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Bringing
it to the people
From
Pte John Wellfare in East Timor
CIVIL-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) staff travelled throughout East
Timor during the months leading up to the draw down of UN peacekeeping
forces to inform and reassure locals.
After almost five years of Australian security presence in a large
part of the country, many East Timorese people have come to trust
the peacekeepers and are uncertain of the ability of the newly formed
East Timorese police and defence forces to take up the role.
OIC CIMIC during the months leading up to the draw down Maj Peter
Monks said CIMIC’s role had been crucial to the overall aim of
the PKF to keep the local population informed of and comfortable with
the draw down.
“It certainly has been a reasonably important role and a reasonable
busy role,” he said.
“A large issue for us throughout WESTBATT’s tour has been
the communities’ perception of the importance of the PKF for
their own security.
“An important role for us has been engaging with the community
and demonstrating that even though the condition’s going to change
and we’re drawing down and reducing our presence along the border,
that their security’s going to be maintained.
“We’ve achieved that through public information campaigns,
getting out talking to people and addressing their concerns personally
and encouraging the local government agencies to address the people’s
concerns as well.
“We’ve found that once the police and government agencies
went out and engaged with the people, people started to be reassured.
“Once they knew what was happening they weren’t uncomfortable
with the fact that we were withdrawing, but it has been a process
to educate people about the implications of our withdrawal.”
“By and large we’ve had overwhelming support here from the
local population, they’ve very much associated [the] PKF ...
with their own physical security.
“I suppose at the basic level there’s a lot of apprehension
about us going, mainly [fear of] a return to instability and also
it’s fair to say that over the past four-and-a-half or five years
that we’ve been in Timor we’ve generally been very good
ambassadors.
“We’ve got a very high public profile and a very popular
public profile and people are sad to see us go just from that aspect
as well, not just for their physical security.” |
