Timor-Leste and Indonesia: Managing Tensions

Jakarta/Brussels  |   4 May 2006

Closer border cooperation between Indonesia and Timor-Leste is needed to help reduce a legacy of tension.

Managing Tensions on the Timor-Leste/Indonesia Border,* the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, analyses the strains between the two countries and recommends specific measures they can take to improve their relations and the lives of people living on both sides of the frontier. Although Timor-Leste has other significant security problems – most recently the 28-29 April rioting in Dili – fears of significant violence along the border with Indonesian West Timor are largely unfounded.

“Despite a troubled legacy, the shared land border has been mostly peaceful”, says Crisis Group Analyst Dave McRae. “Smuggling and illegal crossings, rather than militia incursions, have emerged as the two main security issues on the Indonesia/Timor-Leste border”.

“Losing” East Timor continues to haunt Indonesia, perpetuating fears for territorial integrity, but Indonesia and Timor-Leste have mostly managed to establish good bilateral relations. Sporadic incidents of violence do occur on the border, but they are rarer than one might expect. Though border issues could become more serious in the longer term, particularly in the enclave of Oecusse, surrounded on three sides by West Timor and separated by 60 kilometres from the rest of Timor-Leste, an escalation into wider conflict would require a dramatic external development, such as a new refugee flow of Timorese fleeing instability.

Short of a large commitment of resources to generate livelihoods and provide a lasting resolution of the ex-refugee situation, a soft-border regime is perhaps the most pressing measure. The policy focus should be as much on establishing the infrastructure for legal cross-border trade as on improving security.

Other recommended measures include investing in road works near the border to facilitate access, deploying more police along the border, and improving security cooperation to manage border incidents better as they arise. The two countries should also work with donors on livelihood- and income-generation projects, as well as addressing serious justice issues related to the 1999 violence. Finally, the countries should devise a lasting solution for ex-refugees.

“Some of these steps have long been planned, but implementation is overdue”, says Sidney Jones, Crisis Group’s South East Asia Project Director. “The two governments appear determined to pursue good relations, but this has to be matched by practical efforts on the ground”.