Timor-Leste is the eastern part of an island whose west is Indonesian

The island of Timor has a border that runs through the middle of it. The west belongs to Indonesia. The east is Timor-Leste, a state of its own with the capital Dili. This division is not a seam given by nature. It is what remains of a Portuguese colony, an Indonesian occupation and an independence restored in 2002.

Timor-Leste lies at the eastern end of the Lesser Sunda Islands. The interior is mountainous, and the capital, Dili, sits on the north coast, facing the sea that separates Indonesia from Australia. The state also includes Atauro island north of Dili and the Oecusse exclave on the north coast of West Timor, enclosed by Indonesian territory. The only land neighbour is Indonesia. On 14,874 square kilometres live 1,418,517 people. The state is small. Its border is still one of the clearest in the region, because it divides an island that would otherwise be one continuous mountain country.

One island, two states

West Timor is a region of Indonesia. Timor-Leste is the democratic republic that restored its independence in 2002. Between them lies no strait, but a land border across ridges and valleys. Drive west from Dili and you reach a state that inhabits the same island and has another capital, Jakarta, far away. The geography invites one to see Timor as a single unit. Politics in the east refused that.

Oecusse makes the division sharper still. The exclave lies on the north coast, surrounded by Indonesian West Timor, a Portuguese legacy that does not touch the eastern main territory. Atauro lies as an island off Dili. The state is therefore not a clean eastern block. It is the eastern part, an enclosed coastal pocket and an island offshore. Indonesia is the neighbour on land and, at the same time, the frame around Oecusse. Every road from the exclave to the capital passes through the other country or across the sea.

Portuguese and Tetum

The constitution names Portuguese and Tetum as official languages. Tetum is the Austronesian language of the island, joined to the Portuguese of the colony. Under Article 159, Indonesian and English are working languages for as long as that remains necessary. This is the language map of the history: the colonial language, the language of the people, the language of the occupation, the language of the international administration. Only the first two are official. Precisely by that, the state says it did not remain an Indonesian province.

From December 1975 Indonesia occupied the territory, after Portuguese rule had collapsed. The United Nations did not recognise the incorporation as lawful. On 30 August 1999 a popular consultation under UN supervision decided on independence. The transitional administration UNTAET followed from Security Council resolution 1272. On 20 May 2002 independence was restored. The dates are the political biography of the border. Without them the east of Timor would be only a province with another dialect.

The island is divided. The official languages recall why.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

Dili and the dollar

Dili is a coastal city on a mountainous island, not a metropolis that swallows a hinterland because there is no hinterland on a plain. The roads inland climb. The exclave is reached differently from a suburb. The capital governs a small territory with a complicated shape. 1,418,517 inhabitants on 14,874 square kilometres: a state of manageable size, whose difficulty is not mass, but the border and the memory of the occupation.

The currency is the US dollar, not a crown of its own and not the Indonesian rupiah. The country's central bank, the Banco Central de Timor-Leste, works with that dollar. This is the legacy of the transitional administration and a political decision not to make the occupier's currency the currency of the new state. Portuguese, Tetum and the dollar together make an odd bundle. It is exactly the bundle of a state that pushed its independence through against the middle of the island and then borrowed currency and language from outside and from its own coast.

Timor-Leste is the eastern part of a divided island, plus an exclave and an island offshore, with two official languages that are not Indonesian. Dili governs that remainder. The border on the ridge is the sentence the map does not forget.