Anarchy lurking beneath restless peace

The Australian


Stephen Fitzpatrick, Dili | December 17, 2007

IN East Timor, they say, you only really know a man once he's
betrayed you. Until then, you can never be entirely sure where he stands.

But now the culture of single-mindedness and absolute secrecy that
helped create one of the modern era's signal armed insurrection
success stories - a dogged battle against 24 years of Indonesian
occupation - is also at the heart of what's holding back the nascent
democracy north of Darwin, insiders say.

Players in the project to create a nation out of the ruins of
long-held rivalries and grudges admit theirs is an endeavour for
which there is no guidebook and little guarantee of success. They're
writing the rules as they go.

Things have improved since the low point of April last year, when
Dili burned, dozens died and thousands took flight - but calling that
progress isn't saying a whole lot.

As one extremely senior source warns, "if you sent the (Australian
and New Zealand) troops home this morning, the place would be in
flames again by the afternoon".

There is an uneasy peace in the capital and across the countryside;
every day that goes by without a major incident builds on the
tentative confidence that things could eventually work out. Fingers
are crossed.

On his lightning visit to the capital last Friday, Kevin Rudd
declared he had "noted carefully" the pleas from President Jose Ramos
Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao that Australia's military
contribution continue for at least another year.

In reality - and people like Ramos Horta admit it privately - the
commitment is likely to go a whole lot longer.

The Australian-led military presence, known as the International
Stabilisation Force, enables the UN to get on with its uncertain task
of fashioning a state from the past's ashes.

Infantry foot patrols on the streets of Dili, as well as cantonments
elsewhere in the country, secure the ground for the actual UN
intervention, which is run out of the organisation's Department of
Peacekeeping Operations.

Although the official mandate ends in February and must be reassessed
by the Security Council in New York, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
admitted on Friday that the UN was in it for the long haul.

"I will continue to advocate, in my interaction with member states,
for the United Nations' long-term investment in Timor-Leste," he said
during a visit to Dili which coincided with Mr Rudd's.

While the former South Korean foreign minister also insisted that
last year's crisis "should not be seen as a failure of all that had
been undertaken until then", observers agree it was the UN's
premature withdrawal from its East Timor task then that allowed
tensions to explode.

In the eyes of many, it was a profound betrayal by Australia (which
had provided troops in blue berets) and the rest of the world: the
latest in a history of abandonments of the fragile country that was
first colonised by Lisbon and then brutalised by Jakarta.

Rumours of new violence typically involve absconded military
policeman Major Alfredo Reinado, wanted on murder charges relating to
last year's chaos.

A trial has begun in his absence; Reinado says he won't front it
until those he blames for the violence - including Gusmao and Ramos
Horta - are brought before a separate military tribunal.

Reinado, in efforts to keep himself at the centre of East Timor's
political process, has worked hard at building a cult of personality,
lately carrying with it the suggestion that half of the country's
disgruntled military are about to defect to his ragtag band.

Disorganised and aimless as they are, Reinado's followers were
nonetheless able recently to stage a parade in the central mountains
town of Gleno, at which he boasted to hundreds of supporters that he
would march on Dili and bring down Gusmao's administration. It's an
ambition that puts Reinado close to the disgruntled opposition
Fretilin party - a bitter and resentful group that insists it, not
Gusmao's National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT), is the
legitimate vehicle of government since it won the greatest number of
votes in June elections (Gusmao ultimately formed a minority
administration in coalition with three other groups).

Reinado says Gusmao has abandoned a protesting band of soldiers known
collectively as 'the Petitioners", about 600 members - or about a
third of East Timor's military - whose sackings early last year by
then Fretilin prime minister Mari Alkatiri sparked violence that was
waiting to happen.

Speaking from his distant hiding place by mobile phone to The
Australian, Reinado warned that a new crisis was just around the
corner and that he would not surrender ahead of it.

"If I give myself up right now, will that solve the problem? No. I'm
also a victim," he said. "Who is behind this crisis - where is the
trigger, who has the responsibility?"

Reinado claims the Government is "collapsing", although the view of
many diplomatic sources in East Timor is that his occasional
interventions from outside the main arena actually indicate a certain
amount of stability at this stage in the game.

"It's a Mexican standoff," says one. "He knows the Aussies could take
him out in an instant if they really wanted, so he continues to
bluster but do nothing; at the same time the ISF know that if they
pop him or put him in jail the uprising in his name could be huge."

Most agree the genie would be extremely hard to stuff back into its
bottle if Reinado were killed.

An angry and often irrational enigma, Reinado remains the word on all
lips in Dili, and perhaps that's because he represents precisely what
all players most fear: a return to the anarchy lurking just beyond
view. As recently as yesterday, the fugitive cancelled a planned
secret meeting with Ramos Horta and Gusmao in Dili, citing "security
concerns".

But Reinado, and the other two main issues at hand - the petitioners'
continuing demands for reintegration into the military, as well as
the unsolved problem of internally displaced people, whose precarious
and often violent tent settlements dot Dili and the fringes of other
main towns - are distractions from the more important business of
building institutions such as an independent judiciary and a working
security sector.

By way of example, UN police on secondment from various national
forces, including Australia's, talk disparagingly of an East Timorese
army lacking in discipline and entirely out of control.

Rivalries between the national police and military have played a
major part in the country's recent troubles, and UN police say they
are still regularly harassed by drunken Timorese soldiers with loaded
weapons and little respect for authority.

In a recent security analysis, Australian military academic Bob Lowry
noted that "although an effective police force is essential,
Timor-Leste does not need a military, but it has one: and there is
little prospect of any political configuration having the courage to
demobilise it".

The issue is mostly a historical one, with the national military
having been built on the back of the Falintil guerilla force that
defeated Indonesia's colonial interests. The trick, according to
Lowry, is going to be somehow coaxing the existing army into
functioning within a properly regulated structure.

One of his recommendations - that the "veterans" of the guerilla
struggle be dealt with separately from the country's actual defence
needs - has already been addressed, with recent payments of a bit
over $US9500 ($11,000) each to more than 200 qualifying ex-soldiers.

The national budget being enacted also includes a pay rise for
serving military - a crucial issue in addressing any kind of
institutional development. There is a further plan to recruit about
300 new members at officer level in an attempt to head off the
problem of military lawlessness.

But rule-of-law questions generally remain a huge problem, and that's
where the continued need for Australian soldiers - there are almost
800 of them in East Timor, supplemented by 170 Kiwis - comes in.

For instance, martial arts gangs, a legacy of the Indonesian years
when creative ways of fighting a guerilla war were nutted out by
leaders including Gusmao, now almost have a life of their own.

Doctors at Dili's main hospital tell of being threatened with
crowbars while trying to resuscitate patients; one assailant
allegedly stabbed a rival, followed his victim to the hospital and
then terrorised staff for long enough to ensure the man bled to death.

"People are one day going to start asking questions about why Xanana
doesn't have the guts to admit this gang problem is the result of the
intense culture of secrecy and violence that he was largely
responsible for creating," another diplomat says.

There is still the scent of betrayal in the air; its taste will be
bitter indeed should it ever be fully unleashed.