The object of this chapter is the connection established between non-governmental solidarity and official diplomatic work in what concerns the Indonesian occupation of East Timor between 1975 and 1999. It seeks to analyze this connection as an externalization of the new contours of international solidarity as a component of counterhegemonic globalization.

The heritage of the absolute supremacy of the articulation between the State and the market over the internationalist alternative, which was consolidated during the process of affirmation of national States (both in the center and the periphery of the world system), presents new contours in the period of global capitalism. The weakening of local identities and the conception of global governance as a normative armour of neoliberal deregulation have been keeping the proposal of international solidarity in a marginal position. But it is precisely in this context that the global reconfiguration of international solidarity, as an expression of the principle of community, becomes a fundamental element for the analysis of counterhegemonic globalization. The cosmopolitan reconceptualization of citizenship demanded by this framework acquires a special density in the figures of the "pilgrim citizen" and the "militant State."

The case of East Timor constitutes a test to the consistency of this process and of its major theoretical expressions. In the first place, because the courses it took during the 24 years of Indonesian occupation always depended more on expressions of pilgrim citizenship than on the international intergovernmental agenda. Between 1975 and 1991, the fact that the question of East Timor was kept on the agenda of international organizations and even in the field of concerns of governments such as that of Portugal-both in what relates to the right to self-determination and to the defense of fundamental human rights-was the result of the joint work of networks of non-governmental solidarity organizations (of jurists, Christians, and human rights organizations, among others) and of their ability to give visibility to the problem worldwide and especially in countries with a greater degree of influence in the decision about the case.

On the other hand, this expression of international solidarity by groups of citizens gradually found echoes in the behavior of Portuguese diplomacy, especially after 1991. The political partnerships established by the Portuguese State with several NGOs led Portugal to assume, in the question of East Timor, a singular profile of international performance (significantly different, for instance, from the one that has been assumed by Spain in relation to the problem of Western Sahara). This intense relationship between the State and the NGOs and the specific form that it imposed on the diplomatic channeling of the question to the appropriate multilateral frameworks (UN, EU, CPLP) have made Portugal a particularly interesting case of a "militant State."