Scorched earth in East Timor

East Timor is burning.

Armed gangs who have terrorized the Indonesian province in recent months have now torched scores of homes and are rounding up citizens. Yesterday, they laid siege to the residence of Bishop Carlos Belo, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, where an estimated 2,000 people had taken refuge.

"The situation in Dili is grim. It borders on anarchy," says United Nations spokesman Nick Birnback, from the besieged UN compound in the island's capital.

Increasingly, it appears that the Indonesian military and police are tacitly - if not actively - working with militia groups on a scorched-earth policy in the wake of a vote overwhelmingly in favor of independence this past week. If Indonesia can't have East Timor, pro-Jakarta forces apparently intend to leave it in ruins.

"The game had been to intimidate the people so you could pull the numbers [of voters for independence] down," one Western diplomat says. "The first strategy didn't work, so now they'll create as much chaos as possible while letting East Timor go. Maybe to set an example, maybe out of spite."

If the military is setting an example, as many observers say, it is primarily doing so with Aceh in mind. The Westernmost province of Indonesia's archipelago has been the scene of recent clashes between separatists and Indonesian armed forces. It may be concerned about other minorities in this diverse country, such as the Papua of Irian Jaya, who would like to break away as well.

The turmoil in Timor comes amid growing calls for UN peacekeeping forces to move in to restore order if the 10,000 Indonesian troops and 8,000 police won't. Yesterday the UN Security Council sent emissaries to Jakarta to encourage the government to abide by the UN covenant and maintain order during the six weeks before the parliament meets to ratify the independence vote. But UN troops won't be sent in without Indonesian approval and, so far, Indonesian officials say they will deal with the unrest.

Diplomats here trace the current situation to President B.J. Habibie's sudden decision last January to abandon Indonesia's position that its invasion of East Timor in 1975 had been legitimate and called a referendum. But he didn't consult the military first. And he insisted that the military and police remain in charge of security during the vote. The UN agreed, even though it knew by then that the military were supporting a terror campaign.

"Everybody has given in too much," one diplomat said. "They jumped on the referendum bandwagon."

Some diplomats say that the military, now being pushed out of politics following the removal of Gen. Suharto from office, are motivated by mere resentment.

They draw a connection to a series of ethnic and religious clashes that have wrecked other parts of Inodnesia in the past two years. Soldiers, mostly Muslim, sided with a Muslim minority in a clash with Christians on the Moluccan islands earlier this year, and failed to act when massive riots rocked the capital of Jakarta last year.

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