Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:00a.m.
A decade after tiny East Timor broke from Indonesia and prompted one of the most expensive UN-led nation building projects in history, there is little to show for the billions spent.
The world has given more than US$8.8 billion dollars in assistance to East Timor since the vote for independence in 1999, according to figures compiled from the UN and 46 donor countries and agencies.
That works out to US$8,000 for each of East Timor's 1.1 million people, one of the highest per-person rates of international aid.
But little of the money, perhaps no more than a dollar of every 10, appears to have made it into East Timor's economy.
Instead, it goes toward foreign security forces, consultants and administration, among other things.
"It would have transformed this country economically and socially. We would have far better infrastructures. Our telecommunication, electricity would be far better. Poverty would have been all but eliminated. This is not the case," Jose Ramos Horta, East Timorese President, said in an interview last month.
In fact, poverty has increased.
Roads are in disrepair, there is little access to clean water or health services, and the capital is littered with abandoned, burned-out buildings where the homeless squat.
East Timor was once seen as the poster child for UN nation-building.
After a bloody 24-year occupation by Indonesia that left 174,000 dead, the people of this predominantly Catholic former Portuguese colony voted overwhelmingly in a UN-managed referendum on August 30, 1999, to separate.
The vote triggered a rampage by Indonesian soldiers and proxy militias who killed more than 1,000 people and destroyed much of the infrastructure.
A provisional UN administration restored basic services, repaired buildings and resettled hundreds of thousands of people who had lost their homes.
With greater powers than any previous mission, the UN was supposed to help create the pillars of a new country, virtually from scratch.
The vastness and complexity of the job however became apparent in early 2006, just as the UN was pulling out its last staff members.
Fighting broke out between rival police and army factions, killing dozens and toppling the government.
Then, last February, President Jose Ramos Horta was nearly killed by rebel gunmen in an ambush.
However Atul Khare, who has headed the UN operation in East Timor since mid-2006, claims the country has made considerable progress since 1999, and the UN East Timor mission has been effective and successful.
"In the last 10 years, with their own efforts in partnership, assisted by the international community, this country largely, yes, has been a success," he said last month.
Khare cited increased fertility rates, among the highest in the world, new buildings and fewer potholes in Dili as positive signs.
But groups that study East Timor have concluded that a mere fraction of aid money is trickling into the economy.
The rest has gone into to international salaries, overseas procurement, imported supplies, foreign consultants and overseas administration.
While according to La'o Hamutuk, a respected Dili-based research institute, about 20 percent of the pledged aid was never delivered.
President Ramos-Horta, a Nobel peace laureate, said the world needs to rethink its aid model.
"Where this money has been invested? That is a question mark that requires reassessment by the donors," he said.
Much of the money has gone toward security, for which the impact is difficult to measure although Timor's leaders and most experts agree that without outside help East Timor would have been at risk of becoming a failed state.
The economy is also starting to grow under a new government that took over in 2007 after peaceful elections and is tapping into a US$5 billion petroleum fund from oil and gas fields.
However the fund will be exhausted by 2023, and analysts say if the non-oil economy is not stable by then, people will starve.
Many are already struggling.
Duarte Beremau sleeps in a two-room, dirt-floor shack with eight family members, including four unemployed adult children.
The shelter is cobbled together from rusting sheet metal and has no water, electricity or sanitation.
Beremau, who is illiterate and doesn't know his age, earns US$10 a week from a coffee factory.
"I have a miserable life now. Even my wife has to earn a living. We spend all the money we have to feed the children" he said.
However while admitting the country has "many things to address, many challenges" Prime Minister and former independence hero Xanana Gusmao says the country has now also something very special.
"At least we see hope" he said.
"The hope means that people can understand the need of stability and peaceful environment."
Thousands of foreign soldiers, UN police officers and staff remain across the country, but will start departing early next year.
Today, East Timor's streets may be run down but at least they are calm.
APTN