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> Violence paralyzing East Timor
> Joblessness, ethnic tension, weak leadership bring more bloodshed to troubled nation
> - Nick Meo, Chronicle Foreign Service
> Sunday, June 11, 2006

> Dili, East Timor -- Until the Australian-led international force arrived in East Timor's capital Dili last month, 62-year-old Martina Pereira had spent a terrified week crammed into the Jesuit-run Residencia Loyola listening to gunfire.

> She was sharing the sanctuary with hundreds of other women and children, praying that the prestige of the church in this devoutly Roman Catholic nation would protect them from the troubles that, over seven years, have brought a long-suffering people from ecstatic liberation to the verge of civil war.

> East Timor, born in agony but amid high hopes with the United Nations as midwife, is in danger of unraveling.

> Since Australian-led international forces returned to East Timor on May 25 to stop a threatened slide into civil war, the fighting has died down. There has been little sign of the armed rebels and factions of police and army that had been at odds with each other as the national security forces disintegrated.

> The Australians have had less success controlling gangs from different ethnic groups, which have fought deadly battles in the streets. At the height of the fighting, looters ran riot, and plumes of smoke from burning homes rose over the languid tropical capital, once a Portuguese colonial city. At least 21 people died, and conflict threatens to reignite at any time. The World Food Program estimates nearly 100,000 have fled their homes, mostly to makeshift camps and churches.

> The last time Pereira had fled her home was in 1999, when almost the entire population of the tiny capital city had disappeared into the hills as Indonesian-backed militias ran amok at the end of Jakarta's brutal 24-year occupation. As many as 200,000 Timorese died before Australian soldiers arrived as saviors then, too.

> This time the killing was not as bad, but Pereira didn't hold out much hope for finding her possessions when she ventured back home. "The looters have probably got in by now," she said. "But we must show patience at a time like this. At least it is not as bad as 1999. Not yet, anyway."

> "These are very traumatized people," said the Rev. Eduardo Lebron, the priest in charge at the Residencia. "They have been through a lot in the past few years, and this new fighting is difficult for them to bear."

> The refugees had little idea what was happening. Stuck under the gaze of plaster saints they had heard nothing but sounds of fighting and swirling rumors. Their squabbling political leaders, the men who had led them to freedom, had not taken charge in the chaos.

> "It is the powerful people who are responsible for these things," Pereira said. "The poor people don't know what is going on."

> But political paralysis grips Pereira's "powerful people." The unpopular Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri is widely blamed for the mess, but he clings to power despite demonstrations in the streets calling for his ouster and the maneuvering of rivals trying to replace him. Xanana Gusmao, the hero of the liberation struggle, now has mainly symbolic powers as president. He has tried, but so far failed, to unite the tiny country of 1 million and heal the divisions that threaten to tear it apart.

> Newly appointed Defense Secretary Jose Ramos-Horta, who won the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in East Timor, makes no secret of his wish to be leader. "I find it a bit strange that my own government does not seem to be able to accept its own share of responsibility," he said acidly. "We had a police force that was big in numbers, well-armed, and it disintegrated and fought battles with different forces."

> The flash point for the current state of crisis was an army mutiny after 600 soldiers were fired in March by Prime Minister Alkatiri for going on strike. They were from the western part of the nation, near Indonesia, and claimed discrimination at the hands of military leaders, mostly easterners, who command the 1,400-strong force.

> Easterners claim westerners were often pro-Indonesia in the last conflict, although most westerners insist they were just as strongly involved in the long guerrilla struggle that led to East Timor's independence.

> The army mutiny led to rioting in April, then armed clashes in May, and east-west antagonism quickly spread throughout the population. After the police -- also split into east and west factions -- disintegrated, gangs of youths in Dili armed with axes and machetes set themselves up as vigilantes, burning the homes of anyone from the wrong place and beating those unlucky enough to fall into their hands.

> The chaos has provoked real fears that East Timor could become one of the world's failed states. Australia now faces an expensive security commitment that could drag on for years.

> Vicente Ximenes, a politician formerly with the ruling Fretilin party, said the Australians "are not really doing an effective job here. They are strangers, and it is hard for them to understand who is causing problems. Their job will be harder than it was last time."

> Many Timorese have been stunned by the speed with which the most recent crisis blew up and the savagery it unleashed. In one instance, 12 unarmed police who had been trapped in their station were shot by soldiers as they were being marched out under U.N. escort. In another instance, a woman and her five children, related to an unpopular politician, were burned alive in their home. There are fears that the death toll of 30 could prove to be an underestimate.

> Sidney Jones of the nonpartisan International Crisis Group, who worked for the United Nations in East Timor after the Indonesian pullout, said the weakness of governance in the fledgling state had been a problem from the start. There are few Timorese civil servants. Most of the leadership of Fretilin, the liberation movement that won the first free election, is from the tiny Portuguese-speaking elite, and many of the new officials were out of touch after spending years abroad in Angola and Mozambique. Alkatiri, an ex-Marxist, has been accused by his opponents of trying to run Timor as an African-style one-party state.

> "The leadership was weak and not always that familiar with the problems of East Timor after spending years abroad," Jones said. "The problems between east and west that split the army could have been handled easily by a more competent leadership."

> The Fretilin leaders have not brought about the changes to their lives the people had fervently hoped for in 1999. The United Nations -- which ran a "transitional administration" before independence and a support mission after 2002 -- and Australian peacekeepers left last year at the behest of Timorese politicians who wanted to show they could govern themselves as well as donors watching the cost of the mission. Now, many officials here say they ended their presence too soon. High unemployment and problems reintegrating former guerrillas who fought the Indonesians are also challenges the government has not been able to solve on its own, Jones said.

> Rebuilding after the widespread destruction of the independence fight was never going to be easy. East Timor is Asia's poorest state and has little to sustain its economy. Some coffee is exported, and there could be an oil boom in a few years' time when offshore reserves are exploited, and until last month's turmoil, there were hopes that tourism would catch on.

> For now, most Timorese scrape out meager livings as subsistence farmers or are unemployed in the cities, where jobless young men joined in the looting and fighting.

> It has all been dispiriting for those who believed independence would mean a chance to build prosperity and peace after decades of oppression, poverty and bloodshed.

> "What has happened has been heartbreaking, but we still believe independence will work in East Timor. The people still believe in it," Ramos-Horta said.

> Now the best hope may be that the United Nations returns in numbers.

> But today, much of Dili is in the hands of young toughs like Dino da Silva, a 24-year-old unemployed westerner with a machete thrust into his belt. He was hanging around with a gang outside the burned home of the incinerated family, who were from the east.

> "I don't know who burned the house," he said with a smirk. "But that family won't be coming back here, at least."

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