Aussies leave

last updated 8 January 2015

East Timor

Australian troops pulled out of East Timor this week, after a six-year mission to guard the tiny country’s newly won independence from Indonesia. The 1999 deployment of 5,000 peacekeepers was Australia’s largest military venture since the Vietnam War. Initially, the soldiers protected East Timorese civilians from the pro-Jakarta militias that had been terrorizing them in the run-up to the independence referendum. Later, the troops stayed to help the new country provide security. In what the Australian press called the “literal transformation of swords into plowshares,” the military donated its main base to the East Timorese for use as an agricultural college.