If You Leave Us Here We Will Die: How Genocide was Stopped in East Timor (review)

On August 30, 1999, the people of East Timor voted for independence from the Republic of Indonesia, and then withstood three weeks of horrific violence before an armed international intervention force was dispatched to Timor to restore peace. The tiny size of East Timor should not conceal the momentous nature of these events in modern history. What happened in East Timor in those terrible weeks ought to shape our understanding of the nature of international relations. The events in Timor showed not only the ease with which militaristic bureaucracies can cultivate capacities for mass violence, or merely the difficulty of using such violence successfully to coerce compliance in oppressed populations. They also showed that, given the right conditions, the great powers of the world are capable, despite many tragic examples to the contrary, of acting in a principled and effective manner to prevent or halt genocide.

This is the main thesis of Geoffrey Robinson’s powerful book. His narrative operates on two levels. First, it is a personal testimony to the appalling atrocities that took place, some of which Robinson personally witnessed as an officer working for the United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), which organized the independence ballot. Second, it operates as an academic text that seeks to provide an analysis of the violence and the international response to it. As an academic text, the book makes two main contributions. It contributes to the field of genocide studies by showing how the repeated experience of military mobilization creates propensities for mass violence and genocide in particular populations, which can then be manipulated to serve the interests of elites. It contributes to the field of international relations by showing the conditions under which great powers respond to the threat of such violence.

As a personal testimony of horrific events, the book works brilliantly. Its central chapters deliver an eyewitness account of the months and weeks leading up to the ballot and its aftermath, and tell a story that is both disturbing and fascinating. The building sense of tension and dread felt by both the UNAMET officials and the East Timorese population is beautifully conveyed, as both entered the ballot process facing the certainty of violence from Indonesian-sponsored militias and the uncertainty of any kind of international assistance. The final rescue of thousands of refugees from the UN compound by international forces, following worldwide outrage at the actions of Indonesian forces, makes the story, as Robinson remarks at the outset, one that is ultimately “strangely uplifting.” As such, it contrasts starkly with the bleak images and moral bankruptcy of the international interventions to which we have become accustomed over the past ten years, particularly the invasion of Iraq.

In his introduction, Robinson reflects on his peculiar position as both historian of, and participant in, the events he describes. He comments, “some might say that it has interfered with my capacity for objectivity. That may well be the case” (p. 5). To my mind, the humanity inherent in his personal testimony carries over to and well serves his academic analysis throughout the book, as does the concern he shows and the care he takes in explaining patterns of actions by Indonesians and Timorese alike, without degenerating into reification or stereotyped condemnations or justifications. For example, Robinson wants to understand how some Timorese—primarily unemployed youths—were able to be transformed into instruments of the Indonesian army through the militia system that appeared in the year of the referendum. In explaining that phenomenon, he expresses an explicit concern to avoid using the crude cultural stereotyping employed by the Indonesians, who referred to the militias as a manifestation of angry pro-integration Timorese “running amok.”¹ But he also evinces a less explicit, but no less significant, concern to avoid letting the Timorese militias off the hook. Some militia members were certainly forced to join against their wills, but others just as certainly...