[Kabar-indonesia] 2 of 5: ICG: Resolving Timor-Leste's Crisis

[JoyoNews at aol.com]

-2 of 5-

II.           IMPLICATIONS OF RESISTANCE-ERA SPLITS

Timor-Leste's problems cannot be understood without
reference to the battles and betrayals within the
resistance just before and during the Indonesian
occupation. The divisions are not just between those
who stayed behind to fight and those who spent the
occupation abroad. Within the Timor-based resistance,
bitter fault lines emerged, most notably in 1983-1984
between the ideological puritans and those who wanted
to create a more inclusive national front. The
so-called "Maputo group", the Timorese who spent much
of the war in Angola and Mozambique, was also riven by
personality differences and power struggles.
Fractiousness within a guerrilla movement is common
but when it is carried over into a post-conflict
government, the impact can be devastating - especially
in a country as small as Timor-Leste.

A.            FRETILIN's Beginnings

Virtually all the key actors in the current crisis are
or were once members of the Revolutionary Front for
the Liberation of East Timor (FRETILIN).
Pro-independence and socialist, it was one of several
parties that emerged in the Portuguese colony in the
immediate aftermath of Lisbon's April 1974 "Carnation
Revolution".

In a colony that had no tradition of open political
activity, the sudden emergence of parties led to
fierce competition and physical fights, particularly
between FRETILIN and the more conservative,
pro-autonomy (under Portugal) Uniao Democratic
Timorense (UDT):

Each party presented [its] views as the national
interest but didn't take into consideration that we
are all people of Timor..Sometimes we noticed that the
parties were quite happy when their supporters would
come and say: "We beat up this person" or "We killed
that person"; it was regarded as a small victory. If a
party had the most people in a sub-district, they
didn't let other parties campaign in that area. And so
when other parties would go to those places, people
would attack, block their way, boycott, throw rocks,
and beat each other.[2]

Indonesia, in the meantime, grew increasingly alarmed
by the prospect of a communist outpost on its border
and began a program of infiltration, propaganda and
destabilisation, in which some of the new Timorese
political organisations became witting or unwitting
pawns. On 11 August 1975, the UDT launched a military
action, "variously named a coup, an 'attempted coup',
a movement and an uprising" against FRETILIN.[3] After
about a week of solid UDT gains, FRETILIN forces,
calling themselves FALINTIL (Forcas Armados de
Libertacao Nacional de Timor-Leste) struck back, under
the command of Rogerio Lobato, then the highest
ranking Timorese in the Portuguese army, who was able
to persuade many of his fellow soldiers to join
FRETILIN ranks. FALINTIL was thus born not out of the
struggle against Indonesia but as a party to a civil
war.[4] A general free-for-all ensued, not just UDT
against FRETILIN but also different constellations of
groups fighting each other in different parts of the
country. 

The highest death toll was in the rural areas where
tensions based on long-standing clan feuds and
personal grudges, intensified by more recent militant
party ideological positions, exploded into
violence.[5]

The Commission on Truth, Reception and Reconciliation
(CAVR), established after independence, estimates that
between 1,500 and 3,000 died at this time, with
FRETILIN committing most, but not all, of the
killings. Ermera, a UDT stronghold then and the base
of the "petitioners" now, was the site of some of the
worst excesses. Because FRETILIN had most of the East
Timorese troops in the colonial army on its side, it
was able to defeat UDT in short order; by September
1975, tens of thousands of UDT members were fleeing
across the border into West Timor. There, under
duress, the leadership signed a petition requesting
integration of East Timor into Indonesia.

FRETILIN's brief control of the territory was hampered
from the outset by lack of personnel and increasingly
serious Indonesian incursions. On 28 November 1975,
two days after the Indonesian military occupied
Atabae, a town some 40 km from the West Timor border,
FRETILIN declared independence and established the
Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, with Xavier do
Amaral as president and Nicolau Lobato as Prime
Minister. On 4 December, three cabinet ministers -
Mari Alkatiri, economic and political affairs
minister; Jose Ramos Horta, foreign minister; and
Rogerio Lobato, minister for defence - went abroad to
seek diplomatic support and buy arms. It was more than
twenty years before they returned.

Indonesia launched a full-scale invasion on 7 December
1975, and while the Timorese had some reasonably
well-trained troops and were able to hold their ground
remarkably well for three years, they were ultimately
no match for its much larger and better-equipped
army.[6] 

As the Indonesian advance continued, accompanied by
widespread atrocities, divisions intensified within
FRETILIN about how to respond. Splits erupted over the
principle of subordinating the military to political
leaders, even when the latter were young and
inexperienced; over strategies to adopt in confronting
the enemy; and over how far the civilian population
should be incorporated in the resistance. In 1977,
Xavier do Amaral argued for allowing civilians to
surrender; he was accused of being a defeatist traitor
and was deposed as president, replaced by Nicolau
Lobato.[7] The party took a more radical Marxist line
and purged more dissidents.

