'When a child cries for food, who cares about morality?'

By Greg Ansley

DILI - At night the East Timorese capital of Dili is a city of soldiers and animals.

The dark of streets left almost without illumination by the militias' systematic destruction is broken only by the sharp bark and growls of the oddly squat dogs that prowl constantly through the debris and human campsites. And by roosters.

In the convent that has become home to international journalists living outside the secure zone protected by Australian soldiers, a sow and her piglets forage noisily outside nuns' cells now housing laptops and satellite phones.

The only human movements are the Army patrols quartered in the city, the distant growl of armoured personnel carriers, or the much less frequent chop, chop of military helicopters.

No one moves in Dili at night unless they have to.

The terror the militias used so effectively to drive people from their homes into dangerously inhospitable mountains still governs after dark, even in the tent city that has sprung up under the guns of Interfret soldiers and in the sports stadium housing a growing number of people returning to Dili.

Up to 15,000 people a day have come down from the hills over the past few days and agencies estimate that up to 70,000 more may return over the next few weeks.

That will push resources to the limit as aid and medical workers try to feed, clothe, shelter and care for the health of so many people in a city that effectively has nothing to offer except what is shipped in from Darwin.

The World Food Programme is launching a food-for-clean-up programme under which rice and other essentials will be distributed in return for labour to purge the city of the debris and filth of war.

Later, this will become a food-for-building programme, switching the effort to the reconstruction of East Timor. It is a task far beyond the new nation that will emerge after the Indonesian Parliament's ratification of the independence vote.

World Vision estimates that East Timor will be among the poorest nations on the planet with a per capita annual income of less than $NZ400, below that of Bangladesh.

"The poverty here will be comparable with sub-Sahara in Africa," said World Vision worker Sanjay Sojwal.

The desperation is already emerging. Twice in the past week the main food warehouse near the Australian consulate has been looted by locals who brushed aside civilian guards and took what they could carry.

Both times they carried away about 40 tonnes of rice.

"When a child cries for food, who cares about morality?" Sanjay Sojwal says.

At the sports stadium, where several hundred people now live, registration for rice rations this week disintegrated into a stampede as people tried frantically to collect the 50kg of rice a family World Vision is distributing.

The desperate were given 5kg, enough to feed a family of four for about two days, to tide them over until the system of distribution can match demand.

But even as the urgency grows with the approach of the wet season, and the need to provide housing and sow crops, the terror that emptied the streets at night continues as a noose around humanitarian relief.

Most of the people who pour down to the sports stadium for food and company during the day will return to the hills before dark, their health steadily sapped by hunger and emerging disease.

In the hills around Dare, south of Dili, the National Commission of Timorese Resistance reported that 30 children had died in the past few weeks of hunger and disease.

Even those once cared for by aid programmes have little faith in promises.

World Vision is searching for 2000 sponsored children and their families who were helped into rudimentary village enterprises, now scattered and in hiding.

In the village of Motalaran, at the foot of the mountains outside Dili, eight out of 10 children have the warning signs of marasmus, the saggy skin, pale nails and eyelids that precede by only a few weeks the more serious protein deficiencies of kwashiorkor, the precursor to malnutrition.

Unless the progression can be halted, children, especially, will need medically monitored, high-protein feeding, beyond the iron-rich, high-protein biscuits already being distributed.

The alternative is rapidly spreading disease, and possible death.

But the hill people remain fearful and distrustful of the promises even of aid workers and peacemakers, and cling to the illusory safety of bushland.

Despite the United Nations trucks which drive every day through Dili broadcasting messages of safety and security over loudspeakers, mistrust remains.

"The shock has gone deep and I think people do not trust anyone, and that includes the international community because they feel abandoned," Sanjay Sojwal said.

"They were encouraged by the world community to vote for independence and look what they got.

"I think it will take a while to get their confidence back."