[Kabar-indonesia] 1 of 5: ICG: Resolving Timor-Leste's Crisis

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International Crisis Group [Brussles / Jakarta]

Asia Report N°120 – 10 October 2006

RESOLVING TIMOR-LESTE’S CRISIS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY..................................................i

I.      
INTRODUCTION............................1

II.      IMPLICATIONS OF RESISTANCE-ERA
SPLITS...................................2

A.      FRETILIN's
Beginnings................................2

B.      FALINTIL's
Rise..........................................3

C.      FRETILIN After
Independence..................................4

D.      Rogerio
Lobato..........................................4

III.    THE SECURITY
SECTOR.............................................5

A.      Growing Problems in the
F-FDTL................................................6

B.      Response to the
Petition...............................................6

IV.    VIOLENCE
ERUPTS..............................................8

A.      The Petitioners'
Protest..................................................8

B.      Major Alfredo Joins the
Petitioners..................................9

C.      Conflict Escalates, International Forces
Arrive..........................................11

V.      THE POLITICAL
STRUGGLE..................................13

A.      The 22 June
Speech..............................................14

B.      Alkatiri's Resignation and Alfredo's
Arrest....................................15

VI.    INTERNATIONAL
ACTORS..................................17

A. The UN............

B.     
Australia..............................18

C.     Indonesia..........................19

D.     Portugal...............................20

VII.  
CONCLUSION..............................20

A.      Resolving the Political Impasse at the Top.............20

B.      Preparing for the Commission of Inquiry
Report............20

C.      Dealing with the Petitioners and Major
Alfredo................................21

D.      Security Sector
Review....................21

E.      Getting the Police Back on the Streets.....21

F.       Healing the East-West Rift and Getting the
Displaced Back Home................... 21

G.      Improving Oversight of the Courts and Judicial
Recruitment................... 22

H.      Preparing for the 2007
Elections.......................22

I.       Job Creation for Urban
Youth.........................22

J.       Adoption of the CAVR
Recommendations...............22

APPENDICES

A.            Map of
Timor-Leste................................23

B.           Glossary of Names and
Abbreviations...............24

C.            About the International Crisis
Group........................25

D.            Crisis Group Reports and Briefings on
Asia............................................................
28

E.             Crisis Group Board of
Trustees......................................................................
..........
31

Resolving Timor-Leste's Crisis

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The worst crisis in Timor-Leste's short history is far
from over. The country is in political limbo, waiting
for the report of the UN-appointed Independent Special
Commission of Inquiry that is expected to name names
and recommend prosecutions for perpetrators of the
April-May violence in Dili that killed more than 30
people. Scheduled for release in mid-October, it is
critical to moving forward but potentially explosive.
Elections scheduled for May 2007 could be another
flashpoint. With some creativity, focus, and political
will, Timor-Leste can get back on track but the wounds
are deep, and it will require enormous political
magnanimity on the part of a few key actors. 

There is, however, a growing consensus on what is
needed for resolution, including security sector
reform. A new, expanded UN mission is in place with
the mandate of "consolidating stability, enhancing a
culture of democratic governance, and facilitating
dialogue among Timorese stakeholders". 

The crisis is widely portrayed as stemming from the
sacking of a third of the country's defence forces in
March 2006, after which the disgruntled soldiers
became part of a power struggle between President
Xanana Gusmao and the now deposed prime minister, Mari
Alkatiri. However, the problem is far more complex. 

The roots lie partly in the battles and betrayals that
occurred within the Revolutionary Front for the
Liberation of East Timor (FRETILIN), just before and
during the Indonesian occupation. Ideological and
political disputes in the 1980s and 1990s,
particularly between FRETILIN central committee
members and Xanana Gusmao, then commander of the
guerrilla army FALINTIL, carried over into the
post-conflict government.

They are also to be found in the poorly implemented
demobilisation of FALINTIL fighters in 2000 and the
creation of a defence force for the new country in
2001 that absorbed some of the veterans but left
others unemployed and resentful while donors and the
UN devoted most of their attention to creation of a
new police force. That many of the police, vetted and
retrained, had worked for the Indonesian
administration, was more salt in the wounds of the
ex-fighters. 

The old ideological splits and the frustrations of the
ex-FALINTIL were manipulated in particular by Rogerio
Lobato, a FRETILIN central committee member who had
lived in Angola and Mozambique for the duration of the
conflict. As interior minister, he controlled the
police, encouraged rivalry with the defence force,
most of whom were personally loyal to Xanana Gusmao,
and created specialised police units that effectively
became a private security force. The police under him
were in charge of law and order, border patrol, riot
control and immigration. It was never clear what the
role of the defence force was.

All these problems had been festering for years. When
159 soldiers in January 2006 petitioned the president
as supreme commander, alleging discrimination in the
defence force by officers from the eastern part of the
country (lorosae) against people from the west
(loromonu), many interested parties saw political
opportunity. More soldiers from the west joined the
petitioners, while personal and institutional tensions
between a president commited to pluralism and a ruling
party with distinctly authoritarian tendencies,
politicisation of the police, lack of any regulatory
framework for the security forces more generally and
the in-bred nature of a tiny political elite with 30
years' shared history allowed matters to spiral out of
control.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Timor-Leste Government and the United Nations
Integrated Mission in East Timor jointly:

1.              Immediately define terms of reference
and allocate funds for the "comprehensive review of
the future role and needs of the security sector" as
specified in Article 4(e) of Security Council
Resolution 1704/2006, and quickly appoint the
necessary staff to get the review underway.

