When David Andrews travels the stunning coast road to Liquisa on Monday to observe East Timor's "popular consultation" he will be on the edge of the wild west. Everyone who wants independence has been run out of town. Above Liquisa in the mountains there are more than 3,000 "displaced persons".
Yesterday all was quiet as Fergal Mythen, of the Department of Foreign Affairs, went to check it out for the Minister and EU special envoy. But on Monday the United Nations people on the ground expect that anti-independence paramilitaries, in an area where some of the polling stations are as high as 6,000 feet, will be doing their damnedest to stop the people walking - sometimes 11 hours - to vote.
They will block not just roads but mountain paths and trails to see that the plain people who want shut of Indonesia can't say so. A nearby militia leader and tribal chief, or Kepaladesa, told locals who wanted to hold a "voter education" meeting: "If you hold this meeting I will kill you."
Monday's UN managed vote is the result of a January 27th announcement by President B.J. Habibie of Indonesia that East Timor could vote on autonomy within Indonesia. If it decided against then it could have independence, subject to approval by the country's consultative assembly, the MPR.
Since then, an agreement setting up the UN Mission for East Timor (UNAMET) and the rules for the consultation was agreed last May 5th between Indonesia, Portugal and the UN. But after Thursday's bloodletting in the Timorese capital Dili, resistance leaders and observers are wondering what the pro-Jakarta, pro-autonomy militias - seen as the creation of the Indonesian military - are planning for the next two crucial days before the vote.
Yesterday there was a reliable report that the paramilitaries responsible for much of Thursday's violence against independence supporters were on their way to another western town and hot spot, Maliana. "God knows what will happen," said an UNAMET civilian policeman.
Liquisa was the scene of a massacre of some 60 people last April by the local militia. The locals say it's much more. In July, UNAMET staff were traumatised by a militia attack on an aid convoy for the displaced ones. Yet Liquisa is not the worst.
An agreed estimate of killings by militias since last January's Habibie announcement is not to be had here. It's put anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 - in a land of less than a million.
Since December 7th, 1975, the Indonesian military has run the former Portuguese colony it invaded then as "a fiefdom", says Andrew McNaughton, one of Australia's best known NGO activists for East Timor. He is one of hundreds of foreign observers here for the ballot.
During the past 24 years of guerrilla and civilian resistance to Indonesian rule, more than 200,000 people have died from war, disease and starvation. Now activists like McNaughton see the new phenomenon of militias as "Timorisation" by the army of a conflict that used to be a more straightforward fight between the Indonesian army and guerrillas of FALINTIL. The army has created Latin American type death squads, he says.
Elements high in the Indonesian military will not let go of East Timor because of pride. It's not for the coffee, the price of which is kept low by an army purchasing company, or oil in the Timor Gap, the sea between here and Australia.
The military has lost some 20,000 troops here and that amounts to an investment of blood. He quotes an Indonesian general as saying: "If the people vote for independence they will all get killed - and relations with Australia will deteriorate."
SOME generals detest Australian solidarity activists and politicians who have taken up the Timor issue. They make a geo-political issue out of it, he says. "There's no logic driving this. And they regard the Timorese as third rate people who should have been grateful," he says.
McNaughton adds that current talk by Indonesian and pro-Jakarta leaders of the spectre of civil war is just a subtler version of the "I'll kill you all if you vote against autonomy" threat.
He believes that the Indonesian military's objections to UN peacekeepers should not have been allowed to prevail in the May 5th accord.
The big question this weekend is whether Thursday's killings by militias and police were spontaneous or the beginning of the end of an attempt to derail Monday's ballot - or a continuation of a strategy to coerce voters into staying with Indonesia.
Official political Indonesia is coming under increasing international pressure, as yesterday's strong statements by the UN Secretary General and the head of UNAMET, Ian Martin, calling for Indonesia to control the militias showed.
Indonesia has also been coming under immense pressure in the last 10 days even from nations it considers friends. To avoid humiliating the fourth most populous nation in the world, it's being done privately, according to a UN source.
But during the UNAMET process a political struggle for the next presidency of Indonesia has been bearing on events. The position of Gen Wiranto, the Indonesian Defence Minister and chief of the army, is crucial.
He hopes to be the next vice-president and has been presenting himself as one fully dedicated to "clean government" and the Habibie disengagement policy on East Timor.
He once told Jose Ramos-Horta, the Timorese Nobel Peace Prize laureate and resistance representative abroad: "I could stop this militia violence in two days". But some Timor watchers, including Alan Nairn, the US journalist, believe he is in fact involved in the militia project and just wants to have a good image. A report here yesterday said Gen Wiranto had sent a high-level delegation to Dili. It remains to be seen whether it is to shut off the violence or just to help give that image.
Everyone, including the pro-independence campaign of the National Council for Timorese Resistance (CNRT) and UNAMET know that there is no level playing field. But the CNRT felt it had to go ahead with the ballot. They see the alternative as more violence and a scenario in which independence wouldn't get another chance.
The UN will factor in the effect of intimidation when it come to adjudicate on the result. But it wants to see a clear one.
If the result is 70 or 75 per cent for independence (i.e. against autonomy) then any loss to the CNRT can be put down to intimidation. But if it is 54 to 46 there is likely to be trouble.
"If it's like that you could have partition," said a UN official.
Repartition of the island of Timor - in effect pushing East Timor's border further east - is constantly mentioned by pro-Jakarta figures. It would leave the region that is dominated most by militias still in Indonesia.
It could also set the scene for a new guerrilla war with militias in the mountains.