Losses were heavy. If FALINTIL was able to field at
least 15,000 fighters in the first year of the war, by
1980, only some 700 remained.[8] Nicolau Lobato was
killed in late 1978, and Indonesian resettlement
policies resulted in a huge famine in which thousands
died. By 1979, only three central committee members
were left fighting in the hills, one of them Xanana
Gusmao.[9] 

B.           FALINTIL's Rise

In March 1981, surviving members of the military and
political leadership of FRETILIN met to regroup. Among
those approved for membership in the central committee
was Lere Anan Timor, later the defence forces chief of
staff in independent Timor-Leste. Reconfirmed as
members abroad were Mari Alkatiri, Rogerio Lobato,
Jose Ramos Horta, Roque Rodrigues, and Abilio Araujo.
Xanana was named national political commissar as well
as FALINTIL commander. The meeting produced another
notable development: the first attempt at a national
front, the Revolutionary Council of National
Resistance (CRRN), as a way of encouraging non-party
members to join the struggle.[10]

Until this point, the FRETILIN central committee had
been the resistance's most important body. From 1981,
armed struggle superseded politics, and it was the
military command in the field that prevailed - meaning
Xanana necessarily took a larger role in
decision-making.[11] Over the next two years, he and
other leaders opted to initiate negotiations with the
Indonesians and reach out to the Catholic Church,
which had kept FRETILIN at arm's length.[12] They also
made overtures to other parties, and in the interests
of a united front, abandoned Marxism.[13] 

These policies were not popular with FRETILIN
hardliners, and in 1984, a split took place, so bitter
that in September 2006, it came up in almost every
conversation about the current crisis. Senior FALINTIL
officers, who were also members of the FRETILIN
central committee, attempted a coup against
Xanana.[14] Led by Chief of Staff Kilik Wae Gae; Mauk
Moruk (Paulo Gama), a brigade commander; and the
latter's deputy, Oligari Asswain, it failed. 

The fallout was heavy. Mauk Moruk surrendered to the
Indonesians. His brother, Cornelio Gama, better known
as L-7 (Elle Sette), was purged, and although later
taken back, developed a separate power base in the
Baucau area through a cult-like organisation, Sagrada
Familia.[15] Oligari was removed from FALINTIL and
resurfaced in independent Timor-Leste as a leader of a
dissident group, CPD-RDTL, that for the first years
after the Indonesian departure was a major security
headache for the transition government. Kilik died
under disputed circumstances; his wife became a
FRETILIN central committee member and eventually
deputy minister for state administration in the
Alkatiri government. Almost twenty years later,
Rogerio Lobato was able to manipulate anger left over
from 1984 to build up his own constituency.

Xanana's next major step, even more controversial than
his national unity strategy but a natural consequence
of it, was to pull FALINTIL out of FRETILIN, making it
a non-partisan army. He had proposed this in 1984 but
finally acted on 7 December 1987 and resigned from
FRETILIN at the same time. The following year he
founded the National Council of Maubere Resistance
(CNRM) as the highest political body of the
resistance; in 1989, he appointed Jose Ramos Horta as
its representative abroad, a move that did not win
plaudits from the Maputo group, led by Alkatiri, which
had been in charge of external affairs.[16]

The FRETILIN-FALINTIL divorce had profound
implications for the political dynamics of
post-conflict Timor-Leste. It meant that the party's
political leadership was concentrated in the diaspora,
particularly with key central committee members based
in Angola and Mozambique, and that those who stayed in
FALINTIL until the end were virtually all Xanana's
men. And it created a built-in divide between the
party and the military, and the party and Xanana,
after independence.[17] 

C.           FRETILIN After Independence

FRETILIN for the time being, however, remained the
most important component of the national front, first
the CNRM, and then its successor, the National Council
of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), created in 1998 months
after Indonesian President Soeharto fell from power.
CNRT for the first time included UDT leaders and even
Timorese associated with the pro-integration party,
APODETI. Xanana Gusmao, by this time in prison in
Jakarta for five years but a figure of growing
international stature, was elected leader. Rifts
between him and the FRETILIN leadership were papered
over in the interests of national unity, but after
Alkatiri and many others returned to Timor in 1999,
they gradually came out into the open, to the point
that in 2000, FRETILIN left CNRT. According to Xanana,
the precipitating cause was Alkatiri's accusation that
he was trying to ruin the image of FRETILIN by
insisting that it take responsibility for killing
ideological opponents in 1975. In fact, differences
between the two had been accumulating for more than a
decade.

