Independence! As a people, as a territory, as a nation! One body, one mind, one wish! – Xanana Gusmao

In these words, Xanana Gusmao, the first president of the world's newest country East Timor, encapsulated the tumultuous history of the 192nd nation and the excitement and happiness of his country men and women being free and independent after years of servitude, sorrow and sufferings.

On May 20, at the stroke of midnight, when the U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan lowered the UN flag and unfurled the national red, white, black and gold colours, the outpouring of emotion reached a crescendo. It was a day the East Timorese were longing for; it was their moment in time.

Partaking in their joy, Gusmao did little to suppress his feelings of elation and anxiety. Having come to the end of a long journey of trials and tribulations for a homeland, he is well aware that another journey on a long and winding road to nation building and economic prosperity will not be easy.

East Timor is one of the poorest countries in the world. It has little or no infrastructure and will have to rely heavily on foreign aid for subsistence in the absence of a viable and vibrant economy. The new-born nation of nearly 800,000 people, mostly Roman Catholics and a few thousand Muslims, knows nothing more than farming and fishing.

It lacks resources and initially will find it difficult to mobilise revenues in a land devastated by years of resistance against Indonesian rule. Except for the royalty which it will receive from Australia for oil exploration in the Timor Sea, starting from 2003, East Timor will have to be bottle-fed with foreign aid until it can learn to stand on its own feet.

Hence Gusmao, the 55-year old poet and former guerrilla leader, knows that he faces an uphill task to improve the standard of his people, comprising a mixture of different ethnic groups, speaking different languages; the main ones being Tetum, Bahasa Indonesian, Portuguese and English.

In a country where the unemployment is over 40 per cent and illiteracy at 52 per cent, the East Timor government, for the time being, can do little but to concentrate more on small scale and cottage industries. In this respect, it will have to draw much from The Fund for East Timor, which was established to support reconstruction and development by funding and carrying out health, education and small economic development projects.

Tourism is another sector that can be developed as the half-island country of only 19,000 sq km of the eastern half of the Timor island and an enclave of Ocussi-Ambeno has beautiful beaches as it is lapped by the Indian Ocean on one side and the Pacific Ocean at north. It is about 500 kms from Australia and 1,000 kms from Java.

If a proper infrastructure is put in place, Timor, which means "the orient" in Malay, can be the next Bali of the East.However it now all depends on how the East Timorese would like to draw their chart to their tryst with destiny.

The East Timorese are determined and resolute. And as a nation they are the embodiment of the most persistent and resistant organisation of people-culture-territory.

These concept of nationhood has stood the test of time for centuries among the East Timorese. They were mute witnesses to the spice trade rivalry between the Portuguese and the Dutch when the former established an outpost in their land in the 16th century. During the World War II, East Timor became one of the theatres of war when Japan occupied the island in February 1942. Three months earlier Australian and Dutch troops had landed on Timor despite Portugal's policy of neutrality. In the resistance that followed, more Timorese died than allied troops.

With the change in the world political map at the end of the war, neighbouring Dutch East Indies, including the west half of Timor island became an independent Indonesia. But all these changes did not affect the East Timorese who preserved their separate identity and nationhood.

Cutting across ethnic and linguists lines, the East Timorese had only one wish: To be independent at all costs. And they paid a heavy price to achieve that goal. Since 1975, nearly 200,000 East Timorese have lost their lives and many more displaced fighting Indonesian rule. Indonesia annexed East Timor when the Portuguese left the half-island in haste on December 7, 1975.

When it was made known that Portugal would free the last remaining vestiges of its overseas colonies, after a leftist regime took power in Lisbon in April 1974, ending 48 years of dictatorship, the East Timorese were overjoyed. They thought that with the departure of the Portuguese, they would be masters of their own destiny after nearly 400 years of foreign rule. So in anticipation of independence two major political parties – the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (FRETILIN) quickly emerged in January 1974.

In preparation of statehood, they formed a coalition and unilaterally declared East Timor as an independent state. But before the Portuguese could hand power to a transition government, the pro-Indonesia UDT seized power. The leftist Fretilin fought back and during the fighting the last remaining Portuguese administrators fled. Claiming that intervention was necessary to restore peace and security, Indonesia invaded East Timor and annexed it.

As Indonesian troops landed by air and sea, a large percentage of East Timor's population fled to the mountains, along with Fretilin's armed wing, the Falintil. And many of them died due to starvation and bombing.

For nearly two decades, the East Timorese fought a lonely battle. The world at large did not pay much attention to the plight of the East Timorese, except to pass a few resolutions in the UN calling on Portugal and Indonesia to resolve the problem.

However, the plight of the East Timorese came to light when Indonesia, confident that their annexation of East Timor was a fait accompli, opened the territory to foreigners. This policy of openness proved to be a disaster from the Indonesian point of view.

Foreign correspondents visiting the island brought to the attention of the world community the East Timorese' struggle for independence by giving wide publicity in the Western press. However, two major events made the world sit down and take notice; namely the pro-independence demonstration during the visit of Pope John Paul II to the capital Dili in October 1989 and the Santa Cruz massacre of November 12, 1991, wherein hundreds of unarmed pro-independence demonstrators at the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili were killed. These events proved to be the turning points.

The independence movement gained further international recognition when East Timor resistance leaders José Ramos Horta and Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.

The collapse of the Indonesian economy in 1998 and the resignation of Indonesian President Suharto, who was a strong opponent of a separate East Timor state, further helped the East Timorese cause.

B.J. Habibie, who took over the reins from Suharto, finally agreed to hold a referendum in favour of autonomy or separation in East Timor, and to release Gusmao,