By Paul Kellogg
The United States looks set to provide the logistical backbone for a United Nations military force whose stated aim is stopping the violence in East Timor. Canada will provide 600 troops, Australia 1,000.
The action comes in response to the terrible massacres that have taken place since the people of East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence August 30.
Nearly 99 percent of the population voted -- tens of thousands emerging from hiding to cast their ballots. This is the highest turnout for a referendum in world history.
Of these, almost 80 percent voted for independence.
With the results, came an orgy of violence.
Thousands of murders were blamed on anti-independence "militia".
But there are in reality, only a few hundred members of these militia.
They would be capable of nothing if they weren't backed to the hilt by the 16,400 members of the Indonesian army and the 6,000 police in the territory.
They have actively assisted the militia in their terrible murders.
But the United States and Canada have known for 25 years that the Indonesian military was massacring the people of East Timor.
And for 25 years, the US has opposed all moves to support the resistance of the East Timorese to Indonesian military aggression.
In 1975, revolution in Portugal overthrew that country's fascist dictatorship.
East Timor had been occupied by Portugal for generations. An independence movement took advantage of a weakened Portugal and declared independence. Immediately, Indonesia sent in the military and began the slaughter.
What happened next was one of the century's most horrific massacres. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was the United States' ambassador to the United Nations at the time. By his count, in the first two weeks of the invasion, about 60,000 people were killed, "roughly the proportion of the population of Russia killed by the Germans" in World War Two, according to Noam Chomsky.
But how did Moynihan respond to this slaughter? Here is what he said in his memoirs.
"The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook [to oppose the invasion.] The task was given to me, and I carred it forward with no inconsiderable success."
Over the next few years, 200,000 people were slaughtered. Rivers in the tiny country literally ran with blood. This was a massacre on the scale of the terrible bloodbath going on in Kampuchea (Cambodia) at the same time.
Over the massacres in Kampuchea there was an international hue and cry.
Over the massacres in East Timor there was silence.
The reasons were straightforward. Indonesia was, in the words of Richard Nixon, "the great prize" of the region.
Ninety percent of all shipping between the Pacific and the Indian oceans, passes through its waters. Control of Indonesia, then, has enormous economic and strategic importance.
So East Timor was ignored in the west, while the slaughter in Kampuchea made the front pages.
Nixon's opinion on East Timor is still the dominant one.
"The dilemma is that Indonesia matters and East Timor doesn't," a Western diplomat in Jakarta said just a few days ago.
Douglas Paal, president of the Asia Pacific Policy centre, said "Timor is a speed bump on the road to dealing with Jakarta [capital of Indonesia], and we've got to get over it safely. Indonesia is such a big place and so central to the stability of the region."
The sudden "concern" for Indonesia from the big powers has nothing to do with human rights.
What has changed is in Indonesia itself.
Last year's revolution sent a scare through rulers across the world.
A brutal dictator, in office for 32 years, was overthrown by a magnificent mass movement.
Suddenly, one of the west's most loyal allies -- controlling a strategically important nation of 200 million people -- was gone.
A whole period of social crisis and instability has opened up in the region.
The western powers are not sure which direction the revolution in Indonesia will follow.
They need to find a way to re-establish their influence in the region.
What could be better than suddenly discovering East Timor's oppression and putting themselves forward as saviours?
But you cannot expect the devil to clean up hell.
There will be no solution to the terrible oppression in the region from the bloody hands of the United States, Canada and Australia.