When Timor-Leste's first general election was held
under UN auspices in August 2001, before formal
independence, it was clear that FRETILIN had name
recognition and a party infrastructure that no
opponent could match.[18] It won 57 per cent of the
vote. Alkatiri became chief minister, then, after
independence, prime minister. Xanana Gusmao was
elected president in April 2002 with 82 per cent of
the vote but had relatively little power. Despite
initial nods toward a government of national unity
that would include other parties, the FRETILIN central
committee gave itself a stranglehold on the state by
assigning most key cabinet positions to party members.
Speaker of Parliament Lu 'Olo (Francisco Guterres) was
also president of FRETILIN.

>From the outset, relations between the president and
the prime minister, parliament, and several ministers
were strained, in part because the president's role
under the constitution was so limited and Xanana's
prestige was so huge. Alkatiri had most of the power
and made enemies more easily than friends. In 2005,
the Catholic Church organised a nineteen-day
demonstration against him for the government's stance
over religious education - meaning that when the
current crisis broke out, it was not seen as a neutral
arbiter. Several leaders of opposition parties who
were also former FRETILIN members found in democratic
competition new ways to raise longstanding grievances.

D.           Rogerio Lobato

The man who was a problem for FRETILIN, as he was for
everyone else, was central committee member Rogerio
Lobato. While he has been portrayed in many media
accounts of the current crisis as Alkatiri's
right-hand man, theirs was more a forced marriage than
a natural alliance. Rogerio returned to Timor-Leste in
October 2000, after the elections, and immediately
started making trouble.

He took advantage of widespread unhappiness in
ex-FALINTIL ranks after the creation of the East
Timorese Defence Forces in early 2001 to align himself
with the malcontents in the hope of creating an
independent power base. In August 2001, during the
election campaign and playing up his role as the first
FALINTIL commander, he promised, without details, that
since many fighters had not been absorbed into the new
army, FRETILIN would create a "new concept" to
accommodate them.[19] He was not initially included in
the government and took umbrage that though he had
been defence minister in 1975, he was not given that
role in 2001. In early 2002 he organised a
FRETILIN-linked veterans' group, the Ex-Combatants
Association (Associação dos Antigos Combatentes das
Falintil), that competed with two other associations,
one of them linked to Xanana and CNRT.[20] 

In May 2002, Rogerio organised several thousand
ex-FALINTIL to march on Dili, ostensibly to celebrate
independence but almost certainly to show that he was
a force to be reckoned with. On 20 May, he was taken
into the council of ministers as minister for interior
administration, overseeing local government and the
police. He had gambled and won on Alkatiri's deciding
that he was a lesser threat inside the government than
outside.[21] He then proceeded to try to turn the
police into his own instrument, in a way that hurt the
government, deepened old cleavages, and had disastrous
consequences for internal security. 

Many of the police Rogerio inherited were Timorese who
had worked for the Indonesians but had been vetted and
rehired. The head of the police service, Paulo
Martins, was a former Indonesian officer. Throughout
the latter half of 2002, Lobato used his support in
the dissident community to fan anger against this
group, resulting in violent street protests, while
arranging to open recruitment and bring in his own
men. The result was that a significant element of the
police was more loyal to Rogerio personally than to
the institution or the state. In his independence day
speech on 28 November 2002, Xanana Gusmao called for
Rogerio's resignation, "on the grounds of incompetence
and neglect".[22] In December 2002, Dili erupted into
riots after police mishandled the arrest of a student.
The rioters burned down Mari Alkatiri's house, and
many asked: "Was Rogerio Lobato behind this, too?"

III.        THE SECURITY SECTOR

The military had its own problems. In 1999, as the
UN-supervised referendum on separation from Indonesia
loomed, FALINTIL fighters were cantoned in Aileu,
south of Dili. Under the leadership of Taur Matan
Ruak, commander since 1998, they had held back from
counterattacking when the Indonesian army and its
militias burned much of the country, knowing that to
do so would jeopardise international intervention. But
then the world seemed to forget them. The UN
Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET)
that arrived in October 1999 to prepare the country
for independence gave more attention to vetting former
Indonesian police and getting them back on the streets
than to finding a role for the men in the hills.
Conditions in Aileu deteriorated, and the fighters
grew bored and resentful. "We were treated like dogs",
Taur Matan Ruak said in September 2006. 

