Don't dream about having...a state of Timtim [the Indonesian name for East Timor]. There is no such thing!....From now on, Timtim is the same as other regions. So don't try to be latter day heroes, beating your breasts and proclaiming, 'I am a Timtim patriot.' There is no such thing as a Timtim nation, there is only an Indonesian nation....  

If you try to make your own state...it will be crushed by [the Indonesian military]....There have been bigger rebellions, there have been greater differences of opinion with the government than the small number calling themselves Fretilin, or whoever their sympathizers are here. We will crush them all! I repeat, we will crush them all! 

Indonesian Defense Minister Benny Murdani, speaking in Dili, February 1990 

In June 1974, Portugal laid out three possible options for East Timor: continued association with Portugal, independence, or becoming part of Indonesia. But the Portuguese government took no immediate action on any of these options. 

In East Timor itself, however, the response to the coup was much less sluggish. Within little more than a month, three political parties had formed: the UDT, the ASDT (which later became FRETILIN) and APODETI. 

The first party founded, the UDT (the Timorese Democratic Union), was generally conservative and pro-Portuguese. It initially advocated continued ties with Lisbon, but as opposition to colonialism mounted, it soon began supporting the idea of eventual total independence. 

The second party founded, the ASDT (the Association of Timorese Social Democrats), advocated "the universal doctrines of socialism and democracy." Fully committed to independence from the beginning, it envisioned an eight-to-ten-year decolonization period in which the East Timorese could develop the political and economic structures necessary for independence. 

Both the UDT and the ASDT drew their leadership largely from the middle and upper classes— Timorese who had studied at the Jesuit college at Soibada and the seminary outside of Dili, and who were colonial administrators or school teachers. East Timor's wealthiest citizens tended to support the UDT. They included senior administrative officials, native leaders and prominent plantation owners. One UDT leader—its first president, in fact—was later appointed governor of East Timor by the Indonesians, a post he held from 1981 to 1992. 

The third party, APODETI (the Timorese Popular Democratic Association) favored an "autonomous integration" with Indonesia. (Its original name—the Association for the Integration of Timor into Indonesia—was quickly changed for public-relations purposes.) 

APODETI, which never had more than a few hundred members, appears to have been largely a project of the Indonesian military's intelligence service. The last thing Indonesia wanted was another independent country on its border, and it was dedicated to making sure this never happened. 

Three men who'd been cooperating with the Indonesian military for a number of years became key leaders in APODETI. And immediately after APODETI's founding, Indonesia began providing East Timorese agents with financial support. 

UDT began as the largest and most popular group, but it soon began to lose ground to the ASDT, which was better organized and more innovative. When the deputy president of the Indonesian parliament said that he favored Indonesian control of East Timor, the ASDT sent an envoy, José Ramos-Horta, to Jakarta, where he was assured by Indonesia's foreign minister that Indonesia unequivocally supported East Timorese self-determination. 

Next José Ramos-Horta went to Australia, but the Australian government was unwilling to meet with him or to make any official statement in favor of self-determination for East Timor. He did, however, get support from church groups, trade unionists, academics and members of parliament. 

As its members—and the East Timorese population in general—became more radical, ASDT changed its name, in September 1974, to FRETILIN (the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor) and demanded immediate independence from Portugal. FRETILIN volunteers began to move out from Dili into the rural areas, teaching villagers to read and write Tetum, establishing agricultural cooperatives, helping organize labor unions and other groups, and promoting local culture by encouraging the creation of nationalist poems, songs and dances. Thanks to these activities, FRETILIN became, by early 1975, the most popular of the three parties. 

While Portugal's president called full East Timorese independence "unrealistic," the MFA's new governor of East Timor (and local MFA officers there) wanted to help the country gain its freedom. In December 1974, they invited the three parties to advise Lisbon on how to decolonize East Timor. The UDT and FRETILIN joined in the process and then formed a coalition. APODETI refused to participate, claiming it recognized only the Indonesian government, not the Portuguese. 

In May 1975, the UDT, FRETILIN and the MFA agreed that a transitional government would be set up by October, and that elections for a national constituent assembly would be held in the fall of 1976. But Indonesia had different plans. By mid-1974, it had developed Operation Komodo—named after the Komodo dragons, giant man-eating lizards that live on other Indonesian islands. 

Operation Komodo aimed to strengthen APODETI and weaken FRETILIN, and it scored a number of diplomatic successes. Meeting with Indonesian President Suharto in September 1974, Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam stated that an independent East Timor would be "unviable" and "a potential threat to the area." He voiced his support for a voluntary union between East Timor and Indonesia. Although he added that Australia wouldn't approve of the use of force in East Timor, his comments overall were seen by Jakarta as being very favorable to their position. 

When FRETILIN and the UDT started to work together, Indonesia stepped up Operation Komodo. In mid-February 1975, the Indonesian military (commonly referred to by the acronym ABRI) staged exercises in Sumatra that simulated an air and sea attack on East Timor. Soon thereafter, Indonesia began disseminating false reports of a planned coup by the MFA and FRETILIN, and of supposed persecution of APODETI members. 

Operation Komodo, combined with FRETILIN's growing popularity, weakened the UDT-FRETILIN coalition. Indonesia was able to convince the more conservative members of the UDT that international isolation would result if leftists were allowed to remain in the coalition. In late May 1975, the UDT formally withdrew from the coalition. 

UDT leaders met with Indonesian officials in Jakarta and became convinced that Indonesia wouldn't allow East Timorese independence under FRETILIN and probably not even under the UDT. They felt that only by purging the territory of "communist" influence would they have any chance of preventing an Indonesian invasion. 

Finally, in mid-August 1975, Indonesia gave the UDT false intelligence reports of an imminent FRETILIN power grab, complete with clandestine Chinese arms shipments and "Vietnamese terrorists" entering East Timor to help FRETILIN. The UDT launched a coup, quickly capturing the communications station and the airport in Dili. 

But the UDT greatly underestimated the strength of FRETILIN, which was able to persuade most East Timorese units in the Portuguese army to side with it. Soon FRETILIN controlled all of Dili and by late September it had driven 500 UDT soldiers and 2500 refugees (mostly family of UDT leaders and soldiers) into West Timor. The brief civil war was over. 

(Indonesia permitted the refugees to enter West Timor only if they signed a petition calling for East Timor's integration into Indonesia. As a former UDT leader put it: "It was the last thing we wanted, but with FRETILIN forces closing in on us and without food, we really had no alternative but to agree.") 

FRETILIN immediately began to set up a de facto government to fill in for the Portuguese, who had fled during the civil war. The former Australian Consul in Dili, James Dunn, described the people's response: 

This administrative structure had obvious shortcomings, but it clearly enjoyed widespread support or cooperation from the population, including many former UDT supporters.... Indeed, the leaders of the victorious party were welcomed warmly and spontaneously in all main centers by crowds of Timorese. In my long association with the territory, I had never before witnessed such demonstrations of spontaneous warmth and support from the ordinary people.

ABRI soon captured some towns near the border between East and West Timor. Their campaign culminated in a two-week land, air and sea attack on a town called Atabae, just 35 miles from Dili. ABRI finally took Atabae on November 28th, 1975. Faced with an imminent, full-scale invasion, FRETILIN declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of East Timor that same day. 

FRETILIN hoped this declaration would give East Timor some international protection, but only four former Portuguese colonies in Africa recognized the new country immediately. Western nations, which knew all about Indonesia's plans to invade, remained silent. 

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