It began with a trickle on Tuesday, a handful of forlorn and exhausted women and children crossing into East Timor from the west at the border town of Memo.
By yesterday, the trickle had become a torrent, as the first wave of thousands of refugees began the long walk home, carrying with them the same meager possessions they had when they were forced into West Timor during the height of the militia rampage last month.
Some had not eaten since they were released from the refugee camps the day before. They all told the same story of how their militia captors had suddenly disappeared from the camps on Sunday, after which Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) soldiers had taken control and instructed the people to return home.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"We could not have survived much longer," said one woman, clutching a lethargic five-month-old baby girl, obviously in need of urgent medical attention. "We were not fed properly. There was no rice, and very little water."
The poor condition of the refugees has made the task facing UN relief agencies all the more difficult. Already five people have died on the road from exhaustion, including a seven-month-old baby girl who perished in her mother's arms just as they had crossed the border.
Since Monday, the UN's World Food Program (WFP) has been flying in high-protein biscuits and water to the town of Maliano, just 30km west of Memo, in preparation for the arrival of the refugees.
"It's a race against time to get everything we need in here," said Richard Regan, the WFP's coordinator in East Timor. "We want to keep the people moving so we have prepared light ration packs. The wet season is already here and these people are likely to be malnourished, exhausted and prone to disease. If we can't keep them moving it will be a disaster."
The town of Maliano is likely to serve as the through station for the refugees, as they fan out eastward toward their homes. Found in the shadow of a daunting mountain range, Maliano once served as a hustling, busy trading center where farmers in the region sold their produce, and as a through station for the stream of travelers that negotiated the rough road between East and West Timor.
Today, Maliano lies in ruins. But the scores of burnt-out homes are just part of the story of this town. When it was finally secured by advancing Interfet troops a week and a half ago, about the only people who began returning were men.
"When we arrived it was like a ghost town," said Grant King, an officer in the Australian battalion that now protects the town. "You could count on a butcher's hand the number of houses and people left here. It was like entering a place after the apocalypse.
"When people in the mountains heard we were here they began coming back. But it soon became obvious that there were no women or children with them."
The UN relief teams estimate that prior to the Aug. 30 independence ballot Maliano had a population of 30,000 people. Now there are roughly 6,000 men who sit all day idly around a football field in the center of the town.
According to representatives from Maliano's branch of the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), the political umbrella group representing Timorese independence, when the trouble began after the ballot those who had not already fled to the mountains -- mostly women, children and the elderly -- sought protection at the local police station.
But in what appears to be a pattern throughout Timor, rather than protecting the people, police handed them over to TNI troops and militia who forced the women and children to march to the border. The men, the CNRT says, were all killed.
A visit to the police station, a short walk down the road from the football field, appears to confirm the story. In one small room in the back of the station, what appears to be dried blood is splattered all over the white-washed walls. Further on in the same complex, in the corner of a badly damaged room, lies charred human remains. Next to the remains sits a blackened file cabinet in which locals say the man was burnt alive.
"There were many people killed here," said Horatio Dossantos, 17, who lived in the mountains for a month until the arrival of peacekeepers. "We have heard stories that the TNI has thrown the bodies in the river. Every day I go to the river to look for the bodies. I am looking for my father."
Like thousands of others in the town, Horatio is also waiting for the return of his mother and two sisters from the refugee camps.
"I look down the road always to see if anyone is coming," he said. "I live by myself in my family's house again, which is burnt and destroyed. If my mother and sisters come home we will rebuild it. I will keep on waiting until they come."
If they are alive, the road on which his family will walk presents its own problems, since the area outside the town has not been completely secured.
Last Saturday, Australian soldiers made contact with a small band of heavily armed militia, just 15km southwest of the town. Three militia members were killed in the exchange but evidence of other militia activity has been recorded, with Interfet sources believing the groups -- some with TNI commanders at the helm -- are making incursions from their base inside West Timor.
The WFP's Regan, a veteran of aid campaigns in Rwanda and Kosovo, says there is a strong possibility some of the returning refugees will be militia.
"The same thing happened in Rwanda," he said. "When the people began returning, many of them came back with weapons. This is just one of the many problems we face here. We have a lot of work to do to keep these people safe from harm."
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