Inspection of Embassy Dili, East Timor

An Ambassador with strong human rights and regional experience heads this thinly staffed mission, which suffers enormously from personnel gaps. However, the Ambassador receives exceptional support from a deputy chief of mission who functions also as the management and security officer, a workload the Office of Inspector General (OIG) questions.

OIG also found, however, that Foreign Service national morale at the embassy is generally high, thanks in large part to the Ambassador’s attention. Conversely, many members of the American staff feel undervalued and overworked.

In the past 18 months, the Ambassador and the political/economic/public affairs/consular officer have become far more active in reporting information to Washington. Earlier, there had been virtually no reporting. Economic and social factors are missing from the embassy’s reporting, however, resulting in incomplete analyses of trends.

OIG also found these other concerns:

• The staffing of the post must improve, particularly for American positions.

• The staff needs training, and the post has lost leader grant opportunities due to its own inaction.

• Building and construction projects underway have experienced challenges and are taking considerable time to complete.

• Information management procedures are neither systematic nor rigorous enough for the current information management operation or for an expanded operation.

Nation-building is the task at hand for the Timorese and their friends, including the United States. Sandwiched between Indonesia, with which it shares the island of Timor, and offshore Australia, East Timor must balance its interests with those of its powerful neighbors. Indonesia ruled what is now East Timor until a United Nationssupervised referendum on independence in 1999. Afterwards, bloodshed erupted and militias destroyed more than 70 percent of the country’s infrastructure and killed approximately 1,400 people. United Nations intervention ended the bloodshed, and East Timor became independent on May 20, 2002. A U.S. embassy was established in the capital, Dili, the same year.

Known officially as the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, the country has an estimated 950,000 people, most of them Catholic. The poorest country in Asia, East Timor has extremely high child and maternal mortality rates, but also has potential for development of its oil and gas resources. In 2005 alone, the country will export $243 million in oil and gas. If an expected agreement with Australia over the resources in the Timor Sea is reached, energy exports will increase dramatically. Although the exploitation of offshore resources will make the country richer, the challenge of modernization will remain.

The U.S. mission includes nine American personnel working for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Departments of State, Justice, and Defense. There are  six U.S. personal services contract staff total in all agencies, approximately 130 locally employed staff, and 50 Peace Corps volunteers. Economic assistance to East Timor is about $22.5 million a year, and there is a modest military training and grants program

October 18, 2005