Reassuringly we can count on the world coming up with a new focus soon and the journalists will have something to report because, for sure, East Timor will not entertain us through the Christmas period. And while we wait for the next catastrophe the Indonesian mercenaries have finished destroying Dili, killed or flushed out the population and looted all there was to loot. They are now on their way, with their spoils, leaving behind them a terrorised population and a few blue helmets who have come to guarantee the status quo - meanwhile the world can go back to sleep. For East Timor read oil. But above all this little plot of land represents a safety valve for the internal colonisation policies for the Indonesian archipelago.
All power is concentrated in the capital, Jakarta.
The Indonesians pursue a policy of 'decongestion' from Java to other, poorer, islands with smaller populations. This policy is no more and no less than a colonial programme which aims to spread both Islam and Indonesian nationalism - by force of course. The possibility of independence for the former Portuguese colony has raised fears of the disintegration of Indonesia. This relatively young country owes its borders to the historical vaguaries of Dutch colonisation. It gained independence in 1949 and annexed East Timor in 1976.