Daring SAS rescue
The untold story of how NZ forces undertook a risky mission into West Timor to save dozens of UN workers held hostage by murderous militia – revealed by the chief of staff who oversaw the planning and execution of the daring plan.
It was 20 years ago today that a small SAS detachment from the New Zealand Defence Force took part in a daring mission to safely remove dozens of United Nations personnel from hostile territory in West Timor. And their reward? Coca-Cola and chocolate bars. In his own words, Lieutenant Colonel Rob Hitchings, New Zealand’s Chief of Staff on the Brigade HQ in East Timor at the time recalls the planning and execution of the risky mission.
The call came mid-afternoon on September 6, 2000. A New Zealand SAS ‘‘tracking team’’ of 10 (attached to the New Zealand Battalion in Suai, East Timor), was doing its usual weapons practice at a makeshift range.
The team commander was told to report immediately to the United Nations Brigade HQ, for urgent orders.
The background
The tracking team had been brought in from New Zealand a month earlier to help the battalion that was operating on the border with West Timor, Indonesia, as part of the UN intervention, following the 1999 independence referendum.
The SAS was there to help find militia elements that had been infiltrating across the border into East Timor (now Timor-Leste). The same militia had been responsible for the death of New Zealand soldier, Private Leonard Manning on July 24, 2000. A Nepalese soldier, Private Devi Ram Jaisi, was also killed and three other Nepalese soldiers were wounded by the militia on August 10.
Militia groups were responsible for violence and intimidation in East Timor leading up to and immediately after the vote for independence on August 30, 1999. The results were announced five days later.. The militia rejected the results and were violently opposed to the subsequent democratic processes taking place in East Timor, as well as the presence of UN forces.
The militia groups were East Timorese who maintained links with the Indonesian security forces and authorities in West Timor, and exercised significant control over the East Timorese refugees in camps there. They saw the UN as an international military force that had stolen East Timor from Indonesia, not an impartial humanitarian organisation.
New Zealand’s contribution to the UN peacekeeping operation were part of a composite battalion of about 800 from New Zealand, Nepal, Fiji and Ireland. That battalion was based in the southern coastal town of Suai, supported by a Royal New Zealand Air Force air detachment of four ageing Iroquois helicopters.
Overseeing UN operations along the border was a Sector West Brigade headquarters of about 60 military staff, which co-ordinated activities of the Australian Battalion along the northern part of the border and the Kiwis to the south. The Brigade HQ was commanded by the experienced Australian, Brigadier Duncan Lewis.
The tensions
In the days leading up to September 6, tension had been mounting in West Timor, including with the militia, those East Timorese refugees who wanted to be repatriated back to East Timor, and the international agencies there to support refugees.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) offices in Kupang, Kefa and Atambua had been subjected to demonstrations and attacks by the militia. Three UNHCR staff were attacked in Kefa in late August.
September 5 was also the first anniversary of a massacre of up to 200 innocent people in the church at Suai by Laksaur militias in East Timor. On that anniversary in Betun, West Timor, refugees sought vengeance, and
murdered Laksaur militia leader Olivio Mendonca Moruk. He was decapitated and had his heart cut out, along with further mutilations.
Retribution continued on September 6 when three UNHCR staff in Atambua were killed by the Laksaur militia group. A number of others were wounded. A later UN investigation revealed that the militia mob broke into the UN compound and ‘‘shot the three UN workers to death, bundled the bodies into a car and then the car was set on fire’’.
Conditions were deteriorating quickly across the border, and the lives of UN staff and local workers in Atambua were at significant risk.
In the Brigade HQ at Suai, snippets of information were being collected about what was happening across the border, 45km away to the northwest.
The plan
Brigadier Lewis tasked myself, as the Kiwi chief of staff, to start planning the rescue of the 40 to 45 UN people held hostage in Atambua.
The most obvious military assets to use were the Australians at Fort Balibo, just across the border from Atambua; 20km away and easily reached by the modern and sophisticated Black Hawk helicopters available to the special forces squadron of the Aussie Battalion.
They also had Australian Light Armoured Vehicles (Aslav) that could be used as a backup, or a reserve force, should anything go wrong with a helicopter rescue.
But, as is the geo-political nature of individual national commitments to international UN operations, the Australian Government only allowed its military commitment to the UN to operate within the borders of East Timor. No Australian Defence Force (ADF) assets could be used to cross the border for any part of the rescue.
Brigadier Lewis asked for Australian forces to be used but authorisation was only to come later the next day. Disappointed that modern military equipment and military forces closer to the hostage scene couldn’t be used, but with pragmatic leadership instincts and recognising the urgency of the situation, Lewis called upon the Kiwis of his brigade to tackle the risky rescue.
In optimistic anticipation of New Zealand government approval, relevant Kiwi forces (the tracking team, the three RNZAF helicopters and Acting Battalion Commander Major Lyndon Blanchard) were told to prepare for the rescue.
The go ahead
There was then a rapid sequence of events to get New Zealand government approval. Lewis contacted the senior New Zealand National Officer in East Timor, Brigadier Lou Gardiner, in the capital Dili, who then talked with the Joint Commander of the East Timor deployment based in Wellington, Brigadier Jerry Mateparae. Mateparae then spoke with Chief of Defence Force, Air Marshal Carey Adamson, who sought approval from Minister of Defence, Mark Burton, who secured permission from Prime Minister Helen Clark.
The mission was on.
Approvals took about two hours to achieve; something extraordinary in the usually hierarchical political-military environment.
Adamson simply said: ‘‘Go ahead, that’s what we are there for.’’
Planning for the rescue was well under way by 3pm at the Brigade HQ, when Captain Steve Guiney, the SAS tracking team commander, arrived from range practice.
The most senior tracker, Neville Radford, was already at Brigade HQ when Guiney arrived, uncertain about what was actually happening in Atambua.
‘‘I got in and Neville Radford had already been briefed on the situation,’’ Guiney said.
‘‘It was clear someone was likely to be going over to get the UN staff.
‘‘But I could not work out why the Indons [Indonesians], who were assuring us the remaining staff were safe and secure, did not drive them to the border themselves. It seemed odd, unsettling even.’’
Disconcerting information on what was unfolding at Atambua was arriving, too. An Australian staff officer on the Brigade HQ, who spoke Bahasa Indonesian, was speaking directly with an Indonesian Army (TNI) officer based in Atambua and relaying information about where the hostages were and how many there were. Similarly, Lewis, also a Bahasa speaker, was talking to his TNI counterpart in West Timor. Some hostages were able to communicate with the UN HQ in Dili, where an Australian operations