Essay on "United Nations in East Timor Successes and Failures"

Essay 5 pages (2083 words) Sources: 5 Style: Turabian

[EXCERPT] . . . .

" (Braithwaite 2012, 391). Braithwaite's critique of UNTAET is probably the most shrewd. Although he concedes that the effort was a success, he notes that its success came despite a fundamental flaw in the UN's approach: as he puts it, "part of the weakness of UNTAET was that its leaders tended to construe East Timor as tabula rasa when resistance, church and village governance structures abounded and fused a strong society together." (Braithwaite 2012, 291). And most critics agree that, while successful, UNTAET had taken on too much. Pushkina and Maier think the problem was vagueness as to how it could accomplish its goals: "UNTAET was granted an unprecedented amount of authority to maintain security in Timor-Leste and created a transitional administration; however, its mandate did not specify how this enormous undertaking should have been conducted." (Pushkina and Maier 2012, 332). Allden and Amer think instead it was a problem of resources, noting that in UNTAET's "efforts to provide law and order ... the mandate was too broad, lacking both sufficient resources and experience." (Allden and Amer 2007, 7). And Benzing rather shrewdly summarizes it as a matter of attempting to impose order on the chaos left in the wake of Indonesia's scorched earth campaign: as he observes, "the broad powers granted to UNTAET did not automatically entail the capacity to exercise them." (Benzing 2005, 371).

Ultimately we might observe that each of the UN's separate peacekeeping actions in East Timor -- UNAMET, INTERFET, and UNTAET -- was successful within the basic strictures of what it was established to do. The difficulty, however, and the perception of failure lies instead within the strictures placed upon the UN itself, in terms of what it is permitted to establish. With UNAMET, the UN followed its traditional peacekeeping function, and managed to prevent a full scale civil war -- but it could not prevent horrifying violence. With INTERFET, the UN oversaw a successful military presence that stopped the violence, although arguably this success was possible only with substantial military and financial support being marshaled from outside. And with UNTAET, the UN undertook a singular mission to rebuilt an entire country and ready it for independence: here, the success is judged in terms of the fact that East Timor is now an independent state, and violence there has finally ended. But criticism of UNTAET hinges upon whether the UN exceeded its own permissible strictures, and whether it had the actual skill to perform the tasks it allowed itself to undertake. In terms of conflict resolution, however, it is clear that overall each of these missions was a success. UNAMET prevented the East Timor insurgents from engaging Indonesia into a full-scale civil war that would have engulfed the whole island. INTERFET got Indonesian permission to restore peace and order to East Timor. And UNTAET ultimately cleared the Indonesian-sponsored militias from East Timor, and removed all conflict: East Timor's remaining problems (poverty, high infant mortality) are familiar to countries that have emerged from conflict, but conflict is absent. Overall, the success of the UN's peacekeeping missions in East Timor comes from how well the UN handled a project of such unprecedented scale.

Bibliography

Allden, Susanne and Amer, Ramses. "The United Nations and Peacekeeping: Lessons Learned from Cambodia and East Timor." Umea Working Papers in Peace and Conflict 4 (2007): 1-12.

Benzing, Markus. "Midwifing a New State: The United Nations in East Timor."… READ MORE

How to Reference "United Nations in East Timor Successes and Failures" Essay in a Bibliography

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