2.              Use the review to clarify the roles of
the defence force (F-FDTL), police (PNTL), and
intelligence agencies; maritime, border, and internal
security threats; command and control arrangements,
including in emergencies; and civilian oversight
mechanisms.

3.              Create a job corps for urban youth,
starting in Dili, simultaneously to reduce the
propensity for gang violence and to address an
unemployment rate for this group estimated at over 40
per cent.

To the Timor-Leste Government:

4.              Establish a national security council
based on the above review, on which the commanders of
the police and F-FDTL, the heads of intelligence
agencies, and the ministers of defence and interior
would sit. 

5.              Resolve as a matter of urgency the
issue of the F-FDTL deserters, by prosecutions where
appropriate and absorption of the rest either back
into the defence force or into civilian jobs.

6.              Develop a plan for the gradual
retirement of resistance veterans within the F-FDTL
and a more comprehensive social security package for
all veterans.

7.              Absorb the special police units
created by Rogerio Lobato into the regular police as a
temporary measure until the security review is
complete and any further restructuring can be based on
identified needs.

8.              Review the police re-screening plan
after a month or two to see if it can be streamlined
in the interests of getting police back to work more
quickly.

9.              Seek agreement from leaders of all
political parties on a political code of ethics for
the 2007 elections, announce it on radio and
television and ensure it is conveyed to all levels of
party structures. 

10.          Ensure that the president and all
ministers give full backing to the Simu-Malu
reconciliation project and explore other avenues of
healing the east-west (loromonu-lorosae) rift, with
particular attention to the role that women in
affected communities can play.

11.          Adopt the recommendations of the Truth,
Reception and Reconciliation Mission's report Chega!
[Enough!], giving priority to those related to
security of the person, the security sector,
protection of the rights of the vulnerable and
reconciliation, and disseminate the entire report
widely.

To the UN Secretary-General and Secretariat:

12.          Appoint an activist Special
Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) who
will engage members of the political elite but not shy
away from conflict, intervening where necessary to
overcome fractiousness, adjust programs that are going
astray and help clear political hurdles.

13.          Institute procedures for improving
recruitment of international judges, prosecutors and
lawyers to serve in Timor-Leste courts.

14.          Invite a peer review periodically of
judicial performance, including in the Court of
Appeal, by an independent panel.

15.          Ensure that there is regular oversight of
UN-funded programs in the law and legal development
area by a senior UN official with expertise in the
area.


I.              INTRODUCTION

The worst political crisis in Timor-Leste's short
history is not over. The capital Dili, wracked by
violence in April and May 2006, is relatively calm but
tense, its streets patrolled by international forces.
More than 100,000 people remain displaced, with a de
facto curfew in place. Key members of the political
elite are still at loggerheads.

A United Nations-appointed commission of inquiry is
expected to release its report in mid-October; its
findings will be both critical to moving forward and
potentially explosive. 

Ian Martin, Kofi Annan's special envoy to Timor-Leste,
told the Security Council in August that "this is not
about Timor-Leste being a failed state. Rather it is
about a four-year-old state struggling to stand on its
two feet and learn to practice democratic governance".

But it is also about much more: how a guerrilla force
makes the transition from war to peace and how
security institutions are built from scratch. The
crisis underscores the importance of well thought
through strategies of post-conflict demobilisation and
reintegration and how poor decisions early in the
transition can have disastrous consequences later on.
It highlights key areas where the UN's peace-building
process went wrong, more through passivity than
anything else. And it shows how infinitely more
difficult crisis resolution becomes when political
leaders allow problems to fester.

The immediate crisis started in January 2006, when
soldiers submitted a petition to top government
leaders alleging discrimination in the armed forces.
The allegations were not new but were made in an
atmosphere poisoned by political manipulation that
caused the police and military to be divided
internally and against each other. The interventions
of then Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and President
Xanana Gusmao, who had radically different visions of
where the country should be headed and mutually
antagonistic power bases, often made things worse. The
east-west divisions within the security forces were
transferred to the Dili street, eventually leading to
attacks by westerners (loromonu) on easterners
(lorosae), and creation of a new generation of
displaced. 

This report describes how the crisis emerged and
identifies key measures necessary to resolve it, but
it is not at all clear that those measures can or will
be adopted. Timor-Leste's problems are made more
difficult by the country's being so small and the
political elite even tinier. The entire crisis, its
origins and solutions, revolve around less than ten
people, who have a shared history going back 30 years.
They include President Gusmao; former prime minister
(and FRETILIN secretary-general) Mari Alkatiri; former
interior minister and Vice President of FRETILIN
Rogerio Lobato; Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta; the
defence forces commander, Brig. Gen. Taur Matan Ruak;
his chief of staff, Col. Lere Anan Timor; Minister for
State Administration Ana Pessoa; and Defence Minister
Roque Rodrigues. These individuals, Timor-Leste's
founders, may have produced a dysfunctional government
but each has a role to play in making it work again -
in a few cases by stepping down.

In this environment a new, expanded UN effort, the
Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT), plays a
pivotal role. It is tasked with "consolidating
stability, enhancing a culture of democratic
governance, and facilitating dialogue among Timorese
stakeholders".[1] Much depends on the skill,
experience and personality of its head. Passivity of
the kind that marked the leadership of the last two UN
missions will not help the country through this
crisis. Some creative intervention, however,
particularly between now and the elections scheduled
for May 2007, could help put the country back on
track. 

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