And when the new Timor-Leste Defence Forces (FDTL),
were finally created in February 2001, only 650 of the
1,500 members were drawn from ex-fighters; the rest
were new recruits. From the outset, there were rumbles
about discrimination, and it was this well of
resentment that Rogerio Lobato tapped.[23] The
dissolution of FALINTIL as the FDTL came into being
created even more unhappiness in the ranks of
ex-fighters, especially since with stratospheric
unemployment there was no place for them to go. 

The FDTL, which after independence in May 2002 was
renamed FALINTIL-FDTL (F-FDTL), was divided into two
battalions. Battalion I was headquartered in the
eastern town of Los Palos, from July 2002 to 2006 when
it moved to Baucau. Battalion II, created in late 2002
with mostly new recruits, was based at the army
training center in Metinaro, just east of Dili.
Management problems surfaced everywhere but were
particularly acute in Battalion I, where east-west
differences and other fissures began to emerge.

In November 2002, an internal UN paper noted that:

There was widespread public dissatisfaction in the
central and western areas over the ethnic composition
of the First Battalion, which was dominated by former
combatants from the three eastern districts (where
most of the fighting had occurred and where Falintil
was strongest). [24] 

Taur Matan Ruak made adjustments in recruitment and
promotion policies accordingly but there were
logistical problems as well. With a poor
transportation infrastructure, troops from the west
going on leave had difficulties getting back to their
families and returning on time. A disproportionate
number of westerners faced disciplinary actions as a
result, accused among other things of absenteeism. 

A.            Growing Problems in the F-FDTL

In December 2003, some 42 soldiers (mostly westerners
and including Vicente da Conceicao alias Railos, who
was to play a role in the 2006 crisis)[25] were
discharged. They raised complaints about unfair
dismissals, long travel distances, and poor
communications, some of which were addressed in the
August 2004 report of a presidential commission tasked
with assessing problems within the F-FDTL. The report
identified difficulties in living conditions across
the board, returning on time from leave, and perceived
bias in promotions but the government does not appear
to have acted on any of its recommendations, and
discontent continued to fester. 

On 26 February 2005, another group of disgruntled
soldiers complaining of discrimination in promotions
met with the president. In September 2005, a U.S.
contract for logistic support to the F-FDTL was cut,
leaving the army on its own for such basics as
barracks maintenance and rations. In October, soldiers
sent a complaint to headquarters about leaky roofs and
insufficient food, and while the immediate grievances
were addressed, the grumbling continued.

In the meantime, Rogerio Lobato, with Alkatiri's tacit
support, was creating several special police units
that were better paid and equipped than the army.[26]
Deliberately building on perceptions of easterners
dominating the F-FDTL officer corps, he favoured
westerners.

In January, a group of 159 soldiers petitioned Xanana
Gusmao as supreme commander complaining of
discrimination against westerners in recruitment,
promotions and disciplinary measures. They listed 28
points, mostly reported snubs and insults from
commanders to the effect that loromonu were
untrustworthy and had not fought as hard in the
resistance as the lorosae. A major target of their
complaints was the commander of Battalion I, Lt. Col.
Falur Rate Laek. The grievances were petty enough and
could probably have been addressed if they were indeed
the crux of the problem. But there were other factors
at play.

The head of the petitioners, Gascao Salsinha, had been
caught red-handed in April 2005 smuggling sandalwood.
In response Taur Matan Ruak cancelled his promotion
and an upcoming training assignment in Portugal. The
police wrote an incident report but suddenly the case
evaporated. Because Rogerio Lobato is reputed to
control the sandalwood business, some Timorese
interpreted this as evidence that Salsinha was in his
camp, against the F-FDTL and Xananna - as were the
police. Whether or not that is true, the cancellation
of the promotion gave Salsinha a personal grudge
against Taur Matan Ruak and may account in part for
his subsequent actions.

B.           Response to the Petition

The international media has reported the sacking of
nearly 600 soldiers in March 2006 as precipitating the
political crisis, with Taur Matan Ruak and Prime
Minister Alkatiri as the villains who let it happen.
But it is not that simple.

Salsinha and 158 of his followers signed their
petition to President Gusmao on 9 January, and sent
copies to Matan Ruak, various government officials,
the two bishops, the heads of all political parties
and the ambassadors of Australia, Portugal and the
U.S. They said they were prepared to go on a hunger
strike in front of the president's office if their
demands were not met, and if after a month the strike
produced no result, they would leave the army.[27]

On 16 January, President Gusmao called Matan Ruak and
asked him to deal with the problem. But the defence
forces were in the process of changing Battalion I
headquarters from Los Palos to the more central town
of Baucau, a long-planned move that would in part
address the complaint about the former being too far
away for soldiers from the west to take normal leave. 

