations to self-determination.

What does the word “peacekeeping” mean? People generally think of a specific person or organization who works for keeping the peace. In the International Affair, Marrack states “Peacekeeping is a technique which has been developed, mainly by the United Nations, to help control and resolve armed conflicts.” Professor Alan James traced the origin of peacekeeping back to its establishment in the 1920s. Officially, the first United Nations peacekeeping operation was United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO). In this operation, the UN sent unarmed military personnel to supervise and direct a ceasefire between Israel and Arab. The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), which was first an armed peacekeeping operation, went to Egypt in 1956 to supervise Anglo-French-Israeli interactions. From then on, many peacekeeping operations were established to resolve conflicts. Now, the question is: does peacekeeping really work? If yes, where does peacekeeping go? And how does peacekeeping work? In this paper, I conclude that peacekeeping does work in the long term and does very significant work in cases of conflict; peacekeeping goes places where peace is most needed, and peacekeeping works specifically because of its use of causal mechanisms in four different ways.

This paper aims to lay down the background of the East Timor conflict and explain how the lingering historical sources when added to the recent issues led to an environment where the national capacity and institutions of the country were demolished. While the history of the conflict is vast but here the conflict has been divided into two phases, i.e., 1999-2002 and 2006-2008. Furthermore, the peace-building efforts and security initiatives carried out by multiple Actors shall be critically examined. Peace-building is an umbrella term that constitutes of construction of security in every aspect. So, moving forward it is vital to point out the intersection between Peace-building, humanitarian, development and military approaches. The paper concluded by elaborating both the achievement and challenges faced by local, national and international actors in peace-building mechanisms.

Although humanitarian intervention faces a lot of criticism, it is important to note that what may happen with or without intervention when a country faces problems. The positive effects of humanitarian intervention would be that a new understanding of sovereignty would exits (Krylov, 1995). What can be taken from this is that sovereignty is not absolute. In Allen Buchanan’s article, humanitarian intervention is often defined as an infraction of the sovereignty of the state because of other states trying to protect human rights (Buchanan, 1999). This is often considered a problem of morality because intervention of a state is viewed negatively. It is important to determine

The concept of “threat to international peace and security” (IPS) is of paramount importance for the UN collective security system. Article 39 determines the identification and removal of threats to peace as one of the most fundamental tasks of the UN Security Council (UNSC). Still, there is no clear and exhaustive definition of “threat to IPS”. In the first part of the essay, I will explain how the notion of threat to IPS has evolved after the end of the Cold War. Secondly, I will focus on the UNSC practice, on its unsolvable relation with the definition of threat to peace and on the possible challenges posed to the UNSC by the expansion of the notion. Finally, I will briefly take under examination the Gulf War case as a cornerstone in the concept expansion trend.