GDP/PPP (2001 est.): $440 billion; per capita $500. Real growth rate: –3%. Inflation: 8% (2003 est.. Unemployment: 50% (including underemployment) (1992 est.). Arable land: n.a. Agriculture: coffee, rice, maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, soybeans, cabbage, mangoes, bananas, vanilla. Labor force: n.a. Industries: printing, soap manufacturing, handicrafts, woven cloth. Natural resources: gold, petroleum, natural gas, manganese, marble. Exports: $8 million (2001 est.): coffee, sandalwood, marble; note—the potential for oil and vanilla exports. Imports: $237 million (2001 est.): mainly food. Major trading partners: n.a.
Communications: Telephones: main lines in use: n.a.; mobile cellular: n.a.. Radio broadcast stations: n.a. Radios: n.a. Television broadcast stations: n.a. Televisions: 1.55 million (1997). Internet Service Providers (ISPs): n.a. Internet users: n.a.
Transportation: Railways: total: 0 km. Highways: total: 3,800 km; paved: 428 km; unpaved: 3,372 km (1995). Waterways: n.a. Ports and harbors: n.a. Airports: 8 (2002).
International disputes: East Timor-Indonesia Boundary Committee meets regularly to survey and delimit the land boundary; some East Timor refugees delay return from camps in Indonesia; maritime delimitation and resource-sharing agreements signed with Australia resolved dispute over "Timor Gap" hydrocarbon reserves, but maritime agreement with Indonesia awaits further discussions.
History
Timor was first colonized by the Portuguese in 1520. The Dutch, who claimed many of the surrounding islands, took control of the western portion of the island in 1613. Portugal and the Netherlands fought over the island until an 1860 treaty divided Timor, granting Portugal the eastern half of the island as well as the western enclave of Oecussi (the first Portuguese settlement on the island). Australia and Japan fought each other on the island during World War II; nearly 50,000 East Timorese died during the subsequent Japanese occupation.
In 1949, the Netherlands gave up its colonies in the Dutch West Indies, including West Timor, and the nation of Indonesia was born. East Timor remained under Portuguese control until 1975, when the Portuguese abruptly pulled out after 455 years of colonization. The sudden Portuguese withdrawal left the island vulnerable. On July 16, 1976, 9 days after the Democratic Republic of East Timor was declared an independent nation, Indonesia invaded and annexed it. Although no country except Australia officially recognized the annexation, Indonesia's invasion was sanctioned by the United States and other western countries, who had cultivated Indonesia as a trading partner and cold-war ally (Fretilin, the East Timorese political party spearheading independence, was Marxist at the time).
Indonesia's invasion and its brutal occupation of East Timor—small, remote, and desperately poor—largely escaped international attention. East Timor's resistance movement was violently suppressed by Indonesian military forces, and more than 200,000 Timorese were reported to have died from famine, disease, and fighting since the annexation. Indonesia's human rights abuses finally began receiving international notice in the 1990s, and in 1996 two East Timorese activists, Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and José Ramos-Horta, received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to gain freedom peacefully.
After Indonesia's hard-line president Suharto left office in 1998, his successor, B. J. Habibie, unexpectedly announced his willingness to hold a referendum on East Timorese independence, reversing 25 years of Indonesian intransigence. As the referendum on self-rule drew closer, fighting between separatist guerrillas and pro-Indonesian paramilitary forces in East Timor intensified. The UN-sponsored referendum had to be rescheduled twice because of violence. On Aug. 30, 1999, 78.5% of the population voted to secede from Indonesia. But in the days following the referendum, pro-Indonesian militias and Indonesian soldiers retaliated by razing towns, slaughtering civilians, and forcing a third of the population out of the province. After enormous international pressure, Indonesia finally agreed to allow UN forces into East Timor on Sept. 12. Led by Australia, an international peacekeeping force began restoring order to the ravaged region.
The UN Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET) then governed the territory for nearly three years. On May 20, 2002, nationhood was declared. Charismatic rebel leader José Alexandre Gusmão, who was imprisoned by Indonesia from 1992 to 1999, was overwhelmingly elected the nation's first president on April 14, 2002. The president has a largely symbolic role; real power rests with the parliament and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, also a former guerrilla leader.
The first new country of the millennium, East Timor is also one of the world's poorest. Its meager infrastructure was destroyed by the Indonesian militias in 1999 and the economy, primarily made up of subsistence farming and fishing, is in shambles. East Timor's off-shore gas and oil reserves promised the only real hope for lifting it out of poverty, but a dispute with Australia over the rights to the oil reserves in the East Timor Sea has currently thwarted those efforts. The oil and gas fields lie much closer to East Timor than to Australia, but a 1989 deal between Indonesia and Australia set the maritime boundary along Australia's continental shelf, which gives it control of 85% of the sea and most of the oil. East Timor wants the border redrawn halfway between the two countries, and estimates that this would allow it to earn $12 billion over the next 30 years, as opposed to $4.4 billion. The two countries reached a temporary agreement in August 2004, which granted East Timor a larger share of the oil and gas revenues. In exchange, it would no longer request that the maritime border be redrawn.
Postal History
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