Virtually the entire population was uprooted in September, and those who were not forcibly expelled to West Timor will need basic humanitarian assistance until they can rebuild their homes and go back to work. Other towns, like Balibo and Maliana, are reported to be 70 percent destroyed and equally deserted. East Timorese, working with the United Nations, will need to replace many of the key admininstrative and professional positions held by Indonesians before the August 30 referendum, including in teaching and healthcare services. They will also have to build a court and law enforcement system that can lay the foundation for the rule of law in East Timor. A essential precondition to successful decolonization in East Timor is a secure border with Indonesia and a population secure in the knowledge that the campaign of terror waged for so long by the Indonesian army and armed militias has finally come to an end.
Significant obstacles remain.
Key pro-integration figures, including the governor of East Timor, Abilio Osorio Soares, now living in Kupang, West Timor, and militia leader Joao Tavares, have made it clear that they intend both to mount a campaign for partition and that they will be sending militia forces in from West Timor to do so. Tavares, commander of the PPI, said in Atambua on 1 October 1999 that some 6,500 East Timorese members of the Indonesian army and police were willing to join forces with the PPI to reclaim the western districts, and that any volunteers from elsewhere in Indonesia were welcome to help. In addition, Maj. Gen. Adam Damiri, the commander of the Udayana Regional Military Command, which includes East Timor, said if East Timorese soldiers wanted to join PPI, there was nothing the Indonesian army could do to stop them. It is not clear how strong the militia presence in the western districts is now, but the militias there were among the best organized and equipped, and their command structures in several subdistricts in Bobonaro and Covalima overlapped almost completely with that of the regular TNI forces. Interfet forces that reached two towns in Bobonaro district on 2 October 1999 reported encountering no militia resistance, but the potential for such resistance, indeed for the development of an armed pro-integration force operating in the western districts of East Timor, remains strong.