It is improbable that Matan Ruak was simply too busy
to meet with Salsinha for two weeks after the petition
was received. His past history with Salsinha and the
steady stream of complaints from the rank-and-file are
more likely explanations; there was no reason to
believe that this protest was significantly more
important than earlier ones but it escalated rapidly
from complaints about discrimination to a demand that
that Alkatiri step down. 

On 1 February, the inauguration of new barracks for
Battalion I took place in Baucau, and on 2 February,
Matan Ruak met Salsinha. Discussions that day and the
next produced no result, and over the next two days,
hundreds of soldiers left their bases without
permission. On 7 February, after meeting with a small
group of petitioners, and without consulting Matan
Ruak, President Gusmao agreed to see the entire group
the following day. Matan Ruak believed the president
was ill-advised because the meeting would further
politicise the problem, moving it beyond a
disciplinary issue in the armed forces and bringing
more petitioners into the group.[28] Thus, when asked
to attend, he refused.

Nevertheless, Xanana met with some 400 petitioners -
already more than double the number of signatories -
at his office, together with Defence Minister Roque
Rodrigues and the defence forces chief of staff,
Colonel Lere Anan Timor. Two members of parliament
were also present. According to Xanana, Lere refused
to recognise that there was a real discrimination
problem, instead blaming opposition political parties
for trying to fan dissent.[29] The president urged the
protestors to return to their barracks, said there
would be no reprisals if they were back by the next
morning and promised their grievances would be
investigated.[30] Initially they refused, saying they
had already been warned by their commanders that they
would be considered "enemies" if they took part in the
protest, but eventually, they dispersed.

On 12 February, a five-member commission under Col.
Lere was scheduled to begin looking into the soldiers'
complaints but some petitioners refused to meet on the
grounds that the investigators included three of the
officers they had complained about. Others objected
that they were being treated like prisoners, under
constant surveillance.[31] By 17 February, Lere gave
the petitioners an ultimatum: take part in the
investigation or face dismissal. He suggested again
that some political parties were egging them on.[32]
He then gave weekend leave, from which the petitioners
did not return, and desertions continued. Normally
soldiers absent without leave for 24 hours have their
salaries cut but the F-FDTL continued to pay salaries
as negotiations proceeded. 

By the end of February, the number of protestors had
risen to 593, and on 16 March, when they still refused
to return to post, Matan Ruak ordered them dismissed.
When asked about it later, he said impatiently, "we
had given them every chance. What else could I
do?"[33] 

Alkatiri supported the decision; Xanana Gusmao, who
was out of the country at the time, did not. On 23
March, he addressed the nation in an emotional
televised broadcast that all agree sharply worsened
the situation - "27 minutes of incendiary words", was
how one local journalist phrased it.[34] The president
called the dismissals incorrect and unjust and warned
commanders that failure to address the complaints
would lead to more divisions. He said if 400 soldiers
left their barracks, it suggested there was a serious
problem within the instititution. Discrimination had
long existed within the F-FDTL; it was not just a
question of lack of discipline. He said if this issue
was not properly resolved, it would leave the
impression that the F-FDTL was just for easterners who
believed that only they had fought the war, and all
the others, "from Manatuto to Oecusse", were
"militias' children".[35] The fact that he quoted
directly from the petition seemed to give additional
legitimacy to the complaints.

The speech had an immediate impact in two ways. By so
clearly and publicly undermining Matan Ruak's
decision, it soured the relationship between two men
whose alliance had been a mainstay of the resistance
for more than twenty years, thus opening the way for
further efforts by FRETILIN to make its influence felt
within F-FDTL.[36] And by legitimating western
grievances, it seems to have led directly to attacks
on easterners in Dili by a few petitioners and others
rumoured (without evidence) to have Rogerio's backing.
By 27 March, seventeen homes had been burned to the
ground, and easterners were crowding on to buses to
flee the city. The violence led Alkatiri to state that
only FRETILIN could ensure stability, in turn
heightening suspicions in the anti-Alkatiri camp that
the rioting had been provoked for political ends.[37]

For a few weeks an uneasy calm returned, just in time
for a visit by World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz,
who told the press: "The bustling markets, the rebuilt
schools, the functioning Government - and above all
the peace and stability - attest to sensible
leadership and sound decisions".[38] 

-end/2 of 5... continues...

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